Another year of undue praise!

To those of you starting a new chapter of your lives at Imperial this month, welcome. This is the only paragraph you’re getting dedicated to you for the rest of the year if I can help it. Breathe it in. I’m here for you. I care. Listen to these words of encouragement and sympathy. Your life is hard, but well done for making it this far. All of those exams you had to do, poor little you. It must’ve been really hard to coast on the back of natural ability, copious amounts of privately funded education, or an impeccable national education system. Congratulations for being you. Pats on the back all round.

Right, done. Normal service resuming - welcome back, shitsacks. Everyone happy to be back here, are we? I do hope not. I hope it’s sapping your very will to live just dragging your pathetic, decaying brains along Exhibition Road and up to the gates of the college. Yeah, that’s it. Cry a bit. Well up a little as you remember what coursework submission smells like on a Monday morning at 10am. Weep into this jar here so I can massage it into my gums later for sustenance. It’s another academic year, sweet cheeks.

It’s a great time of year. A time of year when my social media feeds fill up with messages from Imperial graduates ‘jokingly’ discussing how long it is until they can retire from the shitty, money-fuelled job they took as soon as they could leave Imperial with a 2:1, whilst I can enjoy sitting in the JCR, slowly watching the day-by-day decline in the parabola defining the smiles on first year faces. The season of 9am lecture starts in the ball-aching cold. I chuckle not because I innately hate humankind, but because I’m tired of having Imperial pander to its students so readily.

The way first-years are treated defines Imperial’s attitude towards its students. They’re praised for having gotten so far, for gaining entry to one of the top universities in the world. It’s talked about as if most of the students actually worked for their qualifications, as if the majority of Imperial undergraduates gave a shit about their subject or their results. It’s amusing, as well as being incredibly heartbreaking. As an institution, we couldn’t give a monkey’s wankbucket whether or not we create the scientific minds of tomorrow. We care about two things - getting the best students on day one, and pumping out the highest earners on day three hundred and sixty-four. The former ensures the latter, and so we raise our standards of entry, sit back and relax. Who cares what happens in the intervening years? As long as the statistics come out right and the league tables say what they should, then we’re golden.

I’m feeling generous this year so let me toss in a free extra paragraph for new starters. Imperial contains some of the most amazing research, inspiring teachers and incredible resources you will ever have access to. The path of least resistance will put you in contact with almost none of this. Cruise through, hit those pass requirements, and spend the rest of your days drinking yourself into oblivion, and you will leave as an Imperial graduate to applause and deep, meaningless respect from everyone around you. Engage with your subject, talk to people that interest you, and find out more about why you came here in the first place, and you’ll leave in pretty much the same circumstances. But you’ll be a different person. You’re paying a lot for the chance to spend four years at this place.