University Wounded Me. Twice.
Who cares about learners? Here I describe how higher education experiences wounded me and wonder if there’s a better way.
Round 1: I Don’t Belong Here. Cambridge University, UK.
I never believed that I was supposed to go to Cambridge University. Applications to UK universities are centralized under the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS). Students list up to five universities they’d like to apply to and I had one space left on the form. When my mum suggested Cambridge I scoffed, of course I wasn’t clever enough, I’ll never get in. “That doesn’t matter” she said, and on that logic, I startled my high school teachers with my last-minute decision to apply to Cambridge. Unbelievably to me, I passed their tests, got the grades, and entered St. John’s College, Cambridge University in October 2002.
I don’t fit in, I’m not good enough, my experiences do not count. In our first week, a session was organized to get to know our peers. One activity was to share a famous connection in a small group discussion. “These people are all rich, probably their dad knows (or is) someone famous and their uncle is a politician” I thought, “I don’t have any famous connections.” When it came to me, I told them that as a waitress I’d served Terry Waite mustard, and I served at the kiosk at the football stadium when REM were playing. Some guy in my group recommended I inflate the REM story to “I served Michael Stipe a pie”. When I announced my exaggerated claim to fame to the whole room, someone from another group piped up, “Isn’t Michael Stipe a vegetarian?” Busted. Ashamed. Utterly embarrassed. Silence please swallow me whole. The belief that where I come from was not good enough was confirmed.
It’s Not What You Know, It’s What Who You Know Knows
Opportunities beyond the curriculum depend heavily on your family’s bank account and connections. Cambridge University rules state that students are not allowed employment during term time. The rationale is that term-time is for studies and the breaks are sufficiently long for employment. Between semesters, we had to vacate our college accommodation so I felt I had no choice but to return to my hometown and look for work. The make-up factory, the onion factory, bartending at the horse races and not serving vegetarians pies at the football stadium…. While these temporary jobs diversified my work-experience and helped me subsist, I was not applying anything I’d learnt in term-time and the work felt irrelevant to my future. I later discovered that others at university did these things called internships, which sounded like real-world work with fancy companies and people in suits in places like London. I don’t know how they found those opportunities, perhaps someone in their family hooked them up. Besides not having heard of internships before, I certainly couldn’t afford to commute to or reside in London, let alone work for free. Looking back, I see how many opportunities were behind closed doors in corridors I didn’t even know existed.
Life at Cambridge University felt like a parallel dimension, a bubble separate from the real world. I just wanted to get out. One day I cycled and cycled and cycled. I cycled as far as the motorway. I cried. Bicycles aren’t allowed on motorways. I knew I had to graduate. I turned around and cycled back to the bubble.
Three things got me through my undergraduate life; my boyfriend, my advisor, and fire-spinning. I met my boyfriend at the first party in freshers week and we lived together throughout our university years. He played a huge role in my life — together in the bubble he generously gave me the care, support, and love I needed in a place I otherwise felt so alone. In my second year I changed to social anthropology and was blessed to be advised by a wonderful lady who warmly welcomed me as me. She encouraged my interests and thanks to her I wrote my thesis on Glastonbury music festival. Finally, through fire-spinning I found my people, most of whom were not members of the university. When other students were paying hundreds of pounds to dress up in suits and gowns for “May Balls”, my friends and I enjoyed free entry as fire-spinning performers, able to enjoy the exclusive parties in non-flammable attire, stinking of paraffin.
After I graduated, I was ashamed to say that I went to Cambridge University. People stereotype Cambridge University graduates as rich, smart and with posh parents. But I’m not smart — I’m just good at passing school tests. And I’m not rich — back then fees were means-tested and I paid no tuition. And as for my posh parents? Well I’ve never met one of them and it took me over 20 years to understand that I am the grandchild of refugees. I used to joke with one of my few friends that we were beneficiaries of positive discrimination — him from one of Birmingham’s biggest council estates and I from a single-parent family on income-support. In 2019 I discovered that people like us — the firsts in our families to go to university — are labeled first-generation.
Round 2: Scholarship Battles. Sophia University, Japan.
Completing courses is often the least of a student’s worries. Though I saved hard for more than two years to pay entry fees, tuition, and my husband agreed to cover rent, I didn’t have a solid financial plan to get through the two-year Masters program. Nevertheless, I enrolled at Sophia University, Tokyo in April 2015 and spent much of my first year writing scholarship applications. The gatekeeper working in the international scholarship office was one of those people who seem to draw energy from the suffering of others. She only spoke Japanese to me. With a long line of other students waiting behind me in the very public office, she noticed the blank “Father” section of my form and started probing. What is your father’s name? Where is his information? Why haven’t you completed this section? I was shaking, trembling with fear in this public humiliation, fighting to hold back the tears.
会ったことがありません。Atta koto ga arimasen — I haven’t met him.
When she finally released me from the ordeal, I fled the room crying. I ran away from the building, I ran away from the campus, I ran away as far as I could, into the fresh air where I longed to join the traffic on the motorway rumbling out of the city.
If you do not pay your tuition fees by the deadline you will be kicked out. This friendly reminder accompanies each invoice for the next semester’s tuition fee. While the university was generous enough to reduce my tuition by 50% in year one, the second year application procedure required submission of my mum’s pension information even though I’d been living independently for nearly two decades. Although this documentation supposedly functioned to assess my means, they lowered the reduction to 30% when I was demonstrably worse off. Do not get me wrong — any tuition reduction is gratefully welcomed and I never expected a free ride. But this lowering of financial aid in the second year was a pattern so common among my classmates that I couldn’t help wondering if it was a ploy to help lure us fee-payers in, then bank on us somehow scraping the funds together to complete our studies once we were already invested.
What got me through those Sophia University years? Loved ones, my advisor, and swimming. Firstly, loved ones offered not only the emotional support I needed to get through challenging times, but a sizeable cash loan which I highly doubt was available from money lenders to foreign students living in Japan. At earlier stages of life, this financial support would not have been available to me and I would simply have been kicked off the programme and out of the university. People lacking funds rarely get second chances. Secondly, I connected deeply with my advisor — an inspiring lady who goes well beyond her duties with loving care, encouragement, and unmatched academic rigour. It seems that genuine care for students does little for professors’ evaluations, which instead rely upon publications, presentations, and departmental politicking. Finally, when I swim my mind quietens. Alone in the water with breath and body, I stretch and pull in blissful weightlessness. I raise my heart rate. I feel my muscles lengthen then wriggle gently at full extension to feel the stretch just a little bit more. Whatever is going on in the world, swimming brings me into the present moment, freeing my consciousness and giving me the energy I need to keep going.
Time heals some wounds. Over the years I have reflected upon my experiences at Cambridge and moved along the shame-pride spectrum in a positive direction. One decade after graduation I dropped the Cambridge card into conversation which helped create an employment opportunity where before there was none. I do not apportion blame for my suffering of Imposter Syndrome, not at Cambridge nor anywhere else. Issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion within (higher) education mirror and are mirrored by the broader societies in which they are situated — I question whether a line can or should be drawn between the two. Though the government funding which provided my free education has long been cut, I have been heartened by Cambridge University’s efforts to continue to attract students from less financially secure backgrounds, to the point I’ve considered donating.
The wounds from Sophia University are fresher. No formal complaints procedures seemed to be available to (international) students. Concerned for the potential impact on my academic standing, I waited until after graduation to write a letter of complaint to the president detailing the painful experiences I’d been through. I received no acknowledgement. Universities all too easily forget their responsibilities and duties of care when they see their students as headcount and dollar revenues instead of as individuals. This becomes especially pronounced when it comes to international students; my ordeal in the scholarship office pales into insignificance compared to Ingrid, a Norwegian student who was incarcerated in Japanese prison for 21 days — who knows if time can heal her wounds?
When I consider the lessons that university actually taught me, I recall very little curriculum content. I learnt that I have stamina — the stamina to define, raise the funds and execute independent research and produce a piece of academic writing that satisfies (often ill-defined) academic requirements. Next, I am able to function in environments of high uncertainty. When my decade-long relationship dissolved a few months into my Masters, I found myself homeless in a foreign country. Nevertheless, I was able to start all over again, to hold down a job, and to leap into my first experience of fieldwork overseas. Most importantly, I learnt that just one well-placed cheerleader can help a student become more themselves, to follow their heart, and to connect their interests and personality with their academic discipline.
Who cares?
From primary school memories of not knowing how to respond when the teacher went around class asking every student “What does your dad do?” to the dehumanizing ordeals of student administrative procedures, how can we expect learners — or society — to flourish when our education systems don’t care? I am deeply conflicted whether to pursue a PhD or not. While I have done and can continue to do well in academia, I question what of value all this school work has accomplished. I want to help solve important problems, to contribute meaningfully, to help the world become a better place. I want an education system that cares about individuals as whole human beings. And I don’t know how or if more formal education is the way to bring about that change.
