DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived post-Murdoch era

"never practice, only record"

our school didn't do GS lessons. you just turned up to the exam.

ah, we did the Critical Thinking Advanced Extension paper that way. (AEA levels: a qualification i had completely forgotten i had until this morning)

who took S level? now that was real talk. i took the physics mock and i was like, 'no way do i need that blot on my mother fucking copybook'.

I may be wrong but my understanding is that that's essentially the difference between your school and mine (think you went to the neighbouring private school in the same city as me?) and between the state and private (or "better") schools' approaches to university entry. private schools presumably market themselves in part on the number of kids they send to oxbridge and are therefore much much better at encouraging their students to consider applying and teaching them the tricks that will improve their chances of getting in.

i guess - we were never specifically coached in any "tricks" to get into university though (i don't even remember any mock interviews - when i turned up at oxford for mine i felt so inadequately prepared, esp compared to the eg etonians i met there)

but as with cis's school, there was a pretty awesome range of extra-curricular stuff that we were encouraged to do, even though no one actually said "this will help you get into oxbridge" - i helped edit the school magazine, which often meant sunbathing on the school lawn pointing and mocking the kids in CCF for playing soldiers

fuck i remember S levels! i was put forward for the english lit one, our teacher was at pains to emphasise that it was just an experiment and didn't matter. i don't think anyone ever actually got their results, lol, which presumably meant we all failed dismally

Thread turns like this make me wonder if UK ILx is the poshest online clique I've ever known.

the English education system never fails to totally hornswoggle me

boom

i couldn't do maths or physics S level now, and i have a phd in that shit.

trying to find past papers online and failing :-(

sorry, "tricks" was definitely the wrong choice of word there but in terms of being expected consider the effect on university entry when making any kind of academic decisions, we definitely weren't. In retrospect I resent them a little bit for that.

Thread turns like this make me wonder if UK ILx is the poshest online clique I've ever known.

Doubt it. They let scum like me in after all.

Thread turns like this make me wonder if UK ILx is the poshest online clique I've ever known.

sometimes i wonder whether i should just tell my life story outright to disabuse people of these simplistic notions of "poshness" as though it's not far more complicated than obvious signifiers would imply, and can't encompass more than one end of the spectrum. (it's not for online though so no.)

That's the poshest poshcard ever!

Also not accusing lex of being posh or having advantages I did not, just to be clear. I did fine.

oh god my school was utterly blatant about it, they were all, "do this because it will look good on your ucas form!" and then you got the actual ucas form and it turned out there wasn't actually space for you to put on all these library monitorships and debating societies so haha it turned out i was right to never take part in anything, ever.

(um except orchestra)

(and the 'international politics discussion society' that was some of my friends in a classroom over lunchbreaks)

I think AEAs were successors to S Levels? the head of english was all "do it, you'll enjoy it" and put me up for... english, critical thinking, and maybe latin (there might have been a timetabling problem that meant i couldn't do latin?). They didn't put me up for history and now i... am doing a phd in that shit.

i went to a comprehensive school in sheffield for the record. and fwiw probably the least posh oxford college (cf. nrq, who is old money).

they should get us all on one of those "i love the 90s" shows. me and lex could do the paul moreley stuff about S levels.

i don't deny it! i guess what i'm saying is, despite what you think you know about someone, you don't know everything.

sorry, "tricks" was definitely the wrong choice of word there but in terms of being expected consider the effect on university entry when making any kind of academic decisions, we definitely weren't. In retrospect I resent them a little bit for that.

yeah i think the biggest "trick" wasn't anything specific, more the assumption that it would happen, that this was how things were done, so it didn't even seem like extra pressure or a weird thing to be thinking about university applications because duh, what else would we be doing? there literally was no other option. it was like, of course you'll be thinking about university, in the same way that of course you'll be thinking of turning up to school tomorrow

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholarship_Level

i used to get upset about being posh but these days i think, well, my mother worked incredibly hard to have children so middle-class, so fuck you all.

loool

er, in a less belligerent way than that post would suggest

Hey, I went to a hippie free school for the years of my education I spent in the UK, and they didn't bother about A-levels because they were for the maaaaaaan, and they were more concerned with the self-actualisation of the free little hippie children than standards and grades and hassle by the maaaan.

I did, however, just find their website, and they are apparently still going, though clearly OFSTED was sent in to clear out all that hippie muck.

latin (there might have been a timetabling problem that meant i couldn't do latin?)

SO regret not doing latin a-level ;_;

i used to get upset about being posh but these days i think, well, my mother worked incredibly hard to have children so middle-class, so fuck you all.

:D

(cf. nrq, who is old money).

For some reason I read this as "nv is old money", and I thought, WHAT?

NV is in debrett's (under "LOL")

That was the only "trick" I heard about: Take Latin, it will help you at University.

what my public school DIDN'T do, of course, was instil any sort of work ethic into me (maybe it didn't show that i needed this? i coasted through getting top grades at every turn with minimal effort) =====>>>>>> universities, plural = disaster. as i was just discussing on twitter w/another journalist for whom a-levels were basically our academic pinnacle, i'm not even 100% sure what degree grade i got - i assume i actually did get one but honestly i glanced at the results for like a second and the certificate is long lost. so all in all, all those advantages weren't, ultimately, the greatest help (but then ultimately ultimately, after university, they might have been?)

there literally was no other option. it was like, of course you'll be thinking about university, in the same way that of course you'll be thinking of turning up to school tomorrow

iirc there was quite a bit of fuss when i told my school i wasn't going to apply to university? but then they were like "lol w/e you'll do it in the end, gosh having a gnvq as well will look good on your ucas form".

Well, I was possibly in the last contingent of people who moved into "computing" without going to Univ, after that it was 'no degree? Forget it" and even now (especially now, I guess), people just assume I went.

xpost funnily enough I also told my school I wasn't applying for university. Ended up being 'accepted' at Huddersfield. Without applying. (Didn't go, had the job by then)

actually it's been quite instructive this morning to see how many smart, intelligent people i know completely fucked up either a-levels or university, and sort of made me question my assumption that everyone i know obviously went through both smoothly

I think I was pretty much every cliche of a middle-class child but I grew up in Catford so it never really felt like it at the time. Even less so when I went university and virtually everyone was posher than me.

i inherited my a-level results

I did a pretty good Irish Leaving Certificate but definitely picked my subjects and managed my workload to do as little as possible and get by. EG did ordinary level Maths as it was too much work, picked Geography not History despite preferring the latter, Geography is notoriously easy on the Irish Leaving Cert, about 4 weeks work near the end and you'll get an A. I was fluent in Irish and liked English so those were both no work As, got Cs in the two subjects which had huge levels of donkey work required, Latin and Business. And a B1 in French, was disappointed not to get an A.

I didn't get my first choice which was Communications in DCU, but got Journalism which is largely the same and in hindsight a better course. It was a bit of a waste of time though to be honest. Half the course was just a conglomeration of subjects that already were being taught for economics or business degrees, to make up the numbers.

The journalism stuff was theoretically fine and I 100 per cent could have put more into it, I stopped going to lectures regularly after first year, but largely it was just facile rubbish. You could have picked up some tiny camera skills from the course but it wasn't focussed enough on technical tools in my opinion. And it had a truly archaic view of the internet, even for 2001.

Nobody has ever asked me if I have a degree, though I guess it's on my CV. Like Lex I'm not 100 per cent certain of the grade, I think what I put down is correct. When I joined BBC the trainee scheme that got me in actually said it didn't want you to have a degree, thankfully I didn't read that small print.

I guess university fills a gap between the ages of 18-22 or whatever, but it's so exaggerated as a thing. You only really learn when you're in an office and you have to do shit.

Also it's funny how other things you do take on greater significance. I never thought when I spent every day doing a techno blog that it'd really stand to me career-wise but it's one of the most useful and important things on my CV I reckon. Wouldn't be where I am (not a hugely exalted position but at least moving up a ladder and starting a good job next week) without having done that.

Thread turns like this make me wonder if UK ILx is the poshest online clique I've ever known.

― Stevie T, Thursday, August 18, 2011 11:16 AM

'twas ever thus

Despite the fact that I've just eaten a bowl of smashed-up meringue, whipped double cream, and raspberries, I'm probably the least-posh British ILX graduate. Mum never knew her dad, grew up in 2-up, 2-down council house in Sheffield that about 10 family members lived in, no inside toilet, etc etc. Dad's dad was a steel tool-maker, died young. I was the first member of my family on either side, including older cousins etc, to go to university and get a degree. I went to a shit uni and got a shit degree because I literally didn't know any better or have any better guidance. It took me until I was about 28/29 to get a graduate level job. I'm now at a point where I'd say I've done alright for myself, yes that's less about my degree than other stuff I've done since, but the degree helped. I wish I'd known more about university before I went, taken advantage of more. Same with A Levels, actually. I went to the local community college and i was "principal student" in 6th form, whatever that means. I earn considerably more than either of my much older brothers, which I feel... Not guilty about, but sad about, sometimes. We'd never have been ale to buy a use without a deposit from my father-in-law, who, if anything, comes from a poorer background than my mum, but who's worked insanely hard and now runs a company and does business deals in the middle east and stuff. We've just started, this year, to be able to go on holiday a couple of times a year, a week or a weekend away in Europe. I didn't go abroad at all until I was deep into my 20s.

Able to by a house, not ale to buy a use.

Think I can out-prole you there, Nick

How many ORNAMENTS we there in your parents' house?!

Who's the poshest person on ILE? And why?

Were not we! Damn iPad.

I did three A-levels and an extra General Studies A-level which was compulsory at my Sxith-Form College which just happened to have one of the best average UCAS levels in the country. Cheating I reckon.

Mum never knew her dad, grew up in 2-up, 2-down council house in Sheffield that about 10 family members lived in, no inside toilet, etc etc

Best thing my family ever did was move into a council house!

we were so poor we couldn't afford feet

Not all of us were born into old money, like Noodle Vague

lex did you start at oxford?

Some of us had to go to hospital.

xpost TIMING!

Oh, I think you'll find he started long before that.

xpost TIMING!