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Degree success


Stuart

Stuart graduated this year with a History degree from Bangor, University of Wales. He enjoys listening to rock music, writing, playing football and going down to the pub with his mates. He is an aspiring journalist and his dream is to work for a top music magazine. He's going to Canada at the end of this year for a ski season and hopes to return without any broken bones!

Getting a 2:2 is something to be proud of whether you've worked your socks off for it, or had a bloomin' good time at the student bar, Stuart proclaims.

If the much sought after and 'all important 2:1' constitutes a university success, does anything below it mean you're a failure?

A failure was indeed how I felt upon finding out I'd received a 2:2. Was this an unjustifiably harsh mark on behalf of the board of examiners? Did the fault lie with the poor lecturing I received while at university? I would like to say this was the case, but unfortunately the answer to my problem was probably the fact that I had spent too much time in the student bar. The one consoling factor was that all of my housemates, also having probably spent too much time at the student bar, received 2:2s as well.

But, in hindsight, a 2:2 is anything but a failure. Getting a 2:2 will allow you to become anything from a journalist to a marketing analyst. It will even (if you're extra keen) provide the opportunity of doing a postgraduate masters or a diploma. And if you're still disillusioned with what you got from university, just consider the fact that Carol Vorderman (of Countdown fame) received a third class degree in engineering. In short, there's no point in dwelling on what you didn't get from university, but rather concentrating on the many opportunities it can offer you.

Looking around at the friends I made at university I see a group of bright, confident people who probably all had the ability to achieve the much sought after 2:1. The majority of us had been told on at least one occasion that we had the 'potential' to achieve the top grades, if only we paid as much attention to our studies as we had to our social lives.

"University gives people much more than just a degree classification; it provides you with the best three years of your life for gaining independence and having fun without as many responsibilities."

Yet I believe that developing a close social network of friends and developing interests and extra-curricular activities is just as important as having your head buried between the pages of an academic textbook. Even a recent Guardian article, 'Experience not degree comes first for employers', would support this argument. It was found that in making the choice of who to recruit, employers looked for the 'ability to be a team player' an 'easy going cheerful attitude' and 'natural leadership'. These are all personal qualities which cannot be developed through the reading of the latest edition of the Companion to Urban Economics.

Being part of a university team or society may not help you in the pursuit of a good grade, but it does enable you to make new friends and gain confidence, making you all the more attractive to prospective employers. This is not to say that working hard and taking an active interest in your degree subject should be discouraged. In fact if I, along with my friends, had worked harder I'm sure we would have been far prouder of our achievements, even if we still ended up with the same 2:2.

I think that one of the most disappointing things a person can say about their time at university is that they didn't enjoy it. University gives people much more than just a degree classification; it provides you with the best three years of your life for gaining independence and having fun without as many responsibilities. The divide between the degree classifications isn't what makes your time at university a pass or a fail. It could equally be said that a person has failed at university if they didn't make the most of the opportunities outside the lecture room or library. University life is what people make of it. Trying to keep a balance between learning and socialising is probably the most important and difficult part of university life; a balance that many people find very hard to achieve.

I probably spent too much time having fun and meeting new people in my time at university to achieve the classification that I wanted. But do I regret it? Not for a moment. In the words of Jane Shilling, Times correspondent: "Nothing will replace the great word-hoard or talk and friendship that I accumulated in those three misspent years."

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