The Strangeness of Universities
Here's the hideous concrete part of the University of Leeds, looking better than it has any right to look, early in the morning.
I hated those buildings when I was a student there and I still hate them now. As for the lake, it's the watery equivalent of concrete - it's chemically treated and nothing lives in it. I suppose someone thought it would soften the look of the hideous concrete - but when I pass it, I just feel cheated. It's like a reminder of a real lake, without being one.
They're funny places, universities, with their own strange way of doing things.
I was asked the other day why their grading system for degrees goes First, Two One, Two Two and then Third.
Well, whatever the rational explanation is, I think the real explanation is "to make them feel elitist and special." And to make anyone who didn't go to university feel excluded.
They like to have their own particular use of language, too. Now what is a "collection"? Well, it's an end-of-term exam that doesn't count towards your degree, if you happen - as Emily does - to be a student at the University of York.
And to go with the strange language and strange ways, universities tend to attract some strange people, too. When I was at Leeds, for example, there was a woman who never wore shoes. I remember being fascinated by seeing her blue, cut and bleeding feet make their way across the campus one cold winter's day.
But the strangest of all were the Macintosh Twins (I have changed their surname, just in case).
They were two middle-aged identical-twin women who attended the first-year lectures in English and also in Philosophy, every year, though legend had it that they had actually graduated, one from Leeds, one from elsewhere, years before.
One always wore a green tweed suit: the other an identical purple suit. They argued a lot, in little twittering voices, and always seemed to be carrying black bin-liners full of clothes.
In the lectures, they scribbled all the way through. I sat behind them, nosily, once, to try to see what they were writing and it might just have been shorthand, but I don't think so - it just looked like scribble.
Throughout the three years I was there I saw them most weeks, always dressed in the same way.
Apparently they owned a large house in Headingley which was very run-down and the council kept trying to make them look after it. In fact, that was the last I heard of them, some years later: an article in the Yorkshire Evening Post about their house.
I've often wondered what became of them, and why they behaved as they did, and what they thought.
Strange places, universities.
I hated those buildings when I was a student there and I still hate them now. As for the lake, it's the watery equivalent of concrete - it's chemically treated and nothing lives in it. I suppose someone thought it would soften the look of the hideous concrete - but when I pass it, I just feel cheated. It's like a reminder of a real lake, without being one.
They're funny places, universities, with their own strange way of doing things.
I was asked the other day why their grading system for degrees goes First, Two One, Two Two and then Third.
Well, whatever the rational explanation is, I think the real explanation is "to make them feel elitist and special." And to make anyone who didn't go to university feel excluded.
They like to have their own particular use of language, too. Now what is a "collection"? Well, it's an end-of-term exam that doesn't count towards your degree, if you happen - as Emily does - to be a student at the University of York.
And to go with the strange language and strange ways, universities tend to attract some strange people, too. When I was at Leeds, for example, there was a woman who never wore shoes. I remember being fascinated by seeing her blue, cut and bleeding feet make their way across the campus one cold winter's day.
But the strangest of all were the Macintosh Twins (I have changed their surname, just in case).
They were two middle-aged identical-twin women who attended the first-year lectures in English and also in Philosophy, every year, though legend had it that they had actually graduated, one from Leeds, one from elsewhere, years before.
One always wore a green tweed suit: the other an identical purple suit. They argued a lot, in little twittering voices, and always seemed to be carrying black bin-liners full of clothes.
In the lectures, they scribbled all the way through. I sat behind them, nosily, once, to try to see what they were writing and it might just have been shorthand, but I don't think so - it just looked like scribble.
Throughout the three years I was there I saw them most weeks, always dressed in the same way.
Apparently they owned a large house in Headingley which was very run-down and the council kept trying to make them look after it. In fact, that was the last I heard of them, some years later: an article in the Yorkshire Evening Post about their house.
I've often wondered what became of them, and why they behaved as they did, and what they thought.
Strange places, universities.
posted by Daphne at 5:52 pm
3 Comments:
I remember my own time at university and I *completely* agree with you. I've honestly never met so many weirdos in all my life. I left in 1997 so it's 10+ years ago now. I remember printing out essays in one of the computer rooms (no one had their own PCs and certainly no internet access in their rooms back then) and there was this big scary woman who I nicknamed 'Superdyke'.
So many total eccentrics, in retrospect. Of course, as a student we longed for graduation and 'professional life', but now that we've got it, I miss my student days big-time. Would love to re-live them...
As a schoolboy I was over-awed by this concrete bit of the university when I passed through once in the 1970s. It was "Modern" and I imagined that within the concrete walls there would be highly intelligent physicists making discoveries (like the recently introduced digital watch and Texas calculators) that would Change Our Lives. So even though I didn't like I thought that I ought to like it, because this was The Future. I suppose most physics graute now go to work for accountancy firms or in the City.
DIGITAL WATCHES!
They were the future - what happened?
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