So, two things have surprised and disappointed me during my time at Bristol:
Firstly, the inherent elitism from many students who benefitted from an expensive private schooling.
I knew Bristol’s reputation, and expected some degree of superciliousness, but I didn’t expect to be quizzed about my previous education in my first week, nor to find so many wearing their leavers’ hoodies with such misplaced pride.
This is not a tedious, anti-private school pupil rant, as the majority are perfectly pleasant, and there is nothing clever about reverse snobbery. Nevertheless, there is still a noticeable group who, upon meeting you, will mention their school faster than you can drive a Mini Cooper around Wills Hall.
One boy I met seemed genuinely shocked I went to a comprehensive school. He wasn’t really shocked, of course, it was just an act to assert his supposed superiority, but this kind of attitude is a serious problem at Bristol. This boy is a moron.
Secondly, the fact that so many students are so desperate to have tedious jobs once they’ve graduated. Considering we’ll spend five days a week, for forty or more years, at work – it might be a wise idea to do something we enjoy. Instead, there seems a widespread, depressingly relentless desire to have a high-paid, high-powered, highly boring job.
There’s something terribly sad about intelligent teenagers spending potentially the most exciting summers of their lives interning (ie brown-nosing) in their sorry attempts to become an accountant or an investment banker. I sincerely hope a large proportion of them interned at companies which have since collapsed.
If I was more perceptive, I’d be able to establish some link between these two irritants. Private school kids, the offspring of wealthy, money-obsessed parents with those same jobs their children aspire to? It’s probably an ongoing, recurring cycle. I’m not intelligent enough to prove it, though – I only went to a comprehensive.
