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COLLEGE INDEPENDENT 'ALTERNATIVE PROSPECTUS' GUIDE
Part 3.
This is continued from
http://www.webspawner.com/users/newone042/index.html
& ~newone042b~
[More about attitudes of students found whilst in attendance.]
Regarding the advice from other students in first year, I don’t know why students engage in this practice and on proper recognition some time after it seemed only excessively vindictive.
Though, as many students in giving a written published opinion of an educational institution express if they consider the students a benefit, aside from aside from bars, sports facilities, student societies, personal learning facilities and cafes, this opinion of a well-known educational institution should get the message across that it could not have been worse.
Perhaps the sickness was only from rolling in confusion stemming from this place, that a student might advise a younger student by lying in this way, or it was something bigger.
The descriptions given here are confusing, involved, also confused and complex though bluntly true and often even yet unrecognisable contextually generally by this author, and further are not communicated as leading here, though they may be telling.
Regarding getting better adviser some year or so and more after, "I must have forgotten", it was said. "So much better. Much, much better. Believe me. First year is nothing.", I remember.
I remember clearly that I relied on this becalming advice for a confused person in deciding to go back to begin second year, a decision which I remember thinking would be so irrational without such advice. I thought advice that "it", assumed the university course, gets "very much" better must be genuine considering the issuer's correct identification of the value of the first year, not often said during that season in the first year. Also this advice was unsought and given when I was seeming outwardly happy and unconcerned with the course and perhaps believed this. For me it had a double effect of catching me completely unaware and somehow I was brought to trust it as if being brainwashed or hypnotised. The latter is only clearer to me recently.
After some discussion at the beginning of first year, no one in the whole faculty spoke about the standard or any much part of the teaching, aside from this advice I received, until my third year. I remember the words about after first year: "it's actually a very good degree but first year is really, really rubbish", but again these were years later retracted and the same adviser, I realise a very sick person, muttered quietly, "It's not a degree, its not anything. Not even school mostly.", and, "Yes, yes that's it, it's less than zero, did you do that? That's what they do. The people reading. [differently] ...The staff. We love them. They're like that. They do read!" And so on and much more. And something was mumbled about words given before so as to prevent a suicide, aggressively, dramatically and mockingly spoken. Also, "We know things.", and more, laughing, "What did you think it was?". And then, "No, we just say things", and, "but you don't know which time". I was aware at this time that there was a lot of actual character swapping wish-fulfilment from the issuer regarding me the listener. After this, the speaker whose advice I relied on completely in choosing to have three further years of my life at the worst institution possible and then some said that she meant her own suicide. "You didn't think it was you did you? You are so good. [etc.]"
Some other people who advised me that the course got a lot better explained before I graduated that they were playing a game wherein someone would state that it got better and then ask, "did x tell you?". x would then come and do the same. Their "game" I was told and experienced, was centred on their deliberations as to whether some person was in the game. And then I was told it wasn't a game, after a while, when they couldn't decide on someone's possible inclusion, but that it does get better suddenly. "It gets better.. you know when there is better and you get it?... ha ha ha." And so on. The effect of this was that I began to believe that these people were only joking in a way that I would believe them to be too mature, actually, to express in any such situation opinions as to the value of such a thing. And, indeed, one or two of them told me they thought it would be silly to tell me what they think.
However, I mistook this for something mistakable as goodwill, sense or breeding. Rather than goodwill, a light hearted jocular attitude towards study advice I thought I was witnessing in reality was, I learned, deviously vindictive. Not quite oppositional hilarity in acceptance and temporal self-determination was this. This was how I was aware though, generally, and especially at this time. I was very detatched, and in trusting some people, also utterly detatched from the truth. The difference really in my personal existence and the reality was beyond earthly realisation.
A good number of the older students seemed very possessed to me during my first year and after, and humanly aware, and the situation for a first year seemed in the distance, three years to come, somwhow much better than it had done. (Again, agreement was expressed by a few students consulted "yes, it gets better.") Possessed especially were a good number of older students seemingly, and unpertubedly and enlightenedly relaxed did they seem about their performance which was of a standard amongst a number of students players from within the whole institution to allow a Radio 3 Youth Orchestras of the World concert recording and broadcast by one of the student orchestral chamber societies. This was a band of usually just over thirty persons which was distinct from the university, during my time and in which I participated. Though this specific performance was a large disaster, unsurprising in retrospect as the students were utter fakes and not very nice to be understated, something of the one sidedly recalcitrant attitude and other sidedly totaltitarian and inhuman attitude between staff and students was borne out in a context where things can't be faked to those within who know and locals who can be seen to tolerate the dire circumstances in this place from where very, very few students originated at the time. The crucial element was that the students believed that the recalcitrance in any sitaution they were a part of here lay not with them, and this attitude extended beyond where it may have been appropriate, and inexplicably also then seemed to wane altogether in respect of relations with the staff. The latter phenomenon was seen as acting wisely and to one's advantage by deluded, fooled, abused people, and also acting in fear I believe. I think the fear and confusion and jealousy upon those who could cope compounded things.
It seems a very common singular reaction amongst the students was a "schizophrenic" utterly defiant arrogance towards the staff, which included the passing down to or upon anyone who remained civil, and in the light of seeing this, it is hard to attribute these students with any sense. It was also sometimes hard to tell though if the relations of these students with staff was that of close cherubs or, as was claimed by the students, who also said they had to say this, "to get by", a symbol of opposition: "we would never be like that. Not like you."
I suppose not anything real could be conducted with the staff of the establishment in conjunction with the students, an example being this broadcast (even yet) concert of the chamber orchestra company for specific concerts hired members of staff who were active in performance in the region to conduct along with other active conductors whom could be afforded. On this occasion a music department lecturer who was a member of the Edinburgh contemporary music outfit Ecat (Edinburgh Contemporary Arts Trust) was hired for this recorded concert and the following series in a tour to the Czech Republic. Although things had been going positively during the eight scheduled rehearsal sessions over four rehearsal days, and a good number of the band were deps from elsewhere or those who did not make year-time placements, the orchestra were very relaxed before the recording and first concert. And then, I have never experienced this extent of musical screw-up in performance before or after. The member of university staff came onto the stage, in one second commenced the first piece, in the very second second leaned forward and pointed with full arm extension, at the ensemble with a shocking demeanour, like in a scene from the film "The Woman in Black" and then proceeded to accelerate in conducting to conduct twice as fast with a wicked look in his eyes expressing, "think you're getting away with this one?". In shock the orchestra, poised for a great performance and on the right tracks initially, at once following this thrashing communicated to each other to ignore him completely, and carried on in mechanised nervous shock. We should have stopped, one time if ever stopping would be appropriate and a good idea, but the shock was too great.
It was alleged by another member of the orchestra society at this time that the hired conductor had been pointing at this author, as I wasn't involved yet in the decision making parts of the society including choosing and paying conductors. It was said by a few that the older members of the orchestra were only playing a game, to see who they could foul up in trusting their irrational decisions, and obviously they include the terrible staff in the most evil game they could. They cared not for music or that kind of thing, and I shoyuld be pubished for being so stupid as to consider they did, and indeed they loathe carers of any form. It was also said "it" "was" me, the reason given sounding something like I am myself, spoken by someone else. This wasn't wanted, I was told. The conductors' comments during rehearsal sessions, meaningless at the time, made sense in the light of the communication of this evil game.("It is evil. Bluntly.")
I discovered two years after this, most of the older players thankfully having left by this time, that another member of university staff who was hired once a year, or perhaps an extra time for an extra lunchtime programme, hadn't been paid by the company for years. His fee had been agreed for each concert it was related. I was told that this "what they were doing" (also that I "should say this") and that it was something like a situation where students were witholding money to the staff who had already received their contract payments for teaching, because there was no adequate teaching. And I was told that this was not the case, but only that it was to seem like this, by one of the only remaining old members of the society.
Returning to the student advice, this first unstable or rather, as is very clear now, incredibly mentally ill and wayward or possessed character seemed not limited to those who might belong to cults. Examining this situation, it does in fact seem to me that for a sensitive or trusting person beginning study of the offering by this department of that company anyway, it should be more likely than not that such unknown solace which unknown professed spiritual organisations seem to offer might be sought. I see that it appears a natural consequent action to the antecedent experience of a continuing huge and dramatic commotion over what is both nearly nothing (at best) and an indulged evil "joke". It is the Hell-Fire Caves; this with more feigned mirth.
Another student after her graduation though before mine made a confession while laughing, and, though then stressing that she was serious and that, correctly as it was, I would only realise her seriousness later and would not comprehend this at the time. She was most particular and I was blanking, naturally, healthily and normally for such situations and not considering she was talking about anything I could ever even experience, and so it seemed just like a book. It was that she and others were worried about our year at the beginning as we were "always in the library" for the first weeks. She said that she and her friends would have to, "do you… [meaning myself]", and to, "…do 'you'", laughing again. This girl was part of a number of persons who, though only since have I realised properly, went there in order to "do" 'you or 'U', though, "not the university [laughing]: we don’t do them". I found people many people here seemed very quickly to set aside normality and move to a vision of toppling what they could. They seemed to catch hold of time itself and assert an anti-reality. I say perhaps they haven't stopped. I know illnesses certainly didn't just die.
I know now, it has been demonstrated to me, how very serious this student was and how very determined and mentally ill this particular person with a moulded allegiance to the institution was, actual or feigned in similarity, and also similarly her friends, "girls" of both sexes. Really this place, as I can see it now very well indeed, was only about this. This student I describe went to the right place as it is what they do, the company itself (and really nearly nothing else). Perhaps unrelatedly the place seemed to manage to attract some number of persons who might be described as 'U'. But whether or not some persons could covet this funny antique title, wrongly though suggestively applied here, or anything like this, characters I roughly describe should be found as targets anyway, as it was "common" against who they can get, to be blunt. And for some characters this was the greatest opportunity, of much longer than a life time, with undreamed of booty. This is no game that I describe.
It seemed that the institution was the root of this. It is not a case of the institution being only slightly in the doldrums over a period of years, as may sometimes have been suggested by the staff. The state of things was beyond any reasonable slip from anywhere visible. My rather famous and celebrated private violin teacher whom I had known as a child but whom I had forgotten whilst at this institution, along with my forgetting I had known the staff and many, many students, told me that it used to be a "quite substantial" degree, he believed. He had been a member of the old, famous and celebrated Reid Orchestra of Edinburgh. Concerned of the past years however, though one does not really know how things were, it is assumed that the place was much more worthy. In terms of poor life decisions this was not something of the real world which could just, naturally and reassuringly in a life scheme be put down to very bad luck. It seemed something much worse. Perhaps this strange and severe unaccountableness accounts for the confluently destructive behaviour of the students. Or was it all or often the same thing?
Continued on page four.
[~newone042d]
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