Lessons Learnt #2 - Students Are Modern Day Lepers

I’ve never belonged to a minority, and in moments of absurd self-pity have bemoaned the fact. Being a white, middle-class male living in Britain doesn’t really leave you with much of an axe to grind.

As a teenager, looking for a purpose for my angst, I’d day dream about being part of a civil rights movement, or a victim of an oppressive political force that needed over-throwing. It’s only now after the angst has burst and settled, letting the happiness inside out, that I’ve realised what my true claim to discrimination is: being a student.

Only a few nights ago I attended a house party hosted by a group of voluntary nurses from over seas living across our road who had filled their house with, astonishingly, several middle age men.

The arrival of three young stallions like us put their back ups immediately. Hands flew to bald patches in self conscious jerks. Bottles of foreign lager were swigged menacingly. Wedding rings were twirled bitterly inside pockets.

Most of all, voices were raised.

‘I take it you’re a student then?’ asked one, with a playful cup of my shoulder. And there it was. He’d deduced from the longish haircut and the multicoloured laces exactly what I was, and there was no disguising it. I was made to feel a flicker a shame for being part of something I love. I seethed.

‘Why don’t you get a job?’ he ventured, in the semi-serious tones of the booze-boosted coward.
Now along with writing this column, I actually have three jobs. Library assistant, off-license monkey, and mobile climbing wall instructor. Oh yes. I told Mr. Regrets exactly this – neglecting, off course, to mention that I don’t hold them all at the same time, rather rotate with the seasons – and was met with a chorus of jeers, leaving me to drink from my bottle of wine (which also attracted derision) reflecting on my impotent and growing rage.

Being a student attracts sneers and jeers, which is why we stick together in crowds and why asking is ‘you do any student discount?’ feels like holding your limp dick in your hands and saying to stranger ‘but I can’t get it to work!’. People who belong to a generation that denied them the opportunity to study, or worse, a brain that let them down, resent our extensions of our youth, our free time, our joy. They think it’s easy to do what we do because is adds up to less in hours, and hours is the currency by which the fully employed measure their hardship.

Back to the party. The entire time as these men goaded me, one of the nurses whose house we were standing in stood quietly at the back, in the conversation but only listening. She was French, and beautiful, and romantic and bored. She had eyes shaped like almonds in a shade of perfect mahogany. When the third and final question shot over at me from Mr. Regret, I looked into those eyes and didn’t flinch. ‘So what the hell you going to be with an English degree then? A fucking English teacher?!’. Nothing wrong with that I said, but no: ‘I’m going to be a famous writer’.

The men erupted with laughter, leaning on each other for support, tears rolling down their weary faces. But I ignored them and kept my eyes on the girl.

She smiled.

One hour later, as we sat exchanging tender kisses on the sofa, marvelling at our beauty and revelling in our youth, lost in a beautiful dream made possible by believing the future might still yet be a wonderful place, the men sloped off one by one, all hope of young, female company gone.

Being a student may make us into a type of social leper: one where we’re looked down on more through jealously than disgust. But who cares.

It felt good to engage in some non-violent protest, and finally grind that axe.