I am a new kind of university drop-out

It’s been more than a month now since thousands of fresh-faced young students began their first year at university, full of excitement, confidence and hope. Poor souls. I felt that way at first, but it didn’t take long for my first doubts to surface.

When I set out I was innocent enough to think that university was all about working hard (I was studying theology), absorbing facts and learning how to think and argue — as well as having fun, of course. I soon discovered my mistake. In fact I lasted only a term before deciding I wanted to leave, and I did so at the end of the first year. The problem was that my university — like, I later discovered, most of the others — was much keener on the appearance of success than on actually educating students. And the easiest way to appear to succeed was to lower standards.