A Distorted Reality.

I’m getting neurotic about potential choices which I may have to make next year. In 346 days, to be more exact; and it’s a decision which will affect the rest of my life, and a decision which I cannot undo if it turns out to be the incorrect one.

I’m talking, of course, about university choice.

Assuming that I’m offered a place at Edinburgh (which, with my grades being as they are currently, isn’t at all infeasible), my heart will definitely be pulling towards there: a city of art and culture unparalleled in Britain. Assuming that, by some miracle of an interview, I am offered a place at Cambridge and get the grades required to have the offer be worth anything, my head will definitely find favour with this choice: snob value and headhunting opportunities for the future; guaranteed (more or less) social mobility. Plus, I could be, like, a spy.

It’s really a hard decision: it’s the age old short-term happiness vs. future prospects debate. In all probability, I would love Edinburgh as a city and find favour with the people there. With Cambridge, however, I fear that the smarm and arrogance which I have witnessed there myself would rub off on me, and make me even worse than I am now. Currently, my arrogance is of the cute, cocky kind: it would probably become the tragically overbearing kind with the Cambridge atmosphere. The supposed intelligentsia amongst the supposed intelligentsia will inevitably form a them vs. us attitude with the populace at large, and this scares me.

My Chemistry teacher said, after I’d said that I didn’t want to become an ‘Oxbridge tosser’ and so wouldn’t be applying:

People like you need to go. It’s the only way that this will ever change, it’s the only way that the poor/rich education gap will be balanced.

And it has to be said that I thought that he really had a point: I owe it to my upbringing, in a way, to better myself. Climb out of the pit in which we live: break the dependency upon state handouts. I’m not saying that Edinburgh would not be good enough for this, but Cambridge would open so many more doors to me, I feel: as much as anyone will try to deny it, a Cambridge degree would have a certain cache to it which may be found to be irresistible to employers. It’s a helping hand from the mythology surrounding the university.

I’ll choose a better future with 3 years of misery over 3 years of misery and a slightly poorer future any day.