Untitled Page

And yet, even this is precarious. Syllabuses go out of fashion, subjects once deemed valuable become punchlines. Media Studies, Health & Social Care, Tourism, all have danced in and out of favour, depending on the government’s mood. I’ve studied some of these myself. They pad out the CV, yes; but they also reflect a willingness to adapt, to learn, to meet the standards set by examining boards and peers alike.

Still, the real learning happens outside the syllabus. It happens in the day-to-day grind, the trial and error, the moments of failure that teach more than any textbook. Experience is the true qualification, the one not printed, not framed, but etched into the way one thinks, speaks and solves problems and even then, recall is a fickle friend. I’ve long envied those with photographic memory, those who can summon facts like spells. For me, memory is patchwork, improvisation, a dance with forgetting. Perhaps Alzheimer’s is the mind’s way of writing a private will, one that noone else can inherit.

So what are we saying here? GCSEs, A-Levels, Degrees, they have their place? They open doors, but do they feed the soul? Do they guarantee recall when it matters? Not always. If you have it and don’t use it, you lose it as a saying goes. That’s the truth and yet, I keep writing, keep reflecting, keep building this archive, not to chase paper, but to honour the chase itself, perhaps?

Based on the quantity of qualifications one can collect in a lifetime; especially for those of us with a fixation on academia, most employers; particularly in the public sector, should offer a rate that reflects those accomplishments. But this doesn’t always happen. In the private sector, employers often want your expertise at the cheapest possible price.