(Image Creds: Unsplash)
York is NOT a placement university. Many of its students sail through their three years, perhaps otherwise doing an integrated Masters of sorts, and flag their exam-weary gowns out through the pearl gates of Greg’s Place.
But none flap their gowns so wearily as those who have done four years of university – especially those who have worked during their third. For the university experience is long enough, and that extra year calls forth the feelings of a scholar in the Somme.
Last year, I had the opportunity to do an industry placement in the City of London. I worked for 12 months, compared to University’s six (four?) (two?) of teaching. I paid £1,800 “tuition fees”. I earned money, torn miles apart from my university friends, from before Welcome Week to after graduation, visited a few times, and in September rolled into York for what was to be my final year.
I had, of course, notions of what returning would be like at the time of applying to internships. By March, I was, as many are, in the uncomfortable position of having no internship offer and no accommodation for third year – as York’s pre-emptive tenant timetables schedule out the unsure. As such, many of my friends opted for the home straight – to get university finished ASAP. From August, I trumped off to the City, and come last September, I have faced York’s recently unfamiliar face.
It is a strange transition. Two years of students have rolled in; my year has, for the most part, graduated. I recognise little of the crowd in the library. The cult of Long Boi has faded from history, to myth, to legend. From working 9-5 to 2-4, the adaptation has been startling. One mere month of summer dross recycled my work intensity and as such no more do my days consist of eight scheduled hours. The buildings on campus retain their concrete charm – except the old brownfield site sat between Nisa and SLB, upon which apparently not a brick has been lifted.
Working for a year has removed the sheltered privilege of being at university. I have seen too much, and I know what is ahead. Yet my year of email sign-offs and Teams-tapping have produced within me an awareness of duration and leisure. I now find myself saying yes to most outings, meeting new people and seeing the humour in much of York’s repeated dalliance. Compared to friends who instead completed an Erasmus abroad, I have come back to my field of study (PPE) with a renewed energy.
There is choice in what I study. I have gone from being a product to a consumer. A salaryman to a student. The feeling is a mixed one, not wholly negative, but misplaced amongst a population who’d rather slowly turn towards graduate jobs at the final hurdle of their time here.
The three word “with Placement Year” addition to one’s CV is not trivial. It is not a mere temporal addition, a pause and a resumption in study. Like skin refreshes upon bone, a few short years pass at a university before most of the student body changes. The buildings on campus, of course, change little; the societies play Chinese whispers with their traditions and culture. Despite the type of people who reside in our spired and gargoyled city changing little, those which you have known, have familiarised with, over your first years will leave. Unless you, as I now do, reside with seven close friends.
For those currently signed up for a year in “industry” – as though the Rockefellers, Carnegies and Vanderbilts are calling – I have the following to say: the University does not quite pause in your absence; a surprising number of people stick around; and your awareness of the shelter of university from blunt reality is enhanced. However, with time, university becomes yet again that self-same soft blanket of paternalism.