Full Of GOOD THINGS….Learning…..From ‘Emergence’ Magazine….
by Bernie Bell - 09:23 on 12 March 2024
Full Of GOOD THINGS….
Take a look….
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Learning…..
I read on someone’s Facebook page that a side-effect of moving exams online is that most students at the University where he teaches now go home as soon as the last lecture finishes, and don't come back because it's cheaper to live at home.
That is, those who chose to go away to Uni. at all rather than doing their whole course online when that’s possible.
My response was that I was sorry to read this.
In the summer between school & Uni I had a job in an Advertising agency – which I enjoyed. I liked the work and the people I worked with. I was offered a permanent job. My dilemma was ….I liked living at home with my family, and had a group of close friends in Bradford – staying was tempting.
But I thought…..if I stay, maybe I’ll never go anywhere. So – I went to Wales to Uni. and have never regretted it. A different country (it is, you know), a different life, learning to manage my income (that was in the days of Student Grants). I ‘grew up’ there.
If young people stay home to study rather than go away as it’s cheaper and easier – they’ll miss out on all that.
Then I went on a trip down Memory Lane….
First year – I got my Student Grant - had a room in a Hall of Residence, so paid all-in-one for accommodation, heating, lighting and food in the refectory. What was left was for other necessities – books – of which I bought as many as possible second-hand. Clothes, of which I got as many as possible from jumble sales – fortunately, the fashion of the time (1974) suited getting clothes dating from the 40’s when folk were having a ‘clear-out’! The rest was for having a good time, which was cheap enough in the Union Bar.
Second and third year – a room in a student house owned by the University. At the beginning of each term I paid my rent. The electricity was on a meter and I confess that a friend fixed it for me so that I needed to put very few 5p pieces (!) in it to keep it ticking over. The bloke who came to empty it at the end of term raised a quizzical eyebrow and asked did I spend a lot of time in the Library? I didn’t.
Food was from the Co-op - I knew exactly what the things I needed cost and made a list of meals which used everything as economically as possible. I made rolls and sold them in the Union Bar to make a bit of extra spending money. I probably wouldn’t be allowed to do that now unless I got a licence and insurance and the kitchen I made them in was ‘inspected’, all of which would hardly make it worth my while doing it.
The point I’m hoping to make is that there’s more to going to University than getting a qualification – it’s often where people grow up – learn to manage money and…life.
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From ‘Emergence’ Magazine….
MOTH: Pushing the Boundaries of Legal Imagination
by César Rodríguez-Garavito
“If the forest is alive—if the animals, the plants, the fungi, the river, the air, and the rocks are all animate beings—then we need to find ways to hear their voices and spirits.”
"When we attend to the perspectives of nonhuman beings—when we make eye contact with a rhino, consider the world from the vantage point of a soaring raptor, learn to understand the voices of disappearing nightingales, or take seriously the prospect of mycelial interconnectivity—we gain greater insight into the fundamental interdependence of everything in the living world. In this op-ed, More Than Human Rights Project (MOTH) founder César Rodríguez-Garavito widens our imagination of legal rights frameworks, urging us to remember that we are embedded in a wider biosphere in which every element of the web of life has agency."
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