wanting to make a difference

After completing a generalist arts degree Amber realized it wasn't going to be enough to get her ahead in life so she went back to university to get a post graduate degree in something more marketable - management - and she is hating every minute of it.

"It was the only school I could get into," explains Amber, "but as I didn't really have any preference - anything would do - I can't blame the course. It's me."

"My parents think it's great that I'm getting a post graduate degree in management and I can't tell them the truth - that I hate the course - and it's this living a lie that is getting me down."

"There is really no other viable alternative for me but to get a post graduate degree."

"I can't get a good job with just an arts degree - I need something more tangible than that - but I really can't see the management course getting me anywhere either."

"Sure, I attend all the lectures and workshops and do all the assignments," says Amber, "but my heart isn't in it."

"It's a full-time course and it's like a full-time job - hard work!"

"I have no social life - I don't have a boyfriend - and most of the time I'm just depressed and miserable."

"The other students on the course are gung-ho and planning to make a million dollars with their management degree but I think they're kidding themselves," sighs Amber. "I wish I could share their enthusiasm - but I can't. I just want to get through this year and then I never want to study again."

"Neither of my parents have an education and they're so proud that I am doing something they never had an opportunity to do - but the sort of education they might have had in their day is not the sort of education we get today. It' grossly over-rated."

"My parents didn't force me into getting an education - and I'm not doing all this to please them either."

"I could walk away from it all tomorrow and my parents will support whatever decision I make," says Amber, "but what would be the good of quitting a course I am half way through?"

"I think education had a lot of relevance in my parent's time but these days I don't think it means much."

"I'm looking for meaning in my life and education isn't giving it to me."

"When I look at some of the kids who dropped out of high school I sometimes wish I had dropped out with them because they're happy and I'm not."

"My parents got by without an education - and so have millions of people around the world," adds Amber, "and all this pressure and hype about education has gone too far."

"I'm nearly 23 and I have no experience of life at all," sighs Amber. "All I've ever known is study - and the management course is not teaching me anything that I'll ever use to better my life or that of anybody else's."

"The world doesn't need another manager," laughs Amber. "It needs thinking people - feeling people - people who make a difference."

"That's the type of person I want to be, and if I had been twenty years earlier I would have had an opportunity to enjoy a real education - a thinking education - not the sort of fast-tracked, high pressure, corporate driven pap we're getting today."