They say that grades matter the most - that you have the world at your feet when you achieve straight As and that single perfect score. I’ve never believed that - no one’s worth is ever determined by a single letter alone. Then they say that your personality matters too. The activities you take up. The passions you pursue. Maybe. They lie, really. Your worth is more than all those combined, but in the end it doesn’t matter.
I have seen friends who entered their dream schools, but cannot afford to attend. Friends who have to settle for less because they have no way of paying half a million for four years and a degree that will be equivalent to toilet paper by the time they enter the workforce - who claim that they will be fine, that they will be happy there somehow, but they are not. Not truly. Others, who don’t even bother trying, and give up their passion because we don’t have it locally and they don’t have the money to study it overseas. Even more, who opt out of university to work, not because they can't get in, but because they need money. And yet others, who have everything they say is important but were unsuccessful in getting the course they dream of here, and lacked the funds they needed to study it overseas. And those who do not, but study it anyway because they could afford to pursue it in another country. At a university that may sound slightly dubious, but it doesn’t matter because it is the degree that does in the end after all and who cares about where you got it from?
And so it goes. Sweeping the streets six and a half days a week, and barely even getting minimum wage. Working an hour a day, and getting six digit figures. The world isn’t fair. I know that. But sometimes I wish it weren’t that so.
