There are a lot of things I love about returning to study. For a start the learning is great, I'm sucking up knowledge like the proverbial sponge. Testing and stretching, challenging my brain, which has been largely ignored for the best part of three years due to the baby onslaught (by the way, secretly very relieved it's still able to function in any sort of intellectual capacity), on everything from PR professionalism, to contemporary practise, organisational strategy and social theory. Frankly, I can't get enough.
But there is one small area of my university experience that is slightly lacking. For those who know London you will likely be familiar with Elephant & Castle, the less than salubrious location where I have chosen to attend school. For those who don't know of its charms let me paint a picture.
The Elephant is an area ripe for redevelopment, as an estate agent might tout. Like many parts of London it is up and coming, it's just lacking tangible evidence of being either up or coming at this stage. Huge amounts of cash has been earmarked to regenerate the area but any significant improvement has yet to materialise. Demolition of the once notorious Heygate Estate has started in earnest, however, and once those iconic blocks of flats are gone the area will be irreparably changed. Strangely it feels a little sad to think those graffitied monoliths, all stark architectural testament to urban decay, will no longer be there.
So every morning I enter the Elephant through a tired looking shopping mall where the litter-strewn escalators are frozen in time, the entrance doors are busted and the windows smashed. I step outside into an acutely unfashionable market, somewhere you probably wouldn't want to venture late at night, then on through an underground labyrinth of tunnels, where cheery homeless chaps sheathed in cardboard greet me whatever the weather, to reach the hallowed halls of LCC. To say it has been a shock to the system for some of my colleagues coming as they have from the leafy, well-healed campuses of North America, Europe and Asia would be an understatement.
I carry on into the council estate-esque tower block that constitutes our learning space, where fully-functioning heating and plumbing and toilets that flush are the stuff dreams are made of. A clunky, overcrowded lift carries me begrudgingly up to the 14th floor; I sit in drafty rooms with taped up windows listening to the sound of sirens far below as police cars on a continuous loop play chase with London's law-evaders. I can safely say I've earned my gritty and urban stripes.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there's no campus feel at LCC. We do have a couple of old picnic tables on the dirty footpath in front of the building where you can look out on the belching mass of cars, endlessly circling a giant roundabout, spewing out noise and pollution 24 hours a day. It's nice. But I've been to the beautiful, canal-side, architecturally designed converted granary in Kings Cross that is Central Saint Martins college and I know where my tuition fees are being spent (I'm looking at you UAL administration) and it's not on LCC's dysfunctional boiler.
But despite its aesthetic failings I wouldn't want to be anywhere else not least because I will leave with a very well regarded master's degree, all things going according to plan of course. The external trappings belie a vibrant, creative hub, every spare inch of which can and is used as exhibition space for a continuous cycle of art installations. The latest sees a selection of works celebrating the life of influential graphic designer Tom Eckersley from the archive which is held by LCC. Amazing posters from the 1940s-1980s which I can't pass by without stopping to appreciate. Makes coming to uni worth it.
Confession time: I still get excited each time I arrive at school, a small self-satisfied swelling in my chest occurs as I pass through the electronic gates knowing that I'm a student at University of Arts London. I know, I'm such a dork but the novelty of being a student again hasn't yet worn off and to be studying PR in a creative environment is so much more appealing than being stuck in an uptight business school. So I can forgive the dodgy location and the lack of green space, just surround me with art and artistic types and it's all OK.
Thursday 23 January 2014
Saturday 11 January 2014
Rampant Consumerism
As I sit in class pondering the nuances of 19th and 20th century social theory and how it relates to contemporary PR my mind invariably begins to wander onto thoughts of the kids. When the discussion moves to the finer points of Marx's treatise on communism and his work dissecting materialism and the political economy I indulge in a reverie about materialism in my own life, namely my obsession with baby clothes.
Yes, I can finally put my hand up and admit it. I have a problem. Not so much an addiction (though some might class it as such) more of an obsessive habit. But I blame society. Or maybe biology. Whichever external force dictates that a woman of a certain age should chuck in her job and have a baby. I mean what was I supposed to do on all those long days at home alone with a new baby but shop? Does a one-year-old boy really need a designer tweed coat (albeit heavily discounted)? Probably not. Did mine have one? Yes he did.
It's a strange adjustment to make going from being a career focused woman of independent means to becoming the full-time mum of a small infant and there's very little that can prepare you for it. Suddenly life as you know it empties and all that's left is this helpless, all-consuming, wondrous little being filling up your days.
And if your self worth came from your erstwhile career then bad luck as the adjustment will be doubly hard cause now you've got a baby, people will judge you for your choices. If you stay at home and look after said baby then somehow you're anti-feminism; your independence goes out the window and you become reliant on others, in my case my husband, for financial support. On the flip side if you go straight back to work then you're pilloried as a neglectful mother and have to deal with the guilt of abandoning your offspring to child care from an early age.
There are no winners in this game not least because of the guilt and pressure we place on ourselves and our own hang ups about what a woman's role should be. The first time I had to write 'unemployed' on an official form asking for my occupation I felt a deep sense of inadequacy, though that was infinitely preferable to labelling myself a 'housewife' or the more cringeworthy 'home-maker' which for me was too great a leap. I no longer felt like a fully-functioning member of society, a bit of a wastrel, unable to contribute or pay taxes. Frankly I found it disempowering.
So there I was, some kind of desperate housewife (and not the hot, rich kind you see on the telly) keening for the loss of a career that never was, struggling with my newfound identity and needing a creative outlet. And in front of me my child, my muse, my new raison d'être and an unwitting participant in my most recent pursuit. A mini clothes horse to be primped and preened and manipulated into the latest in Scandinavian baby chic. And for what? To fill a hole, relieve boredom? Who knows?
Of course being an unemployed student puts a serious dent in any ambitions I may have to turn my children into miniature fashionistas and as a result most of my activity is limited to online window shopping. It's a sad fact that I can spend hours poring over the websites for purveyors of stylish baby clothes, coveting things that I a.) cannot afford and b.) possess sufficient sentience to know there's no point spending large amounts of money on as a baby has little to no use for statement pieces in their wardrobes that they will no doubt grow out of within a couple of months. To that end I now have a Pinterest board that I use to propagate my obsession instead. And I have two followers (which is more than can be said of this blog and my twitter account combined). And one of them isn't my mum! That must make me some kind of opinion leader in the baby fashion stakes? If my career in PR falls through I'm seriously thinking of becoming a baby stylist. Surely there's a market for it!?!
There's no denying it, I'm hooked. I'll probably continue to scour the websites until I am gainfully employed once again and it's unlikely I'll ever pass by a baby shop without wanting to go in. But there are worse addictions to have and at least I'm not acting on my urges to spend. Well, not all the time anyway.
Yes, I can finally put my hand up and admit it. I have a problem. Not so much an addiction (though some might class it as such) more of an obsessive habit. But I blame society. Or maybe biology. Whichever external force dictates that a woman of a certain age should chuck in her job and have a baby. I mean what was I supposed to do on all those long days at home alone with a new baby but shop? Does a one-year-old boy really need a designer tweed coat (albeit heavily discounted)? Probably not. Did mine have one? Yes he did.
It's a strange adjustment to make going from being a career focused woman of independent means to becoming the full-time mum of a small infant and there's very little that can prepare you for it. Suddenly life as you know it empties and all that's left is this helpless, all-consuming, wondrous little being filling up your days.
And if your self worth came from your erstwhile career then bad luck as the adjustment will be doubly hard cause now you've got a baby, people will judge you for your choices. If you stay at home and look after said baby then somehow you're anti-feminism; your independence goes out the window and you become reliant on others, in my case my husband, for financial support. On the flip side if you go straight back to work then you're pilloried as a neglectful mother and have to deal with the guilt of abandoning your offspring to child care from an early age.
There are no winners in this game not least because of the guilt and pressure we place on ourselves and our own hang ups about what a woman's role should be. The first time I had to write 'unemployed' on an official form asking for my occupation I felt a deep sense of inadequacy, though that was infinitely preferable to labelling myself a 'housewife' or the more cringeworthy 'home-maker' which for me was too great a leap. I no longer felt like a fully-functioning member of society, a bit of a wastrel, unable to contribute or pay taxes. Frankly I found it disempowering.
So there I was, some kind of desperate housewife (and not the hot, rich kind you see on the telly) keening for the loss of a career that never was, struggling with my newfound identity and needing a creative outlet. And in front of me my child, my muse, my new raison d'être and an unwitting participant in my most recent pursuit. A mini clothes horse to be primped and preened and manipulated into the latest in Scandinavian baby chic. And for what? To fill a hole, relieve boredom? Who knows?
Of course being an unemployed student puts a serious dent in any ambitions I may have to turn my children into miniature fashionistas and as a result most of my activity is limited to online window shopping. It's a sad fact that I can spend hours poring over the websites for purveyors of stylish baby clothes, coveting things that I a.) cannot afford and b.) possess sufficient sentience to know there's no point spending large amounts of money on as a baby has little to no use for statement pieces in their wardrobes that they will no doubt grow out of within a couple of months. To that end I now have a Pinterest board that I use to propagate my obsession instead. And I have two followers (which is more than can be said of this blog and my twitter account combined). And one of them isn't my mum! That must make me some kind of opinion leader in the baby fashion stakes? If my career in PR falls through I'm seriously thinking of becoming a baby stylist. Surely there's a market for it!?!
There's no denying it, I'm hooked. I'll probably continue to scour the websites until I am gainfully employed once again and it's unlikely I'll ever pass by a baby shop without wanting to go in. But there are worse addictions to have and at least I'm not acting on my urges to spend. Well, not all the time anyway.
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