“Of course the big change since my day is the invasion of women in men’s colleges. … I suppose I’m a little suspicious of it: one’s always suspicious of change. One wonders what the effect will be on what is, after all, the ostensible purpose of universities — learning, teaching, research and so on. On the other hand I see nothing against it in theory, and I’m a little envious, too: it would have been nice to have been part of the experiment. But I’d like to know what the result is in ten years’ time: whether they will have settled down into a kind of unisex community or whether it will boil up into shootings and tears and failed exams and nervous breakdowns. Probably something cheerful and non-academic, like an American college musical.”
– Philip Larkin, “An Interview with the Observer,” Required Writing
This was basically my college experience. Minus the shootings, though it was a near thing.
Posted by mesh at May 11, 2006 12:59 PM | TrackBack