ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
Stumbling through what should be his penultimate semester of tertiary study, a local university student is expecting another swathe of pass and fail marks to appear on his transcript come exam time.
However, Sonny Gilbert has a sneaking suspicion that his three-year Creative Industries degree will spiral into a five-year study into abject human laziness and absent willpower.
That is, except when he’s protesting coal energy and other fetishes of the Liberal Party.
What he doesn’t know, is that his first full-time job out of uni will be supervising the bane marie in a FIFO mess hall in central Queensland – at least 6 years after graduation.
“I’ve been on ‘academic probation’ now for nearly three years,” he said. “The university declared me an ‘at risk’ student just days after O-Week in 2013.”
But the 22-year-old is looking forward to graduating, soon.. So that he can continue living in the same share house for the better part of the next decade, before inevitably clicking on an online ad for unskilled, non-unionised, hospitality staff in Blackwater.
“I’m living proof that you can get through life doing the absolute bare minimum,” he said. “I can’t wait to get out in the workforce, though. I’m tired of being a student – I’m ready for the real world.”
More to come.
