Possibly-repetitious Addendum

I don't think I mentioned yesterday the feeling I now have that in fact one's degree is if anything less important than the other things one does whilst at university. I don't think it would be fair to condemn me for having failed to realise this at the time, and it's certainly not something the university would have told us. (Did anyone's tutor ever check they were making appropriate progress in their non-academic activities?). But looking from this perspective, it looks like any extra effort expended on academic work beyond that required to get a 2:1 (which even at Cambridge is probably rather less than one thinks; but again hindsight is a marvellous thing because I spent a lot of both the first and third years thinking that I was going to fail entirely, not that I could afford to slack off a bit) is not only wasted but actually counter-productive in that it distracts from accruing the extra-curricular stuff and the work experience (which at Cambridge is of course limited to the vacations, which I nevertheless completely squandered) that seem now to be, if anything, more important than the degree itself. It's rather bleak really and certainly shows that I should've spent my three years very differently. Whether I would have, or whether I would've wanted a degree at all had I known, I'm not sure...