This is a pretty good idea of how I feel about my education.
“I’m glad I received an education, although beyond an ability to read and write I’m not sure quite what it gave me. On the one hand I’m glad I didn’t go to public school, and on the other I’m jealous of the innate lifelong confidence it seems to instil in people – as though they’re aware of some safety net I can’t see. The most valuable thing you get from education is a space in which you can make friends, gain experience, and figure a few things out. I spent the first half of my 20s deep in debt and working in a shop, with a vague idea what I wanted to do, but no idea how to go about doing it. At the time I thought I was incredibly lazy; looking back now I realise I kept trying my hand at different things: cartooning, writing, rudimentary web design and so on, until eventually I started getting the kind of work I wanted, after which I worked my arse off out of sheer crippling guilt over the years I’d been coasting.”