My mother complained that I haven’t written about my graduation apart from that slightly sarcastic post I wrote prior to it. So here I am with an update on the experience.

First of all, it wasn’t as bad as I had feared. We had to be sat down by 10:30 and the ceremony didn’t start until 11:00. That was a pretty boring half hour. But then once the ceremony itself started it went surprisingly quickly.

Unfortunately the person who was reading everyone’s names out made a bit of a mess of it. A lot of people’s names seemed to be pronounced incorrectly. It wasn’t just the international students, which you might understand. But even some common Anglophone names were completely mauled.

For just one example, the guy who was sitting next to me is called Sussock. Not too difficult I would have thought, but he was introduced as ‘Sisscock’. Amazing. I was a bit worried I was going to be Step-hen but I got off in the end. But for so many people I imagine their memory of the ceremony will be this guy butchering their name. I’m sure it’s not a fun job to have to read so many names out, but it was a bit unfortunate.

The rest of the ceremony wasn’t much better, I’m sorry to say. I watched the webcast of the ceremony that came the day before mine to see what I should expect and that went much better. But in my ceremony the same jokes fell flat because the delivery was so poor. And a lot of the script was skipped as well. I reckon he just wanted to go home early!

The plus side of that was that we all got to go home early as well! And the queue for the photographer was not bad at all — I was only third in the queue when I joined it. So it was all over much more quickly than I expected.

So I got a nice certificate and a glorified giant red Smarties tube. I was not sure about that you know. In all of the photographs my parents took I am standing there with this ridiculous empty Smarties tube. Then of course for the proper professional photograph I was holding a different fakey prop degree certificate. I can’t really deal with these levels of fakeness. In future I will probably just look at the photos and think, “Smarties tube, fake”.

The photos we took ourselves were not much of a success. My parents can’t seem to cope with the digital camera. Every time my mother uses it she asks the same question — “Which button do I press?” Which button do you think? The one on the top, just like film cameras??

But no, she just reacts like she’s been asked to build a nuclear bomb. Once she’s figured it out she waits about 20 seconds and then — without warning — just presses the button. No “are you ready?” or “right” or any other warning to stop looking gormless. She just presses it. So in all of the photos she took I look either confused, disgusted or gormless.

Escapades with the old camera (which is genuinely as old as I am) were not much more successful, so I hear. My mum managed to drop it in McEwan Hall and the back fell off, exposing the film to all that vicious light. Apparently it was in a dark stairwell, so fingers crossed. Later on we couldn’t work out if it was winding on or not. Serves them right for using a camera that’s about to celebrate its silver anniversary.

Then we got someone to take a photo of me with both of my parents. It was the best shot of the day — apart from one thing. We were standing in front of a building site. We didn’t even realise until I downloaded the pictures onto my computer.

It is funny because when I went through the campus earlier in the week I was surprised at how little it looked like a building site — the new computing building is almost finished, and it’s now largely free of the normal eyesores that are associated with construction sites. Yet we managed to stand in front of the one tiny bit that still has building equipment on it. Incredible.

I also look pretty peeved in a lot of the photos. And I look gaunt and baggy-eyed. It didn’t help that I was seriously tired having had so little sleep and I suffering from caffeine withdrawal at that time of the day, several hours after my one and only coffee of the day.

Anyway, I know you are desperate to see a photo of me in all of that silly attire and holding that ridiculous Smarties tube, so here is the best shot of me (cropped because my parents still haven’t mastered the zoom function on the camera).

In complete seriousness though, all-in-all it was quite a strange day. I felt a bit down about it on my way back. I had a very strange mixture of feelings. Partly that I was probably seeing a few people for the last time and didn’t really get the chance to say a proper ‘goodbye and good luck’ in the rush of the day. Partly regret that I hadn’t made the most of my university days. Partly that I have to come to terms with the fact that I’m moving on to a strange and challenging period of my life. Mostly, simply that — despite the fact I didn’t enjoy my time there much — university is over. Bye-bye JSTOR log-in. Seeya later Athens account.

So in the slim chance that any of those people I didn’t get the chance to see again happen across this post, all the best for the future!

My first post about my sleeping patterns was a surprise hit. So I have decided to write a second update as I reach the halfway mark of my year-long experiment to keep data on my sleeping patterns.

The previous post ended on a bit of a cliffhanger as all my graphs were spiking up quite alarmingly. Since then I think progress has been quite good.

Here is graph 1 (data measured in clock times) updated to show the first six months (i.e. this year up to yesterday). As before, these are all seven day rolling averages.

As you can see, the broad trend for all of the lines is for them to go in the right direction. In fact, very recently the ‘alarm’ and ’slept until’ lines were at the lowest point they’ve been all year. However, since my sleeping patterns appear to be in cycles, that will be counterbalanced soon enough by a period where I wake up later. You can just see the start of that at the end of this graph.

The previous three months are very different to the first three months. The cut-off point for the last post came just after I had had my last class at university. Since then I have had far fewer regular engagements, but I have still had the odd activity to get up early for — exams, GP2 races, graduation ceremonies and what-have-you.

In general, I am still having a lot of trouble predicting how long I will sleep for. Choosing the right time to set the alarm for is the most difficult thing about getting my sleep under control. If I set it too late then that is useless, whereas if I set it too early I just go back to sleep, possibly not to be seen again until the afternoon!

The ‘morning’ lines (alarm, slept until, got up) have been much more unpredictable than the ‘night’ lines (bed at, slept from). In fact, the night time variables are remarkably flat, with only a little bulge a couple of weeks ago ruining an otherwise slow but relatively steady trend towards earlier times. It now feels weird to be up after, say, 0200 and I consciously try to avoid staying up beyond that time (which was otherwise commonplace for me).

Having said that, although they fluctuate a lot, the morning variables are also going in the right direction — but very slowly. At the start of the year I was most likely to wake up at midday. Nowadays I’m more likely to wake up at 1030. Considering we have also had the clocks changing in that period, I am effectively waking up two and a half hours earlier than I was at the start of the year. Assuming I end up with a normal job though I will be looking to get up three or four hours earlier than even this.

Here is graph 2 — variables measured as lengths of time.

This graph is still fluctuating quite a lot. As you can see, ‘insomnia’ is going down in general. But it is still causing me a headache. I seemingly can’t tell how tired I am, so sometimes I am unable to fall asleep for half an hour (which I consider to be normal), others for over four hours (as actually happened on one day and is distinctly abnormal).

Incidentally, the data for what I have called the ‘insomnia’ variable is slightly odd. The name is misleading. It measures the difference between the time when I go to bed and my estimate of when I fall asleep. But often I am sitting in bed reading a book before actually turning in. So perhaps you can knock, say, half an hour off the figures to get a better idea of my ‘insomnia’.

Another notable aspect of the graph is the fact that the area of green — which I have called ‘lazy’, the difference between the time when I wake up and when I get up — has increased. I think this is partly due to some advice I followed in the comments to the last post. Duncan2 and 4u1e both suggested putting my alarm at the other side of the room.

I had tried that trick before, but with little success. Now I have put it at the complete opposite side of the room, a good 15 or so yards from my bed, and in an awkward position. At first it certainly had me waking up earlier — but I felt so awful that I just stayed in bed for ages! Hence the increase in ‘laziness’.

As you can see on the ‘lazy’ graph, it is pretty easy to pinpoint the moment when I started putting the alarm at the other side of the room, with a massive spike in early April. Since then the spikes have still happened from time to time. But they are getting smaller, suggesting that I am coping better with the scheme now. However, the ‘lazy’ graph is disappointingly the one graph where the trendline is going in the wrong direction. So that’s something for me to work on over the coming months.

Another point to note from the comments is that I have now extended my caffeine curfew. Beforehand I just banned coffee after around 1800. Now I have banned tea as well. Green tea is banned from about 2000 onwards except for when I am working until 2100, in which case I have that final mug of caffeine at the first opportunity I get. I used to be sceptical about whether cutting out caffeine was actually working for me. But since I started cutting out tea as well I have found that I am getting to sleep earlier.

I think overall the year so far has been positive in terms of getting my sleep under control. Now what I am aiming for is to start waking up regularly at 1000 without feeling rotten and hauling myself out of bed at that time as well!

Yet again, the comments to a previous post have gone on an interesting tangent. Once again Jeff was behind it. He’s not afraid to get stuck into a debate and he always has some interesting points to share, even though I don’t always agree with him! I thought the discussion was quite good so I want to share some of it in a new post and also expand on my thinking behind abstention and why it is not a bad thing.

Before I start I should point out that I have never abstained in an election that was at local government level or above. In fact, in the local government elections last year I listed a whopping four preferences. Not bad for a cynic! (Having said that, it was admittedly for negative reasons — I wanted to vote for everyone except Labour).

Nonetheless, I struggle nowadays to understand why abstainers are so vilified, as though they are sub-human. I think sometimes people conflate abstention with apathy. In reality it is perfectly consistent to be interested in politics and yet not vote when the election comes round.

In his first comment Jeff said:

I find it incredible that someone can maintain such a thoughtful and intelligent political blog with all these numerous opinions and then, when an election comes around, he may not take part.

Compare and contrast with James O’Malley’s comment:

I think your experiences of becoming more apathetic with age - essentially more apathetic as you became better informed - are pretty similar for a lot of people. I’ve just finished a degree in International Relations, and as a consequence of learning what a horrible bleak mess the world is, I think we all became cynical about almost anything political.

I have gone through a similar process. Being interested in elections and voting behaviour, whenever there was an opportunity to study them at university I took it. I wrote my dissertation on what motivates people to vote. The whole learning experience has led me to become less likely to vote and more sympathetic towards abstainers.

(As an aside, if anyone’s interested, I have decided to upload my dissertation here since it got the best mark of anything I ever did at university so I feel quite good about it! So if you’re interested and you have a bit of spare time, have a read and you might get a bit more insight into my current thinking about voting.)

In short, Jeff asked why someone like me would not vote despite knowing so much about politics. What slipped his mind was the possibility that someone like me would not vote because they know so much about politics.

For a few months now I have been meaning to outline a few problems with elections and democracy as we know it (this post isn’t it by the way, it’s still coming). This is not because I am not a democrat, because I am. However, I am disappointed in the poor standard of analysis of democracy. Discussions about it frequently descend into a list of clichés and slogans. It leads me to think that most people are democrats because of blind faith rather than because they have actually thought about it.

That’s a dangerous situation to be in because it breeds complacency. The flaws of democracy are constantly swept under the carpet. But the only way to improve things is to put the flaws on a pedestal and debate them properly. Simply pulling out that hoary old Churchill quote doesn’t bring us any further forward.

That was the case in the comments to the post about student apathy. All I said was that I understood why some people would not vote. Before I knew it, commenters made out that I was advocating something resembling anarchy, I had no right to complain if I didn’t vote, I was doing an injustice to the people of Zimbabwe, and, yes, that bloody Churchill quote was wheeled out. A who’s who of clichéd arguments that get us no further forward.

Bellgrove Belle began proceedings by advocating compulsory voting — albeit with a ‘none of the above’ option (how gracious of you!!). I let that slip by at the time, but only because I didn’t want to go down that tangent. However, now that I have started a separate post I will outline why compulsory voting is the most outrageous idea.

Firstly — and this should hardly need pointing out — people are not the servants of politicians. Yet. Politicians are the servants of the people. Having a government frogmarching everyone to the polling station is not my idea of freedom. The point about the right to vote is that it is a right. That means that you can choose to use it or not. If you are forced to vote, it is no longer a right — it is an oppression.

A vital principle of our liberal way of life is that people know for themselves what is best in almost all instances unless their actions cause harm to others. If people do not vote, it is not because they are wrong (which is a view typically only found among political elites). It is because, for the abstainers, it is costly to go out and vote. And if it is costly for an individual, in turn it is costly to society.

Beyond the cost of sending everyone out to vote, what is wrong with just leaving people be? People should be perfectly entitled to abstain if they want. Forcing people to do things they do not want to do will only breed even more cynicism and apathy.

Having a ‘none of the above’ option is the ridiculous fig leaf to all of these criticisms. There is already a none of the above option. People know very well that they can spoil their paper when they get to the polling station. If people were screaming out for a none of the above option, we would know it by now.

I have only ever heard compulsory voting being advocated by two groups of people: politicians and aspiring politicians. It is funny that these people should select the one ’solution’ to apathy that is almost guaranteed to give them more votes. What a coincidence! Moreover, it is the lazy option for them to choose. It implies that it is the voters who have done wrong, which is a very undemocratic stance to take in actual fact. For politicians, the idea that it is they themselves who have caused apathy — and that it is their job to fix it — is too difficult for them to comprehend, so it seems.

Jeff was next up, suggesting that the logical conclusion of my defending abstention for an individual is advocating mass abstention. Nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, it is the very fact that others vote in their millions that makes abstention as an individual a reasonable option.

If no-one else voted then I would find the voting decision very easy — I would cast the deciding vote, probably for myself. We don’t live in that world, and my stance is a pragmatic recognition of that fact.

There is that old guilt trip: “what if everyone else thought like you?” The point is that not everyone does think like me. And it would be rather egotistical of me to think that my actions would be copied en masse by the population as a whole. If it were the case that I was so influential, I would find myself sharing the same bed with six and a half billion others every night. As Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt point out:

Imagine that you and your 8-year-old daughter are taking a walk through a botanical garden when she suddenly pulls a bright blossom off a tree.

“You shouldn’t do that,” you find yourself saying.

“Why not?” she asks.

“Well,” you reason, “because if everyone picked one, there wouldn’t be any flowers left at all.”

“Yeah, but everybody isn’t picking them,” she says with a look. “Only me.”

Then Jeff pulls out that old one — if you’re so dissatisfied with the candidates, why don’t you stand yourself? The answer, I would have thought, should be obvious. Standing for election would involve immense personal financial and other costs. I would have to give up my job to dedicate enough time to campaigning, meaning a loss of income. Then I would have to somehow fund the campaign itself.

On top of that, I would probably lose my deposit. The political system is heavily biased in favour of the large parties — partly because of the voting system, partly because of the media and whatever else. The fact is that if you want to be successful in an election you almost always need the backing of a big party machine.

Independent candidates are successful from time to time, and small parties do break through. But in reality these are all led by either someone with a lot of money or a celebrity figure like Tommy Sheridan or Martin Bell. The other successful independents are single-issue (often local-issue) candidates, and I am interested in more than one local issue.

The point I am making is that were I to stand for election tomorrow, no matter how good my policies were, I would have almost no chance of making any kind of impact whatsoever. Am I supposed to believe, as Jeff suggests, that this is the extent of my democratic powers? You can’t exactly blame someone for not doing this when the odds are so heavily stacked against them.

Get ready for another cliché now. “If you don’t vote, you don’t have the right to complain.” Aaah, *tick*.

This is one of the oldest ones in the book. Yet even though it’s a catchy slogan, what is always omitted is exactly the reason why you don’t have the right to complain. Is that because there isn’t one?

Democracy is about so much more than elections. For sure, an election is a vital cog in the democratic process, but it is just one cog among many. China has elections, but that doesn’t make it a democracy. Just this week we have witnessed a sham election in Zimbabwe.

I would think that the idea that elections are the only valid form of political participation in a democracy would come as a surprise to the many pressure groups, non-governmental organisations, media outlets, publishers, think tanks, academics, mass demonstrators, lone protesters, letter writers, bloggers even, and others — all of whom play a vital role in a democracy. Is it really more valid to enact change “from within”? Then we are to do away with all of these vital elements of civic society? Are these people all supposed to stand for election as well? Are they harassed about their voting behaviour before being permitted to speak up?

Democracy is so much more than putting an X in a box. It is about speaking out, debating and persuading. If you have next to no power in the ballot box, what is so illegitimate about using a different method of trying to improve the world? I think that suggesting that people don’t have a right to speak out because they recognise that their vote is near worthless is actually an intensely anti-democratic view to take.

Jeff’s position is apparently to say that the only valid way I have to express myself is to vote for someone, even if it is the “least worst” candidate. Am I really supposed to believe that the extent of my democratic rights is to vote Lib Dem instead of Labour?

Even when I do express a preference in the polling booth, that vote is a drop in the ocean. My reasons for voting are lost among those of thousands of other voters (or, in a national election, millions of others), each of whom voted for different reasons. The politician then cherry-picks the reasons that suit his agenda best. So what have I achieved by voting?

I can say that the time I have spent voting is a waste when I could have spent that time engaging in another democratic activity. For instance, I could have spent that time writing here. That way I can articulate my views in an infinitely more nuanced way than I would by voting. This makes my voice louder than it otherwise would have been. I believe that I can make more of a difference by doing this. What would be so illegitimate about that?

This is all without even getting into the instance where you genuinely are undecided. If a voter is guilt-tripped or compelled to haul himself into the polling station, what is he supposed to do? Toss a coin? Close his eyes and see where the pencil lands? Given that your vote is essentially a way of enforcing your views onto other people, I am amazed that anyone thinks that the decision to vote should be taken so lightly.

Finally came the guilt trip from Ideas of Civilisation. He brought up the current situation in Zimbabwe saying, “it’s a reminder of the freedoms, and responsibilities, we have here.”

The thing is, I believe that recent events in Zimbabwe support my view. Morgan Tsvangirai pulled out of the contest because the election was a “violent sham”. Was that illegitimate? Or should he have contested the election because otherwise he doesn’t have the right to criticise? Of course not. His voice is louder outside the contest and he has made the point about the current situation in Zimbabwe very forcefully. It is a perfect example of making one’s voice heard outside of official electoral channels.

Of course, the situation in Zimbabwe is very different to the situation we face in this country and other, freer, more democratic countries. I suspect the point IoC was making about Zimbabwe was that, in such countries whenever there is a free election is usually has a comparatively high turnout.

That is right, although it is a very different situation. When you are given hope in the shape of an inspiring candidate you are bound to grab it with both hands. That is the case even more so if the bandwagon theory (discussed in my dissertation) is true — people want to feel a part of making a big change so will take part in the vote.

You don’t have to live in an unfree country for such a thing to happen, so that doesn’t put this country’s politicians off the hook. Barack Obama is currently doing it in the USA by engaging certain parts of the electorate at levels that have never been achieved before. It’s just that right now there is no such candidate in this country.

Back to the unfree country though. Even in the hypothetical watershed election that brings everyone hope, turnout will not be 100%. It might be higher than the turnouts we see in this country, but it will be nowhere near 100%. In fact, if turnout was anywhere close to 100% accusations of vote rigging will be flying.

This fact demonstrates that abstention is a perfectly natural and legitimate position to take in an election. In fact, it serves a very useful function in a democracy. Any attempts to eradicate it should be viewed with as much suspicion as attempts to eradicate any other political view.

There has not been much blogging this week because I have been quite busy. Part of that is because my next post is another epic rant unfortunately (looking like 2,000 words plus at the moment). But most of the time has been spent on preparation for the silly thing with the gown and stuff which happens tomorrow morning.

I have managed to go through my entire time as a student without complaining about debt or money issues. But just as I get to the end of this whole academic journey I have been tipped over the edge. I honestly cannot believe how much money I have had to spend on this nonsense. I don’t like dressing up at all (I think it’s quite pretentious, even on special occasions) so I’m buying all of these smart clothes for the first time. I haven’t got the calculator out, but I reckon it must be well over the £200 mark by now. What a load of fuss over 90 minutes! I bet you I will never find another use for that white bow tie…

Anyway, thanks to the wonders of modern technology my graduation ceremony will be broadcast live on the internets (Windows Meeja required). Will I trip up? Will my trousers fall down? Will my hair catch fire? Tune in to find out!

This post began as a response to Jeff in the comments to a post below. But it was getting long and waaay off topic. So I have decided to post it as a separate post.

To save you from trawling all the way through the discussion, we were basically wondering whether the SNP can afford to throw away student votes. I think we agreed that they probably can, because student votes don’t exist to a great extent anyway.

And you raise a good point about the students too. I do wonder how many of them really vote despite their protests and the like. Am I right in thinking that you were even considering not voting? If that’s the case then not much more proof is needed that student participation rates are low.

Jeff is right that I am considering not voting in the next election. It all depends on how annoyed I am at all the parties. Last time round I voted for everyone but Labour (even giving Solidarity my fourth choice!) in the local elections. Possibly in the general election I will throw my weight behind an anti-Gordon Brown tactical voting campaign since I live in his constituency. How funny would it be if he lost his seat? I can’t miss out on that opportunity!

But in general I am pretty disappointed in all of the parties. And given that I have almost zero chance of affecting the outcome anyway, I see little point in casting my vote. Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m apathetic about politics, as you are surely aware.

I can’t speak for other students of course, but I think they are much like all young people, and to an extent people in general. Some are really interested in politics and will vote in any election no matter how inconsequential. But many, many others are entirely disenchanted with politics.

There is a stereotype that students are generally heavily interested in politics. Of course there is that element of loud-mouthed self-styled radicals. But they are in a pretty small minority. Most students, I bet, could not give two hoots about party politics. Even some politics students I’ve come across can be surprisingly poorly informed.

This has something to do with blogging as well. It used to perplex me — perhaps it still does — that you do not get more students blogging about politics. After all, students are supposed to be opinionated and earnest. And they often have plenty of spare time to dedicate to this sort of thing. Plus, all of this blogging and new technology — you might expect it to be a young person’s game.

But you don’t get many student political bloggers. From the top of my head, I can count them on one hand. Maybe I can count them on two fingers — including me. I remember once a survey revealed that the average age of readers of political blogs is 40.

Even among my mostly politically aware circle of friends, I probably know almost as many non-voters as voters. I am somewhere in the middle. For the time being I vote, but I don’t blame anyone for not voting.

Funnily enough, despite the general trend that people get more interested in politics (or at least are more likely to vote) as they get older, I have moved in the opposite direction. When I was as young as possibly 12 or 13 I was more earnest and couldn’t see why anyone wouldn’t vote. Now at 22 I am jaded and cynical and am more and more likely to abstain every day.

What does it say about me that I’m jaded and cynical at the age of 22? Imagine what I’ll be like when I’m actually an old codger…

Anyone disagree with me on students and politics? I know a few students (or graduands!) will be reading this, so what do you think?