One of the offshoots of my studying for a Welsh degree, as would be the case with an English degree, is that I spend quite a lot of time reading really depressing novels. Regardless of the language, it seems a "classic" novel is one that makes you want to stab yourself in the eyes.

What I've learned from these novels is that Welsh life was for a very long time linked with the process of digging things out of the ground -- slate, tin, coal, etc. There were, of course, other miserable occupations. If a job was low-paying, exhausting and likely to get a person killed, the Welsh were keen.

Since very few people in these parts do this kind of work anymore, the modern take is that it was all a jolly good time. Indeed, nothing says "jollity" more than impending death, disease and poverty. Ballyhoo! What a delight!

That said, I will admit that I, too, often feel a certain wistfulness for the days of "traditional" labor. It is increasingly difficult to come across a large factory or the like in the modern Western world. These days, the only massive factories one finds in the United States are those churning out college degrees for the people who, a generation or two ago, would have been quite happy with a good union job.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately because I am now well into my second year of university. Because I am a mature student -- i.e., old and busted, and not being invited to parties -- I find myself trying to take seriously the task of earning my degree. As a result, I have come to the conclusion that some people simply do not belong in a university atmosphere. And I'm one of them.

Blimey. All this thinking. This experience is absolutely nothing like the 1986 Rodney Dangerfield film "Back to School." I'm not sure Cardiff University even has a swim team.

As was the case about this same time last year, I am feeling completely overwhelmed. I'm desperately trying to keep up, I want to make the best of this experience and truly get something out of it. But for some mysterious reason I just can't seem to develop an appreciation or interest or impartial tolerance for 16th century Welsh-language poetry. And not a day goes by that I don't think to myself: "I wish I were mining coal, or working on an assembly line or doing something that I'd actually be good at."

But the problem is I wouldn't be good at things like that. I'd be awful. I've had factory jobs and failed miserably. When I was 19, I had a job that required me to stand next to a conveyor belt and put things in a box. I simply had to read the number on the box, and place a correspondingly numbered product in the box. At least once an hour, my manager would walk over and point out that I had screwed up again. After two weeks of this, I was given the task of taking old cigarettes out of cartons and placing them neatly in a big plastic container. I was fired a week later.

Faltering now in university, I can't help wondering: Am I actually capable of doing anything? If my stock of Internet columns are anything to go by, the answer is no. I am unemployable.

The fact is, I am simultaneously the embodiment of the arguments for and against Marxism.

It's a reality that causes long stretches of sleepless nights filled with wandering panic and run-on sentences of terror like: "If I don't do this, then this will happen and then this and this and this and this and this and then I'll be deported and they'll accidentally put me on an extradition flight and I'll end up in some unpronounceable country strapped to a water board, all because I failed to fully grasp the poetry of Gruffudd Hiraethog!"

At this point, those depressing Welsh novels come in handy. Firstly, they allow me to sit back and think to myself, "Well, at least I haven't got consumption." More importantly, they help me to remember that life has always been tough, and in many cases, tougher. The only response to it is to stumble forward.

I'm struggling in university, but so far no one is making me leave and I'm dumb enough to keep at it. Perhaps I do belong here after all.

Chris Cope lives with his wife in Cardiff, Wales. His column appears every other Tuesday.