University
Getting to university at the age of 18 was an eye-opener for me in so many ways. Having moved around to a lot of different schools, usually arriving a year or so after my new classmates and trying to fit into previously established social hierarchies (think square peg, round hole), it was a refreshing and welcome change to be just one face in a whole intake, all of us lost and trying to work out the most direct route to the library students’ union bar.
The biggest shock to my system, however, was the discovery that I actually enjoyed the academic side of things. Well, mostly. I did English for the simple reason that I liked reading, always have, but was forced to face up to the fact that, with a few exceptions, I cannot bear “the classics”. To be perfectly honest, I find the cannon of English Literature to be, well, rather boring.
There are exceptions. Chaucer, for example. And medieval literature as a genre. Erm, Gothic horror. Shakespeare. Elizabeth Gaskell. Ok, it’s a short list. I can’t help it. I want to slap Jane Eyre, I really do. I’ve tried so many times to read Dickens and it just doesn’t happen. And please don’t get me started on The Modern Novel.
I confess that I spent a great deal of time in the aforementioned students’ union, contributing to both its activities and its profits. I wonder if the Powers That Be in the university ever regretted allowing the SU building to be constructed next to the river which runs across campus? It was irresistible on hot, sunny days, its banks filled with students ignoring their timetables, drinking cold beer instead… 
If I could go back and do university again, I would pick more interesting modules, spend a bit more time in the library and slightly less in the bar, and learn to cook. The one thing I would never change is the house my friends and I rented in our second and third year. I don’t have many photos but this is the view from our living room window.
A view that never got old (7 April 1999)
(In case you’re wondering about the date, yes, it snowed during the Easter holidays.)
What a wonderful view
I didn’t go to Uni – I love reading and learning, but academic study isn’t my thing. I like to ramble from one subject to another in random lurches, rather than focus on one subject. Luckily when I was young you didn’t have to have a degree to have an interesting career unless you wanted to do certain quite specific things.
I could have gone to Uni for a view like that!
Well that beats a view of the North London line, from my student days. As for the bar, sadly very much ditto. If I did it all again, I’d choose marine biology at Southampton and ignore advice about good career choices, and buying houses, and go live in a beach hut on the south coast somewhere.