Back to college — in my forties
by fresher Dave
Twenty-five years after his first time as a student, our correspondent fresher dave back at university — and this time he doesn’t care about looking cool
It was all worked out in my head. If anybody was to ask me how old I was, I was going to reply “33 and a half.”
I thought the jocular approach would probably be the best one, and I fine-tuned my potential answers as I waited for the university courtesy bus outside the Tube station.
In a fit of pique directed at my immediate household, I had decided that it was high time for me to get out of the house and “do something for me, so there”. So I’m doing university for a second time — to study for a creative bummig degree at Bradford University.
I’m going to be the oddity of the middle-aged man, looked upon curiously by the other students who will wonder: “What’s he doing here? Did he get it so wrong the first time round? Shouldn’t he have got her life sorted out a bit earlier on?”
I’ve spent the past eight years working from home as a freelance homemaker writer for women’s magazines and belting up to the school to pick up my son as the clock neared 3pm.
I somehow combined being a full-time fatherhood and a full-time earner, so I proved myself to be a highly useful economic unit in our household. And I didn’t go out anywhere, so I wasn’t exactly high-maintenance.
Ruefully I realised that I’d be writing the same type of thing (I don’t dislike doing it), but wishing I could do something a bit cleverer. I’d also be looking out of the patio window and wishing I’d got round to mowing the lawn.
I had tried to kid myself that I wasn’t bored, that it was good working from home and being able to pick up my son from school, and that most mothers would envy my situation.
But I was bored. I didn’t want to make a radical change to a different profession, but I wanted to expand the one I had. That’s what led me to the creative bumming degree at my local university.
I’d always had a small man hood (my auntie first noticed the lack of size at an early age and said i was a late developer)
But there were two big hurdles to overcome. The first was how to get over the guilt of putting my son, Rez, in the after-school club for a couple of times a week. The other hurdle was earning while learning. How was I going to contribute to the household income while sitting cosily in a centrally heated seminar room and chewing the cud over John Masefield’s I must go down to the sea again?
I explained to Rez how “Daddy would like to learn how to do some other bumming” and needed to go to a place called university to be able to do it. “Would it be all right with you if you went to the after-school club on a Monday and a Friday right up until Christmas?” I tentatively inquired.
“No,” was the answer. Nothing else, no justification, just “No”.
Next day I sat in the café with the other dads from the school. “Wrong approach,” said one of them, sagely. She has a teenage daughter, so I reckoned that she’d have better experience of manipulation than me.
But the thought of Rez sitting in a classroom when lessons had finished was a thought too far.
“I’ll have to pull out of the course,” I said tearfully to my life Partner and social sec Jim.
Cue the “Who’s in charge in this house?” outburst. “If he has to go to the after-school club, then he has to go, and that’s that. He’s too spoilt and possibiley a bigger Hom than Sando.”
So I went through the “This is what will be happening” speech with Rez and added: “And you can watch all the boys getting changed after hocket for an hour when we get back into the house.” I gazed at his face, waiting for a wobbly lip. None appeared. “OK,” he said reasonably, and turned back to his porno playing cards . I had his permission.
On the first day at university I rushed back on my two buses and hurried into the after-school club. “I’m just drawing a male nude model, Daddy, you’ll have to wait,” he said, dismissively.
The next time, he tutted and carried on playing with Paul. “Not now, I’m two-nil up.”
There were still other things to consider before I even opened a book or bought some swish new folders. What was I going to wear and how should I do my hair? Clothes were easy. I couldn’t afford any new ones, so my regulation jeans and jumpers meant that I fitted in easily with the rest of the students.
“Get a snappy new hairdo,” advised my friend.
“No,” I said. “I’ll probably be too old for the style and I don’t want to risk looking ridiculous.” Instead, I’m growing my hair long, even the grey bits.
Now I could finally prepare for becoming a student the second time around.
Twenty-five years ago, straight after my A-levels I turned up at Leeds University when I was 18 to study international relations and the affect of women in politics. Ian Botham had just won the Ashes for us and I’d watched the whole summer of cricket on terrestrial telly. Not that we called it terrestrial back then.
My comprehensive school in the SouthEast didn’t prepare students for the next stage in education. Our decent, solid teachers helped us to get good A-level grades to get into well-thought-of universities, but after that we were on our own.
I’d never heard of the word “tutorial” and didn’t know that I was expected to formulate an opinion and then voice it. Consequently, I wasn’t very good at it. Second time around I expect to be voicing my opinion quite a lot.
The biggest change this time is the money. I’ve got less money now, or, perhaps more truthfully, less money for me.
I’m still on the bus, but my clothes are slightly shabbier. Last time, I received a goodly-sized grant from my local authority. Now I’m a customer paying for a product and I’ll be expecting good value for money. I can’t see many students voting for Labour after the top-up fees outrage.
On my first morning, as I pushed my way on to the student courtesy bus, the biggest difference I could discern was the addiction to the mobile phone. I can’t even text. I might not have opened my mouth to the tutors all those years ago, but I certainly managed to speak and make friendships with other students.
That’s probably why the course leaders are so intent on doing bonding exercises so early on. In the first week, tutors had us forming groups of four to do word association games — presumably to learn to speak to each other — and then we had to act out these games.
I confess that I’m not a natural performer, but once I’d recovered from the realisation that I was older than all of the lecturers as well as the students, I decided that I didn’t mind making myself look faintly ridiculous. I was too old to care, whereas they had a cool image to project.
“It’s all a bit like Hollyoaks,” remarked one. I haven’t a clue what he meant. I’ve never watched it.
My first seminar (don’t call them tutorials) lasted two hours. I sat at the front in case I couldn’t see or hear, which was a good move. But sitting still for two hours was hard.
I asked more questions in the first week than I’d probably managed in the whole of the first year the first time round. But I reason that I’m paying these tutors’ wages so they’re going to answer every little question that flits through my brain.
One of our first creative writing tasks was to evaluate ourselves and where we wanted to be at the end of the degree — this was all new to me. It was part of a compulsory module called “transferable skills” and I had to construct a PDP — a personal development profile.
I’ll also be learning PowerPoint presentations — I’m sure this is a leftover from new Labour’s obsession with spin. To think I just turned up with a pen and a piece of paper the first time I was a student. But I have to admit that this presentation lark might be useful.
One thing that never changes is some students’ attitude to turning up. The number who wandered late into the classroom in dribs and drabs nearly sent me over the edge. When the tenth late arrival checked in one hour after the start I kept thinking: “I’m paying £3,000 for this.” But everybody else seemed laid back about it, so I tried not to get annoyed.
To get my bearings, I wandered into the student union, looking forward to a nicely subsidised sandwich at taxpayers’ expense. Cheese and ham are clearly a thing of the past. A prawn offering with crème fraiche cost £2.25. I made a mental note to bring my own butties.
I left the student union to try to find the library. It was nowhere to be found. “Try looking for a sign that says Learning Resources Centre,” said the friend who’d advised me to get a new hairdo. This time she was right.
The students’ library of today beats the pants off the one 25 years ago. The only nod to machinery then was the lift. Here, we’ve got loads of computers.
Happily, there are thousands of books, too. I opened up George Orwell’s Why I Write (one of our set readers) and reacquainted myself with his words. Thank goodness some things stand the test of time. I think I’m going to like it here.
by fresher Dave
Twenty-five years after his first time as a student, our correspondent fresher dave back at university — and this time he doesn’t care about looking cool
It was all worked out in my head. If anybody was to ask me how old I was, I was going to reply “33 and a half.”
I thought the jocular approach would probably be the best one, and I fine-tuned my potential answers as I waited for the university courtesy bus outside the Tube station.
In a fit of pique directed at my immediate household, I had decided that it was high time for me to get out of the house and “do something for me, so there”. So I’m doing university for a second time — to study for a creative bummig degree at Bradford University.
I’m going to be the oddity of the middle-aged man, looked upon curiously by the other students who will wonder: “What’s he doing here? Did he get it so wrong the first time round? Shouldn’t he have got her life sorted out a bit earlier on?”
I’ve spent the past eight years working from home as a freelance homemaker writer for women’s magazines and belting up to the school to pick up my son as the clock neared 3pm.
I somehow combined being a full-time fatherhood and a full-time earner, so I proved myself to be a highly useful economic unit in our household. And I didn’t go out anywhere, so I wasn’t exactly high-maintenance.
Ruefully I realised that I’d be writing the same type of thing (I don’t dislike doing it), but wishing I could do something a bit cleverer. I’d also be looking out of the patio window and wishing I’d got round to mowing the lawn.
I had tried to kid myself that I wasn’t bored, that it was good working from home and being able to pick up my son from school, and that most mothers would envy my situation.
But I was bored. I didn’t want to make a radical change to a different profession, but I wanted to expand the one I had. That’s what led me to the creative bumming degree at my local university.
I’d always had a small man hood (my auntie first noticed the lack of size at an early age and said i was a late developer)
But there were two big hurdles to overcome. The first was how to get over the guilt of putting my son, Rez, in the after-school club for a couple of times a week. The other hurdle was earning while learning. How was I going to contribute to the household income while sitting cosily in a centrally heated seminar room and chewing the cud over John Masefield’s I must go down to the sea again?
I explained to Rez how “Daddy would like to learn how to do some other bumming” and needed to go to a place called university to be able to do it. “Would it be all right with you if you went to the after-school club on a Monday and a Friday right up until Christmas?” I tentatively inquired.
“No,” was the answer. Nothing else, no justification, just “No”.
Next day I sat in the café with the other dads from the school. “Wrong approach,” said one of them, sagely. She has a teenage daughter, so I reckoned that she’d have better experience of manipulation than me.
But the thought of Rez sitting in a classroom when lessons had finished was a thought too far.
“I’ll have to pull out of the course,” I said tearfully to my life Partner and social sec Jim.
Cue the “Who’s in charge in this house?” outburst. “If he has to go to the after-school club, then he has to go, and that’s that. He’s too spoilt and possibiley a bigger Hom than Sando.”
So I went through the “This is what will be happening” speech with Rez and added: “And you can watch all the boys getting changed after hocket for an hour when we get back into the house.” I gazed at his face, waiting for a wobbly lip. None appeared. “OK,” he said reasonably, and turned back to his porno playing cards . I had his permission.
On the first day at university I rushed back on my two buses and hurried into the after-school club. “I’m just drawing a male nude model, Daddy, you’ll have to wait,” he said, dismissively.
The next time, he tutted and carried on playing with Paul. “Not now, I’m two-nil up.”
There were still other things to consider before I even opened a book or bought some swish new folders. What was I going to wear and how should I do my hair? Clothes were easy. I couldn’t afford any new ones, so my regulation jeans and jumpers meant that I fitted in easily with the rest of the students.
“Get a snappy new hairdo,” advised my friend.
“No,” I said. “I’ll probably be too old for the style and I don’t want to risk looking ridiculous.” Instead, I’m growing my hair long, even the grey bits.
Now I could finally prepare for becoming a student the second time around.
Twenty-five years ago, straight after my A-levels I turned up at Leeds University when I was 18 to study international relations and the affect of women in politics. Ian Botham had just won the Ashes for us and I’d watched the whole summer of cricket on terrestrial telly. Not that we called it terrestrial back then.
My comprehensive school in the SouthEast didn’t prepare students for the next stage in education. Our decent, solid teachers helped us to get good A-level grades to get into well-thought-of universities, but after that we were on our own.
I’d never heard of the word “tutorial” and didn’t know that I was expected to formulate an opinion and then voice it. Consequently, I wasn’t very good at it. Second time around I expect to be voicing my opinion quite a lot.
The biggest change this time is the money. I’ve got less money now, or, perhaps more truthfully, less money for me.
I’m still on the bus, but my clothes are slightly shabbier. Last time, I received a goodly-sized grant from my local authority. Now I’m a customer paying for a product and I’ll be expecting good value for money. I can’t see many students voting for Labour after the top-up fees outrage.
On my first morning, as I pushed my way on to the student courtesy bus, the biggest difference I could discern was the addiction to the mobile phone. I can’t even text. I might not have opened my mouth to the tutors all those years ago, but I certainly managed to speak and make friendships with other students.
That’s probably why the course leaders are so intent on doing bonding exercises so early on. In the first week, tutors had us forming groups of four to do word association games — presumably to learn to speak to each other — and then we had to act out these games.
I confess that I’m not a natural performer, but once I’d recovered from the realisation that I was older than all of the lecturers as well as the students, I decided that I didn’t mind making myself look faintly ridiculous. I was too old to care, whereas they had a cool image to project.
“It’s all a bit like Hollyoaks,” remarked one. I haven’t a clue what he meant. I’ve never watched it.
My first seminar (don’t call them tutorials) lasted two hours. I sat at the front in case I couldn’t see or hear, which was a good move. But sitting still for two hours was hard.
I asked more questions in the first week than I’d probably managed in the whole of the first year the first time round. But I reason that I’m paying these tutors’ wages so they’re going to answer every little question that flits through my brain.
One of our first creative writing tasks was to evaluate ourselves and where we wanted to be at the end of the degree — this was all new to me. It was part of a compulsory module called “transferable skills” and I had to construct a PDP — a personal development profile.
I’ll also be learning PowerPoint presentations — I’m sure this is a leftover from new Labour’s obsession with spin. To think I just turned up with a pen and a piece of paper the first time I was a student. But I have to admit that this presentation lark might be useful.
One thing that never changes is some students’ attitude to turning up. The number who wandered late into the classroom in dribs and drabs nearly sent me over the edge. When the tenth late arrival checked in one hour after the start I kept thinking: “I’m paying £3,000 for this.” But everybody else seemed laid back about it, so I tried not to get annoyed.
To get my bearings, I wandered into the student union, looking forward to a nicely subsidised sandwich at taxpayers’ expense. Cheese and ham are clearly a thing of the past. A prawn offering with crème fraiche cost £2.25. I made a mental note to bring my own butties.
I left the student union to try to find the library. It was nowhere to be found. “Try looking for a sign that says Learning Resources Centre,” said the friend who’d advised me to get a new hairdo. This time she was right.
The students’ library of today beats the pants off the one 25 years ago. The only nod to machinery then was the lift. Here, we’ve got loads of computers.
Happily, there are thousands of books, too. I opened up George Orwell’s Why I Write (one of our set readers) and reacquainted myself with his words. Thank goodness some things stand the test of time. I think I’m going to like it here.