20 Years since Graduating from University

I graduated from the University of St Andrews in Scotland on this day in 1998 with an upper second-class honours degree in Russian Language and Literature. It was and still remains my biggest and most surprising achievement.

^{My brother, sister-in-law and mother}

I was a bit of a no-hoper at school and left at 16 with only one Scottish Higher qualification in woodwork. I went straight into the British Army as an apprentice Radio Telegraphist in the Royal Corps of Signals. I trained at the Army Apprentices' College in Harrogate, where they discovered my aptitude for languages. So I switched to the intelligence branch of the Signals and embarked on an intensive two-year course of Russian.

After my first year I fell off a cliff whilst on exercise and spent over a year recovering. I then completed my second year and went back into hospital after graduation for more surgery. I was then told that I was to be discharged on medical grounds, despite my having graduated top of my class in Russian. My instructor in Harrogate persuaded me to apply to university to study Russian, but the military qualifications I had obtained weren't enough to get in.

^{My Russian class and instructor. I'm in civvies because I'd already handed in my uniform pending discharge}

So while I was going through surgery and recuperation, I was still on the Army payroll and I went back to school to take my highers so I could get into university. I did Russian -- thankfully available at a local school, though this wasn't common -- history and English. That was enough to get me into St Andrews and I started there in 1993, two years after leaving the Army Apprentices' College.

I won't lie - I found university very challenging, both academically and spiritually, but isn't that the way it's supposed to be? I was 21 when I started and had had a vastly different experience from most of the students there, but I think it was that that gave me the resilience to power through.

^{Fellow Russian student and erstwhile lover with whom I became very good friends}

I used to look at friends with university degrees with a certain awe and reverence. It felt like something so unattainable to me that I was crazy even to try. But five years later, my name was published on the board in the quadrangle with the numbers 2:1 marked up beside it. Not only had a got my degree, I'd got a good result.

I still look upon that experience as one of the most enriching and life-changing experiences of them all. It wasn't so much the substance of what I learned academically speaking as the life-changing experience of education in its broadest sense; I'd learned how to learn, how to live, how to believe in myself; I'd learned resilience, perseverance and how to cook a mean bolognese!

^{Mum and dad at our graduation dinner - both departed now}

The most important thing I learned, much to my surprise, was the fact that achieving a university degree wasn't the end, it was the beginning. The piece of paper might be useful to prospective employers, but it wasn't because it said I could speak Russian; it was because it said that I could get through five years of all those things that university teaches you, all those strengths of character that began when I took the Queen's shilling and joined the army and, perhaps even more, when I got through two years of surgery and recovery and still managed to live life to its full.

^{St Andrews Town}

I remember my surgeon, a full colonel in the Royal Army Medical Corp's describing me as stoic. I'd never heard that word before, but I think it was an apt word to describe me and I take comfort from that when things are tough.

To all my teachers at Prestwick Academy who gave up on me, I forgive you, but as I do, I blow a raspberry in your general direction.

Thrrrrrrp.

By September I was enrolled at another university to do a post grad in translation and interpreting and that's where I met my wife. That's a whole nother story though!