BSc

It's been a long time coming, but finally the exam results are out and I can now call myself a Bachelor of Science.

To think, that back in my school days the thought of going to university never entered my head. That was what the smart kids, with middle class parents, did. We were working class and I was going to have a working class job, so I did the technical stream at high school, rather than the academic stream. In fact, I didn't even finish high school. I left at the end of year 11 and went to technical college to study electronics, where I lasted about two and a half months before I dropped out, because I was having too much difficulty with maths.

Years later, as a qualified telecommunications technician, I decided I wanted to turn my hobby of writing into a job and so started a bachelor of arts degree majoring in Journalism and English. Well that cured me of ever wanting to be a journalist and I never finished the degree.

Fast forward to 2003. Donna and I had just got engaged when I told her I was going to do a science degree part time. The first four days of our honeymoon were spent in Armidale while I did a biology residential. The last seven years have meant trips to Armidale in April and September each year for res schools, and Donna driving me into the city each July and November for exams and sitting in the car with a book waiting for me to come out after each one.

When Michael Caine and July Walters did "Educating Rita" back in 1983, it was still a bit of a novelty, the idea of an older person going to university. Well I might have been the oldest person in some of my classes, but I certainly wasn't the oldest in all of them. You're never too old to learn something new.

I even did pretty well in maths this semester and it was at a higher level than the maths at college.