(all I could do was sit there and watch him remenice)
So, Younger son has started university, and despite, ostensibly, having grown up in Glasgow(mostly) spent this week discovering where the various parts of The University# are.
The tedium of lectures, the delight of labs, the hell of other people, the indiference of the educational establishment to the fate of the undergrate.
Of course he has the additional disadvantage (?) of a year maturing in Japan, so not perhaps so bright, dewy eyed and clueless as many of his immediate fellows.
I am inextricably drawn back through time in conversation with him.
A long time ago in a Galaxy far far away….
I had even less excuse for my geographic failings, having grown up in the very shadow of the institution to which I enrolled, but I still spend several weeks wandering in search of this lecture or that lab.
Was I ever so bright, dewy eyed and clueless? I want to say no, but I suspect I was just as guilty as the next fresher. My prediliction for a 1970’s moustache is probably all the evidence required to convict. The sarcasm would come later.
I do remember a red haired girl in my very first lab (she was not my lab partner), who didn’t think much of me setting fire to something, (possibly myself) and wasn’t backward at saying so, – 40 plus years later we are still in touch and close friends, and obviously neither of us could forsee that future.
I remember people from all walks that befriended me in the QM union bar. I do not pretend it was some hotbed of intelectual discussion, what band playing this weekend? what alcohol promotion? {Campari..really?} where the party after the disco? These weighty topics filled our days. Would the world in in nuclear MADness? It’s ok, we can still buy some vodka across the bar.
What amazes is how many of those people are still (prominent) in my life, and many even of those who have drifted away, are still only a Facebook step (friend of friend) away. To this day, nearly every friend I possess can be traced back through introductions made by someone from that time.
I have tried, in my own way, to educate my sons without trying to lecture them. They have their own lives and many things can only be learned and not taught (what would Mum and Dad know?). I can only hope that Ben finds, not just the academic achievement that elluded me, but friends such as I have, to enrich and flavour the rest of his life.
It is the people that are the real learning.
Next week on IaDL: Tony tries to draw the equivalent of a familly tree for friends, and needs a bigger bit of paper (again).
# Glasgow University -with Quadrangles and gargoyles and old professors who have physics units named after them.
Dalmallyfest the Asylum 