Move on up

Back in the day I tried to be an incredibly responsible individual at university and signed up for a computing course to accompany my main course of study. An ‘Introduction to Computing’ course, to be more precise. Now this was in an era when simply turning on a computer and actually getting it to do anything for you really was a science. I figured back then that this computing lark might be quite a useful tool to have in the future. As it turned out, this was my supplementary course in my first term of my first year at university, and quite frankly Tuesday morning lectures after a very late night at the regular student night at the Black Orchid nightclub really didn't go hand in hand. And because I’d often miss the Tuesdays, I figured the Thursdays weren’t really worth attending either. Somehow I managed to bumble my way through the coursework, thanks to my friend Fiona who for some reason was far more reliable than myself. And, of course, my very generous tutor passed me with 40% - the pass mark was 40% and I took note of the polite inference.

It’s amazing where we are now, some 20-odd years on from those less techno days. One irony in all of this was that had I not done that course I might have done something that I genuinely had an interest in - Art History, for example; something by its nature wouldn’t have changed a whole heap to this day. And looking back, I wish I’d done something like that, something I’d actually liked rather than signed up for something that I thought I ought to do. Okay, I was young and little did I know that everyone would be walking and talking down the street with a computer in their hands all these years down the line. But, intrinsically, the field was never my bag. Hopefully, these days I’m learning to be a bit more true to myself.