OK I know this shot has no photographic value whatsoever. It’s simply a vehicle to explain that I have been and gone and done it good and proper. I am an undergraduate of the University of Plymouth.

I remember a friend of mine once telling me (when she had no idea that I would end up taking a degree here…….well, neither did I for that matter) that she felt she’d failed in her family’s eyes because unlike her brothers who’d all gone to Oxbridge (can’t remember which of the two) and become barristers, she’d gone to crummy old Plymouth Poly (now this very University) and ended up in Market Research! However, I'm pretty sure she didn't think of Plymouth as "crummy" and I'd say her family can only think of her as a storming success in reality. She is certainly great at her job and also has a lovely family of her own. Plymouth University has to be a great place. Perhaps I’m “bigging up” Plymouth because they accepted me but certainly it doesn’t seem like a second-class place to me at all. In fact, I understand it wins all sorts of awards for the quality of its tuition so that’s good enough for me.

As of today, I’m going to be here for four years, toiling and struggling with my degree. It’s a life-long ambition which I never once thought I’d fulfil. When I took my A levels in 1978 I’d well and truly had enough of “school” – I’d been to fourteen of them in 10 years and then on to a college of further education. I was “schooled-out” and hated the idea of starting off at yet another “school” so I went off to get a job.

Of course what then happens is that you learn to rely on your wages/salary. I was a home-owner within only six years of starting work and then what can you do? You’ve got a mortgage and if you go off to college, how on earth are you going to pay it? Looking back, there are ways and means – for example, it never occurred to me that I could rent out my own home to cover my mortgage payments while studying. However, hindsight is a wonderful thing and frankly not one that I’m going to get hung up on now.

Now, I’m here. I’ve got myself onto a course that I’m so excited about.

Today is my first day. It’s all been a bit stressful and scary, not least realising that most of the students on my course are well into “young enough to be my child” territory and most of them have never worked either. They’re all BYTs and I’m old enough to be a grandmother and questioning my ability to do this course. Not to mention being scared stiff about plunging myself into a financial abyss – I may well live to regret this decision.

For now though, at the end of my first day, terror aside, I’m also feeling thrilled and excited that I managed to get here. I am an undergraduate. I am a student. Wahay.