Going back to school

I find, as I get older, that my thirst for knowledge is increasing. I’ve always had a trivial brain, with an innate ability to store useless information and recount it at just the right occasion. My best friend’s wife is often keen to remind me that my gravestone should read “the sh*t he knew...”

I’ve always believed that being able to store information doesn’t necessarily make you intelligent. I know a little bit about a lot of things, whereas intelligent people know a lot about one thing. Sure, Kasparov was a chess Grand Master, but could he beat me over 20 questions about the Premier League? I don’t think so.

At school, I learnt enough to pass exams, but no more. I didn’t build up great knowledge about a specific subject, just what the teacher suspected the exam question would focus on. Which meant that a lot of the specific knowledge about the Napoleonic Wars, the formation of an Ox-bow lake, or Coleridge’s use of onomatopoeia, just slipped away. I had nothing to anchor it to.

But now I want to learn real things, not just what year “Take on me” was released, who was the last player to score 20 goals a season for Everton, or how to get from Spielberg’s “Hook” to the recent “Iron Man” in just one move**.

I tried going back to College a few years ago, where I studied Astronomy (stargazing, not fortune telling) but the rest of the class was filled with people who had been rejected from Robot Wars so it put me off. This year I tried again. Inspired by the need to keen to kick start a career which has meandered along for too long, I enrolled in “A”-level Media Studies at my local college. It was going to be night classes so I wasn’t too scared about my age making me stand out from the other students. How wrong I was.

I’m not the ugliest guy in the world, but I’m not the prettiest either. I’m not the tallest, or the shortest. I’m not the fattest, or the thinnest. I’m somewhere in between all of these, but with one distinguishable mark - my hair is going grey. In fact, it’s been going grey since I was 18, just at the temples but in the last few years it’s become more virulent at the sides and back, with a few flecks on top. No big deal, you might think, for someone who recently turned 33, but I still feel quite self conscious about it.

And this wasn’t helped when, in only my 3rd lesson of my new Media Studies course, the girl next to me turned to say “my step dad’s the same age as you...”

Clang!!!!. The sudden realisation that I was stuck for a year with a room full of people who were born in the 1990’s! I was born in the mid 70’s and ’grew up’ in the 80’s (a very happy decade) but none of my fellow students were even alive at this point.

I was immediately aware that there were certain “cliques” within the classroom, and I was never going to part of the “cool” gang. And I didn’t want to be, I’m a married civil servant for crying out loud, I don’t need that kind of status confirmation. But the thought of dealing with classroom politics after 15 years away didn’t appeal to me, and some of the jibes about my age were actually starting to hurt. Imagine that?

Then, just I was on the brink of quitting, I had an epiphany. A flash of light, a moment of clarity, if you will. These were just kids, I’m much older and far wiser. I know more than they will ever learn, and I can cut them down with a lash of my wit. I began to establish myself within the class, made a few friends, and began to settle in. I even made a smoking buddy!

By the time the first exam came around I was very nervous. I hadn’t sat an exam since the last year of my degree in 1997, so I was rusty. And the last time I sat an exam, mobile phones were a thing of the future, so it didn’t occur to me that I might need to switch it off, rather than just leave it in my pocket. And, of course, the inevitable happened.....

But I got an “A” for the exam which was my first ever. I got D’s for my previous four A levels, and wasn’t used to the feeling of being top of the class. I forgot the age old mantra that with great power comes great responsibility, which is just as well because it doesn’t apply here. However, what I should have remembered was that that with personal success comes jealousy and resentment, so perhaps I shouldn’t have bragged so loudly.

Anyway, that filled me with confidence and I went about compiling my coursework, which consisted of choosing a film genre, writing a script, storyboarding it, then designing a Poster campaign to accompany it. It was fantastically hard work, but really enjoyable. Everyone else chose horror, comedy, romance etc. I dared to be different, and chose a Western (See above).

Apparently I’ve done really well in the coursework, but I won’t know for sure until after the second exam in June. But this whole year has been an incredibly rewarding experience. If nothing else, it’s got me out of the house on a Thursday night and I’ve learnt some new skills. Plus, from my youthful friends I learnt that an EMO is the new term for a Goth. You see, I’m hip, I’m with it, I’m down with the kids. Oh dear.....


** The answer we were looking for was Gwyneth Paltrow.....that’s Gwyneth Paltrow. Thanks for playing.