Exploding shed

[whisky-dave]

I wonder how Einstein would have got on doing this. I mean having to translate his work to English.

[Robin]

I didn't pay attention because I always wanted Cambridge. I experienced disappointment early ;(

[NY]

I didn't want to go to Oxford but I was one of the people that my headmaster thought was "good Oxbridge Material" providing I "put my nose to the grindstone" and had "a good revision programme" - he spoke in pompous clichés! (*). So I thought I'd at least *try*. I was recommended to apply to a specific college whose physics professor was "a good friend" of the headmaster (like hell he was!). So I went along for an interview and answered the question "why do you want a conditional offer" with a good paraphrasing (as opposed to a word-for-word parrotting) of the head's words, only to be told "but we don't make conditional offers in physics at this college", which does make me wonder why the hell he was interviewing me! I'm sure there was more than either he or the Head were letting on - maybe they

*did* make conditional offers but my answer wasn't good enough, in which case the interviewer should have *said* that - honesty may hurt but it's fair, whereas lying just offends.

I wasn't impressed with the insular college system where a lot of the teaching (and certainly the tutoring) takes place in each college, so the only times I'd meet everyone else on the course would be at lectures and labs - at least physics did have lecture and lab time which many of the arts subjects don't.

Despite my reservations (which I shared with the Director of Studies and the Head, I was persuaded to take the entrance exams after I'd finished my A levels. They wheeled out a retired maths teacher who was probably in his 80s and was very frail and doddery to try to get our maths up to Oxford Entrance Exam level. Why they didn't just set the standard at A level standard to avoid extra tuition is a mystery.

It was no surprise that I didn't get through, and I was secretly pleased although I had to feign disappointment to keep the Head happy. If |'d been a accepted it would have been hard to decline the offer, though I think I would have done. Oxford would not have been right for me - I'd be the first to admit that. The Head and all his pompous platitudes should have realised that and not tried to push borderline people so hard, simply to increase the number of Oxbridge candidates on the school's records.

However I did get AAB offers from all five redbrick universities that I applied to through UCCA so I had a free choice of which one I accepted.

(*) Most of the sixth formers (if not most of the whole school) were good at imitating him: standing ramrod straight in assembly, head in the air looking down his nose and speaking in a lazy upper-class drawl with a slight lisp on every R. Seeing photos of him now, 37 years later at Old Boys events, it's hard to equate the lined, slightly stooping man with the ramrod straight man-in-black-gown who was in his fifties when I knew him.

[Alan J. Wylie]

Stoichiometric