You can feed her in my office", before going on about some tribe she had lived in. It never entered my head not to carry on and I had the backing of a lovely anthropologist who said, "Nonsense. When I got pregnant in my second year, the head of my course embarrassed himself by saying a woman should be at home when she had a baby. Though I liked the rats we used in experiments. I am embarrassed only in that I chose psychology as it was mostly made-up, reactionary garbage to explain the status quo. ![]() Even now when people talk about going up or down to Oxbridge to "read" stuff, I feel like an interloper. Having left school at 16, I had spent years travelling, working, living. The most shocking thing I did at college was to go in the first place. ![]() As I stuck my Hebrew posters to the opposite wall, I began to fear this might not be an ideal match. He proceeded to tell me of his great pride in his two grandfathers: one a Spaniard who had served as a close aide to General Franco, the other an American who had risen to the rank of Imperial Wizard in the Virginia chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. Soon he was covering the mantelpiece with old black-and-white photographs, including snaps of two old men, their expressions severe. ![]() I started unpacking my stuff – much of it consisting of souvenirs of a gap year in Israel – while my new companion did the same. I'd been allocated a shared room, with no say over my room-mate. But one contender revealed itself on my very first day. The lowlights of my student past? How long have you got? When you recall the mullet haircuts, the ill-timed vomiting and the clumsy passes, it's hard to know where to start. He replied with a sigh and said, "Sometimes, I wish someone would just answer, 'I have no bloody idea,' and leave it at that". I immediately launched into a rambling monologue of total crap about the concept (that I was meant to have come up with, but hadn't) that would explain my paint thrown about on a canvas. Which brings us to the really embarrassing bit: a visiting lecturer once looked at my work in class and asked me what I was up to. That winning combo left me achingly single with plenty of time to hone my craft. I also had a fashion obsession: dressing like a 70s pimp. I was trying to be unique but it just looked as if someone had been sick on my head. I had virtually shaved my head and dyed the remainder lilac. I'd done nothing but smoke and be quiet for two months. It goes without saying, I hope, that I hadn't done anything. ALL THE FIREMEN WOULD FIND WOULD BE BITS OF GRISTLE. "MORE UNAWARE OF HERSELF THAN CAMILLA LAMONT." (I can't remember what was wrong with her.) "WE'D LOVE TO BOMB HER. It started with the fact that the library smelled like farts, and ended with me: "ZOE WILLIAMS: UGLIER THAN BIG BIRD", it ran all capitalised. Zoe WilliamsĪt the end of my first term, a satirical magazine (ie "a mean piece of paper") came out, detailing what its authors thought were the major flaws of the college. I wound my scarf around my face and hoped I'd sink through the floor of the bus. We haven't asked him, but he'll be away." Whereupon the guy in the seat in front of us turned round. ![]() Knowing that I lived in the attic and that my pal was in the very damp basement, the women asked where the party would take place. On a 56 bus into the university, my best pal and I were boasting to a couple of women students about the party we were planning in our rooming house – to which they were invited. My most embarrassing moment (of many) at Leeds University still makes me cringe. Jack StrawĪ young Jack Straw, circa 1970. But it did get better: the tea got stronger, I made friends, and eventually I fell in love. I don't think I'd ever felt so lost and untethered and thoroughly humiliated as I did in that moment. I remember then sitting in my underwear in my student room while he talked to me about Jesus. It was, he explained, a sign of his commitment to abstinence before marriage and his devotion to God. All was going well, I thought (despite his Taz boxer shorts), until he paused, awkwardly, and showed me the silver ring he wore on his left hand. I began dating a visiting American student, and one night he came back to mine. A year and a half in, I ended my long-distance relationship with a boy back home, but my attempts to live a new, single life of joy, dancing and thrilling promiscuity fell at the first hurdle. I was shy and lonely, and so desperately worried about money that I used tea bags twice and lived on beetroot sandwiches. Photograph: Laura BartonĪt first, university was achingly miserable.
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