No Regrets

I have been learning at home since I was nine. I never really received any pressure from people to go back to school but, to my surprise, when I reached eighteen and did not go to University, there was general consternation.

 I had sat two “A-Level” exams at the beginning of 1999, so I suppose that it looked to other people as if I had decided to re-enter mainstream education. The truth was that I didn’t know why I decided to sit the exams, and when I reached the end of the two-year correspondence courses, I had grown to dislike the conventional method of teaching. Dismissing the experience as an interesting experiment, I returned to normal life; if University had ever been considered, it was so no longer.

The popular belief seems to be that University offers an exciting social life, and a chance to gain a qualification; when asked if I don’t feel myself to be missing out on these advantages, I can only look blank and reply that no, I don’t, actually

It was only in the following months that I came to realise what an unusual decision I had made. Not only friends and family, but the entire population, seemed to consider University to be a good thing. Newspapers and radio, television and books, old and young, all presented it as a wonderful opportunity, and everyone seemed genuinely concerned that I was not taking advantage of it.

 The popular belief seems to be that University offers an exciting social life, and a chance to gain a qualification; when asked if I don’t feel myself to be missing out on these advantages, I can only look blank and reply that no, I don’t, actually.

 A fact which hardly anyone seems to consider, is that there are advantages to be enjoyed which, perhaps, are not to be found at a University.

 Every day I have time to reflect, and think about what I am doing. The interests which I have been cultivating since I was young, flourish and mature as I continue to nurture them. With the rising and setting of the sun, and the passing of the weeks, I come to see that things which I thought I understood are far more complex than I had imagined, and many things which I thought were important really don’t matter at all.

Practical skills such as housekeeping, gardening, cooking and vegetable growing assume their natural significance, and rather than being overshadowed by academic activities, complement them, and make an harmonious whole.

Of course, I do not know how this compares to a University education, but I do know that I have room to get to know myself and to admire the beautiful world around me. I am offered the opportunity day after day to grow better and better at what I most enjoy doing, and I am free to do it in whichever way I like best.

So long as this continues to be the case, I will never be able to reply that I feel I am missing out, and so long as I am at liberty to do what I want to do, I cannot regret my choice not to go to University.