thank you

I've never really expected

to find myself giving advice to people graduating

from an establishment of higher education.

I've never graduated from any such establishment.

I've not even started at one. I escaped from school as soon

as I could, when the prospect of four more years of enforced

learning before I'd become the writer I wanted to be

seems stifling. I got out into the world, I wrote

till I became a better writer the more I wrote, and I wrote some more,

and nobody ever seemed to mind that I was making it all up as I went along,

they just read what I wrote and they me paid for it, or they didn't,

and often they commissioned me to write something else for them.

Which has left me with a healthy respect and fondness

for higher education that those of my friends and family,

who attended Universities, were cured of long ago.

Looking back, I've had a remarkable ride.

I'm not sure I can call it a career, because a career implies

that I had some kind of career plan,

and I never did. The nearest thing I had was a list I made when I was 15