WEBVTT

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
thank you

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I've never really expected

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
to find myself giving advice to people graduating

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
from an establishment of higher education.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I've never graduated from any such establishment.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I've not even started at one. I escaped from school as soon

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
as I could, when the prospect of four more years of enforced

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
learning before I'd become the writer I wanted to be

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
seems stifling. I got out into the world, I wrote

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
till I became a better writer the more I wrote, and I wrote some more,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and nobody ever seemed to mind that I was making it all up as I went along,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
they just read what I wrote and they me paid for it, or they didn't,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and often they commissioned me to write something else for them.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Which has left me with a healthy respect and fondness

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
for higher education that those of my friends and family,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
who attended Universities, were cured of long ago.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
Looking back, I've had a remarkable ride.

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
I'm not sure I can call it a career, because a career implies

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
that I had some kind of career plan,

99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999
and I never did. The nearest thing I had was a list I made when I was 15