Choose to study a subject you really enjoy

I went to a Catholic convent boarding school in Kent called Mayfield. I didn’t exactly love it, but I didn’t hate it either. I am still in regular touch with several friends from there, and one of the classrooms in the Adelante Africa Secondary School is called the Mayfield classroom, as it was built with donations from people who were in my class. What I liked least at school was sport, and when I discovered that doing Greek meant missing ‘double hockey’, I immediately chose it, and was lucky enough to be taught both Greek and Latin by a really inspiring teacher. So I did these two subjects for A level, and applied to university to study Classics, i.e. Latin and Greek. I particularly wanted to go to Oxford University, because the degree course there involves studying language and literature, but also ancient history and philosophy, which I was very interested in.

Margaret Hubbard

I spent four wonderful years at St Anne’ College, Oxford. At a recent reunion with friends from that time, we could barely remember any bad times, only good ones. Our memories seemed to centre more round free-time activities than studying – punting on the Cherwell, lying in the grass in the Parks technically revising for exams watching cricket, or organising crazy parties, interspersed with a few memories of the one-to-one tutorials which we were lucky enough to have. We also had classes, and we all had vivid memories of those with our extraordinary Latin tutor, Margaret Hubbard. The classes took place in her room, which had a huge table in the middle piled with books, but also with a variety of ashtrays, as she was an inveterate smoker. While she was talking to us about Latin poetry, we would be mesmerised by the cigarette in her mouth, where we could see the ash was about to fall, wondering if it would make it to the ashtray in time. Not something that could happen in today’s classes!  

Many people are mystified by why anyone would choose to study Classics, unless they wanted to teach it, which I was clear I didn’t. In fact, I chose it mainly because I enjoyed it. I had no idea what I wanted to do when I finished university. However, shortly after finishing, I decided that I wanted to live in Spain for a while. The obvious thing was to get a job teaching English, one of the few areas in which, as a foreigner, one could get a job. So I moved to Valencia, and was able to get a job teaching English, and this is where studying Classics came into its own. I loved grammar. I was comfortable with it. I could deal with the metalanguage about tenses, aspects, etc. I could explain it. It is a fact that many native-speaker teachers find grammar quite scary, especially if they have never learned a foreign language, but after doing Latin and Greek for so many years, for me it was familiar territory, and as, in those early teaching days, grammar was still the main component of the TEFL course, I was in my element. 

The takeaway from this, as far as I am concerned, and which I have said to many, many students over the years, is to choose to study a subject you really enjoy, as it will always end up benefiting whatever you do in the future. In today’s fast-changing world, where it is impossible to predict which jobs will be in demand in five years’ time, you will never regret it.

Celebrating with friends who had just finished their final exams at Oxford. I had finished the day before, so was very very relaxed!