That was Then

It is 19 years - more than half my life - since I first came to Imperial College. I'm not sure what date it was exactly, but I remember that ITV were rerunning the JFK mini-series when I got home, so I'm guessing it was around 22 November. I think it was a Wednesday.

It was for an interview for the undergraduate physics programme. I'd never dreamt of the business school then. Well, it wasn't actually an interview, I knew that. I'd read the alternative prospectus. It was a chat with the legendary Dr Pain. The interview was in the afternoon. But there was a tour of the department beforehand that I wanted to go on. So, I got a really early (and hence expensive) train from Preston. I got there with plenty of time to spare and went to the Geological Museum, a thrill in itself.

I remember being surprised that only one other person turned up for the tour. Surely, if you'd been invited to interview, you'd want to go on the tour? Seemingly not. Perhaps not everyone studied the alternative prospectus as carefully as I did. Our guide was a female physics student. And there aren't many of them. I remember her saying that in the Physics building, going from the top fllor to the basement, you go from the hottest place in the world (OK, just a fairly hot place: the fusion/plasma group) to the coldest place (OK, just a fairly cold place: the low temperature physics group). Actually, I can't remember which group is on which floor. I work with a chap on an Imperial Innovations project who did a PhD in fusion physics there. I could ask which floor the group is on. OK, OK, it doesn't matter that much. I do remember going for lunch, and The Waterboys "The Whole of the Moon" playing on the PA. And I do remember walking across Prince's Gardens and there was a crocodile of prep school children and I thought I will write a trilogy of novels about this (my three years at Imperial College, not the prep school children). Well, that was something that wasn't to happen.

We had our chat with Dr Pain. All eight of us. We got our offer. Two Cs. I was very into Imperial College. I knew it was the number one science college in the UK (after Cambridge and Oxford). I remember a Horizon programme in which they described it as the number one. They were doing something in the stairwell of the Physics Department. I wish I could remember what. But I knew Imperial wasn't that good. But I couldn't hope too much for Oxford. My A-level physics teacher. Fred Richardson, went to Imperial and he talked of it often in class. At that instant, Imperial was enough to be going on with for me. It was within my grasp.

I'd didn't go to Imperial as an undergraduate. But before I started my MBA, I had spent many happy hours at Imperial at ICSF meetings and Picocons (not forgetting all those canapes at business school information evenings). The thing is that being at Imperial everyday somehow does have quite the same resonance at 36 that it would have done at 18. I can't see myself writing a novel about my MBA (well, actually...). Imperial was recently ranked as the 14th best university in the the world by the THES. OK, it's certainly doesn't have the 14th best business school in the world. But even so. That should be quite something. Maybe if I was doing a PhD in the Physics Department, I would feel that is was quite something. But somehow, given that I'm not, I can't quite muster the feeling. Imperial isn't quite MIT. That's one of the problems of getting older. Nothing's quite what you hope it will be.                     

Comments

[Celestial Weasel]

I too had a tour, though not interview at Imperial. Something about it depressed me, I think I was not naive enough not to have twigged the 'no women' problem, not that this helped me in the strict 'going out with someone' sense whilst I was an undergraduate, though it did, I think, help in the general 'not full of macho undergraduates full of raging hormones and not getting any' sense. Also they had no Maths and Comp Sci course, the two were in different 'schools' IIRC, and it was notoriously right wing and I was quite left wing at the time.

As I've probably said before I applied for Maths at Oxford then Maths and Comp Sci at 4 places in London - I had an interview at Kings where they basically persuaded me that I should go there if I didn't get into Oxford, even though it was my 4th choice - which I would have done, actually.

You have probably gathered by now I have a sort of love-hate relationship with London. I think that it would have been cool to have done one year in London, maybe an M Sc. though I was fed up with university after 3 years so maybe it should have been after my first job or better still in the parallel world where I bailed from my 2nd job after 3 years (though come to think of it I would then have not got my 5 figure sum payout from the MBO! [the first of the 5 figures was '1' BTW lest you think I made a fortune], though overall bailing would have been the right decision. I think about one year sounds about right, I remember going to see one of the OUSFG people who did a masters at UCL after Oxford and having a nice wander round Camden and thinking being in the centre of things would be good.

The novel I stopped writing after about 3 chapters and an outline featured a character who went to university in London. I reread the first two chapters last night, I would quite like to read the novel, though not necessarily to write it!

There is something very 'first novelly' about the inevitably university novel. I was actually re-reading one last night, I think it is now out of print - it won the Betty Trask prize for best first novel, and was written by a friend of someone Known To Us. He only seems to have had 2 novels published which is a shame as I thought he was rather talented.

Anyway, I am going over slightly old ground here, it is after midnight and I am rambling...

[Paul]

I was aware of the right wing reputation of Imperial (I was and am an old-fashioned, unreconstructed socialist) and the male dominance. The male dominance didn't worry me *that* much. I was a geek and I expected to find my niche among other geeks. Having a girlfriend would have been nice, but it wasn't realistically on my horizon at that time.

I invented a set of imagined friends that I was going to have at Imperial. Isaac Stein was a chemist who went on to be an anthropologist at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Arthur Alan Kenningworth ("Red Ken") was a physicist, born in London, brought up in Plymouth, a huge Plymouth Argyle fan, his most glorious day was their FA Cup semi-final appearance in 1985, a socialist firebrand, he got a 2:2. There was a chap from Northern Ireland whose name I forget, but had a sister who was a nurse. Michael Spencer was the old one of our group to have a girlfriend, Juliet. He was a geologist and, at least, in some version was killed in a car crash while working for a oil company in the Middle East. David Mitchell was the periphery of our group. He was a physicist, came from Derby, the youngest of five brothers (one of his brothers had a First in Italian from Cambridge, I think). His dad had been a Japanese PoW. There was also Adrian Rosebury who dod chemistry and biochemistry. He was a reprobate and got a third.

Well, I could still write a novel about them, I suppose. But they have at least now achieved immortality on the Internet. It is probably significant in some way that I can remember more about my imaginary friends than most of the people I was at St Anne's with.

[Ajay]

Hi,

I have started following your blog as I am considering an MBA at Tanaka in October 2005.

Are you regretting chosing Tanaka?

I attended an information session recently and was impressed with Tanaka's focus on entrepreneurship and the Technology Venture Project. The bits I was not so sure about were the building, which felt a bit sterile, and the teaching methods, which seemed a bit too theoretical. I would really appreciate your opinion on this.

Cheers,

Ajay

[Celestial Weasel]

> It is probably significant in some way that I can remember more about my imaginary friends than most of the people I was at St Anne's with.

I think you have made another contribution to the 'best blog comments of the year' list. As of the beginning of December you are still way way way out in front with your previous entry, however!

[JRB]

Well I did that that MSc 3 years after graduating, joint Imperial and UCL, and I was certainly much happier with the atmosphere in the former. The halls of UCL always felt full of foreigners. Imperial felt much more British, I understood its ways, could appreciate is nerdy nature, though I did find the rump of ICSF meeting in the library a bit too much. BH was the exception rather than the rule.

I'm sure in part being brought up so much closer to London, it was never the adventure that it might be coming from the provinces. Also I never aspired for that kind of novel, and will rib you mercilessly about your imaginary friends.