I went to college to do an Art Foundation course. Yay, good for me.
But I was 48.
And almost everyone else wasn’t. They were fresh out of school.
Now, when I was a kid we had this quaint little tradition called The Generation Gap. It meant people my parents’ age were called Mr and Mrs so-and-so if they were my mates mums and dads, or Aunty wotnot if they lived next door.
What they weren’t called was The Bevster, and invited to go clubbing after joining them for happy hour at Wetherspoons first.
I was invited to so many Harry Potter themed birthday parties (where Bellatrix Lestrange was my most viable option, unless a bad hair day was suggesting Hagrid) that I can now embrace my inner Helena Bonham Carter at a moments notice, and still have the wand I made out of a knitting needle.
Young people today, I learned, are inclusive, funny, kind, smart, conscious, and generous to a fault.
It felt completely appropriate to celebrate my year with them, so I started a collection in our last term. I wanted us to fund a well getting built in a country where clean water was an issue.
Every Monday, I went round the studios, rattling my jar. And every time they gave me everything they could. And get this, it was often all the tiny loose change they had in their pockets. Sometimes I would hear a genuinely apologetic, “I’m sorry, I have to keep a quid for the bus home, but you can have the rest”.
They didn’t turn a blind eye if they had left in the world was 30p – they just gave it freely.
Inspired, my husband tried to do a similar thing at his place of work, where contractors there were earning £35 an hour. They declined.
At the end of term I’d collected enough to buy not one well, but two. And there was enough left over to also fund two smokeless stoves in a country where lung disease was a problem amongst the poor.
And most of that money was loose change. Almost £10 was in single pennies.
It was a fitting tribute to a wonderful bunch of people.
I still follow them all on social media, feeling proud as punch as they get degrees, travel, find their passions in life, marry, have kids, even publish books.
One day, these will be the people making policies, running businesses, teaching the next generation.
It’s going to be awesome.
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