Almost 10 years after leaving university, I’m all paid up. 

Unfortunately, I don’t have a degree to show for any of the time or many thousands of dollars I spent at university 😱.

That’s maybe not surprising, based on my career, I should have studied computers or business. Instead, I picked mostly science subjects that interested me. Fortunately, they’ve turned out to be a great foundation for me to build from. 

Chemistry, physics, and maths taught me how to reason from first principles, building ideas upon one another. Statistics in particular forced me to look at the world in probabilities, which for me opened up opportunities (dreams are achievable — just avoid positions that are likely to risk your success). Together these subjects taught me to think scientifically, to keep an open mind, and to always try and find the best explanation.  

Neurology, psychology, biology, and human physiology were a great starting point for explanations on what makes us, us. So much of what I learnt in these subjects influences how I think about people and relationships today.

Finally, French. I’ve never reached fluency, but I can get by, and I continually dabble. Studying French taught me a couple of thousand words, linguistics, and that you can often get 80% of the results for 20% of the effort.

University is a strange and wonderful journey. 

And, it’s a journey that is worth making free. Tax me, tax me.