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RICK MacLEAN: University? Go or no? Tough decision gets tougher

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26.04.2026

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RICK MacLEAN: University? Go or no? Tough decision gets tougher

It was the same thing. Every class. I’d sit there every Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoon – OK, I skipped some Fridays – and take notes about the history of England during the Tudor era.

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Henry the Eighth and all that stuff.

Some days were interesting. He ordered some wife to be beheaded. Some days weren’t. He fought with some cardinal over a divorce.

The rules were simple. Absorb enough information, write the essays – we actually hand wrote them, no typewriters, never mind computers, or artificial intelligence doing the work for us – and pass the final exams.

Credit earned. Just 39 more courses to go.

‘The old guy has lost it’

True. I’ve skipped all the best parts. The growing up among a thousand people my own age. Half of them of the opposite sex. Parties every weekend – and more than occasionally during the week.

And one more thing. It was cheap.

I still go to university. To UPEI in fact. Well, I go there to teach a course. I haven’t “gone” to a university to take a course in more than four decades.

But at least once a year I look into the faces of the 30........

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