Cambridge University and the Twenty Year Delay.

Cambridge University is famous the world over. It has inspired an untold number of books and films set in its idyllic surroundings – yet, is it an inspiration to actually go there, study there and be there for three years? Does Cambridge University have a positive effect on a life?

I am moved to write of this now, because of a thought that is never too far from my mind: life is brief and sudden and the one thing none of us know about it, is its length. If I did not write of this, it might forever go unwritten and never be known. That is something I cannot let happen. So, today, I have decided to write of Cambridge University’s effect on my life path – well, one of those effects. I write knowing that very few people will read of it, here, and it will still largely go unknown, even so – however, it shall serve the purpose of making a record of these thoughts, so that they are to be found, in the world, should anyone choose to look for them.

I went up to Cambridge with such high expectation – and perhaps, in fact, that was part of the problem. I expected to be surrounded by enlightened, intelligent, lively minds with humane outlooks and understanding personalities, informed by premature wisdom. I thought they would be the best of the best. Sadly, they weren’t like that at all. There was relatively little of any of these characteristics present – or at least not to the degree I sought. They were not as bright as I had hoped and many tended to be rather conformist and intolerant of difference. In fact, they exhibited an exaggeration of the negative characteristics I had observed in colleagues at school: a narrowness of mind, that liked to exclude anything or anyone that didn’t match their rather limited range of expectations. Yet, I am not here to write of the students, even though many of them were disappointing, in some ways. I am here to write of the institution itself, and its staff.

Firstly, there is the legend that Cambridge has good teachers. I don’t know how this impression ever took hold, because very few of the lecturers I had, were decent teachers. Some of them were truly appalling. One, in particular, has never been forgotten. He “taught” Physical Chemistry, using blueprint style preprinted overheads, which he would flash up before a lecture hall filled with hundreds of people and point at a dense mass of mathematical equations and say: “As you can see, this implies that”, as he pointed to the top and bottom line, without explanation or introduction of what, actually any of it was about. He never gave any indication of what any of the symbols represented or what, in fact, was being communicated by the equations. At times like this, I would look around the lecture hall and see what I expected to see: a sea of incomprehending faces. If any of these people were to work out what was being discussed they would have to do all the work themselves. The lecturer was not going to be of any help at all.

I remember another occasion, years later, in a Philosophy of Science lecture when a very earnest and intelligent young man came to me after the lecture and asked: “Did you understand any of that?”

“Yes.”, I said, because I had.

He looked most discomfited, because it was clear that he hadn’t – even though I knew from conversations with him, that he was very intelligent.

What perhaps, I should have said, is that I approached his lectures with a very open mind and let all his words fall upon my mind. There they would link up and form meaning, or be pieced together as one great puzzle, until all became clear. The only reason I understood that lecturer's work was because of my own peculiar approach to listening, not because of any communicative skill on the part of the lecturer. Then again, of course, I may have been seeing my own meanings in his work and not the ones he had intended.

The truth was, of course, that the lecturer was extremely opaque and he did not talk in a way designed to convey understanding. He spoke as if in a private language, of immense complexity. Looking back, it is possible he had some innate disorder that affected his ability to communicate – because he was inherently very bad at it.

At Cambridge, bad lecturers were much more common than good ones – at least in the sciences. They were bad in two primary ways: they did not know how to communicate well – and they were very dull to listen to.

Those failings, however, are minor compared to the ones that bothered me more deeply about Cambridge.

There were two other aspects that troubled me. Firstly, whenever I showed creativity or enthusiasm, in my written work, I invariably was greeted with great hostility, by the academic staff. It appeared that creativity deeply offended them, perhaps by sparking some envy of some kind. I found it most unnerving to be welcomed so, each and every time I showed a creative response to an assignment. So unpleasant were the reactions I received, which varied from being reported, by “Dr Robert Lee Kilpatrick” for writing an essay of “inappropriate length” (for which I had to see a disciplinary committee!), to my essay being screwed up into a ball, by Dr. Barbara Politynska, who didn’t like its thesis. These were deeply scarring experiences. They made me understand that to express my inner thoughts, on any subject, would only be to court a hostile reaction. The effect on me was stark: I didn’t really want to be there anymore. This was a place that loathed creativity. It was a suffocating feeling, actually – for I could not, thereafter fully express what I thought, without knowing that it would be unwelcome. Cambridge, I learned, was a place for intellectual conformists – at least, at the undergraduate level, in the subjects I studied. Anyone with the merest spark of creativity, was definitely unwelcome.

Then there was another side: the plagiarists. Cambridge had those, too – both among the staff and among the students. One staff member, some of whose work was derived from something I said to him, was Nick J Mackintosh, a Psychology Professor, at Cambridge. He wrote an entire book based on something I said to him – of course, he didn’t acknowledge his original source, at all. I will tell that tale, in another post, to give it, its due. Another person who plagiarized some of my thoughts, appears to be Marc Quinn, the British “artist” – for some of his most striking works are simply embodiments of things I said to the editor of a magazine at Robinson College Cambridge (the Bin Brook), about my own work, in the presence of several other students who had not been introduced. Marc Quinn was a student at Robinson College (my college). Again, I will give the full tale another day, to give it fair space.

Anyway, the weight of all these experiences was truly disheartening. It did something I could never have expected it to do: it put me off pursuing a career in science, altogether. So, even though I had been a physicist at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, Middx, before going up to Cambridge, after Cambridge, I wanted nothing more to do with science. So, for twenty years, I did just that: I avoided science and did other things.

Slowly, my feelings on the matter of science, healed. What really accelerated the healing was Ainan. Working with my son on his passion for science, reawakened my own and reminded me what I had so enjoyed before Cambridge put me off. So, after a twenty year delay, I returned to science and started doing research into Psychology. I am now a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at HELP University, Kuala Lumpur, focusing on research.

I know this: had I never gone to Cambridge, it is likely that I would never have been put off working in science. It is likely that there would never have been a twenty year delay before returning to science. Thus, going to Cambridge, far from “advancing my career”, as I had expected, cost me twenty years work as a scientist.

My experience at Cambridge, really colours my view, now, as to what is a suitable place for Ainan to study at. There is no way I would subject him to Cambridge, for instance. I look, now, not for brand names, in Universities – but for a friendly welcoming culture and good teaching. I see no attraction in any institution whose culture resembles the Cambridge I knew. In a way, this is a blessing, for guided by what I went through, I am now seeking to ensure that Ainan never has to suffer similarly. So, some good can come of it, at least, that is my hope.

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Is creativity encouraged in the classroom?

I ask this question because my own life supplies the answer.

Looking back over my schooling, my childhood and my education, I see something, in the young boy and man I was, that I have rarely seen in the students I have taught in the decades since. I used to approach every task given me, not from the point of view of what have other people thought about this problem, or question, but from what did I think of it? I always did my own thinking. It was not something I made myself do, it was something I did naturally, anyway. Indeed, I think I would have found it much harder to do it the other way, the way almost everyone else did it: with reference to the thoughts of others. I couldn't do that. I didn't think that way. I wasn't built to absorb the thoughts of others and make them my own, undigested and uninterpreted. Yet, that was the way of most people.

So, when given a question to answer, I would answer it in my own way. Typically, this would result in an original answer, because I was not influenced by other people's prior thoughts. Yet, how was this creativity received? Was it welcomed by my teachers?

Well, the short answer is sometimes, yes, but often no. Even the times when it wasn't spurned, it wasn't really respected.

Once, for instance, I gave the beginnings of a book I had written, to my favourite English teacher, Mr. Stephen Kerruish, so that he could read it and give me feedback. He smiled his customarily broad smile on receiving it, took it from me, and listened as I asked him to let me know what he thought of it. I would like you to guess what he did with it. Have a good think.

I expected Stephen Kerruish, being my favourite English teacher, and one whose opinion I valued, to read my science fantasy story and perhaps provide some helpful comment. I hadn't shown it to anyone else and I trusted his opinion. He was the only person in the world, I let read my work. Not even my family got to read it. Well, I asked him about it, a week or so later, but he hadn't read it yet. He just nodded, and smiled and didn't commit himself to anything. A few weeks later, I still hadn't heard from him, so I asked again. He nodded again, smiled and didn't commit. I decided to be patient. Weeks became months and soon the months stretched to the end of the year. He never got back to me about it - and he never returned it. In time, I forgot to ask him anymore and I never saw my work again. Now, it had been perhaps a sixth of a book, written very quickly, over a few days. So, its loss was, to me, at the age of 15 or so, quite a loss, indeed. I never got the chance to read it again and I never got the chance to finish it. Of course, it was not anywhere near as well written as my later works - but, you know what, I would give anything to have it back, again, so I could have the chance to read my teenage thoughts and once more, come to know the boy I had been.

I found Stephen Kerruish's response discouraging. Clearly, my creative efforts meant nothing to him. He didn't even value it enough to return it to me - even if he couldn't be bothered to read it. The saddest part of it was that I respected him as an English teacher and really would have liked his opinion. In asking for it, I lost my work, because I never saw it again. How disenchanting.

That was my best experience, with teachers, with regards to creativity. So, at best, I received a smiling indifference.

I had an art teacher called Jeremy Bournon, who used to do something very demoralizing whenever I discussed my art ideas to him. He would laugh at me. He would laugh in my face. Now, I understand what he thought was funny. He thought my enthusiasm for my ideas was funny, he thought my passion was funny. He found it hilarious that I should care so much about my ideas - so he laughed at me. What is more he would encourage anyone else who was present to laugh, too. So, I would end up being laughed at, for ideas which were, actually, very original and striking (so much so that they were typically plagiarized and used professionally by others, in later years). I remember those discussions well. Jeremy Bournon would begin with a smirk, and end in a mocking laughter - and any others watching, would join in the general amusement at my expense.

That was how creativity was encouraged at my school, King's College School, Wimbledon.

Jeremy Bournon had another habit, too. He was forever mocking me for my name. He would try a dozen different variations on it, in one conversation. He would never get my name right. He would pretend that he couldn't remember it and would pretend to struggle to recall it. He would refer to me with a long list of wrong names, finding my irritation at being misnamed, most amusing. Again, he would invite witnesses to laugh with him. So, everytime I met him, he would go through this routine. He never failed to find it funny - perhaps because I never failed to find it irritating. I would, of course, supply him with my correct name, and he would pretend it was news, to him, and stop the chain of misnomers.

Another interesting habit of Jeremy Bournon was that he never attended his own lessons. I took A level art, but this "teacher" never showed up to teach me. So, I had no art teacher for A level at all. I don't know why this was so. Perhaps the school, in all its administrative efficiency, had not informed him of when my lessons were supposed to be. Who knows...or maybe he just couldn't be bothered.

The only interest he ever took in my art was to present it at a public showing, without my permission, to make it look like he had been doing some teaching. The art works were cut and framed up (thus permanently altering their characteristics in a way I had not chosen). Furthermore, I was not allowed to take them home, despite repeated enquiries. After I had left the school, I asked for my art back and no-one seemed to know where it was. There were indications that, perhaps, it had been thrown out. So, there went all my painstakingly created adolescent work. It should be noted that I had a very detailed style in those days, and would sometimes spend months on a single work. What a waste.

Then there was Cambridge University, which I have written about before. I would just like to remind you though, of the incredible hostility I received, from the academic staff, whenever I handed in a creative essay. Staff guilty of this included, Dr. Barbara Politynska, a psychologist of little apparent intelligence, who crumpled up my essay, most intently, and handed it back, after ironing it flat again. In the margins she had written comments like: "Is this a moral thesis or an extract from the Sun?". She behaved as if she had been highly offended by what was, after all, nothing more than an analytical work offering a different, perhaps challenging, perspective on some established thinkers. When she handed it back, she HAD TEARS IN HER EYES and said I was "precocious". Now, why being precocious would make her angry and tearful I have no idea. It was a most disturbing experience for me.

I never saw her again. Nor did I have a supervisor for the rest of the year, in Psychology. It was most bizarre.

Another terrible supervisor was Dr. Robert Lee Kilpatrick, who refused to mark my essay, called its 22 pages, a "work of inappropriate length", made an OFFICIAL COMPLAINT ABOUT ME to my college, for writing it, blamed me for Barbara Politynska's disturbed personality problems - and I ended up being disciplined, in a special hearing, for my "misconduct". Oh, and he never returned the essay, so I could not benefit from all the work I had put into what amounted to a thesis.

What had I done wrong? I had written essays based entirely on my own thought - and not that of others. That is all. It was really perturbing.

From that moment forwards, I wanted nothing more to do with Cambridge "University". It had shown itself to be positively inimical towards anyone with any thoughts of their own.

This post has been deliberately brief. It is little more than a precis of the events in question, a suggestion of what happened. Much more detail would make it too long to read. However, the lesson of my own educational experience, at school and University is this: creativity is NOT welcome, in the present education systems, in the UK at least. Being creative won me indifference at best and a venomous, seemingly jealous hostility at worst. I was even punished for being creative, at Cambridge. Now, how is that for encouraging creativity in the young?

The best place for a creative person is out of the school and University system altogether. There is no place for the creative person in the education system I grew up with. "Education" might as well be spelt "ERADICATION", where creativity is concerned.

So, what advice can I give to a creative person? Firstly, don't expect a positive response from authority figures, of any kind, if you choose to reveal your creativity to them. Expect jealousy and consequent hate from the more insecure and competitive ones. Expect to be plagiarized. Expect to be marginalized, for it. Secondly, find a quiet place of your own, secure from the interference of others, where you can work on your ideas and creative products, yourself. Work in peace. Expect no help from others. When you are ready and feeling strong, you may show your work, to someone in a position to bring it to the wider world (a publisher, a gallery, a scientific journal etc.) but preferably not someone who would be in a position to feel competitive towards you.

It won't be easy, but this is, unfortunately, the only safe way to proceed, if you are creative and wish to build any kind of creative career. You have to be tough - and you have to be immune to the discouragement that you will, inevitably, receive along the way, from the insecure, the jealous, the spiteful, the incomprehending, or the simply indifferent.

Don't give up, however. If you have something to say, make sure you find a way to say it - but like I have said, don't expect the journey to that point to be a happy one or an easy one. It won't be.

Best of luck.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 6 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to:
http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/
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Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

Cambridge University: an awkward truth or two.

Cambridge University is a fabled institution. Its renown is such that no-one in the developed world is unaware of it. Everyone knows how fierce the competition is for admission – and so everyone knows that, to have gone there, demonstrates a high level of ability, of some kind. This wins respect for its graduates.

It is a beautiful city and it is right to speak of its “dreaming spires”…but is it really as idyllic, as portrayed? Is it really a world of leisurely drifting down a gentle river, through an enchanted city?

No. Unfortunately, Cambridge is populated by people and people have a way of being imperfect. In some cases, they are SO imperfect that I had to wonder how they got into the University in the first place – and I don’t mean as students: I mean as academic staff. Some of the staff really, really shouldn’t have been there.

Cambridge University has a supposedly supportive academic system. There are lectures to attend, as usual, but there are also what are known as “supervisions”. These are sessions with an academic with a small group of fellow students, often no more than three or four students. Usually, there is one supervision, per week, per subject. By subject, I don’t mean individual topic, I mean a whole area like “Mathematics”, “Psychology” etc. The course I followed at Cambridge, Natural Sciences, involved choosing from a range of subjects, each of which was pursued with the workload that a single subject degree might attract at another University. In the first year, there were four subjects, in the second year, three and in the final year, one.

One year, at Cambridge, I was studying the History and Philosophy of Science, as an option. I thought this a humanistic break from the other matters I had been studying. My supervisor for this topic was a young American academic called Dr. Robert Lee Kilpatrick. (The one now with Technology Vision Group (TVG)). He was what every British person expects an American to be: quite large, confident, charming and seemingly nice. I got the impression that he devoted a lot of energy to appearances. However, appearances, can often be deceptive.

Now, it was the custom for supervisors to set an essay each week, which we were to do before the next supervision, hand it in, and have it marked. Usually, one expected the essay to be related to the course in some way, so that we could consider its concepts at depth and come to a better understanding. Sometimes, however, it was clear that our supervisors were unsure exactly what was in the course. On these occasions, they would do what Dr Robert Lee Kilpatrick did one day: he said: “Write about whatever you like.”

As a young student, I used to actually like a request to “write about whatever you like” – because it allowed me to be creative and that was just what I liked to be. Thus, I didn’t really mind when a supervisor, clearly lacking in any ideas, imagination or understanding of the topic they were supervising, didn’t have any notion of what he/she should set us to write and so suggested that we write whatever we wanted. I was somewhat naïve, at that age, and didn’t realize that one of the primary reasons for an academic to ask their students to generate the topic is that the students would thus be generating ideas for an academic possessed of a barren mind. Upon reflection, however, it does seem to me that those academics who were in this habit, were those who were least creative, productive or, well, academic. They were also, universally, unprepared to teach their classes: none of them had done any background work, for the class they were supposedly to teach. Dr Robert Lee Kilpatrick was no exception in this regard. Yes, he was charming…but sometimes he really didn’t know what to do to give something worthwhile to his students.

So, that week, I went off and thought of a topic to write on. I found something of interest to me and began to write. My thoughts flowed freely and I found that the more I wrote, the more I understood, the deeper went my insights and theorizing. My pen rushed on, expressing the birth of what amounted to a thesis. I wrote with enthusiasm and passion, driven by the urge to create – something with which, I was later to find out, Dr. Robert Lee Kilpatrick had no familiarity or appreciation.

Finally, I was done. It was over 22 sheets of paper, written on both sides. He had asked me to “write whatever I liked” and that was just what I had done. I had written a considered, thoughtful, original, insightful piece on early scientific/medical thinking.

A week had passed. It was time for Dr. Robert Lee Kilpatrick’s supervision.

I went to his office at the appointed time. The door was ajar. So, we gathered inside his office, sitting, waiting for him to arrive.

Time passed. First minutes, then tens of minutes. We began to wonder what had happened to him.

After about half an hour of waiting for him, we finally decided that we might as well leave for it was clear that Dr. Robert Lee Kilpatrick hadn’t even bothered to turn up for his own lesson.

I left him a note, which none of the other students had the courage to join me in writing (lest their handwriting be recognized, I suppose).

I remember the words still:

“We are here.
Where are you?
Now you are here,
we are not.
So, there!”

The next week I handed in the essay. Cheekily, he was rather irritated that we hadn’t gone looking for him, the week before. Apparently, he had been hiding out in the staff room. He had waited there, throughout his own lesson, expecting us to come looking for him. At least, that was his excuse. I found it very curious the way he expressed himself. He made it seem like WE were at fault, for not finding him. It never seemed to occur to him that it was his own responsibility to turn up for his own lessons. I found it most bizarre. I didn’t protest to him directly. I just listened to the self-justifying nonsense coming out of his mouth. Here was a teacher too lazy to even turn up for his own lessons, making it seem like his students were too lazy to spend their lesson looking for him all over the building. Amazing.

It takes a strange bent of mind, so adept at blaming others, to find his students at fault for his own failing.

Anyway, I handed in the essay. He didn’t set another one.

It was the last time I ever saw him.

During the week that followed this “teacher”, made an official complaint about me, to the senior academics at my College. He said that I had “written an essay of inappropriate length”. He didn’t explain whether it was too long or too short. He just said it was “inappropriate”. He further complained that I had upset a fellow academic Dr. Barbara Politynska. Now, I thought that was a very interesting way of twisting the facts. You see, Dr. Barbara Politynska had upset me, not the other way around.

In earlier days, I had told Dr. Robert Lee Kilpatrick of my astonishment at the actions of Dr. Barbara Politynska, who was my Psychology “supervisor”. She had done just what he had done and set an essay by saying: “Write about whatever you like”. She too shared his apparent lack of creativity, lack of preparation for lessons and unfamiliarity with the courses being taught.

Just as I had with Dr. Robert Lee Kilpatrick, I took the opportunity of being set an open essay to write a creative one. I wrote about what interested me, which, that week, was on the matter of intelligence. I critiqued what I thought were biases in the work of some academics and explained what I thought was wrong with their analyses, among other things, in my essay. I wrote, as I was later to do for Dr. Robert Lee Kilpatrick, with passion and enthusiasm and involvement with my subject.

Imagine, then, my surprise, when I received my essay back after being marked. The essay had clearly been crumpled up and thrown away. I don’t just mean casually crumpled, I mean, really, really aggressively, crumpled. It was covered in fine wrinkles. Even the wrinkles had wrinkles. Even more bizarrely, realizing that she would have to hand it back to me, she had ironed it flat again, which made it legible, once more – but couldn’t obscure the history of crumpling which it had endured.

There was more. In the margins she had written nasty little remarks. One has stuck with me to this day: “Is this a moral thesis or an extract from the Sun?”

The Sun, in case you don’t know, is a downmarket tabloid newspaper that carries a half-naked girl on page three and is known for its strongly expressed opinions.

Perhaps you might like to make the effort of imagining what it was like for me, a rather sensitive young student, to be received with such hostility on two consecutive occasions on which I wrote with creativity, passion, enthusiasm and commitment.

The moment when Dr. Barbara Politynska handed the essay back to me was the moment that Dr. Robert Lee Kilpatrick later referred to as me upsetting her. You see, Dr. Barbara Politynska actually had tears, unshed, in her eyes, when she gave me back the essay. She said, then, that I was “precocious”. I wondered then, as I wonder now, why on Earth a student being “precocious” should have distressed her so. Yes, I suppose she was upset…but she had no right to be, for I had done nothing to upset her, except write an essay that was “whatever I liked”, as requested. The one who was rightfully upset on seeing the state of his finely crumpled, sarcastically commented upon essay, was me.

Yet, Dr. Robert Lee Kilpatrick had reported it as if I was the wrongdoer, even though, as I had told the story to him I had expressed my profound amazement that she should have behaved as she had.

So, I was in trouble with the College authorities for “crimes” which seemed rather absurd. Both “crimes” related to the fact that I had been creative. I had actually had the cheek to write two essays, based on my own thoughts, for two academics, on their request. I had not copied my thoughts from other sources. I had not expressed secondhand opinions. I had actually written my own thoughts, with passion, creativity and enthusiasm – and just look at the reaction of this ancient University.

In that moment, I was confronted with an unspoken law of Cambridge University: Thou Shalt Not Think For Oneself. At least, that is the essential meaning of the actions of these two academics when confronted with an original essay.

My College launched some kind of investigation. They took this matter very seriously – though I couldn’t quite work out, for myself, what exactly I had done wrong. I had written a thesis length essay, because I had been asked to “write whatever I liked” – but this was deemed “inappropriate”. Thus, it seemed, I COULDN’T actually write what I liked – for I had, and he didn’t like it.

I was subject to the across-the-table gaze of my Director of Studies and another senior academic, as they grilled me over my “offence”.

I don’t really think I ever got the chance to put my view of things across. I was a little too shocked by the proceedings to do so, effectively. I was actually dumbfounded to receive such official hostility, simply for being creative. For that, basically was the issue here. Neither of my supervisors had received my essays well. Both had responded aggressively to them. Apparently, the concept of free speech hadn’t reached the halls of Cambridge University. Only slavish copies of official sources were allowed to be written, seemed to be the message.

It was decided that I would be assigned a new Psychology supervisor. I was never assigned a new History and Philosophy of Science supervisor – and I never saw my old one again. The Psychology supervisor was rather slow in being replaced – in fact, many weeks passed, before one was assigned.

I really didn’t like the way that supervision was conducted. Instead of there being three or four other students, there was just me, with him. He was a very serious man who didn’t introduce himself. So, I was left to guess his name. He had a very strange attitude towards me: he seemed to treat me as some kind of criminal. He walked around the room for most of the supervision, as if wary of me. He spoke little. He seemed to be evaluating me, as if looking for signs of imaginary anti-social behaviours he had been alerted to. All of this, on his part, really put me off participating much. It wasn’t a success. Happily, I never saw him again.

Thus, I passed the academic year without a supervisor in both History and Philosophy of Science and Psychology.

What really gets to me, after all this time, is that Dr. Robert Lee Kilpatrick NEVER RETURNED MY THESIS LENGTH ESSAY TO ME. HE KEPT IT.

I had put considerable effort into that essay – but I never got the chance to read it ever again. He never returned it.

I have a fair idea why he was so annoyed on receiving my essay. He was just too damned lazy to mark it. He had already shown himself to be too lazy to turn up to his own lessons – so I think it is a fair guess that he was just too lazy to read the essay I had written, or, at least, mark it. Yet, that was precisely his job, for which he was paid. He was supposed to read that essay, comment on it, let me know what was good, what was not and give me some general feedback on the merit of its ideas. He didn’t do that. He just kept the essay so that I would never benefit from the work I had put in to it.

Twenty years later, I wrote an email to him reminding him of the essay, and asking him to return it if he still had it in his possession. I did so, because I think it is important for any writer or thinker to maintain a record of their past work, for everything builds on what has gone before and all is part of the whole. Besides, I really just wanted to read it again.

He didn’t reply.

Cambridge University was not what I had hoped it would be. At least for me, on every occasion on which I showed passion, creativity and enthusiasm and actually created anything from it, I attracted great hostility from the staff there. It was a form of conditioning. If I was creative, they were hostile. If I expressed my thoughts, they were hostile. I quickly learnt that Cambridge was not open to creative thinkers at all. At least, I was not treated well, on quite a few occasions. After a while, I shut down and stopped expressing myself there: after all, what was the point? If I wrote what I wanted to write, I would only attract hostility of a high order. I grew detached from the University. It was not a place for creative minds; it was a place for people who spent their lives rearranging the thoughts of others. At least, that is the impression I got from it. If one’s essays conformed to expectation, did nothing new, and contained only reworkings of sources, they were acceptable. However, if they did something new, or sought to express their own viewpoint, the welcome would be hostile.

Perhaps I was unlucky. Perhaps other people had better experiences than I did. But, you know what? Neither Dr. Robert Lee Kilpatrick, nor Dr. Barbara Politynska had any right to have been Cambridge academics in the first place. Neither had the right attitude towards their students and neither conducted themselves appropriately where I was concerned. You just don’t react in a hostile manner to a student who has made a creative effort. That is the worst thing an academic can do to a young mind.

Just imagine how I felt, all those years ago, to have been treated so, simply because I wrote what I thought. It completely put me off academia. I turned away from it utterly as a reaction to the way I was treated. It is only, now, two decades later, with an academic son to attend to, that my attention turns once more to academia.

However, I never want any of my children to go through what I went through. I never want them to attend an institution where students are greeted with hostility if they are creative. Wherever they go, it must be a place that appreciates the “precocious” – and doesn’t have disturbed academics with tears in their eyes because someone wrote an essay that expressed a thought or two. It must be place where the teachers are not so lazy that they won’t turn up for their own classes. It must be a place where the teachers actually make an effort to read and mark, what their students have made an effort to write.

Now, Dr. Robert Lee Kilpatrick is involved with something called the Technology Vision Group (TVG). As far as I can see, it raises money for biotech and life science ventures. His doctorate is not, as you might expect, in Medicine or Life science, but in the History of Science. His only academic work listed on Google Scholar is: “Nature’s Schools: The Hunterian Revolution in London Hospital Medicine 1780-1825”. It has received just two citations, giving him an H-index of 1. H-index is a means of ranking the impact and influence of academics. To understand this score, consider this: a successful academic will have a score that increases by one, every year. An outstanding academic will have a score that increases by two every year. A truly brilliant academic, will have a score that increases by three every year. I understand that this work is his PhD thesis.

Dr. Barbara Politynska has since left Cambridge. I believe she returned to Poland. I understand that, for many years after her tearful day with my essay in her hand, that she was heard to complain about me, in self-justifying ways.

I had looked forward to Cambridge, as a child, as a place where, finally, I would find academic peers and academic acceptance. Instead, I found narrow-minded, unaccepting, aggressive, mendacious, disturbed, Machiavellian, hostile, uncreative, plagiaristic, lazy, rude, detached, unprepared, ignorant, academics, who really, really, really didn’t care about the students. Of course, not all of them were like that. I have written of one who was not, in another post. However, that some were like that, is just unacceptable. Cambridge University needs to have a higher standard not for its students, but for its staff. Too many of them, should never have been there in the first place.

No student, anywhere in the world, should be subject to disciplinary action simply because they wrote an essay. Yet, that was what happened to me at Cambridge. I wrote an essay of “inappropriate length” – and was subject to a disciplinary hearing, of some kind, in consequence. What kind of mad, backwards thinking, kind of “University” is that? I created something and was punished for it. In fact, it happened twice in a row from two different teachers – one crumpled my essay, the other complained about it.

In a University that had its priorities right – that is, the support of its students and the support of creativity and academic growth – both of those academics would have been fired, AT ONCE. For, neither was fulfilling their basic role of teaching or nurturing. Both were behaving as if the creativity of their charge offended them. They resented it.

Anyway, this leads me to make a recommendation. If you or your child are creative, I really would recommend that you do not allow them to go to Cambridge University. It is possible that it has changed since my day – but I doubt it. Places like that tend to have institutional momentum. It is probably, today, much as it was in my day. It is not a place to be if you are the kind of person able to write a thesis length essay, simply because it is “whatever you like”.

A creative person should not be subject to the hostility I received, from Dr. Robert Lee Kilpatrick and Dr. Barbara Politynska, simply for expressing thoughts on paper. So, make sure your child doesn’t go through the same thing.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

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