It’s amazing to think how much I owe to the fact I went to university. I know I’ve written about this here before, albeit not for a while, but I really think going to uni made me who I am. It brought me out of my shell: I went from being a home-loving, nervous boy to an outgoing, gregarious man. At uni, I did some of my best work, and my master’s thesis is probably the best thing I’ve ever written. At uni I did things I never knew I could do. And at uni the pictures were taken which caught the eye of the woman who later became my fiancee. That lead me down here to all the incredible things which have happened over the last five years. Had I not had the experience of living in halls, I doubt I would have had the confidence to move to London.

Thinking about it, in fact, it’s hard to estimate how much I owe to university. And I doubt I’m alone in uni being highly formative: for many young people, uni is the place you discover who you are. To have just come across this Huffington Post article, then, chills my blood. ”Stephen Hawking has voiced his fears students with conditions similar to his will not receive the support they need to succeed due to funding cuts.” Due to new government cuts to Disabled Students Allowance, the support which enabled me to attend MMU will no longer be there. I was bloody lucky to go to university when I did; had I been born later, had the insults to humanity we now have in power been in control just over a decade ago, I probably would never have gone. More to the point, how many young people will now be denied the opportunity I feel so fortunate to have had? And just because of the tories and their cuts. As angry as I feel at them, I feel sad for the victims of their greedy, selfish politics.