The Seven Ages of Man

Well maybe not quite the seven ages of man in the Shakespearean sense but a commentary on how we change during four years of undergraduate study. My inspiration for this post comes from Dawn over at Webmiztris who published a delightful series of pictures of her own evolution through grade school years. Sadly I don't have such a complete set. But I was rummaging in a box of snaps of my student days wondering how it could possibly be 35 years since I started out as a student at University of Wales in Cardiff. Well I can't explain that but here for your amusement is a pictorial record of my “development” through those heady days…

October 1970. Freshman. Picture from Student Union ID card. Long hair, cluelessly styled. Awful glasses. No confidence.

October 1971. Picture from SU card or similar. Better haircut (I’d found a barber who could do layering). Still got the awful glasses though somehow confidence growing. Cool leather jacket that got stolen from the SU cloakroom.

October 1972. Another SU card photo. Big improvement. Now looking like I’d got a clue. I still have those trendy gold octagonal glasses somewhere. Hair is noticeably bleached by spending six weeks baking myself in Greece. I’m still terrified I’ll develop melanoma from those days.

October 1973. Getting serious for the dreaded final year and hitting the books big time (mostly to compensate for behaving like a reprobate in the previous three years). Precision haircut with artfully sculpted facial hair. Fitted puke green shirt; I seem to remember I wore a lot of brown back then…

Graduation, 1974. Somehow proud owner of a very respectable degree in microbiology. I should have kept that tie as that style seems to be back in fashion. Don’t know about the brown suit though.