For one thing, everything is a lot sterner, more businesslike than I remember. There's a lot more emphasis on TURNING UP, on completing assignments, and meeting deadlines. It's all coursework, so there's no chance of winging it in the exam, and there's a special programme to identify plagiarism when you submit your work online.
However what's really exhilarating, as I have found in learning to navigate the library system is the sheer scale of what's accessible: vast searchable databases, a huge range of electronic books and journals - the entire world at your fingertips.
The question is of course, will I be able to make use of it all? In 30 years in television, I've made lots of films about the ancient world, but in almost all cases I was reporting on other people's conclusions, and evidence was largely there for illustration rather than proof. As one friend put it I was jumping from the top of one ladder of inference to another like a demented gibbon. Now I will have to create those ladders myself. I think that will be quite testing, and a lot of hard work. But fascinating too, of course.
The next question is what to study? In TV I've done a lot of work on religious issues as well as history, so I'm hoping to concentrate on how ancient religion worked. It may be that myexperience will help with this. I certainly hope so. But it maybe that it points me in all the wrong directions. We shall find out.
I'm off now, for the initial meeting with my tutor. I hope to bring you more about this later on, and perhaps more interesting, stuff about what I am studying.
