In the summer holiday at the end of the second year I went to America with my friend Colin, an experience well documented elsewhere. Up to about halfway through the third year I was on schedule to get a 2:1. At that point, I bought a PC. Previously I had done all my work on the computers at university, which meant I could only do work when I was on campus, and only when there were computers free. Now I could work whenever I liked for as long as I liked, and I did. For the last six months I worked flat out on the off chance that I could bump my 2:1 up to a first. Actually I wasn't 100% confident that I would even get a 2:1. Since a large percentage of the final mark swung on the final exams, and it's very difficult to predict with any confidence how well you're going to do in exams, I couldn't help feeling that it all might go horribly wrong. Meanwhile, I was periodically going off for job interviews.

In my first couple of interviews I had no idea what to expect, and probably portrayed myself as something of a bumbling idiot. But interviewers tend to ask much the same questions as each other, and by my sixth interview (for Kelvin Hughes Ltd) I'd heard it all before and had all the answers ready. When I got home from that interview, after weeks of going to interviews but not being offered any jobs, I had some post from the first company that had interviewed me offering me the job, and shortly afterwards got a phone call from the employment agency that had got me the interview with Kelvin Hughes, offering me that one as well. A couple of days later I was offered yet another job, so was able to take my pick. I plumped for the one with Kelvin Hughes.

I finished at university, and miraculously got a first, as well as a prize for the best final year project. Unfortunately, the prize was my pick of three books from a catalogue of distinctly uninteresting books. I couldn't pick any I had the least desire to read, so I haven't bothered yet. I'll get round to it one day.

As he had said all along, Jon got a 2:1. For the first time since the sewing machine test, I had beaten him in something, and it was something which overshadowed everything that had come before. This was what I liked most about getting a first.

So I moved to Ilford and started work as a software engineer for Kelvin Hughes.

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