The answer to my suggestion confirmed my fears. ‘What on earth do you want to do with Geology? There is no opening there unless you eventually get a first and become a lecturer in the subject.’ A first, a lecturer - I, who could not even learn a couple of books of Horace by heart! I felt that I was being laughed at. In fact I am sure I was not, and that my adviser was quite sincere and only trying to be helpful, but I certainly did not feel like arguing the matter. I listened meekly to suggestions that I should take Classics or Law, and left the room in a state of profound depression. ‘Oh Lord,’ I thought, ‘even here I won't be able to escape from Kennedy's Latin Primer,’ with which I had been struggling for ten years.