IS UNIVERSITY WORTH THE PRICE TAG?
I know size doesn’t matter, it’s what you do with it that counts. But my student debt is MASSIVE. (Like, £28,000-lasttime-i-looked-massive.) What do I do with it? I don’t think about it.
I’m from Watford, from a background my mum calls ‘upper lower class’ but she’s kidding herself. (In eight months when she gets hold of an old copy of
Grazia in the doctor’s waiting room, I’m getting a slap for that.)
I went to Oxford to read English and I’d never felt so overwhelmed in my life. People there had brains, ambition and confidence. They’d say things like ‘Oh, that’s my dad’s book’ in a bookshop, and it wasn’t The World According To Clarkson.
At university, people wrote plays, formed societies and did things I was far too shy to do. I was 18 and paranoid about being laughed at. But I got used to it, learnt from it and then, four years after I left university, I stuck two fingers up to fear and became a comedian.
I’m now an author, stand-up, film director, actor and Bafta-nominated screenwriter and I wouldn’t have had the nerve to try any of it if I hadn’t gone to uni. I was transformed by the people I met, and the day I got my degree I remember thinking that no one could take this off me, it would always be my achievement.
University is expensive. I exhausted every loan available and waitressed through my holidays, but it’s money I spent placing a bet on myself. This week, I finished writing my third book and fourth screenplay – I feel like my bet is paying off.
*Don’t Think About The Debt, Nat, Don’t Think About It.* Nat’s new book ‘Girl Out Of Water’ is out now