Here I am with the degree I’ve laboured these past five years to earn! You’ll notice that, at the same time, the sun is merciless and the wind is blowing a gale, turning my academic gowns into something the Montgolfier brothers might have test-flown. Astute FrillyShirt fans will note that they got my name wrong in the printing – perhaps it’s appropriate that they use my bachelor’s name on my Bachelor’s degree, but I’d still rather they didn’t. Especially sharp-eyed readers will notice I’m wearing cufflinks with little moustachioed swells on them – wedding gifts from the marvellously crafty Lyndsey!

I’d make some wry wremark about expensive pieces of paper or unattractive employment options, but honestly, I’ve taken a very great deal away from my experience studying. Facts and methods, naturally – writers, movements and ideas I’d otherwise never have learned of – but also the skills of critical and, I think at least as important, creative thinking. Creative thinking gets short shrift when naming the merits of higher education – to take preconceptions apart to their base elements is important, yes, but then to recognise the uses and values of those elements, and reconstruct functional systems from them – that is the foundation of progress.

As an aside, when I do further advance my education, I shall try my level best to push from Masters level straight through to a doctorate. Why? Because those floofy velvet caps are much nicer than those mortarboards the masters wear. I can see how they evolved from medieval scholar’s caps, but I just can’t see why. I don’t think they suit more than one in ten graduates who don them. Shame.