Your social life is what makes up for this at the time, naturally, but looking back, was it really the best way to spend three years?

No. No it wasn’t. How much better it would have been to do what Jo is doing now – wanting to learn and wringing every last ounce of opportunity out of it. And still going out and getting bladdered with her new friends, albeit only a couple of times a week rather than twice a day.

Once you come into your late twenties/early thirties and gain some perspective on your education (or lack thereof), a new and admirable impulse to self-improvement and the broadening of horizons is frequently born. It might not be academic – my sister, who spends all day fixing computers and building databases, spends her evenings silversmithing and learning stained glass window wizardry (I’ve had a very nice pair of earrings out of the former, so far, though the Gothic-arched nativity triptych I ordered to brighten up the downstairs loo seems to be taking a little longer), but it fulfils a need in a growing number of us.

Aside from all the arts and crafts stuff I’d like to do (and for which I have displayed no discernible talent in my entire life), I’d like to find someone, somewhere who could help me tie together such fragments of historical knowledge as I have – gleaned mostly from Blackadder and Philippa Gregory novels – and give me some semblance of a picture of why the world is as it is today. I’m still too scared to go back and try again, though – which is absurd. But at least when you’re young, the fear of failure is less. Maybe that’s why the system sends us there so early. Still, the benefits of choosing, as a fully sentient adult, what, where and when to learn must surely outweigh this emotional baggage?

Once I have curbed the desire to beat her with epic poetry, I’ll check with Jo. She’s been doing nothing but read for two terms. She must be clever enough to know by now.

Contact Lucy Mangan at lucy.mangan@stylist.co.uk and on twitter.com/lucymangan. Share your thoughts on Lucy's column in the comments section below.

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"I am so jealous of my friend going to uni"