
In my follow on post, Wendy went home on the Sunday night and I headed to Manchester. I work for my University and part of my job is trying to get young people into higher education. As part of that job, UCAS (the government run body for Universities) was putting on a University fair in Manchester where every University in England attends and has a stall.
Late Sunday afternoon I met up with a girl who also works for the University and the two of us drove up to Manchester. I've never actually been to Manchester before but it was a great city. The University put us up in a hotel for 2 nights and also gave us money to spend on food. We set up our stand in this huge convention center also. We were good to go.
On the Monday, the fair started at 9:30am and teenagers poured through the doors. All in all there was about 10,000 teenagers on the first day, maybe a bit more. It was fun to talk to them about higher education and obviously the importance of getting them into it. In a way, this is the next generation of people who will represent the country.
What was interesting about the fair was all the mixed and confused teenagers. Some knew exactly what they wanted to do, others had no idea. Some were there because they knew they wanted to go into education, for others is was a day off school. I couldn't stress enough the importance of gaining a degree and from personal experience knowing what a trial and long road it is to getting into University but I felt like I done my part in trying to get them there. It was also good to talk to the other Universities about how well they had done on the two days.
I finally got back Tues night from Manchester and had much University work to catch up on myself. By the time it got to Wednesday, I really wanted to go out and drink. All 4 of us boys in the house wanted to go out so we met up with some other guys and all headed to a bar called Walkabout. There we drank lots and then split in half to go to separate clubs. A few o