— go back one page
— go back to the guide
Also, I was usually given a large amount of academic work to do during the University vacations, which was tested by ‘collections’. This was not only a test at the beginning of the new term, but also a kind of ceremonial. Fellows of the college in Oxford from different disciplines would grill you in light of the test results to see if you had made fruitful use of the university vacation, given the requirements laid down at the end of the previous term.
In light of this, I always had a limit in my mind to the periods in vacations which I was willing to devote to paid work, if any. This cost me a job in Ripon in Yorkshire, where there was a famous restaurant, wanting a trainee wine waiter. I might have loved that, but when they said ‘three months’, I felt that I had to say no, because I would have had insufficient time to do the academic work required during that vacation.