They didn't even mention university at my rural UK high school in the 90s. I left without knowing anything about it. Nobody in my family or community knew anyth

They didn't even mention university at my rural UK high school in the 90s. I left without knowing anything about it. Nobody in my family or community knew anything about it - my dad left school at 15. You were just expected to leave school at 16 and get whatever job you could find in the local paper. As a kid I honestly thought that to go to university you had to be either an aristocrat or some kind of child prodigy. I thought it was like becoming a monk or something where you'd leave behind everything you ever knew and would essentially become someone else. The creepy gowns and mortar boards and inscrutable terminology ("double first"?) made it look like joining the masons. These were just images I'd picked up from TV. Nobody told me any different. After I left school I met a bunch of sixth formers from the local grammar school who had entirely different expectations. They were no smarter day-to-day than the kids I knew from high school, they were largely just middle class kids who had been inculcated with a different attitude and had a wider sense of what was possible for them. I was mad as hell with the education system, for the years of bullying and low expectations. I was determined to make it as a self-taught programmer as an act of revenge. Looking back, it was a mistake. I really should have pushed myself to go to university, I feel like I missed out on a lot.