Chapter 31

Some meetings or events Andrew would get nervous about, others for a variety of reasons he did not. He was not nervous for the Open University meeting and had been seriously dampening down his expectations. Andrew just did not think he would get in. Even allowing for his age he figured that they would prefer anyone other than him to be offered a place. So he was surprisingly relaxed as he waited with his mother for the interview. She had just fed Scott and he was asleep in his carry seat. Their offices in Edinburgh were, and are, in the West End. Several converted houses that had been connected, so it was full of odd corridors connecting the former residences. Finally it was their turn and they were called into the meeting room.

To meet a panel.

Andrew had been expecting a single person, as had his mum, and so to find three people sitting on one side of the table with a secretary off to the side taking notes was a surprise. There were two seats on the near side of the table and so they sat down and the introductions were made. The three people were Sue Conway, the Scottish Director, Rod Hill, the Scottish admissions manager, and Professor Frank Young, who was the Director of the Applied Sciences School, the person is charge of the Computing course. Sue did most of the initial talking.

“Andrew, thank you for agreeing to meet us here on relatively short notice. I don’t need to explain to you that your application was met with a considerable amount of skepticism when it was received. However, we did treat it like any other application and it was processed. As a result of that process it was flagged for Rod here to review. That led to him talking to me about your application and finally we included Professor Young in our conversations. He is attending a conference here in Edinburgh and has made time to attend this interview. What I would like you to do is explain why you want to undertake the Computer Science and IT course at the Open University?”

She smiled openly and waited for him to start. Andrew looked at the three of them. She looked positive, Rod Hill looked bored and the Professor was staring at Andrew with a vaguely annoyed look on his face, like he had somewhere better to be. Mind you, he had made the effort to skip part of his conference and attend the interview.

“I am very interested in computing and computer science. I am self-taught from books I have borrowed from the library. I have my own computer and work on programming every week. A friend and I meet every Saturday and work on projects, play with bits of code, work on routines. What we are lacking is any kind of structured training. There are no computer science courses available as of yet. With the spread of computers we know that this will change over the next three years. I will be finishing senior school then and I want to learn more now. After a lot of review and digging around in the library I found that this is the only course that is currently available where it is a micro computing focus as opposed to mainframe based. Because of the lack of courses at the school level this course has no pre-requisites. So there is a small window where I don’t need school courses to be accepted and there are no other options. I know that I am not what the Open University was designed for but I decided to apply, state my case as I am doing now and see what happens.”

Andrew stopped there. If they had questions then he would answer them as best he could. Professor Young looked at him with some more interest.

“You have thought this through, I will grant you that. What makes you think you will cope with the course load?”

Straight to the point.

“Your block one is three computing courses sandwiched round a maths course. I can give you no evidence that I will be able to deal with the computing courses. I am actually more confident about the maths, as I am very strong at maths at school. One of the reasons that I am applying to the course is to see what there is to learn and to give me a frame of reference for my own ability. I am smart, study hard and good at maths. I have learned a lot of computer science over the last year. I code my own programs and am working on a new game with my programming friend. I have added to our hardware, configured ports and installed peripherals. Finally, I have done a lot of work with one of the newer applications. I have a bunch of self-taught experience and a passion for it. Other than that I can offer no other evidence.”

There was no point in bullshitting the man.

“You submitted a copy of your 2^nd year final report card. You are definitely strong in the maths and sciences. But you aren’t even half way through senior school. Look your application is strong as far as it goes. Your big issue is that you are 14 years old.”

The professor looked frustrated that Andrew was so young. Sue piped up again.

“Mrs. McLeod, can we have your perspective please?”

“Andrew has covered most of it. He is a very focused young man. Everything he says is true. He won’t know whether he can do it until he tries to do it. He has saved the money to complete the degree and I think he will surprise all of us with how he does, but then I would think that, I’m his mother.”

She smiled at the panel and Andrew had a surge of familial love, which was sad in its rarity but still it was nice to hear his mother talking him up. Rod then brought up Mr. Campbell.

“Your personal reference is also the person that you did the application work for, is that right?”

“Yes, he is.”

“Can you talk a little about what you did for him?”

Andrew was ready for this one. When he heard that former and current employees of Mr. Campbell’s company were being charged he asked Brian if he could reference his involvement in the case at the interview if the opportunity arose.

“Did you hear about the big fraud case at”

Andrew mentioned Mr. Campbell’s company. They all nodded or said yes.

“I worked for the current managing director over the summer on part of the evidence in that case. I used VisiCalc to create reports that allowed him to check things in the company records. I can’t talk much about it obviously but Mr. Campbell gave me permission to say that much and would take a follow up call if you need any other verification. You won’t get any more details as there is a court case. But I spent over 250 hours working with him on stuff relating to this case. All in VisiCalc.”

All three of them looked surprised and maybe slightly impressed. Sue nodded at Rod and he made a note. Brian Campbell was going to get a call. The Professor summed up.

“You have articulated the situation with computer science as it relates to micro computing very well. You have identified a window where someone much younger than normal could apply and the lack of pre-requisites would not be held against them. It should be noted yours is the only application from someone so young. We have a bunch of 17 year olds but no one at 14. We will have to think about it. Please know that your application is being seriously considered. You should receive an answer this week. Should the answer be positive would you be able to commence in January?”

Bloody hell. He could be a university student in four weeks. Andrew looked at his mum who nodded.

“Yes I could start next term if I am accepted.”

With that it was over. Andrew went round the table and took the time to shake all their hands and thank them, every little helped. In the car on the way home his mother raised an interesting point that Andrew had missed during the interview.