| Description | Interview with Mrs. Sheila Young, recorded on 18 September 2002 Sheila by Jennifer Carter.
Transcript of Interview :
JC Okay, Sheila, we were just saying, having done the sums, that it is quarter of a century since you went up to University, so I am sure some of the details are hazy, but no doubt you remember some things very clearly. Can you tell me why you came to Aberdeen in the first place?
SY Yes, my family were living in Strathpeffer, in Ross-shire at the time, and so I guess Aberdeen was really my closest university, plus the fact that my father was a graduate, my brother was also there at the time, so it just seems a natural thing for me to go there. In fact I don't remember looking at another university. I just wanted to go Aberdeen.
JC And that was it?
SY Yes.
JC I should have asked you, what was your maiden name.
SY It was Dey.
JC Dey, I should have remembered that with my interview with your father. He I think was a forestry graduate, and he worked in the Highlands mainly.
SY He worked all over the UK, so I had an early childhood life of moving around a lot.
JC Of being a gypsy! I know, sounds like me. What school would you have come up from, from Strathpeffer?
SY Well in fact I had been at Cults Academy in Aberdeen, another connection, and we have moved up to Strathpeffer, so I didn't have any secondary education up in Strathpeffer.
JC So you had just finished at Cults.
SY Yes, I had just finished at Cults when we moved. Well I did my first year in Cardiff, in South Wales, first year secondary.
JC You seem to have had quite a variety. Okay, and your elder brother, the one who preceded you to University, what was the gap?
SY Three years.
JC So he was still there was he, or was he graduated?
SY No, he was still there, because he started off Medicine, and after two years he changed to Zoology.
JC So you would have overlapped for most of your undergraduate career then in that case. So you headed down from Strathpeffer, and you a clear idea what you wanted to study at University?
SY Well that is quite interesting, because at school I was good at languages so I decided to do French and German in first year. But is was a big shock to get there to discover from, I mean I think there were only three of us doing 6th year studies, French and German, at Cults, and suddenly to arrive at university and you are surrounded with people who are just considerably more able, because they have mothers who are French or German, they have spent every holiday in France or Germany, and it was a shock to me. So I struggled a bit with my French and I did all right in my German, but I increasingly felt that perhaps languages wasn't for me after all. In first year I had done Zoology for Arts students, which was brilliant, and I wish I could remember the name of the …
JC Something like Orkin, is that right?
SY That's right. He was the most fantastic man.
JC Yes, I so often hear how good his stuff was.
SY What an amazing man, and I just remember getting to the end of his session on evolution and you know, he had presented the theory of evolution, and at the end of it, he said " I suppose you all think that I believe this. Well guess what? I believe in God!" and he walked off the stage. There was just this silence, you could hear a pin drop. He was amazing.
JC Yes I had forgotten. He was well known for being religious.
SY Wasn't he Jewish?
JC I think he was. Yes. I am pretty certain.
SY He was an excellent presenter.
JC Wonderful communicator. I have heard that so often. So from the zoology you went on in a science direction?
SY Well no, because sadly, it was Zoology for Arts students, it was a stopper. I should have never really taken it in the first year. So I decided to drop French, continue with my German, and that presented me with a problem, because I didn't have two second year subjects. So I picked up Scottish History, which I did well in, and I picked up Religious Studies.
JC Scottish History would have been Grant Simpson?
SY Grant Simpson. He was fantastic. Great man. And Donald Withrington.
JC Yes, I knew them well as colleagues, of course.
SY And there was another lecturer who did Social History… Economic History.
JC Alistair Durie?
SY Yes, I think that was it, and he was also excellent. Just a very strong department, I thought. Very good and very supportive. So Religious Studies was excellent. It is gone?
JC Andrew Walls maybe?
SY Yes.
JC Well you certainly had a group of very good teachers.
SY Yes, I did! And what I thought was fantastic about it was, I just think this sums up the Scottish education system, to me, was that, well I went on in third year to do more Scottish History, Music for Arts students. What else did I do?
JC Barrett-Ayres I suppose in Music, query? Maybe not quite so late as this. Roger Williams ?
SD Sounds very familiar. But through all this it just really gave me a broad understanding of what was going on, particularly in Europe in general. Looking at music. Looking at art, looking at history..
JC And they all fitted together in a funny way.
SY Apart from the Zoology, which didn't quite fit, but it was good in its own right. Yes I felt I came away with a good understanding of what was happening in Europe at the time.
JC And at that stage you wanted to do an Ordinary Degree. You wanted to finish with the MA?
SY No, I had gone to University to do an Honours Degree.
JC In languages.
SY I had, but the system at the time was not as flexible as it is now, and because I didn't get to the point where I had 2 second year subjects. I mean, you probably know this, better than me, but it just became difficult to do an Honours degree at that point. So I left with my Ordinary Degree. Feeling that I could have done a lot better. I should have done a lot better. I was also very young when I went to university. I was 17, 17½, and a young 17½!
JC Yes, and a not very well educated one if you had moved about a lot.
SY No, that's probably true. And I had actually been moved ahead when I moved from the Welsh system to the Scottish one. I don't think that was ever really to my advantage.
JC No, it gives one a feeling of having funny gaps in the background.
SY Exactly. So I feel my day is still to come. I am back! I am doing Scottish Cultural Studies.
JC How long have you been in that course?
SY Just a year. I have just signed up yesterday for this year. Apart from trying to upgrade to an Honours Degree, the business that I run is to do with Scottish culture. I run courses for foreigners coming to Aberdeen. So I was just aware that there are gaps in my knowledge, and Scottish Cultural Studies seemed to provide courses that could fill those gaps.
JC And of course it is very part-time presumably?
SY It is, and it is very convenient. The course that I did, Prehistoric Archaeology, last year, was completely WEB based. Which is so bizarre. You know, doing your exam on the WEB.
JC When you think back to the old days! So when you finish that, will you then go to the History department, and say you would like to History Honours now. Of course you can, you know. You could have done that instead of Scottish Cultural Studies.
SY Possibly. I am quite interested in Ethnography, so I may go down that track.
JC Or do Cultural History, that's another Honours available. But basically I mean, I don't want to enter into enormous detail but basically anyone with an Ordinary Degree, provided it has certain components in it, can come along and say look I would like now to turn this into an Honours Degree. How do I do it?
SY So, I am certainly learning a lot and finding it very interesting.
JC Well that's great isn't it and it is not too expensive is it, doing the KEY learning stuff, whereas you know, you would be paying a bit more if you were doing a full-time study for an Honours Degree.
SY Plus I am also fortunate that Shell provide money for partners to keep up their skills. So that is great.
JC If you could think back, when you were making your choices for the Ordinary Degree, did you have good support from a Regent or an Adviser? Or somebody who tried to steer you towards a good pathway, or did that not work well for you?
SY Well I am not sure if it did work that well for me, given that I probably shouldn't have taken Zoology, which was a stopper, in first year. Actually I also tried to do Celtic Studies, in first year, but I dropped that because just the level of work was just too great.
JC It is very heavy to take three languages, isn't it?
SY Yes, that was Mr. O'Docherty , and the O'Boyle. He was there at the same time as well.
JC I remember Mr. O'Docherty, he had very pointy ears!
SY He did. My adviser of Studies was in the Geography department. A really nice man, and I can't remember his name. He knew my great aunt, who had been the Student Health nurse! She has long since passed away.
JC Not Sister Stewart?
SY Kathleen Stewart! That is my great aunt! She was the most fantastic person. She was my great aunt.
JC She must have died some time ago?
SY She did. She died when I went to Australia.
JC I used to visit her occasionally, because she lived for a time in a flat in Queen's Road.
SY That's right. Super woman.
JC So amusing, and full of dreadful gossip. So he knew her?
SY Yes, and I just cannot remember his name. Perhaps I didn't take his advice. I just can't remember the details and I can't really remember what happened in subsequent years.
JC As to how you followed this rather curious pathway. So having sussed out the academic side a bit and we have moved slightly away towards advising and so on, how did you get on socially at University. Where did you live, for example, when you came to us?
SY I lived in a flat in Great Northern Road, with my brother, and then my cousin joined us. So I lived there for the whole time, and socially I joined the Lairig Club, the climbing club, but after the first year I met my husband to be. He was at St. Andrews University. I suppose from that point on a lot of my social life revolved around him, and around St. Andrews. I ended up spending a lot more time away with the St. Andrews University Mountaineering Club than I did with the Lairig Club.
JC So you were almost going to two universities simultaneously?
SY In fact I could study far better when I was down there, because I didn't know anyone, unlike King's Library or the Taylor! Socially I had a good time.
JC You managed to mix in well enough at University, although all the time you were in a flat, because that is sometimes an obstacle.
SY No. I became part of a small foursome, a group that were 4 of us, and we stuck together, one from Auldearn, one from Nairn, and another from Kilmarnock. So we did a lot of things together.
JC So each of you had separate friends, so it radiated out that way?
SY Yes, and we still see each other.
JC That is great, isn't it. Yes you do make friends for life at university. So your networks were really, I suppose, the Lairig Club and other societies and things?
SY I went to church, Gilcomston South, with Willie Still, so many, many students went there, and also Divinity staff went there, so I met a lot of people through that too. I didn't join the Christian Union, not quite sure why. So a lot revolved around Gilcomston, the Lairig Club and St. Andrews.
JC Sounds like a fairly full life. How did you commute between Aberdeen and St. Andrews?
SY On the train.
JC And then somebody met you at Leuchars?
SY Yes, my boyfriend, as he was then. I used to get the 4.19 to York, and off at Leuchars.
JC Thinking then, laterally, from your social networks and things, and you mentioned chatting in King's Library, how did you find that side of university, that is to say the support given to students in terms of their learning experience, through library, through computing. I don't know how important that was in your days.
SY Computing hadn't happened!
JC Okay. So was the library good from your point of view, as an eclectic scholar, who was looking for all sorts of different things?
SY Yes, I think it was, and it must have been, because I went on to work there!
JC Did you?
SY Yes, that was my first job.
JC Right, what did you do?
SY I just worked behind the issue desk. I thought at that point that I might become a librarian, so the university was kind enough to let me have a go, try it out, and as it happened I had the time of my life, I worked there for, I think, a year and a half. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
JC And that was still King's library. The old library. And they took you on just as a graduate. You had no library training at all?
SY Absolutely none.
JC Were you doing it whilst you were doing the job? You didn't study for any of the Library exams?
SY No I didn't. I had told them that I was thinking of…. I wanted to work when I left university before going on to another course, and I used the Careers Service, at Aberdeen University, and they were great, and in fact they were so great, that is what I became. I became a Careers Adviser. So during that year working at King's I had frequent visits to the Careers Service, and lots of interviews.
JC Who was your main adviser, or did you see different people?
SY I can't remember that sadly.
JC Was it David Haggart, who was in charge of it in those days?
SY I am not sure. It was a woman.
JC Somebody Sutherland, I think, was one of the prominent women, although there have been a lot over the years.
SY I can't remember, but I do remember saying "How did you get your job, as I want a job that involves people". I enjoyed giving information, and I advised them, and it came from that.
JC Goodness. So let me get this straight. You worked first in King's Library, and then trained as a career person?
SY I did. I went to Napier.
JC I was going to ask where you trained. Because there are not a lot of courses.
SY No, there aren't. At that point there were three in Scotland. Paisley, Strathclyde and Napier, and I went to Napier for a year. Then there followed a period of unemployment. Five months of unemployment. This was in the '80's, you know, the height of Mrs. Thatcher's cut-backs.
JC I don't think the plane flying overhead is going to disturb us too much!
SY I think it is!
JC You think it is going to fly over us in a minute and drown everything. Of course I am wearing these ear-muffs so I am not hearing it as loudly as you.
SY We are all right! Yes 5 months of unemployment, which was actually a blessing. It didn't seem like that at the time, but I then got a job as an Unemployment specialist careers adviser, in Angus, where I was responsible for the long-term unemployed, 16 - 18 year olds.
JC That must have been very hard.
SY It was very hard, but I think having been in the same boat myself for 5 months..
JC You could empathise.
SY I could.
JC You were not married at this point I take it.
SY Almost, almost. In fact we married when my husband was writing up his Ph.D. Which everyone advised us against, but it seemed to work! So I did that for 3½ years, and then Ian got the chance of, actually he got 2 offers in a week. One was to work with Shell International, and the other was to do a post-doc. in Cambridge. So this was a very, very big decision for us. Did he go down the academic path? I could easily, I am sure, have found a careers job in Cambridge, or do we go for the international travel, new experiences, new cultures. Well as you already know, we opted for Shell, thinking that we will have a 5 year plan and we will reassess the situation at the end of 5 years and then see what happens. It was certainly interesting.
JC So you certainly have a variety of qualifications which really make you a very tradeable person wherever you go.
SY Oh, I wasn't finished then!
JC What next?
SY You see, again I think that it's this Scottish education lifelong learning thing! Well our first posting was in the Netherlands, so we had just a couple of months in The Hague, when I decided that I needed to learn to touch type, and that was just one of the best things I have ever done. So useful. Then we moved up to the north of Holland to a place called Assen, near Groningen, you may have heard of Groningen University, and it was very difficult for me to find a job. So I made a decision to go back to Edinburgh to get English as a Second Language qualification, which I did at Basil Patterson College.
JC Oh, yes I have heard of it.
SY For a month or 6 weeks, and went back, found a job teaching English as a second language, and we lived in Assen, I think, for 2½ years. Then we moved to Melbourne, in Australia, where I worked in a further education college there, teaching migrants English. Which was a great job. And then from there we went Bangkok, in Thailand.
JC It is rather like being in the Armed Forces isn't it. They move you about like mad.
SY Yes. We didn't have any choice in those days, it was just that you were posted or you left. One or the other. So moved to Bangkok, I didn't say that I had my first child in Australia. My son was born in Bangkok, and I did teaching English as a second language. It just fitted in round my baby, and then we moved to New Zealand, to New Plymouth, in Taranaki, and I worked in a Catholic girls school there, as a foreign student liaison person, plus I taught them English as a second language. I also there, began working with DEAF, deaf adults, and that was probably the most challenging thing I have ever done in my life.
JC You would have had to learn sign-language and so forth did you?
SY We did a sort of - one of my deaf students had very good lip-reading skills, so we would go through, together, the lesson that day, and then I don't how we got through. I think just having English as a second language teaching skills helped greatly. And I picked up a qualification in teaching deaf adults.
JC As I was saying a moment ago, you have a row of certificates, I don't know why you want an Honours Degree on top of all that! What else have you got concealed. What else? You are probably a cordon-bleu cook as well I bet!
SY I picked up a qualification, an Australian one, over there, teaching - it is called English is a Second Language in the Mainstream, and it is excellent. Actually when I arrived here I tried to convince people that it was a great thing to offer teachers in school, but no one wanted it! Really it is helping mainstream teachers to give them strategies, if they have a second language learner in their classroom. It is a course is run over 10 weeks, and that is why I was teaching.
JC Interesting . Might be worth speaking with Lyn Mckay at St. Margaret's about that, because she was telling me the other day, that they have been coping this last year with a little girl who had arrived, with an oil family I think, from Russia, and arrived without any English. Apparently it is not a problem if these people with very little English start in the Nursery, but when they need to go into the Junior School, it is very difficult for them.
SY And very difficult for them and very difficult and demanding for the staff, without training.
JC So that might be one to speak to her about. Okay, is that the last of your qualifications, until you get an Honours Degree or a Ph.D or something?
SY I don't know if that will every happen. Yes, I think that probably is it. Then we came home nearly two years ago.
JC And you have settled here at Aboyne? Very nice too.
SY Most difficult move though. Repatriation, very, very hard. Feel like a foreigner in the beginning.
JC Difficult to settle in and pick old links?
SY I think that thing is, that you think that the place has changed, when in fact it is you that's changed, because you were this pure Scot, if you like, and on top of that pure Scot, has poured four other cultures, but I am getting there, and as I say, I have started a small business. I am just trying to use as many of the skills as I have picked up over the years, just to make it more bearable and easy for people coming into Aberdeen from overseas.
JC It strikes me listening to all this, that in a funny way, your Ordinary Degree was actually a very good preparation for all the things that have subsequently happened to you. I mean, you know, people are sometimes dismissive about Ordinary Degrees, partially because of the title, I think. I think that is why we call them Combined Studies now, it sounds posher But your degree, seems to me, to have given you leads in all sorts of directions that have been extremely useful later.
SY Absolutely, and art for arts sake, and I think in the '80's many of the departments that I was part of, or many of the subjects, went under the hammer.
JC There has always remained teaching of Music, but not for a full degree. But of course interestingly it is coming back now, as part of the University's linkage with Northern College.
SY Right, that is good to hear.
JC So it will be re-instated, by the back door as it were.
SY And Religious Studies that went too, didn't it?
JC No, that's kept on in a sort of underground way, but it is still being taught. But again, I think, not to a full M.A. degree. There are a lot of things which used to be full M.A.'s are now taught for say, 2 years, within a degree, you know. Like Italian language. Like Classics, Latin and Greek.
SY Swedish went too, didn't it.
JC That hasn't come back, interestingly, even as a first and second subject. Yes the '80's were a very hard time, and of course you graduated before all this hit the University.
SY I did.
JC Looking back on the '70's, what was it like as a time for students? Can you form any general view of that period, those 3 years. I mean I know it is an impossible question, but people nowadays, often say, that students are entirely focussed on getting a good degree and avoiding as much debt as they can.
SY I would not like to be an undergraduate now. I suppose everyone says that.
JC But then ..
SY Then, there was a real feeling of freedom, I think.
JC And you had a full grant presumably?
SY Yes I had a grant, which I could live on.
JC So money wasn't a big issue.
SY No I didn't have to have a job. I mean I always had a summer job, but I didn't have this feeling of, where is my next penny coming from, and how I am I ever going to repay this money! It was also a time when women, obviously, were becoming more emancipated and I do remember as that kind of a time that there was a lot of strength among women.
JC Was that an issue within the University? I mean for example, going way back to the earlier 20th century, of course, it was a terrific issue I mean, women had to fight every inch of the way to get recognition in the University. Was there any of that in your experience or were people just equal?
SY I think people were just equal, but then I was in the Arts Faculty, and I couldn't speak for someone in the Medical Faculty or any other Faculty for that matter.
JC But I was interested that you sort of picked that up, the sort of Feminist movement being something you were aware of.
SY Yes, you could only be aware of it. It was definitely to the fore.
JC Interesting, though not a period when women were very prominent in the University. I mean, I think it was before the second woman chairman of the SRC, for example, I think she came after your time, Sylvia Taylor. So women were not sort of prominent in the student body, in terms of actually running things. And of course we never had a woman Rector, until 2 years ago.
SY Gosh, is that true. Two years ago!
JC Yes, Yes, Clarissa Dickson Wright is the first female Rector. Interestingly, Sybil Thorndyke tried in 1939 and was narrowly defeated. But that is very interesting that you should pick that up as something that you were conscious of as a young woman.
SY Very conscious.
JC And of course there were few women on the staff.
SY That is probably true! I wasn't too aware of that though. French and German there were..
JC Yes. languages there are always more women certainly.
SY But, yes, you are quite right. In fact Professor Witte?,..
JC Delightful man, but very old fashioned.
SY I should really say something about him, as he was really incredible. He used to walk in, and he was piled high with dusty tomes. Like 5 or 6, which he would dump down on the desk, and he never once, the whole time I was there, ever consulted one of them! Which always amused me!
JC Yes, why did he bother to bring them!
SY But he never came into the room without them! He was good.
JC Yes, he was a super man.
JC Okay Sheila, we have covered a lot of issues, is there anything that you would have liked to speak about which we have not happened upon?
SY I don't know really. Everytime we get to this time of year my mind goes back to university, just the Ivy on the walls on the King's buildings, and just that chill in the air, and going back to university. I just had such a great time. I loved it.
JC I should have asked by the way, I know you had been a pupil at Cults before you moved up to Strathpeffer. Had you ever actually visited the University before you came as a new comer, as a student.
SY Not in terms of an open-day or a school tour, from what I can remember.
JC So you arrived down by train, by car? Did you parents bring you?
SY Car. Parents brought me.
JC And you went straight to the flat.
SY Straight to the flat, got sorted out. I think the following day, my mother called me to tell me not to buy cheap cuts of meat, because she was really rather concerned about me, but I had come from a family where I had learnt to cook at the age of 12 or 13!
JC So cooking for yourself was not a problem.
SY Not a problem at all.
JC Did you have to cook for the others in the flat?
SY Yes, I did actually!
JC How did I guess!
SY We started off doing a rota, but then everytime it was my brother's turn it was beef burgers.
JC So you all got a bit fed up with that!
SY I am sure he planned it!
JC Sounds like a typical male ploy!
SY And actually our flat in Great Northern Road was one that had a shared toilet on the stair. No bathroom. So my cousin and I used to go for a, sounds shocking now, but we used to go for a weekly bath to the Union.
JC Of course you could do that then! They had pay bathrooms.
SY Yes they did. Do they not now?
JC Don't think so. You paid a shilling or something to get a bath!
SY We would come out of the Union having had our bath, all clean, and we would go in to the chip shop next door ..
JC And get all smelling of grease!! Such is life. Sounds funny.
SY The only thing that saddened me was the change of King's Library, and I just want to know where did all the bookshelving go, where did the furniture go to. Where is it?
JC I don't know I am afraid. I fear that it probably went into skips but I don't know.
SY It can't have!
JC Because they were lovely big tables, I remember them.
SY They were, and they had some of the.. now who was he? Smithy?
JC Little mice.
SY Little Mice on the chairs. So they have gone?
JC They may be somewhere in the University that I don't know about, but I have certainly never seen them anywhere, since they went out of that library. Yes it was sad. I think that the Conference Centre works very well, and it is a good thing and all that, and certainly the old King's Library was out outgrown in many ways. It was sad it had to go. Okay, well anything else at all then that we missed out on?
SY I don't really think so.
JC You have been very kind and very forthcoming. So I won't talk to you then, but simply say thank you very much indeed, and it has been extremely interesting hearing all this, and I am grateful for your time.
SY It was a great pleasure. Thank you.
JC Good.
End of Interview
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