Alex O'Connor

But when you're a kid, academia is like the only thing.

Unless maybe you're like a particularly talented like footballer or something in school.

But even then, maybe your school doesn't encourage that kind of thing.

And you will be told that the most important thing in your life are your exams.

Don't get me wrong.

Those exams are important.

Like, nail them.

It will help you in the long run.

But the idea that that is kind of what life's about is obviously insane.

And I think kids like know that, but they haven't like felt it.

They haven't internalized it.

I speak to a lot of school kids and they've heard this kind of stuff, you know, don't let the exams rule your life and stuff.

But some of them, I think hearing that I literally did just completely fail and then change my mind and turn it around and it sort of relaxes them a little bit.

It's no guarantee that you're going to be able to turn it around and go to Oxford, right?

It's obviously not the case.

I feel very lucky in that regard.

But like, there are options, man.

that would have been something i would have wanted to study and you can now that's the point right you can textiles yeah but i think you can you can get the the kernel of of what you might be into because maybe you might find that you really enjoy your art classes and you know you don't want to be an artist you know you're not going to be the next you know monet or whatever but like you enjoy it that should be enough to maybe think okay then i'll study that and i don't know where it's going to end up but that's the kind of thing that opens up these worlds that you didn't know existed that will help with being able to be an architect

Because you will be able to draw images.

It will help with doing textiles.