Member-only story
My Expulsion from the Herd
We are a tribal species, and my banishment was so psychologically painful I still struggle to talk about it 20 years later.

It’s October 2000. I’m 17 years old, and I’m a first-year undergraduate at Oxford University. I’m there to read English, but what I really want to be is King of the World. I want to make a name for myself, and I’m in a hurry.
I want to be President of the Oxford Union — the famous debating society and student stomping ground of many a future UK prime minister — but I fall at the first hurdle and don’t get elected. So I set my sights on editing one of the student newspapers.
My tutor makes her disapproval clear. She expects me to work hard for my degree. Time spent at the Union or in the student newspaper offices is time I should be spending in the library.
But I’m a teenage boy and I’m not listening. So I write articles, I’m made Deputy News Editor, then News Editor, then Deputy Editor and Online Editor, then it’s Spring 2002 and the Kingdom is mine.
But all is not well. Five weeks into my eight-week tenure, I am fired.
Them’s the breaks!
It’s a sad little tale I don’t often tell.