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.

Niall Stewart
Wise & Well

A cluster of pale wooden pegs on a grey background. An identical wooden peg but painted red stands alone, some distance away.
Image by Freepik

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.

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Responses (9)

What are your thoughts?

You have amazing self-insight into a painful situation. Sometimes I wish we could all wear our wounds on our foreheads so we wouldn’t be so quick to vilify and criticize. We are all just walking wounded, trying to do our best in the world. I hope your happiest days are just ahead for you.

So instead, I’m writing about it. Why? To put it in perspective. To release myself from the power it has over me.

This article was both emotionally powerful and informative. I hope that writing about your experience has helped to lessen the weight even a bit. I appreciate you sharing this. ♡

Thank you for sharing this poignant and difficult experience and what you learned from it! Feeling excluded is so hard - and especially when we are young. I am glad you got past it.