Richard Watt

Your time at the University

I always knew I’d leave home in Aberdeen to study. I thought I’d like to go much further afield, but my mother was keen on having me reasonably close to home, so Edinburgh was a suitable compromise.

I remember the very first afternoon I was in Edinburgh; after settling in in Cowan House, I was dropped in town by my parents and I walked back, looking around me at this strange, unfamiliar city. I can honestly say I fell in love with Edinburgh that afternoon. Perhaps it would have been the same wherever I went, but Edinburgh still means more to me now than any of the other places I’ve lived.

Over time, my favourite place (aside from the Pear Tree pub, of course) became the top floor of the Library; up there, in amongst the bound copies of Punch and the linguistics journals, I learned to study and I learned to write. I formed some of my strongest friendships up there, leaving notes for one another (not all of them read we’re in the pub, but some may have) and scurrying down to the café in the basement if we had anything which actually needed out loud debate.

Tell us about your Experiences since leaving the University

Right from my earliest days at Edinburgh I knew I wanted to be a writer. It has been a long and somewhat eccentric journey, but I published my first novel, Going Back, in May 2013.

My journey has included working all over Scotland in the book trade, in the south east of England for a world-renowned confectionery company, and, more recently, commuting regularly to northern Italy as a project lead for a huge software implementation.

Right from my earliest days at Edinburgh I knew I wanted to be a writer. It has been a long and somewhat eccentric journey, but I published my first novel, Going Back, in May 2013.

In the spring of 2006 I uprooted my family and emigrated to British Columbia to see if I actually could be a writer. I wrote regular columns for the local newspaper before settling down to work on my first novel. Along the way, I have kept my eye in in the IT sphere, working for a local computer company, and have spent large amounts of time coaching, what Canadians appear to call, ‘soccer’.

None of this appears to relate to linguistics or what I learned in Edinburgh, but I could not have got from there to here without those wonderful four years.

Alumni wisdom

Be true to your dreams, trust in your own abilities, and spend your time in Edinburgh absorbing everything which is on offer to you. Never again (unless you are very lucky indeed) will you have such a wealth of knowledge and experience available to you - make the most of it!