What’s a time you followed your gut and it turned out to be exactly right?
One of the most important times I trusted my gut came in September 1978, when I was sixteen and had just started the Sixth Form at the RGS, Newcastle.
I had chosen Economics, partly because it seemed sensible and useful. I was also taking Geography and English. Yet within a couple of weeks something felt wrong. I cannot remember a dramatic moment of revelation; rather, it was a growing certainty that I was sitting in the wrong classroom. The subject simply did not make sense to me. I felt like I was back in the dreaded O’ level Chemistry class. Even when I was supposed to be concentrating on something else, I was reading history books.
So I followed my gut and changed to History. At first, the decision didn’t look particularly wise. My early essays came back with Cs and Ds. After the initial confidence of making the switch, reality arrived in red ink. Rather than give up, I asked my teacher how I could improve. I listened carefully and applied his advice: every argument backed up by evidence. Have a clear introduction, make five or six key points then provide a conclusion. Within a couple of terms my grades became Bs, and then As.
Looking back through my diaries from Sedbergh, the signs were there long before. History was the subject in which I consistently excelled. In July 1976 I recorded coming first in the end of uear History exam. I was reading far beyond the syllabus and thinking constantly about people, places, politics and the past. Economics may have looked practical, but History was where my natural curiosity lay.
The decision proved transformative. Two years later I achieved exceptional A-level results in four subjects: History, Geography, English and Art. Those results enabled me to sit the Oxbridge entrance examination, and ultimately I was offered a place at Balliol College, Oxford to read Modern History.
For a teenager, changing subjects after only a few weeks felt risky. Yet it remains one of the clearest examples in my life of trusting an inner conviction and being right. My instincts recognised something before I could fully explain it: Economics was a sensible choice, but History was the right one.
The path that led from Sedbergh to Oxford began with that small decision to listen to my gut.
That said, my gut instinct has also sent me in the wrong direction several times ! But that wasn’t the question!
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