One day eight years ago Owen Dawson was doing The Irish Times crossword when his attention was caught by a notice at the top of the page advertising the new modular BA degree at University College Dublin. What urged Dawson to investigate further was the fact that admission was open to students without a Leaving Certificate. In fact Dawson didn't even have a Junior Cert because he had been forced by family circumstances to drop out of school and get a job. Dawson had never had a happy relationship with the education system anyway. He says he found it difficult to learn and in one way he was relieved to leave it all behind. But even though he dropped out of school he never lost his love of books and he maintained a voracious appetite for reading - a quality which stood him in good stead when faced with long reading lists for English and history at UCD.
Having left school at 16, Dawson spent two years as a bacon counter assistant before being apprenticed to Tetleys in London as a tea taster. He left Waterford in 1952 and his apprenticeship involved tasting up to 600 teas a day. He also spent a lot of time tasting potential teabag paper (it was still all loose tea in those days), as Tetleys was one of the first companies to contemplate introducing what has since become the ubiquitous teabag. Dawson spent two years with Tetleys before returning to Dublin to work for Henry Pattison, one of a number of tea merchants clustered in the Thomas Street area of Dublin at the time. From 1954 until roughly three years ago, Dawson continued to work full-time in the tea business, initially as an employee with companies such as Punches and Bewleys and thereafter as a tea importer and distributor in his own right. He is now semi-retired but he still imports small amounts of high quality Indian teas which are sold through specialist food outlets such as Avoca Handweavers.
Owen Dawson was 59 when he decided to sign up for the modular BA. He spent five years working towards a degree which involved lectures four nights a week at the end of a full working day. At a family meeting before he embarked on the course his wife, Patricia, and three sons were unanimous in their support and encouragement.
"It's not something you could do without their support," he says. "It's a very selfish thing to do and your life changes totally. You lock yourself away to study at weekends instead of being with the family and you get uptight about assignments and exams. It's not easy on your family. But if you apply yourself you will get through. The day of the conferral was one of the happiest days of my life. I had achieved something I never thought I'd get the chance to do and I never thought I'd be capable of.
"When I was growing up university was never something I'd ever ever thought about. For a start we didn't have the money and I didn't have the academic ability either. But the modular BA gave me (and others like me) the chance to change this.
"My class were an extraordinary group. There was so much ability and so many clever people in that group who had not been given a first - never mind a second - chance. Getting the degree was no ego trip. It had much more to do with reaching one's potential and achieving a sense of personal fulfilment," Dawson says.
What really annoys him, however, is the inequity of the current fees structure. "Those studying at night have to pay fees whereas day students do not and I think this is grossly unfair, given where most people on night courses are coming from," he says. "The college subsidises the fees, but even still it is an expensive way to get a degree, and I know of several fellow students who had to take out a bank loan to finance their studies. I don't think that's right." Having finished his BA, Dawson decide to take the next step and he is now half way into a year-long MA in journalism at Dublin City University. At 67, he's the grandad of the class but that doesn't bother him or his fellow students. "There is no problem with my age - apart from the fact that I'm no good with computers and it's second nature to them. But they are very good about helping me out when I'm stuck. I think study is a bug. You get it and you can't let go even when you see the hassle and anxiety you're causing for yourself by going on."
At present Dawson commutes (usually by public transport) from Bray to DCU four days a week and he admits to finding the MA course somewhat pressurised. "They are very strict about assignment deadlines and there always seems to be a deadline staring you in the face," he says. "I had decided to do the MA either in history or journalism and I eventually chose journalism because it seemed more immediate and more pressing." Dawson now faces completing a 10,000-word thesis and he is hoping to do it on a health-related subject.
As a former Irish international squash player who still plays as often as he can Dawson is particularly interested in the relationship between exercise and ageing. "I believe that as you grow older you need to take more exercise, not less," he says. By this I mean increasing the frequency of the exercise you take, not the severity. It also involves keeping the brain fit by doing some sort of mental exercise - even the crossword," says this lean and fit-looking man before he rushes off to catch the bus to DCU.
