Essay --

Do I regret not doing this years ago? No, I do not. It is certainly true, that since a small child, growing up on my Dads pig farm, have I been fascinated by receive. Yes, piddling new piglets were beautiful, but other things intrigued me. The sow usually delivered her new brood with both serenity and independence. Some of my early memories are of rushing out to the farrowing house crates (yes, the poor animal in those days was in a pen designed purely for birth, not outside in the freedom of the field) to enter how many piglets had arrived and hoping to catch a glimpse of the afterbirth, as we referred to it, sometimes even seeing her deliver it. Gruesome to some but to me it was amazing how this strange tone mass had kept lots of little lives alive. This fascination is still with me today, evident when my family and I went to lambing day at a local farm. But now, following the birth of my children, I brought empathy for the ewe too. Studying on the Access course has already tau ght me a lot about myself. Although an initially a shock to the system after everywhere twenty years away from stu...