Did you meet interesting and influential and helpful people that have given you some guidance? 

My tutor had an awful lot of really good contacts for the subject area I was in and I did get to meet them but I was really bad at – I didn't want to go to conferences, I didn't want to go to seminars, I didn't want to do the whole making contacts, being nice to people, though I didn't make anywhere near as much of an effort as perhaps I should have done in that respect, especially if I was going into academia, but I just didn't enjoy it, I didn't enjoy conferences and seminars, I dreaded them.

Can you remember why you didn't really enjoy them?

I just found the whole atmosphere quite daunting, I think it's a very competitive world, I think people are very institutionalised who stay in universities and the conversation is totally history dominated which is obviously a good thing for some people but I just found them so focused on their academic stuff that I couldn't have a well rounded conversation with them.