Steven W.

I'm back to this series. I actually thought I'd talk about Lydia or Kim or someone else from work next, but nope, Steve it is.

I should start by saying, I know a freaking lot of Steve's. I even had a kid with a Steve. But not Steve W. Don't worry about that.

Steve W is one of the few Steve's I know from outside work. I infact met him at uni.

I saw him a couple of times in my first year. Mest hat, GC hoodie. You know when you see someone and just think 'but you're meant to be my mate!' Steve. At the time, I was so into GC and mest, I could've chewed his ear off all day, lol.

We didn't work together until near the end of first year. They did a taster day for second year TV, and we were two of the people who went, if I remember rightly (I think I do. My friend Jenny was there too, and she's the girl who I never stopped talking to once I got started/played viscious chess games with, so it's hard to actually remember.)

We were in the same TV group second year. So we got talking (because I had loads of mest and NFG and green day stuff too), with the rest of the people in the group (10 girls, 5 boys total, 4 of the guys were from Sheffield, half the girls were from Essex. It's like they rigged it or something. Most of the guys on our overall course went for radio or digital media instead of TV, which was why they were out-numbered) ... a hell of a lot of our group were into mcfly, I remember, so if we didn't have any ideas for our projects, we'd just talk about the latest CD/gig.

In third year, we both ended up majoring in radio. They were talking about projects we had to do in pairs or threes and at one point in the lecture he turned around and was like *mouthing, since the lecturer was still talking* 'you, me, punk'. So for 12 weeks we got to do work we actually liked, and pretty much avoided all our personal seminars for the topic, in true punk style, lol (or the direction from the lecturer was always the same and gave us nothing to work with and we figured, hey, we can do it on our own, we both spent the last 2 summers doing make-up work anyway. We did our practical work together too, it made the most sense. He was having the same issues I was having with my dissertation, in that I hadn't been given a lecturer to refer to and every time I emailed the guy in charge of assigning us, I was had a go at for not taking action sooner, rather than given any help. It was nice to have someone in the same boat.

He didn't really respect the system. Not in a 'bad boy' way. You had to seriously kiss ass to get anywhere at our uni. It was so competitive. And I'm competitive, but my kiss-ass is all piss-take. I wouldn't get anywhere straight-up brown-nosing. I didn't go to uni to steal our lecturers contacts, you know? But that, it seems, is how you got a first on our course. I'm glad he didn't buy into the whole system, it helped not to feel swallowed up by those that do.

He's one of the few people I've stayed in touch with since leaving uni. I've got my third year housemates and Jenny on facebook, but apart from seeing each others status' and whatnot, we don't really keep in touch. But I do still talk to Steve. He's into a lot of the same bands as me and my BFFs, still. He's watching all the films I wanna go see if I had the chance (I will be making it to Prince of Persia though, dammit!) ... so even if I haven't actually been face to face with the guy for 4 years, it's nice to think that something came out of three years at university. Good to think that someone's at my level, in the same boat, and still a friend.