Английский язык. Темы для экзаменов. Уровень С1

But when I finally got to university, I found that Sheffield (which was the city where I was studying) was a much bigger, smellier, noisier city than I was used to, and I couldn’t cope with it for more than a year. Also, I really realized that I didn’t want to be a scientist, and I couldn’t see the reason for filling my head with facts and figures, useless information, which I couldn’t relate to my practical life around me, so I spent most of my time with friends, sitting and listening to music, and discussing philosophy and life.

After failing my first-year exams at university, I moved away to Glastonbury, a small town in the south, with many artists and musicians, where I could find a lot of things to do which really did inspire me. But this was much to my family’s disapproval.

FAMILY

Thomas

Nowadays, I don’t have very close contact with my family. I write occasionally to my father and mother, and I hear news from my brother. Sometimes I get a letter from my grandmother as well.

Also, occasionally, we telephone each other.

I haven’t felt such a close part of the family unit since my mother and father got divorced. They’ve been divorced about for eleven years now. I’m 25, by the way, so when they were divorced, I was 14, and from this age I started to get my independence, started to live my own life a little bit.

When I was younger, though, the family atmosphere was mostly very happy. I remember going away with my parents for trips in the country, in the park.

We had a dog, who was called Badger, for the first 12 years of my life, and for a couple of years after that we had another dog, who was called Meg. We used to wake up at 6 o’clock in the morning to go to a local park to watch the sun coming up. The parks were very big in the area where I was born, which was on the edge of the city, so one side of the village went into the city and the other side of the village went into the countryside, and in the direction of the countryside there was a huge park, called Bradgate Park, where I used to go with mum and dad, and my little brother.

During my early childhood, I spent almost all of my time with my mother. She taught us things and of course cooked for us, and played with us all day, when we were at home. When we went to school, of course, things were different as well, but my first close connection was really with my mother.