"Almost as soon as I began, I was lost. The idea of getting up each day and going to class, of learning over and over again that I was stupid, and crass, and incompetent, did not seem doable. It hadn't occurred to me that I was there to learn, to become less stupid. I felt I had failed already, fumbled the opening pass. I had arrived to university quite mad already and quickly became exuberantly so, drinking litres of gin by night and lying in bed, shaking with fear, all day long. It wasn't laziness, exactly, that stopped me trying to work, but that fear. It lay immobile on my chest. All of Dublin, but especially Trinity, felt corrupted by some malign force that I couldn't break through."