A graduate, who travelled around the world before deciding to go to university, yesterday celebrated reaching the end of his educational journey at Aberdeen.
Darroch Bratt, from Inverness, collected his degree in Anthropology, despite admitting he wasn’t sure university was the right option for him in the first place.
After leaving school, Mr Bratt travelled to New Zealand, Sri Lanka and Eastern Europe before embarking on campus life in Aberdeen.
The 26-year-old said: “One of the reasons I travelled was because I felt it would be a bad idea to jump straight into university.
“So I worked a bit to find out what I really wanted to do and then travelled before making the step to come to university.
“You need to find out that education is for you and the way to do that is to find out what your personal strengths are and travelling allowed me to achieve that.
“Even though I am graduating now and I am a bit older [than many other students], I don’t feel like I am behind at all. I feel as if I really learned a lot from my travelling.
“It inspired me to do my degree in Anthropology, because I saw so many different ways of life and enjoyed experiencing the different cultures and meeting people from all across the world.
“In that respect, travelling led to university.”
It was this love of diversity and different cultures that led Mr Bratt to Aberdeen in particular.
He added: “That was something I truly loved about Aberdeen University; it is very diverse and allowed me to continue my passion of learning about other cultures.
“Throughout [my] university [studies], I was very passionate about volunteering for Unicef and I hope to go into their graduate programme.”