I have no idea what I am doing

You didn't write essays in highschool? That's all highschool was for me.

You will never need to buy a psychology textbook. All the information you ever need you can find in the library or on online journals.

I didn't go to school.

Hrmm, really? One is listed as required reading...

Many subjects don't actually require the required reading. Back when I was an undergrad, I would generally wait a week or two to see how the book was used before purchasing it. Check out the library to see if the books are freely available.

Also, check out whether second hand books are available. They're usually a hell of a lot cheaper and not too shabby in terms of quality.

Were you home-schooled?

As long as I can get the edition I need, I guess... at some point I'm going to have to get hold of the twelve or something novels and plays I'll have to read as well, though.

Not really.

In absolute fairness, I did two years of Psychology A levels before university so I already had a very good handle of the basics.

I'd still advise against it. Just pay good attention to your lectures.

Then how did you learn?

And how did you qualify for uni without a highschool diploma or equivalency? You can't just go through life without some kind of schooling, not in a first world country anyway.

He lives on the internet, google schooled him.

How did he what?

Hrm. Well, I'll leave it for now. Could save me a fair bit of money, so thanks for that.

I didn't.

I applied through the Queensland Tertiary Admissions Centre, with whom I sat the Special Tertiary Admissions Test, which tests your verbal and quantitative comprehension without requiring any real knowledge of anything except English. I did well at that (I got a percentile rank of 99, although that probably would have been a fair bit lower if people who graduated from school took the test), so I was able to get into a Bachelor of Arts in which I plan to gain prerequisites (maths, physics, chemistry) to transfer to a different program.

That's both fascinating and kind of confusing. Mostly the latter as there are several hundred - nay thousand - instances in my own life between puberty and adulthood where being properly educated was not only necessary, but imperative.

You must be one hell of an anomaly.

Does the Uni you're at offer a foundation program? Uni SA and Flinders run six month/year long courses aimed at bringing the uneducated to a University-friendly place.

And I mean uneducated in the nicest possible way.

The great unwashed
The rustics
The underclasses
The social hotpot

Proles
Plebs
Chaff
Scum

Sorry, what were we talking about?

As an aside, the Dean of Arts made a speech at my graduation ceremony where she told us how we'd all come from having rustic backgrounds to being cultured gentlemen.

My mother was not pleased.

She sounds uppity.

Of course she is, she's the Dean of Arts in one of the oldest universities in the world.

She's so far up the ivory tower she can't see anything for the clouds