Connections from our 1985-1994 graduates

Your memories of Warwick

Dana Zaman

BA English and American Literature, 1992

I miss the fun we had when we were students at Warwick- turning up to lectures dripping wet after water fights in the summer. I remember Rag Week- students being followed by other students dressed as giant gnomes!

I also remember thinking I was going to die when men in balaclavas burst into our lecture room with rifles ( which I thought were real) and thinking, " I must die with dignity as this could be in the Warwick Boar," and then realising it was all a prank for Rag Week when one of the men in balaclavas slapped a box of milk tray in front of a fellow student, saying, " And all because the lady loves Milk Tray!" I remember drinking runny soup from the soup machine just before the exams and asking another student whether Boris Yeltsin was a real person because I had just written about his trans-world identity in an exam and I needed him to be a real person for my argument in the essay to be correct! I was a bit of a funny girl back then!

I remember writing poems about another student's sneezes in lectures when we were doing the ‘Courtly Love Tradition’, and gushing to a friend. "Oh Sarah, Sarah, he's got poetic and romantic hair!", to which my friend replied rather curtly, " No Dana, he just needs a haircut!" I was very young for my age while I was at Warwick and friends realised this and were quite protective of me as I still had a bit of a naive schoolgirl vibe about me at university. I made many good friends and we created some very happy memories together.

Every year, the Students’ Union would play Electric Dreams for the final year students who were leaving, and one year, it was suddenly, our turn to leave. It all went so fast. Tears were shed as we parted and said fond farewells. For three years, we had lived in a safe bubble of academia amongst our best friends who were also our neighbours, and suddenly, it was time to come back to the real world, to come home. For the first year, adjustment was hard. I missed my University and my friends terribly. I thought I would never recover but time heals all wounds and I learned to re-adjust to the real world. Now several years later, I have published a book for children and would like to share the link with friends and Warwick Alumni. I hope you're all proud of me! The Prince Who Lost His Pants: Zaman, D.F.: 9798370018008: Amazon.com: Books

Diana Holbourn

Diana Holbourn

BA History and Sociology, 1989

I look back on my time at university with fondness. As a blind person, I had extra challenges, but I found Warwick to be a friendly and supportive environment. There was a group of volunteers who read course material onto tape for me so it was accessible to me, and extra power points and bookshelves were put in my room, the former for the electronic equipment with synthetic speech I used to write essays on, and the latter for some braille books, which are a lot bigger and bulkier than print books. I'm grateful to the university for organising those things.

I found the course interesting, and I made some good supportive friends. I recently became an author. As a blind person, there were a few things I naturally had to do in a different way from the norm, such as typing my books on a computer with synthetic speech so it reads what I type out loud to me and enables me to use the Internet and email.

My books all have the same main character, a child genius called Becky Bexley. The first is a zany children's comedy calledThe Early Life of Becky Bexleythe Child Genius, where she does unrealistically remarkable things and gets up to mischief, and the others are part of a young adult fiction series calledBecky Bexley the Child Genius, where Becky gets involved in a lot of fun, and also helps adults and other people around her overcome mental health and other problems, using genuine therapy techniques.

Warwick love stories

Mark and Anne

Mark and Anne Curry

BSc Accounting and Financial Analysis, 1990 and LLB Law, 1990

We celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary in August 2023 having met when we were allocated rooms near each other in Benefactors’ Hall in October 1987. We started dating a month later. We married in August 1993, with several Warwick alumni amongst the guests, and we now have two children; Alex who has graduated from UEA, and Maddie who is in the Upper Sixth at school.

We celebrated our anniversary with a trip to Stockholm, and we’re forever grateful to the person who sorted the University hall allocations in 1987!

Viv and Myles

Viv and Myles Kelvin

BSc Biological Sciences, 1989 and BEng Engineering Electronics, 1989

We celebrated our 30th Wedding Anniversary in August 2023. Having first met doing First Year Reception (FYR Week) Oct 1988. My job was to take one of the University minibuses and pick up the freshers coming by train at Coventry train station, and Myles’s job was to meet the minibus shuttles on campus and show them to their rooms. We had to wear the turquoise themed FYR T-shirts, which featured Flintstones Bam Bam and Pebbles. We still have them to this day, they’re 36 years old this year! We started dating that week.

We married in August 1993 with several Warwick alumni amongst the guests in my village church in South Wales. In 2001, we emigrated to America - south of San Francisco - for Myles’s job in Silicon Valley. I own a real estate company and Myles has an IT business development company. We now have two children, Emily a research scientist at California State University, and Jonathan a mechanical engineer working in LA. We celebrated our special anniversary with a dream trip to Bora Bora, where we went scuba diving with sharks and eagle rays.

Journeys since Warwick

Jayaraja

Jayaraja

BA QTS (Phys Ed), 1985

As chair of the trust overseeing the renowned Alfoxton Park House, Jayaraja now resides there, leading a team of volunteers in renovating the historic building. Alfoxton was once home to William and Dorothy Wordsworth and the birthplace of the Lyrical Ballads.

Your books

Daguang Tan

Daguang Tan

PG Dip Translation Studies, 1991

My latest completed monograph “The Key Science of Interlingual Language Signs Invention” in trilingual edition (Interlingual Language, English Language, Han Language) encapsulates more than thirty years academic life experience greatly influenced by The University of Warwick, where I studied MA in Translation Studies from1989 to 1991. As an alumnus, I have continued to witness the innovative high-tech achievements of the University of Warwick, both nationally and internationally.

This monograph is supposed to be the soul of the trilogy (Interlingual Language Signs Invention, Nro Zr/the Love Man, Kingdom Style Residence with the Front Garden and Back Garden).