Exceptional A Fool's guide to British Universities Graduation by Mark Jackson      200 Word Flash Contest Winner

At Oxford University, I walked the gardens, that summer I was newly graduated.  I noted the neat freshly cut lawns and the sweet scent of the immaculate flower beds. Then my eyes fell on the sign: Only Fellows may use the lawns. I was a graduate, so I was going to use that grass. I stepped onto that emerald square, I walked boldly to the centre. Ignoring the gasps, I looked around, took a deep breath, and began to dance. I did the one-step, the two-step, and the three. On that beautifully tended green: I lifted up my knees, I kicked back my heels, and I threw out my feet. The sod flew; I caroused, I cavorted, I pirouetted upon that square of mud. I’m a graduate, I thought, from Sheffield…Polytechnic. ‘You fools!’ I cried in my ecstasy. In Hindsight I was the fool. A Fellow is a senior member of the academic staff; far above any lowly Honours degree. I now go back to that 10x10 square, the scene of my shame, every year for eight hours of unpaid tending. I will do so for the next one hundred and seventy-two years; or until I die. Whichever comes first. Writing Prompt Write a story on any topic. 200 Words Exactly! Title not included in count. 200 Word Flash Contest Winner Author Notes The lush lawns of the colleges are due to the policy Oxford has maintained for centuries of allowing only fellows or professors to step on the grass. Everyone else is obliged to keep walking along the concrete path. Sheffield Polytechnic was a tertiary education teaching institution in Northern England. It had no rules about walking on the grass; it had no grass.

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