St Andrews is always there when I need it

Alumni Relations

Monday 5 October 2026

Neil Shepherd (BSc Hons 1998) arrived at St Andrews to study Chemistry with Maths, acquired a reputation for a string of memorable mishaps, met the love of his life in Chapel Choir, and ultimately defied his own conviction to become a maths teacher. Now Head of Maths at King Edward’s School in Birmingham, Neil shares his memories of student life and reflects on a summer spent back in St Andrews researching two prominent mathematicians with connections to the school where he has taught for 12 years.

St Andrews is my heritage, not that that played a large part in my choosing to go there. I’d visited a few times as a lad, but only because my Mum (Adrienne Shepherd, née Hall, BSc Hons 1969) was born on The Scores, living in Cupar before later moving to Portobello. She had returned for university as the first in her family to do so, loved it and told us as much. My cousin later followed suit (Gwen Berwick, MA Hons 1985), so when I was thinking of getting a degree, St Andrews was always on the list. It was only after visiting with it in mind as a place for me and not my family that it really clicked. It has been the cornerstone of my life and I go back sparingly, to replenish.

Regs, mishaps and lifelong friends

I lived in Regs during three of my four years (and in a flat near the Kinness Fry Bar, fondly known as KFB, in my third year), so most of my haunts were Regs-centred or Regs-adjacent. It was a terrific, warm atmosphere, where people had space to learn, grow, support, tease, console and generally carve out the frameworks for who we would all eventually get to become. I look back on it with enormous fondness and gratitude.

I had an initial… awkwardness about me that the people who have become my lifelong friends looked past: this was physical as well as emotional and verbal, and I became known for various haphazard failures in common sense, such as burning my foot with boiling water, accidentally heating an oil bath in the Purdie Building to about 600 ^OC, an unfortunate incident with a Vacu Vin (wine stopper), and burning the other foot with boiling water but then letting it get infected because I was too embarrassed to go back to the GP. I locked myself out of my room endlessly.

I switched from Chemistry with Maths to Maths and Stats, borne partially of the cost of repeatedly breaking equipment but more from realising that I really enjoyed learning new maths, which, given my parents were both mathematicians, I had been reluctant to confront. I worked far too hard in first year, only later realising that the scores didn’t matter much. I therefore worked far too little in second year but got it right after that and can now just about cling on to the shirttails of the understanding I built over honours years. I remember marvelling at number theory and fractals. I remember loathing symbolic computation.

Cinema, singing, and the best decision of all

My absolute favourite haunt was the New Picture House (NPH), and I remain a fully committed cinema nerd. I wrote the film reviews for new releases in The Saint in its maiden year (getting some stick for a ***** review of Titanic, which I stand by) and wish I’d sought out other cinephiles, but I felt comparatively ignorant at the time. I imagine most of the advice we would love to give our younger selves would be akin to ‘stop fretting and just get stuck in!’ I saw some absolute belters in the NPH in my time: Pulp Fiction, Scream, Apollo 13, Se7en, Good Will Hunting, The Usual Suspects, Contact. I was one of about only 12 people who caught The Shawshank Redemption in its single week in screen two, whilst the opening night of Goldeneye was sensational.

I loved playing violin in the St Andrews Symphony Orchestra and one night at the Younger Hall in front of a sea of promenading, booze-fuelled students in a ‘last night’ concert was especially indelible. I sang in St Salvator’s Chapel Choir for three years, with trips to Prague and Belgium, and pier walks increasingly done in pursuit of an extremely pretty alto who, in fourth year through a mixture of persistence and what I naively felt was charm, I started seeing. This was the best of all decisions made at St Andrews and Elizabeth (née Mellor, MA Hons 1998) and I will celebrate 30 years together next year, having married in Sallies Chapel in 2004.

I played for no proper teams, unless you count a year in goal for Lethargy FC (which you shouldn’t) but Saturdays and Wednesdays were spent at Lade Braes or West Sands for joyously chaotic kickabouts, often followed by a pint of tea with a fry up at the Union. In 1998, I was proud to win the Regs award for ‘person with the most ridiculous haircut’.

The teacher I said I’d never be

Having struggled with moving to Maths I was certain that, given that both my parents were teachers, whatever I did next was not to be that. My sister (Corinne Shepherd, BSc 1999) had, thank the Lord, studied Medicine but I was still fearful of the perception of unoriginality. I went to the meals and presentations that the companies courting graduates put on for us but to me they all sounded a bit hollow. There was an option of postgrad work using the exciting stats in my degree to monitor marine populations, but I couldn’t handle the idea of staying behind when everyone else was leaving. I had taught English in Hungary (via a joyously vivacious and utterly off-the-books summer school/scam populated with fellow enthusiastically unqualified St Andrews undergrads in the summer of 1997). I’d also done some work in a school in Methil via the University. I decided I could try a PGCE in Maths, just to see.

Three decades on and I’m Head of Maths at King Edward’s School in Birmingham, having done versions of the same role in Chester and Milan, following my first post in Bradford. My job is a perfect mix of working with the most inspiring staff and the most astonishing pupils. It keeps me tied to the finest of subjects and incorporates my own love of geekery and performance. There is nowhere to hide in a classroom, and it demands unwavering commitment, but the rewards you get when given the chance to support others in building their own paths is truly hard to top in a job.

I live in Worcester and have done for 16 years, as our children, Rose and Xander, now start their lives as young adults. Elizabeth still sings, now for the Three Choirs Festival Chorus (following on from the St Andrews Madrigal Group) and the people here are polite and kind.

Returning for research

This summer I spent 12 days back in Agnes Blackadder (not New anymore, I suppose) Hall conducting research. I hadn’t expected to do this, but it opened up for me quickly and I could think of no place where a sabbatical could better be spent. In researching notable mathematicians from King Edward’s School, I noted two Victorian alumni, one a teacher, one a pupil, who had led incredible lives, shown enormous intelligence and startling breadth of knowledge. They also had enormous diversion in their world views. Sir Francis Galton’s life and work are incredible, little known and understandably swallowed by the shuddersome shadow of his creation of eugenics. His zeal to measure the whole world led him to the conclusion that the true legacy of his cousin Charles Darwin’s theorem was selective breeding to bring the Empire to its full potential. His extraordinary work on the statistical techniques which he had intended to use to prove him right became his true legacy, and I filed him under ‘well, it was another world. I later came across headmaster and author Edwin Abbott Abbott whose work Flatland directly satirises the concepts of inherited privilege Galton swore by.

I wish I knew more about how ideas (mathematical and otherwise) congeal but declined to take the module in my degree on the History of Maths and have regretted that omission ever since. This sabbatical, therefore, would be my penance, and I spent the trip digging into the resources at the University Library and beyond, learning more about these two men and connecting the dots between them, leading to the writing of this article.

I spent a glorious time wandering down old snickets, basking in apocalyptic thunderstorms, mourning the NPH and the all-night bakery, grabbing a fudge doughnut or two and, 28 years after watching the last Scottish World Cup performance in the Union, watching John McGinn lay that legacy to rest before catching a sunrise over East Sands – another privilege.

I don’t know when I’ll next be back – but I know St Andrews is always there when I need it.