I didn't like school. Primary school was tolerable, but at second level I had a rotten time. I regularly pretended to be sick so that I could go home. I've never really thought about why I didn't enjoy it, but I guess that like many people I found the transition from primary to second level difficult - despite the fact that I attended the one school, Synge St CBS, Dublin, for both levels.

Still, I enjoyed English. In first year, we were taught by Mr Buckley. The last of the old guard, he was a brilliant teacher who believed in discipline - he punished us by hitting us on the knuckles. He taught us to scan poetry, which was unusual in schools in the Eighties.

I studied Latin for three years. I didn't mind it and found it useful when I did Old English at Trinity. I performed well in subjects in which I was interested - English, Irish and French - but I disliked subjects such as physics, maths and economics, which had little to do with language.

I was lucky in that all the English teachers I had up to Inter Cert were very encouraging about what I wrote. I used to write a lot for a local magazine in Rialto. It helps when teachers come up to you in class and tell you that you're good at something, especially when there are 30 other children looking for attention.

By 1985, I had applied for and had been offered a place in communications at DCU, but decided against taking it up. I felt I wasn't ready to go to college and I spent the next three years in various jobs, but mostly working in Dublin Corporation. By then, I knew what I really wanted to do - English at Trinity.

I was old enough to appreciate the course and I was there because I wanted to be. As a result I really enjoyed it and had a wonderful time.

On the course, I came upon many things which helped me in my writing. Dr Gerald Morgan taught me Chaucer and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I had never encountered middle English poetry before and I was surprised by its colour and humour.

I read Aquinas and other philosophers and became aware that nothing is really new - everything is influenced by what came before. I began to realise that that seeing influences in your own work is unavoidable and no bad thing. What matters is how you use those influences.

I had always read American detective fiction but had no idea that people would teach courses on it. Thanks to Dr Ian Ross, who ran the TCD course, I was introduced to a lot of writers - including Ross Macdonald, my single biggest influence.

I read a lot of things I didn't particularly enjoy. I would never have finished Bleak House, for example, if I hadn't had to talk to the class about it next day.

The really great thing about Trinity was that so much was left to yourself. We had only a very small amount of formal lectures - about 10 hours each week. It wasn't at all like school and you had a lot of space to study. I was able to write for college magazines, read widely, run an English literary society and still find loads of time to enjoy the social life. College is the only place that you can do all that.

Going to DCU to do the MA in journalism was completely different. However, I met many good people there and they were very supportive when I opted to do my thesis on the closure of Jerusalem to the Palestinians.

John Connolly is an Irish Times writer. His first novel, Every Dead Thing, has just been published by Hodder & Stoughton (£10).