Remember your first day at school? Imagine a school with 14 miles of corridors, 1,200 rooms and 7,000 people. Imagine a school where there are many new rules to learn, and where 750 letters arrive awaiting your attention, before you even get an office.
I have just arrived at such a place - the House of Commons.
It is a real honour to be here, and I'm enjoying everything but there have certainly been days when I've got lost, or spoken at the wrong moment, or not spoken at all (not a regular occurrence.)
Certainly, just as at a school, the firsts stay in the memory: the first day I actually sat in the Chamber, the first Prime Minister's Question Time, and of course my first speech.
What no one warns you about is how you can arrive at 8.30am and leave at 11pm, and still not have time for a break. The reason is that this place is completely absorbing and the key discipline is learning to focus on your own agenda: help your constituents, learn how to hold the Government to account and get to understand how our laws are made.
As we come to the end of the summer term I look back over these five weeks and it seems like a lifetime.
Much has happened the first defeats of the Government and the roller coaster of the Conservative Party leadership election.
Just imagine, there's five more years to go.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
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