This chapter discusses MacCormick’s activities – literary, editorial, administrative, political – while he was a pupil at Glasgow High School and then a student studying philosophy and literature at the University of Glasgow (1959–63). It focuses on MacCormick’s playful and pleasurable explorations of language and the significance that language already then had for him, as was evident in the pieces he wrote and the editorial work he did both at school and at university. The chapter also discusses MacCormick’s participation in the remarkable debating culture of the University of Glasgow, where MacCormick was President of the Glasgow University Student Nationalist Association, and where he formed numerous life-long friendships (e.g., with Donald Dewar and John Smith). It considers the significance of his exposure – which was intense in Glasgow – to the norms and standards of debating.