I don't tend to document my studies much anywhere really. I dont have a normal student life and my degree is an extra little thing in my life. Here's the story: at 18 in sixth form I was pushed to get go to uni. Didn't matter where or what for but they just wanted as many of us at univeristy as possible. I initially wrote my personal statement about for a Marketing degree. I showed my form tutor and I think he could read that I didn't really have any interest in what I was writing at all. He said maybe it was the course, so I switched to Law. I know now that it wasn't the course at all, because my degree now is Business and Marketing. It was just that at 18, I wasn't ready for uni at all.
I didn't fancy moving out. I loved the idea of it, and I was already working weekends in London so a part time job wasn't alien to me. Like I said, I just wasn't ready. It's funny because it so many other things we know that kids aren't ready to do things always at the same time as their peers. I may have started walking 6 months earlier than someone a couple of days older than me. Doesn't mean they never walked. Just meant that at that time, on that day, they weren't ready. No one pushed them and said 'get on with it and just walk'. So why do they push 18 year olds to just jump and get on with uni.
Anyway I settled into driving 4 times a week up to my uni, an hour away on a good day. 2 hours away at 7am on a Monday morning on the M25. I got used to it. There was one teacher who genuinely scared me to death. I didn't attend a single class of his but the uni would never know. All I had to do was sign in via tapping my badge on a reader once a week and it signed me in for all of my classes.
I did enjoy it though. For the most part. I may a friend or two, we went for coffee, and I'd come home and sit for hours working. I think that was the problem. I couldn't stay and study at the library because I would hit solid traffic on the way home. Everyone had their cliques from their student houses so most knew someone in their class already. I didn't go to freshers, because I had no one to go with, and I couldn't be apart of unions, purly because they were on diffrent days to my classes and I was not prepared to drive up for no reason. Oh, and my teachers would barely turn up at all. There was also that.
I left in the February and went to work full time as of that September in my secondary school. And for a year thats where I was. Just working full time at my first 'proper job' and content that I was getting a full time income at aged 19, when all of my friends were living on beans in a dirty house with strangers.
Anyway after a year I got very bored. I've always enjoyed learning as such, never minding the essays I'd write, and after going cold turkey for a year, I wanted something more. I found that the original uni that I'd wanted to attend (never getting the grades in sixth form for it so went to my second choice for a few months instead), did an online course. Part time and fully online. I jumped at it, had a telephone interview and started that September (2017) on a Business and Marketing degree. And three years later, here we are, about to embark on my 4th year (and HOPEFULLY final year, if I can double everything up in time).
What I've learned?
1. Don't listen to anyone else's advice on what you want to do. Maybe I'd have dropped out of uni eveen if I'd have done that Marketing course the first time round, but I wish I'd have tried it instead of Law that only made my mother happy and the school look better.
2. If you don't fancy it, don't do it. I do thank God a little that I went into full time work and then got a degree. Because I grew up far quicker that way than living in that student denial world of more and more education and not understanding how the real world works.
3. I am also very glad that I waited until NOW to do it. My essays go hand in hand with my blog and Instagram bits, and I know things through my experience on here that I wouldn't have back in 2016/2017, because it wasn't the same then.
4. My timekeeping is bang on. I leave things until the last minute for sure, but I never forget to do something or hand something in late. And touch wood I've always passed it.
5. It doesn't matter how you did it, it's that you did it. I know that a first class degree is fab, and a 2:1 is better than a 2:2 of course. But as I'm not told what I'm on track for, and we aren't given grades at the end of each year (because there aren't really ends to years, we just carry on until we graduate) I don't care so much about them. I would love a good mark of course, but I've had high grades and I've had just pass grades. I just want to throw my hat in the air and take a fabulous head shot with that rolled up paper to blow up and hang in my grand old office one day. Try your best, but in the end a degree is a degree. I don't know the grades of any of my friend's who've got one, and wouldn't care either way regardless.
I don't have the usual student experience. We don't have an online freshers week or online student union. But I'm fully okay with that.
If you want to find out more about my online course, please let me know!
Post a Comment
The last time I went out was October. It's nearly June. I don't count my birthday party because that was inside and I drank coke all night as my throat had felt like killing me off on my 21st. I'm not much of a goer-outer, so for me this isn't much of an issue, just a point really. I remember back two summers ago, I had just quit my uni course after lasting 6 months and was working 8 hours a weekend because I physically couldn't handle anymore standing. My weekend work wasn't the most accommodating. A year before, I ended up in hospital with blue, clotting legs, and at work, when the end of my shift came around and I just wanted to sit down after hours and hours of standing still, I was told to go back to my till and wait until they said I could go, or drag a basket full of rubbish upstairs and lob it into a bin. Two summers ago I found my current job, in my old secondary school and my life changed for the better. When I started, I was working there from 8.15-4 (ish) everyday and until October of that year, did 6 hours a day on the weekends also. I'm not sure how I did it, but I did, and quitting that awful retail place was one of the best feelings in the world.
Fast forward a year. It's September again, I'm still at my full time job, and blogging on the side. Silly Katie decided that writing blog posts of an evening isn't enough work, and thinks going back to uni would be a fun idea. Oh Katie, aren't you silly. The end of September arrives and I'm working the same hours a day, but now I'm at the stage in my blog career that I'm attending events every few days. September sees new beauty launches, pre-fashionweek stuff, and the usual press parties. I would then come home, and sit on my bed at 9/10pm to learn a new unit for my degree. Come October and my mum mutters "you're burning the wick at both ends, soon you'll fuse out". And I did. I cried because I couldn't think straight and was only passing my units, not getting the merits I'd hoped for. I'm a morning person, to an extent, but would wake up at 7.15 and have about 20 minutes to get ready if I had any hope of getting myself some food for the day on the way to work. Whilst we're on the food subject, I lost all appetite. Now, I'm a big eater. Give me McDonalds' three times a day and I'll be yours. Anxiety was a minutely (rather than daily) experience, and come October, I simply couldn't do it anymore.
I stopped going to every event I was asked to. Train fares aren't cheap, and pretending to like the awful prosecco I was being given was a harder task to swallow, literally. My grades were going up, and I actually got home, showered and to bed at a normal time. We're now in May, nearing June, and I'm still juggling life. I leave for work at 7.40, head to Asda to get my tuna sandwich and water, then get in at 8 before everyone in my department, bar my bosses. I'll leave work at 3.30 unless it's my overtime day, which will see my exit at 4.20ish, and head home. Ofc I do still love going to product launches, now that I know a few people in my industry, shall we call it. But these are rare, far and few between, and I'm happy with that. There's nothing worse than thinking I have a deadline in two days and my evenings are spent being ignored by a PR rep whilst I'm having a canapé shoved in my face. I do my uni degree completely online, with lectures and forums and essays submitted every two weeks. I don't have to drive anywhere or make conversation with people in a classroom, and I bloody love it. I plan things to a T and writing lists helps me to see how much of something I need to do that evening, be it blog, work or uni related. I spend each weekend out taking photos, which is hard when your blogger pals have free time during the week, and you only have half terms to venture into the city.
I'm doing well. Anxiety is still at a high, and my stress will never stop. I have say, 3 or 4 different possible career paths right now that I'd be happy with. I'm also completing a very expensive course through work which will be amazing to have behind me once I'm done in November. Another thing to add to my list, but something I'm ever so grateful for. My life is jam packed with things, and I never have a 'day off' as such. But when you enjoy what you do and your hobby is classed as one of your jobs, how could you complain really.
Two years ago I became set to head off to university to study law. I bought my first car to drive up there everyday, a whole heap of stationary, and became increasingly excited at every 'sign up for...' or 'register for...' email. Two years ago I went to uni. Two years ago I wasn't ready.
My life back then was completely different. I was in a (what I thought was) a long term relationship, worked my bum off revising for my exams, to not end up with the results I wanted. My journey as such, started when I was writing my first personal statement. I was set on a marketing degree and after one 'are you sure' comment; my 'you don't want to do this' mind flipped and I chose law. Why? Your guess is as good as mine.
I started year 13 with a fresh statement, and applied for universities mostly close to home. As much as I wanted to move out, I wasn't ready at all to move at that time. I got all 5 conditional offers and as I always plan for the worst; when one changed to unconditional, I mentally prepared myself for not getting the grades for my first choice. I knew, before even collecting my results, that I was accepted to my backup option, but once I was over the gutting of the grades, it was never an issue really.
I worked on the weekends. I didn't really need to as, because I wasn't in uni halls, my maintenance loan and grant went a little further than others' did. That job, standing behind a till for 4-8 hours twice a week was awful. I was physically drained, as well as having (undiagnosed but I'm certain its arthritis) in my joints.
My days during the week would go as followed: Monday-9am-10am lecture....5pm-6pm lecture. I would get up at 5, leave my house at 6, be in traffic on the M25 for two and a half hours, park the car, rush to the lecture room for an hour. Then spent 8 hours in my car. Literally sitting in my car. Sometimes I'd meet a pal or something in the library, but no one that I knew lived on campus and they could go home in between. My day could also go like: Monday- 9am-10am lecture... rush there, traffic etc... for it to be cancelled. Or the 9am one would be fine, and I'd wait around to be told at half 4 that the 5pm one wouldn't be on.
I was mentally drained and over the Christmas break, it was constantly on my mind about leaving. My final strike as such was part of our grade was to do a presentation with a few other people. No one in my group tried or bothered, and mixed with my whole 'I can't do presentations without combusting' thing, I skipped uni that day, and researched to quit the next. My last day was one of mixed emotions. I got my form signed by one of my favourite lecturers, had my final costa coffee from the Law building, and treated myself to a subway before I drove home.
Looking back, part of me wishes I'd have stuck at it. I think of the little things, like meeting Sinead before a workshop, or shopping for everyone's Christmas presents. I think of the fact that I'd have been about to start my final year, and nearly be a graduate. But. I look back knowing that the course I was on, I have no interest in. I didn't care for it from the second I first signed up for UCAS never mind the day I left.
And today I can happily say. I'm going back. Haaaa what am I doing.....
I've always thought about a course that relates to business or blogging. Before I even left I applied for a journalism course at a more local uni. I luckily got my full time job last July, so put the course on hold. I had to chose recently what to do, if to take up the course or not. I decided not to take it and immediately started looking at part time degrees. Part time usually means 4/5+ years instead of 3. I couldn't find any at all until I clicked on the Uni of Essex online page, and found that they offered a business and marketing course, fully online, that would last up to 4 years. Within a day or so, the admissions team called me, applied for my finance, and sent through my offer letter. The course, business and marketing, opens me up for alot of things. The first thing is obviously helping with my job. Once I complete this, I can study for a PGCE and become a teacher, something I've wanted to be for pretty much my entire life. But it also helps my blogger prospects. Running a blog, and earning money through it, is, a job. I'll understand how a business works more, and the marketing part could also land me some experience with PR companies, something I'm very interested in, being on the other side of it.
I left university aged 19 because I simply wasn't ready. I think nows the time, at nearly 21, that I know what I want, and I'm going to get it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)