Looking back at a year of studies at the Open University

This will be a series of posts over a week or so.

I'm currently between courses and thought this would be a good time to reflect on the year that rushed past. As an adult student with business experience I felt that I could take on a fairly high amount of entry level coursework to start with, then reduce my study pace as needed at higher levels. My plan was to study 120 points with the Open University, including three 10 point 'starter' courses intended for people who haven't studied at uni before or haven't studied for a long time. This was in parallel to work commitments (37 hour week according to contract, in practise it's about 45 hours), commute (3 hours per day unless I can work from home) and maintaining somewhat normal social relationships with my girlfriend, family and friends. I also have some hobbies and investments to manage so there was always going to be a need for compromises.

So, how did it all turn out? It certainly wasn't according to plan! Probably the most disruptive moment was the panic call from my girlfriend that she was being evicted by her landlord with an hours notice. No contract, very shady business as it seems the landlord was cheating on benefits claims while making money on renting out rooms. While playing nasty with the landlord might have been satisfying, what was really needed was an urgent solution so that my girlfriend would have a place to sleep that night. A good friend of mine agreed to help and within 2 hours of the first call the move was complete and I was no longer living on my own.

Previously we had been seeing each other about 3 nights per week, leaving me with 4 nights for studies and other commitments. As soon as she moved in there was some level of disruption each night, ranging from having dinner together to trying to go to bed at the same time. Maintaining all of these things as much as possible was probably beneficial from a 'healthy living' point of view but anything that requires getting into a productive state of mind ('the zone') was far harder to complete. In the end I wrote most of my essays in the middle of the night while she was asleep. Reaching my academic targets was still possible, but I think it hurt the relationship more than if we had remained living apart. Up to 4 nights of dedicated study without interruptions was more productive than up to 7 nights with interruptions and pressure to finish by a certain time.

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#libelreform twitter tag.