Personal Blogs

16-18 hours a week is the proposed for a 60 credit year.

I think this is highly manageable at the moment it works out at just over two and a half hours a night in a seven day week. But to be honest once I get started (the hardest part) I don't seem to be able to stop.

 Theres something very rewarding about doing something and then getting it right when you practice it, at the moment I'm doing 4 hours after work, which is broken down into 1 hour chunks with a stretch of the legs, something to eat and a little social for 20-30 minutes before carrying on. This seems to be working for me and I wish I had had this approach when I was younger and will be something that I hope to one day encourage any future little Alistair's to do.

Overall a positive night with bright prospects for the future.

Well, here I am ! 

Enrolled on a BSc (Honours) Computing & IT degree. But how did I get here, what motivated me to take this step, and what do I think will motivate me throughout what can only be described as a very long time to be studying. 

I left school, after attending private school with average A-Levels and a naive view that I could live life without debt. It was this nativity that led me to not go to university. Well that and I didn't have any idea what subject I wanted to study and with all my colleagues choosing subjects and writing personal statements I felt very much like the odd one out. The end of Sixth Form came and still I had no idea what I wanted to do and so after a couple of kitchen porter jobs I decided to follow down my fathers routes and join the military. 

Having always wanted a degree, I always kept it close to my career aspirations. Firstly choosing a role in the forces that through career progression offered a foundation degree that I can top up for an honours. However as the years past, I became more frustrated and felt I wasn't achieving my full potential, and so one night browsing for a company that did classroom based learning on CCNA, I decided to have a look at my old school colleagues on Linked-In and job criteria's for networking positions. The majority asked for a degree or equivalent experience and that brought home the reality, I had been in the Army for just over 4 years and I was in no better a position than I was when I left school, in terms of being employable. 

Thats when the Open University comes in. I looked at their website and other University websites, making sure that they were accredited and the modules were subjects I was interested in. And of course the all important question of whether your getting your money's worth.

You can take a guess at the decision I made.