Personal Blogs

I started learning with the Open University when it was in its infancy. That's why my OU number starts with C. It was in its third year. There was no Internet, and there were no mobile phones. Distance learning meant a course workbook through the post and watching programmes on BBC2 . TMAs were done on a typewriter, with carbon paper, and sent in by post!

It was before the complicated Degree structure we now see. Almost all the students just took an unspecified BA. It may have been the only option.

I started a few years after starting work and I was lucky to have en employer who paid for my fees. But student finance was simpler in those days. There were no student loans. Most University students were given grants to pay for their living expenses. The grants also covered University fees. (When I took my BA in Mathematics at Cambridge in 1969 I didn't know anything about fees. The grant just paid them.)

So my first OU Degree, from 1973 to 1981, was very mixed, starting with D100: Understanding Society. I did courses on Psychology; Language; Soviet Government (The USSR still existed then;) Space and Time; And Music.

Why did I do it? because I always want to keep learning. In the words of Rudyard Kipling, "I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who."

Alan