Seen as I'm currently on the final break of a lovely (ahem) 12 hour shift at work and feeling a bit tired and mopey I thought I'd take this opportunity to remind myself and let everyone know my good news:
My confirmation letter came through from Student Finance!
So I've passed my details on to OU and should hopefully now be fully confirmed and enrolled for DD101 starting Feb '13.
All very exciting to think its finally happening and I'm definitely going to try and get some prereading in over Christmas.
I've already heard of Good Essay Guide: Social Sciences which is in the Amazon basket ready to go but if anyone knows of any others let me know!
Thursday, 13 December 2012
Tuesday, 11 December 2012
The Stupefying Student Finance Frenzy...
I have to a blogger confession to make, I know it may ruin the the illusion of blogging, I'm aware that blogs should just appear with no forethought or planning but sadly I have neither the talent nor the spontaneity for that and quiet often write whole blogs only to never post them. This time I started top write a blog having a bit of a winge about applying for a Student Loan starting with "like 90% of students I'm paying for my tuition with a student loan" before realizing that was a clearly inaccurate number which I had plucked out of the air and deciding to find out the actual amount. Now while I'm more than aware that my research skills are worryingly lacking I just cant find the data on this anywhere so I'm putting the request out there; If anyone has a clue of what percentage of students do pay for tuition with a loan from SLC then please let me know! This seems to be one of those facts that's going to annoy the life out of me until I can find out and out my mind at rest.
Moving on to the point of the original blog I as I mentioned last time signed up for my course [PPE BA (hons)], selected my first module (DD101; Introducing the Social Sciences) and, subject to finance I'm all ready to go for February 2013. I think the emphasis here needs to be on subject to finance. Admittedly the OU could not have been more helpful in this respect, the original call handler talked me through everything I would need to do and done a quick eligibility check and they even sent a form out with helpful accompanying notes. Admittedly I had been a bit over keen and my form had already been printed off the website and posted in by this point. The form itself wasn't too stressful but did cause much concern re my name change which I'm hoping is a small and easily understood change (literally just a good old fashioned taking of my husbands name post wedding) but nonetheless its been filled in, signed and posted for about 2 weeks now.
Today I finally heard back from them but just with a letter saying they would be in touch soon and no return of the documents I had to send in with the form? I clearly have no clue what this means whether this is positive, negative or standard but at least it confirms my application got there in (hopefully) one piece. The other positive is that it gave me my reference number which has now been sent through to OU and moved my homescreen loading bar a few centimeters closer to the end.
The other main update from today which, although not strictly related to the 'failing at being a student' theme of this blog is that I've finally signed up for next years Great North Run. I ran my first half marathon at this years run and absolutely couldn't wait to do it again, I loved the training and the day itself was an amazing experience so when I got the email to say I could sign up fora guaranteed place for the next 3 year I immediately nagged the Mr into letting me sign up as my combined Birthday/Christmas present. The amazing memories of this years run coupled with a recent family illness giving me yet another charity to want to raise funds for means I'm absolutely desperate for next years run to come around.
Next year might be busy but that's what I like and I absolutely cannot wait for it!
Moving on to the point of the original blog I as I mentioned last time signed up for my course [PPE BA (hons)], selected my first module (DD101; Introducing the Social Sciences) and, subject to finance I'm all ready to go for February 2013. I think the emphasis here needs to be on subject to finance. Admittedly the OU could not have been more helpful in this respect, the original call handler talked me through everything I would need to do and done a quick eligibility check and they even sent a form out with helpful accompanying notes. Admittedly I had been a bit over keen and my form had already been printed off the website and posted in by this point. The form itself wasn't too stressful but did cause much concern re my name change which I'm hoping is a small and easily understood change (literally just a good old fashioned taking of my husbands name post wedding) but nonetheless its been filled in, signed and posted for about 2 weeks now.
Today I finally heard back from them but just with a letter saying they would be in touch soon and no return of the documents I had to send in with the form? I clearly have no clue what this means whether this is positive, negative or standard but at least it confirms my application got there in (hopefully) one piece. The other positive is that it gave me my reference number which has now been sent through to OU and moved my homescreen loading bar a few centimeters closer to the end.
The other main update from today which, although not strictly related to the 'failing at being a student' theme of this blog is that I've finally signed up for next years Great North Run. I ran my first half marathon at this years run and absolutely couldn't wait to do it again, I loved the training and the day itself was an amazing experience so when I got the email to say I could sign up fora guaranteed place for the next 3 year I immediately nagged the Mr into letting me sign up as my combined Birthday/Christmas present. The amazing memories of this years run coupled with a recent family illness giving me yet another charity to want to raise funds for means I'm absolutely desperate for next years run to come around.
Next year might be busy but that's what I like and I absolutely cannot wait for it!
Tuesday, 27 November 2012
The inevitable introduction.
As you might have guessed by the lack of a time line this is my very first post on my very new blog and therefore falls into the incredibly dull but always necessary 'introduction post' category. There's no exciting or to be honest vaguely interesting way to do this so I suppose I should get on with it...
A massive hello and welcome to my blog everyone! I'm Caroline, I'm a 23 year old mum & wife from the north east, I have a massively fulfilling (*ahem*) full time call centre job and I've just today signed up for an OU course and can now add 'Student' on to the ever growing list of responsibilities on my introduction.
Just for a little bit of background I should point out that after falling pregnant with my daughter at 17 I left education with a grand total of 3 GCSE's graded above a C and although in many ways my life has worked out incredibly well I've always felt like I have something of a score to settle when it comes to education. After having my daughter I started a full time hairdressing apprenticeship and went on to work in 2 full time salon jobs for 4 years before a brief stint as a charity fundraiser and eventually fell into my current job. As anyone who has ever worked in a call centre will tell you its a reasonably easy job but an endless future in it fills you with the most complete pit-of-your-stomach terror that you eventually have to take action.
I think that, coupled with what has been in all honesty a pretty tough year (not to mention some changes to the university funding system) are what led me to sign up for this course. At the time of writing this I am precisely 10 days away from turning 24 and admittedly freaking the flip out about it. Like I said before I've always had a sense of needing to bury my demons when it comes to education and have looked into going back to college and uni in the past but through various circumstances the timing and situation has never been right. Maybe previous plans falling through are the reason why, after finding out through an acquaintance (OK, a Facebook friend) that OU part time courses now qualified for a student fee loan a week ago I spent several days obsessively reading through their website to find out everything I could as well as looking on several external sites for balance. I have eventually settled on a course; BA (hons) Politics, Philosophy & Economics (if you're interested) and after several unsuccessful attempts to register online (bad omen?) called OU up.
I spoke to a wonderful, lovely and helpful man in the call centre who's name I completely forgot to write down (you'd think I'd know better given my own experience) who got me an account set up, registered me on the course, reserved my place on my first module and even gave a bit of advice of applying for my loan.
So that's it done. I'm officially registered with OU (pending fees loan) and I have (as is the done thing) even set up this blog to trying and document what comes next.
I don't for a moment imagine juggling parenting, marriage, a full time job and a degree, along with next years increasing to-do list including moving house and running my second half marathon will be easy but I, luckily, love being kept busy. And whats life without a few minor breakdowns along the way!
A massive hello and welcome to my blog everyone! I'm Caroline, I'm a 23 year old mum & wife from the north east, I have a massively fulfilling (*ahem*) full time call centre job and I've just today signed up for an OU course and can now add 'Student' on to the ever growing list of responsibilities on my introduction.
Just for a little bit of background I should point out that after falling pregnant with my daughter at 17 I left education with a grand total of 3 GCSE's graded above a C and although in many ways my life has worked out incredibly well I've always felt like I have something of a score to settle when it comes to education. After having my daughter I started a full time hairdressing apprenticeship and went on to work in 2 full time salon jobs for 4 years before a brief stint as a charity fundraiser and eventually fell into my current job. As anyone who has ever worked in a call centre will tell you its a reasonably easy job but an endless future in it fills you with the most complete pit-of-your-stomach terror that you eventually have to take action.
I think that, coupled with what has been in all honesty a pretty tough year (not to mention some changes to the university funding system) are what led me to sign up for this course. At the time of writing this I am precisely 10 days away from turning 24 and admittedly freaking the flip out about it. Like I said before I've always had a sense of needing to bury my demons when it comes to education and have looked into going back to college and uni in the past but through various circumstances the timing and situation has never been right. Maybe previous plans falling through are the reason why, after finding out through an acquaintance (OK, a Facebook friend) that OU part time courses now qualified for a student fee loan a week ago I spent several days obsessively reading through their website to find out everything I could as well as looking on several external sites for balance. I have eventually settled on a course; BA (hons) Politics, Philosophy & Economics (if you're interested) and after several unsuccessful attempts to register online (bad omen?) called OU up.
I spoke to a wonderful, lovely and helpful man in the call centre who's name I completely forgot to write down (you'd think I'd know better given my own experience) who got me an account set up, registered me on the course, reserved my place on my first module and even gave a bit of advice of applying for my loan.
So that's it done. I'm officially registered with OU (pending fees loan) and I have (as is the done thing) even set up this blog to trying and document what comes next.
I don't for a moment imagine juggling parenting, marriage, a full time job and a degree, along with next years increasing to-do list including moving house and running my second half marathon will be easy but I, luckily, love being kept busy. And whats life without a few minor breakdowns along the way!
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