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!
