My First Month In
I can't quite believe it, but I am one month into my Open University Journey already! In case you don't know my story or just not up to speed with my life, it has been a dream of mine to study with the Open University for so many years I cannot remember when God planted the drive in me! I got a foundation degree in Multimedia back in 2005, but that wasn't worth the paper. Neither was it any relevance to the anti-bullying work I am doing now (or at least would be doing if it was not for this bloomin' pandemic!) Despite my years of experience working with children and young people, which date back unofficially to 1994 but officially to 2003, I felt the need to back it up with something official. This is especially the case because I could be considered an authority once my organisation is fully up and running.
My official degree won't begin until October, as that is the earliest start date from the point I got the green light to achieve this goal. But I'm not one to sit around when I could be working towards a dream, and so I decided I would take this opportunity to study one of the Open University's Access Modules. These modules are designed to give a taster to how the Open University works and trains you in the skills you need to study well for the degree. It seemed too good a chance to not undertake!
The Module I decided to study is known as People, Work and Society. From that title, you can imagine the breadth of subjects I could be examining. The sub-heading for the course is "Can People Change." and though this narrows it down slightly, the broadness of what we do cover is impressive, to say the least!
For the first few weeks, we have been looking at Child Development (a subject I have been exploring in my own time in recent years anyway,) so I couldn't have asked for a better start to the course in that respect. But there is no resting on my laurels as we have just moved on from Child Development, and we are now looking at the control people have over their own health. This means a good chunk of studying Coronary Heart Disease this week. Not something I expected to learn about to become an authority on anti-bullying, but I'm sure it will link in one day! That's the beauty of this current Module, as it lays some foundations for the next chapter and knows what opportunities those foundations will bring.
In a week or two, applications will hopefully open for the degree proper, a BA (Hons) in Childhood and Youth Studies. While I work towards that, I must not lose focus or momentum with this Module. With the subject areas of Business and Law not too far around the corner, I'm sure there will be a lot I can use to grow myself and the anti-bullying work from that.
A month in, and I still feel giddy that this is finally happening; let us hope I still think that after 80 months!
