Ian Milner

Undergrad student testimonial

I am a 47 yr old divorced father of two, and live in Cheshire with my partner and her son, although my kids (17 and 14) live in the Midlands. I do see them regularly, so that takes up some of my time at weekends. I work for a paint process management contractor at Jaguar Land Rover in Liverpool, and have quite a varied job. I have a background in Chemical Engineering, and my speciality is Automotive Paint Application. It is quite an interesting and varied job, I work as Supervisor, sometimes Manager, of a team of 18 staff and also act as a Process Engineer for Jaguar Land Rover. My career background has included sales, marketing, and various operations management positions, so I found my OU course very well related to my job. Having said this, with B203, I really struggled to get my work-life balance right. I leave home at 06:00 to go to work, very rarely get back until 17:00, and go to bed at 22:00 for work the next day, so fitting in time for dinner, some time with my partner, and kids at the weekend meant study was squeezed in between dinner and bed nearly every night, and a few hours each day at the weekend.

I chose the OU, as I cannot afford to give up work to continue study, and from all of the distance learning organisations available, the OU is by far the most reputable. There are a lot of alternative affiliated courses available, but I believe the OU puts its students' interests first, as opposed to other more commercially orientated organisations. Also my father studied with the OU several years ago, and found his degree worked well for him, as it is held in high esteem by employers.

I have completed B120, B121, and just finished B203. I found B203, a real struggle in terms of workload, but very interesting and well set out. My criticism of the course was that it should have been a couple of months longer in order to get the full benefit from the course content. This was common to other students. We found that to complete the TMA's on time, we had to sometimes not complete all of the exercises we were asked to do, and certain parts of the course were so interesting, I wanted to spend more time on them than I had.

I have achieved the Certificate in Business, and want to progress to the Diploma, and then the Degree. However I have studied for over two years without a break, and the next course, B201, starts in January, so I can enjoy a rest and guilt free evenings in the summer.

The course has focused me a lot more on the management functions at work, and help me understand why things are done the way they are. My workplace has been an excellent case study, and I have drawn positives, and negatives from the management of the company, so have developed a lot of confidence to take on a higher level management role in the future.

I have managed to use some of the tools and techniques learned from the course at work, however the management style of the company I work for is a touch parochial, so I intend to use my learning in the future, when I gain more autonomy at work.

All three of my tutors have been very good. I have had one tutor with a financial background and two with marketing, whose inputs, mainly in day schools have been invaluable. However I am lucky in that the course material was very well laid out, so I didn't need to pester them much! Also with my considerable work experience, I recognised much of what I was learning in the workplace. I feel the course may have been more difficult for less mature students, and virtually impossible for a school leaver to undertake. I feel that the University of Life plays a big part in OU courses.

I thought the way the courses are laid out, particularly the website based structure with reference books was very easy to follow. The Tutor Group Forum was interesting, though sadly on this course, such was the time pressure, that I did not have the time to contribute as much as I would have liked to. Rather than lock myself away, I found I can sit in an armchair with my partner in the same room, armed with laptop, textbook, notepad and pencil. This has avoided several domestics! I have had to lock myself away on occasion to complete TMAs and revision, but I am lucky that I can totally absorb myself in the course material, and ignore the telly.

I would definitely recommend OU study to anyone, in fact I have already shown work colleagues, and some of my suppliers what I am doing, and they were all very impressed with the course structure.