Carrie on being a student
The best bad news of my life
On Friday 8 February I received some bad news. It wasn’t entirely unexpected but it nonetheless shook my world. Redundancy. Eight weeks’ notice of. The words rung in my ears for days like tinnitus. Gnawing away at my confidence and slowly grinding my mood down to an all-time low. I knew it was coming. The contract I had been working on was due to finish any time and there simply wasn’t any more work for me, but still, when the letter was handed to me I felt a fear far greater...
Dear Anonymous Student
Dear Anonymous Student, No, you don’t know me. You may have seen me or my face spewed somewhere on the internet but you don’t really know me, but I know you. I’ve followed your progress for a number of years now and wanted to let you know how inspiring you have been to me, albeit unknowingly. You’ve achieved so much with so much left to do; I’m in utter awe of you for your mindset. I wish I could be more like that – driven, determined and capable but instead...
Five ways the OU has changed my life
“Don’t give up on your dreams because of the time it will take to achieve them, the time will pass anyway” Anon When I embarked on my first module way-back-when, I don’t suppose anyone who knew me even entertained the notion of me completing an entire degree. In some small way I don’t think I honestly thought I would either; I was very prone to fads and bouts of peer-jealousy and most of my ideas fizzled out in a matter of weeks. My...
Multitasking
It seems I’m not very good at concentrating on more than one thing at a time. For so many years now my studies have dominated my thoughts so I’m used to them always being there, tickling my brain, reminding me that they’re around. Since the New Year my thoughts have been dominated with something else and I’m afraid my studies are falling by the wayside. Last April I had promised my legs to a charity who needed them to run the London Marathon. At the time it seemed like a...
I rode, I ran...
I rode, I ran, I ate, I relaxed, I span, I walked, I hiked, I socialised, I enjoyed. That’s how I rolled during my two weeks off work over the Christmas and New Year. You’ll notice that nowhere among that list does studying feature – that’s because I made a monumental decision to completely and utterly ignore my studies for those two weeks and you know what, that decision resulted in the best Christmas break I’ve ever had. You’d think that for someone as...
Get the balance right
We always had a ritual on Christmas morning. My Dad would wake my brother and I up at about 7:30am (we’d always sleep in), he’d make us stand impatiently at the top of the stairs while he went down and made a pot of tea (my mother couldn’t cope with Christmas morning without a pot of strong tea), then he’d shout “SANTA’S BEEN!!” and my brother and I would race down the stairs and split off to our respective ‘sides’ of the living room and...
My trip to the House of Commons
It’s not every day that a dogsbody like me gets handed the opportunity to go somewhere where formal dress is a requirement rather than an option, so when I was invited to attend a reception called ‘Transforming Lives: Serving Britain’ hosted by the Open University but held in the Speaker’s House in the Palace of Westminster - with kind permission of Mr Speaker himself the Rt Hon John Bercow MP - I couldn’t say yes quickly enough. The...
The penalties of being part-time...
I pride myself on being a part-time student; I think it takes a certain kind of person to devote themselves to part-time study. For starters it takes longer so is automatically a bigger commitment than its full time equivalent. Secondly, a lot of part-time students I know (me included) study alongside a full time job which means that we’re putting in at least 50 per cent more effort than a full time student – I doubt there are many full-time students who...
Happy (or is it?) results day!
My Facebook feed is awash with good news and celebration - that means it must be results day! Fellow Open University bods are status-updating their achievements left right and centre and, I tell you, there are some very happy people in OU land today. I didn’t realise it was results day myself, so it was only upon seeing the proclamations that I thought it wise to check my own StudentHome page and lo-and-behold I’ve passed T227 which means I can now claim...
Location, location, location? Thinking about a PhD applications
The time has come. Applications for PhD places are about to open up across the nation and I want one. When I first ‘decided’ that I wanted to strive for a PhD I was a bit clueless about how they worked. I knew the basics: three (ish) years working on a doctoral thesis, full time job equivalent, and hard work. What I didn’t know – or more accurately consider – was what would be involved in ME doing one. The sole reason I started studying...
About Carrie Walton
I dropped out of school at 17, halfway through my A Levels and got a job. I’ve worked full time ever since, but when I reached 23 I enrolled with the OU and started on a journey towards the degree I’d never stopped wanting. In 2009 and aged 29 I realised I didn’t want my journey to end and formulated a new plan which includes a masters, a PhD, research and whatever else I might be able to cram into a journey now held under the umbrella term “lifelong learning and ongoing self-improvement”.
I finished my BSc (hons) Open in December 2011 by which time I'd already started on an MA in Social Science research at Durham University with a view to doing a doctorate in the not too distant future. The OU isn’t getting rid of me that easy though, I've already signed up for a BSc (hons) in Criminology and Psychological Studies and I plan to keep studying with them for as long as grey matter will allow me to, it’s all part of my never ending lifelong learning path.
Alongside studying, I work full time for a building contractor in the North East of England as a Liaison Manager. Working is a means of affording and appreciating the things I really enjoy; mountain biking, hiking, theatre, gigs, cinema, eating out, writing, the list could go on, I just like doing things. In whatever spare time I can muster after that, I volunteer for OUSA and am a school governor.
My name is Caz (or Carrie) and this is my journey from dogsbody to doctorate…
