{"id":1623,"date":"2011-07-22T16:38:58","date_gmt":"2011-07-22T15:38:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/?p=1623"},"modified":"2012-07-10T11:41:01","modified_gmt":"2012-07-10T10:41:01","slug":"thinking-outside-the-socks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/?p=1623","title":{"rendered":"Thinking outside the socks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A report on the OU\u2019s women students in <em>The Times<\/em> in 1984 included an interview with Jan Hobbs, who left school at 16, received her OU degree\u00a0while aged in\u00a0her mid-40s and by this point was studying for her Honours. The reporter notes that while Jan said that\u00a0she was happy, the garden is \u2018a confusion of weeds and piles of unmatched socks sit jumbled in a chair\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>A summer school counsellor recalled how he talking with a woman who said \u2018Well you know what? My husband rang me up and he was up to his neck in it with the kids and I can&#8217;t believe I laughed\u2019. She then said \u2018And I don&#8217;t miss my <em>Mr Sheen<\/em> a bit\u2019. I am grateful to the Society for Research into Higher Education\u00a0for the funding which enabled this\u00a0interview with Tony Whittaker by Ronald Macintyre, 4<sup>th<\/sup> January 2012, to occur.<a href=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/Mr-Sheen.jpg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-2180\" title=\"Mr Sheen\" src=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/Mr-Sheen-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Perhaps you too have snubbed Mr Sheen? If you have ever left socks to sort themselves, exerted will power over wool power, in order to get on with your studies, <a href=\"http:\/\/www8.open.ac.uk\/researchprojects\/historyofou\/\" >tell us about it<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A report on the OU\u2019s women students in The Times in 1984 included an interview with Jan Hobbs, who left school at 16, received her OU degree\u00a0while aged in\u00a0her mid-40s and by this point was studying for her Honours. The reporter notes that while Jan said that\u00a0she was happy, the garden is \u2018a confusion of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[144],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1623"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2386,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1623\/revisions\/2386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}