{"id":4178,"date":"2016-10-18T16:12:46","date_gmt":"2016-10-18T15:12:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ounews.co\/?p=4178"},"modified":"2016-10-18T16:12:46","modified_gmt":"2016-10-18T15:12:46","slug":"youngest-law-graduate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/business-law\/law\/youngest-law-graduate\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the OU&#8217;s youngest ever law graduate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Completing her degree at the age of just 18, Zahra Alidina is The Open University&#8217;s youngest ever law graduate.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-4316 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/image2-e1476803561374-300x284.jpg\" alt=\"Zahra Alidina\" width=\"334\" height=\"316\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/image2-e1476803561374-300x284.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/image2-e1476803561374.jpg 560w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 334px) 100vw, 334px\" \/>Zahra left school at the age of 13 to pursue law related subjects at GCSE and A-Level through home education. Completing her A-Levels at just 15, she found it difficult to get into traditional universities because of her age. After a detailed interview with The Open University, Zahra was accepted onto the law degree programme and her OU study journey began.<\/p>\n<h2>&#8216;Passion for law&#8217;<\/h2>\n<p>Zahra said: &#8220;I&#8217;ve had a passion for law from a young age &#8211; \u00a0I always spent as much free time as I could visiting public galleries, reviewing cases and following them. I spent time at The Old Bailey and the Royal Courts of Justice; it was fascinating seeing all those high profile cases happening and I decided I wanted to be one of those Barristers practicing.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I feel very lucky to have been given the opportunity to embark on a career that I have always wanted to do, as well as being fortunate enough to be confident enough to know and pursue what I love and what I wanted to do from such a young age.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h2>Incredible support<\/h2>\n<p>Zahra says that one of the biggest challenges to distance learning is being disciplined and self-motivated; she had to work hard to bring her writing style up to the standard required for degree-level law.<\/p>\n<p>She said: &#8220;I had an incredible amount of support from my own peers, \u00a0students, and tutors at the OU. I am very ambitious and I work incredibly hard; it&#8217;s amazing to think that if all these people believed in me I could believe in myself as well.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Watch the video of Zahra explaining her experience of being a student with the OU:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/player.open.ac.uk\/embed\/266bb1b334\" width=\"480\" height=\"270\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Find out more about studying Law with The Open University:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/law-school.open.ac.uk\/\">The Open University Law School<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/law-school.open.ac.uk\/study\">Studying Law with the OU<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.open.edu\/openlearn\/society\/the-law\">\u00a0Free learning on Open Learn<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Completing her degree at the age of just 18, Zahra Alidina is The Open University&#8217;s youngest ever law graduate. Zahra left school at the age of 13 to pursue law related subjects at GCSE and A-Level through home education. Completing her A-Levels at just 15, she found it difficult to get into traditional universities because [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":4365,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,18],"tags":[996,1282,2135,2136,2468,2475],"class_list":["post-4178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-law","category-student-stories","tag-graduate","tag-law","tag-student","tag-student-experience","tag-young","tag-zahra-alidina"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}