While I was at school I never enjoyed education. Sixth form was ok, but I always did the bare minimum which resulted in me barely scraping the minimum A-Levels. I also have awful money control. Put £100 in my hand and I will have spent it on something by the end of the day, with each purchase accompanied by me saying “ooh shiny”. I also have £500 come out of my account in direct debits each month too, which combined with the previous point, means my bank account is more dry than a camels gooch within a couple of weeks of being paid.
So with those points in mind, I’ve seriously been considering going to University. Numerous unanswered job applications over the past few months tell me that some GCSE’s and A-Levels are no longer good enough to acquire a job that pays £20,000+ per year, so a degree of some sort is required. But I’m still not entirely sure what to do. Due to the money situation I would like to study at Oxford Brookes as this means I can easily commute in and out each day, and still live at home to keep costs down a bit. Sure its not quite the same Uni experience, but it is meeting new people, and those new people I’m sure would drag me kicking and screaming to some pubs and bars after lectures. But best of all, three month summer holiday. Yes please!!
For a while I’ve been very, very tempted into doing the social work course they offer. I have been interested in social work for quite a while, and since that incident where the blind, deaf and dumb social workers completely failed to notice ‘Baby P’ being beaten to death, the local councils are in desperate need of social workers. Indeed, looking on the jobs section of their website, starting salary for that role is £30,000. Yes there are some downsides, for example you do need to be cautious and treat each case with care. Don’t remove a baby from a household that isn’t at risk, and make sure you spot the ones that are at risk early. Lots of red tape and paperwork bogging you down, and you also receive the wrath of the general public. Although I work in customer services, I already do receive my fair share of wrath.
The only trouble is I’m still not too sure about it. I’m still not 100% about it, which is annoying me. I’ve got my dream jobs swimming around in my head, and neither of them I have the intelligence or the finances to do. Not unless the boss of Jaguar reads this and knocks on my front door tomorrow. I also wouldn’t mind doing a course in photography as this is something I’ve always loved doing; however in the long term what sort of job prospects are there? Setting up my own business is too risky, and most other photography work is freelance, which I do not want. So the best thing to do would be to get a higher salary job, then spend money to buy a decent camera and do photography as a hobby.
So today I took a deep breath and logged onto the UCAS webpage, and immediately regretted it. Why does it need to be so extensive? Also because I was rushing, it took me some time (and quite a lot of swearing) to find my Country of Origin. Obviously they were being kind to put United Kingdom at the top, but in my haste I immediately scrolled down to ‘U’ only to find nothing there. So I tried ‘B’ for Britain, nothing there. ‘E’ for England also showed no results, which is when the swearing began. However I prevailed and now all that remains is for me to obtain a reference and write a personal statement.
Now, neither of these I understand. For the purposes of education, not to mention education I am paying for, why do they need to know that much about me? Why should my hobbies and interests and personality affect my studies? Does someone who writes poetry and helps abandoned puppies get priority to someone who plays Warhammer and practices witchcraft? Sadly it must be done, so over the next week expect me to be emailing you drafts of my personal statement for your advice.
I’m now also faced with the nightmare of applying for student loans and bursaries. I do not do finance, see paragraph one of this post for details. Just reading the information made my eyes want to bleed, and why can’t websites just tell you the information rather then send you off to the a separate webpage? Again for my friends currently at University, you can expect many texts and MSN messages beginning with “help” over the coming weeks.
Luckily though, I have noticed that if you study social work you are entitled to a non-repayable bursary from the NHS. Yes it means more online forms and more swearing, but ultimately will make life much easier. I might even afford a tiny bit of a social life with that.
So yeah, all I need to do is finish UCAS, apply for a student loan, apply for the bursary, and also see whether spaces are still available on this course seeing how late it is in the year. Simples!
