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Melanie Devine
I always regretted that I had never gone on to further education when I was eighteen. I did achieve three A levels at school, but not at sufficiently high grades to get a place at university (this was in the early 1970s). I joined the WRNS and subsequently married and had two children. It was only when they were at school on a full-time basis that I was able to consider studying again. At that point in my life I was in my mid-thirties, and fed up with being "just a secretary" – I wanted to have the qualifications to move me into a different role with new possibilities.
Originally I intended to follow the Literature line within the Arts because I had always enjoyed that subject at school. However, once I started the foundation level I immediately became attracted to the History line. This was definitely not the history I learned at school, which just consisted of taking copious notes and regurgitating them for exams. Here we were being asked to consider why things happened, and to look at source material in an analytical way. We were even encouraged to look at newspapers, cartoons, artefacts and wills, and to question their validity and what they had to tell us. This was exciting and innovative – and for once there were no definitive right answers! My opinions, as long as I could justify them, were judged on their merits and this gave me increasing confidence in my ability.
It is sometimes very difficult to fit my studies in with the rest of my life. My husband was in the Royal Navy, which meant that I was frequently playing Dad as well as Mum to my two sons. Summer school bookings were always a matter of some concern as he was frequently abroad, and I have to admit that I tried to select courses which did not have compulsory summer schools in case there were problems.
I found the easiest way for me to study was to get up early in the morning and do at least one hour's reading or note-taking before the house erupted. Often the TV programmes were at awkward times, so I would video them and watch them at 6am on a Saturday. TMA writing was done on a Sunday, after a week of preparing notes, bibliographies and other materials. My husband did comment recently that it was nice to be able to use the dining room table for meals again! My friends gave up asking me if I had seen such-and-such a TV programme the previous evening because I watched very little recreational television for the nine years of OU study.
One problem I did have was using the computer to write an essay. You have to become quite selfish and risk the wrath of two game-playing fiends and a husband who asks "why do you have to write in the evening when you have had all day to do it?" while at the same time expecting clean white shirts for work, meals on the table, the house clean and tidy, not forgetting that I was also in paid employment and during the day I too was working!
I think that there are a wide range of things that I have enjoyed in my Arts studies: the actual learning process, and the feeling of satisfaction when I get a good mark for a TMA; meeting the various tutors and the other students; the activities in which I have been involved; and also the interest it has inspired in me to go out and find out things.
The actual learning process is hard work and I become very cross when I hear people decrying Open University degrees as if they are not as academically rigorous as those from conventional universities. When I opened the TMA booklet for the first time in the Foundation year I was ready to give up straight away – how could I possibly answer any of those essay titles? But by the end of the year I was confident that I could write 2,000 words on those subjects, and that I had something to contribute to the debate, not that I was always right by any means.
As I homed in on the history courses during the next 5 years I became more critical of my skills and more determined to produce a piece of work which would satisfy me as much as my tutor. I was a positive nuisance at the local library looking for current journals and new books written on the particular subjects! I also had the confidence to go out to museums, galleries and exhibitions and to look for items which would support or question the work I was currently doing. I particularly enjoyed spending time in the National Gallery looking at the Hogarth paintings, and recently returned to examine the Wilton diptych for my MA Dissertation on Richard II.
The tutors have been excellent for the most part. I find their enthusiasm for teaching the subject to a group who are equally enthusiastic to learn is totally different from what I remember at school where 42 pupils sat in a hot classroom taking endless notes without even listening to what was being said. Tutors have positively encouraged questions and debate, and pointed me towards all sorts of additional information which extended my knowledge. One in particular, whose name unfortunately I cannot remember, heard me saying that I enjoyed the book Greenmantle by John Buchan. He suggested that I should read some books by Peter Hopkirk on the subject of The Great Game and the British ambitions in central Asia. My ambition now is to save up enough to travel the Silk Road, visiting Tashkent, Samarkand, Kashgar and Bokhara to see where Connolly and Stoddart were executed by Emir Nazrullah – I would never have known about this otherwise.
On a more personal level, the friendship of fellow students from a wide range of backgrounds has been very important. From just arranging a car-full to attend more distant tutorials to spending an evening in the pub discussing the next TMA, it has widened my circle of friends. It has also been very important for me to meet people who hold different political and social points of view, which enabled me to understand alternative perspectives of historical events.
I had very little confidence when I started OU in 1990, but by 2001 I made a "cold call" to a Professor at Teesside University and at the age of 46 was accepted as a PhD student for the coming year. I certainly have come a long way, and I have enjoyed every minute of it.
Follow this link for Melanie's advice to anyone thinking of starting Arts study »