2 Mar 2015

Studying with the OU when pregnant

I'm a little over halfway through my fifth and sixth uni modules. It's going quite well, and I'm astonished that this is my penultimate year. I started 37 months ago!
I'm also halfway through my third pregnancy.

Pregnancy has given uni work a new dimension of difficulty that I didn't expect:

 - It is much, much harder to not procrastinate. I have lost all self-discipline. If I want to sit and watch two hours of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and wail, then I do. I'm not particularly behind, but I do struggle to juggle it all.

- It is harder to remember everything. Baby brain is, unhappily, not a total myth. Some days I'm fine. Some days, I'm wading through mental custard.

- Pregnancy is not an illness. Alas, it causes me to be rather ill. Several months of morning all-day sickness, a wonky hip, sciatica, SPD, anaemia, and sheer exhaustion has somewhat knocked me for six. All these things are either resolving or in line for treatment, so hopefully I should feel better soon, but I recommend you aim for your first trimester to be in the summer break!

- My working habits have altered. Before, I got all my work done in the morning when I was full of the joys of spring. Now, I'm fairly useless first thing in the morning, and completely useless mid-afternoon. I have to work round it.

Despite all this, I'm doing OK. I actually got a pass one in my first level 3 TMA - my first ever pass one in an essay-based subject. I've dropped off a bit since then, but I'm hoping for a pass two overall. TMA writing is hard, because I feel woolly a lot of the time - not to mention stressed! It's so hard to remember everything and write something incisive.
The real challenge will be that I don't finish this year until I'm 36 weeks pregnant. I've got an EMA, which should be OK because I can put that together over time. It's the exam that worries me. Not so much from a "WHAT IF I GO INTO LABOUR???!!?!?" perspective, because that's unlikely. It's more about the sitting-uncomfortably-for-three-hours. BUT I WILL COPE!

Then I get my results around when the baby's due, when they'll have become a distant memory in a haze of sleepless feeds. So, hurrah!

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