5 Aug 2016

Postgrad

I had a strange sense of instability and loss when I finished my degree. I'd had this idea for quite a while that IF I did well, I would do a masters. But when I actually did well, I felt completely different. A masters felt suddenly terrifying and enormous.I didn't feel clever enough to do one. I didn't feel I possessed the right skills to switch to history after four years of mainly sociology and biology. I emailed the OU to ask them what preparatory work they would advise. They actually advise a bridging course, held by Oxford University online, which costs the princely sum of £2500. I knew I couldn't afford that, and I told them so. I did, however, buy all the set texts from it in a bid to teach myself.

After some time, I received an email telling me to run through a pre-assessment to see if I had any of the right skills and broad knowledge, and to buy the main set text from the previous year to go through.

I did the pre-assessment, not expecting to do well. I got 98%.

The next step was funding the thing. As previously mentioned, my BSc cost me £5, but fortunately the government are allowing postgraduate student loans for masters courses starting this September onwards. I applied online - a very simply process, provided you know how much money you want - and then thought about how I was going to pay for the first module since I won't get any loan money until my first instalment in October but you have to pay for your modules up front.

My first idea was to put it on a credit card, but no credit card company will lend me that much cash (£3800) in one go, so I thought about a loan. The lowest APR I could get was 10%, so I looked into OUSBA loans. These are loans from the OU that you pay back over the course of your module at a fixed APR of 5%. It is, unless you can afford to pay up front, a really good way to pay for modules even with a student loan. You apply through the OU, at the same time as registering for a module. It's a swift, online process and you usually get a decision immediately.


I was accepted onto the masters course last Friday, when all hell broke loose with(in) my mummy, and I will blog about that soon. I don't even know if I want to do it now, with everything else going on, but at the same time, studying has been my lifeline, my structure and my main distraction over much other stuff over the last few years. And I know Mum wants me to get to writing my great body of historical work, so I'm doing it for her now as much as myself.


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