If at first you don't succeed, you can always try again

I don’t like to tar myself with a particular brush, but it’s a well-known fact that I’m a drop out.

I don’t try to hide it any more as I once may have done but yes; I dropped out of high school. Halfway through my A Levels I got sick and left and at the time, never looked back. When I started studying for my degree with the OU I sort of felt like I’d turned a corner; I’d shed the ghost of the high school dropout which had haunted me silently over the seven successive years and began on a brand spanking new fresh mission which I WOULD see to fruition.

Well, it never happens like that does it! I got through my first two years fairly unscathed, struggled a bit towards the end of my second course (they were still called that then) due to a relationship breakdown, but scraped through nonetheless. Then, because I was newly single with no friends and far too much time on my hands I signed up for 90 points worth of study at the same time. Big mistake. Not very long into one of the courses I realised it was too much and withdrew from it. Then not very long into the other one I realised I’d bitten off way more than I could chew in signing up for a level 3 science course with no background in science and withdrew from that one too. What didn’t help was that by this point I had started seeing someone who lived in Sheffield so a lot of my time was spent travelling back and forth to see him (he didn’t drive and suffered from M.E. so all travelling was down to me).

Knocked me for six
Anyway, a few months later he moved in with me and I signed up for yet another course which started off really well but then something happened which threw everything totally upside down; my 21-month-old niece fell asleep on Christmas Eve and never woke up again. Now don’t get me wrong, the funeral was held in early January so by all accounts there were only a few weeks where things weren’t going ‘as normal’ but it just knocked everyone in the family for six and I found it so difficult to get back into the swing so I ended up having to forfeit that course too.

My relationship ended a few months later due to me having fallen head over heels in love with one of my best friends who has truly turned out to be the love of my life (I know, it reads like a soap opera doesn’t it, I’m really not THAT interesting). That summer I embarked on yet ANOTHER course and again, got off to a great start and was really enjoying this one and hoping it would signal my return to good solid study but then another situation occurred. The father of my ‘new’ boyfriend became ill and had to go into hospital. For weeks on end we drove back and forth to the hospital (I managed to find another one who couldn’t drive so once again I was playing chauffeur) visiting him in the hope that they’d find out what was wrong with him and then the day came – cancer. He passed away within two weeks of the news but because of that, his mother had to go into residential care as she had Alzheimer’s. So we spent the next months visiting her at the care home until eventually she passed away following a massive stroke which had left her severely brain damaged. During this time, despite my best efforts and the efforts of a very helpful and lenient tutor I fell too far behind with my studies to be able to catch up and had to drop out of that course too.

Should I have tried harder?
I was genuinely devastated, and deep down I couldn’t help but scold myself for not trying harder to keep up, I just kept thinking of the dozens of women who manage to keep studying right through pregnancy and childbirth (not literally, although I now have a mental image of a woman on a delivery table with a biology book in one hand and gas and air in the other!), and the dozens of other students who must’ve gone through the same sort of thing and still coped. Obviously my determination wasn’t strong enough.

I called a time-out on my study for a short while and returned to it in early 2010 and am pleased to say that I completed that module without any major hiccups and am now more than half way through my final undergrad module.

I'm a drop out...
So there you have it, I’m a drop out. I feel no shame, I have no regrets, I fell off the horse big style but it didn’t faze me; we live and learn and move on and get where we want to be in the end, with a little determination of course.

As a matter of interest though, here’s a couple of things I think may have helped my situation:

1. I shouldn’t have been allowed to sign up for a level 3 Science module with no prior science background; that was just suicide!
2. Signing up for 90 points at once should have been more tightly controlled, working full time and studying 90 points in one go just don’t mix for the Average Jo[sephine].
3. When I informed The OU that I would have to drop out, given the circumstances (not through choice but due to deaths in the family) the opportunity to ‘pause’ that module and maybe pick it up again at the next presentation with a minor extra fee incurrence would’ve been superb. I didn’t WANT to drop out, but circumstances meant I just couldn’t keep up!

Has anyone else been through something similar or have any suggestions which may be useful? I would think it’s in the OU’s best interests to reduce the rates of ‘drop outs’ so if you have any suggestions SPEAK UP!!