I’ve got my degree. A certificate arrived for me in the post the other day from The OU and it says that I’m now Carrie Anne Walton BSc Open. Hurrah, right? Hmm... Yeah. I thought I’d be more excited too.
I suspect the reason I just opened it and thought “oh yeah, nice” was because I’m still working on the ‘Hons’ part of it so the actual degree isn’t really as significant to me as it might be to others. I can’t go on and start postgraduate study until I have an honours degree so having a ‘basic degree’ is completely irrelevant.
But it’s an achievement though isn’t it. It’s nice that I’ve got the certificate now and can legitimately use the letters after my name (although I won’t, it’s a bit ostentatious I feel), but I’m far from jumping around for joy. At the beginning of my ‘journey’ way back in 2004 I might’ve felt differently. All I wanted at that point was a degree; that was the pinnacle of achievement for me but since then I’ve changed my goalposts somewhat, so the degree has been demoted and is now basically the first rung on the ladder so getting it, while still a good thing, is just not as exciting as it should be.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly not trying to downplay the achievements of anyone else who has been awarded their degree, most certainly not. It’s just that I’ve set my sights a lot higher now so this is really just a tick off my mental ‘to-do’ list. I do find it strange, however, that other things I’ve done give me a far greater sense of achievement. For so long I’ve been so eager to fill up my achievements folder with lots of colourful certificates and fill up the ‘education’ section on my CV but lately it’s been the smaller things which I’ve felt better about which have nothing to do with my studies.
It just goes to show how fluid and ephemeral hopes, dreams and plans are. You can never anticipate how these will change, but when a degree with the OU can take six years or more you ought to expect that circumstances might change.
