Friday 19 September 2008

A most remarkable turn of events

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I was a late arrival to the world of higher education - I started my undergraduate degree at 29. I loved it. I have been plotting my return ever since, but being perennially skint has made this a complex undertaking. I have this attachment to, you know - eating and stuff. And housing -yup - I'm big on paying the rent.

Birkbeck College is one of the schools of University College London, and they offer part-time post graduate courses that are taught in evenings and on weekends. I applied last year, and was accepted for the LLM in Law and Political Justice, but all hell broke loose this time last year (death, pestilence, disease etc), funding fell through, and I deferred entry.

This year, being still skint (*sigh*), I applied for their scholarship programme, but was rejected. I wasn't really surprised - I was neck deep and sinking in a project from hell at work and barely managed to get a coherent application in. I figured, well, obviously the timing's not right. You can't push these things too hard - and it would be hard - juggling 60 hour work weeks with a part-time Masters is insane, right?

Yesterday I got an email from Birkbeck. They have additional funds, my scholarship application was shortlisted in the last round, and I've been awarded a full fees bursary for my degree.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I start in two weeks.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Processing this has been made more difficult by the fact that I was celebrating last night (ahem) and I was dreadfully, horrifically hung over this morning. I had to chair two meetings and attend two more and I am not sure how I even got through today. I am so so glad to be home and no longer trying to look enthused about how our new accounting procedures are going to affect the coding on my project lines.

I'm ecstatic.

I am not sure how I am going to get through the next 6 weeks or so.

1 comment:

Geosomin said...

squeee!
Full fee bursary?
As my Dad would say: hot damn and hallelujah! :)
That is fantastic. Absolutely.
It just goes to show that life/fate/karma/popeonarope has a thing or two to say about how things turn out for you...a bit of an apology for the not being able to go before, perhaps.
I'll indeed raise a toast of the berry beer tonight. I confess to a bit of green jealousy -if I could find a MSc program project worth sinking my free time (ha) into for a Master's degree on weekends and evenings I'd jump at the chance, instead of helping everybody else get theirs...
Congrats.
Do you get to wear a funny hat when you're done?