Last night I applied to enrol at Open University for Internet Studies. I’m kind of excited and at the same time slightly nervous about whether I will be able to do it.
I considered tertiary study years ago, but the timing never seemed right. It is amazing that the thought hasn’t re-occured until now, it seems like I’ve been at a loose end for a long time, certainly since I gave away QConnect last year.
The women I’ve met online at AYW have been a good influence. A lot of them have been to Uni, a few of them are doing post-grad studies and a couple are in the same situation as me, having never studied at tertiary level.
The big question is, will my brain handle it? My mind hasn’t exactly been getting a lot of exercise for the past couple of years!
I’ve signed up for a UniPrep course as well as my first unit in Internet Studies, so I can only give it my best shot and hope I pass!
The BA (Internet Studies) is about the human dimension of the Internet – how people network interconnect, and creatively design the Internet. This major allows students to develop key skills and knowledge of the Internet as a social technology of communication and interaction. It combines professional outcomes, scholarly creativity and technological skills with an emphasis on deeper understandings, as well as the chance for innovative, cutting-edge project work. The approach is interdisciplinary and develops skills in one or more of website design, online public communication, virtual community management analysing political and social uses of the Internet. Because of the possibility in this course to link studies with other disciplines such as media, business and computing, many options exist to create a degree program that suits individual needs and interests. Depending on their choice of units in the course, students will be prepared for work or further research in: communications; media and marketing; content management; Internet policy and regulation; online research and analysis; virtual communities; website design and development.
This was from Andrea at AYW – I decided to post it here so it could be a bit of a “pep talk” for me.
Liss, ohhh, that’s exciting 🙂 Good on you for enrolling. It is scarey but once you get into it you’ll be fine. I enrolled in this course and was all cool about it and then when my first pack of materials arrived I got this big surge of nervousness and ‘oh nooo, what have I done? Confused ‘. I had to put the package down, walk away and not look at it for a little while and then go back and open it properly once I’d really got used to the idea that it was real 🙂 Then once you get into it, there’s no looking back :).
I think it’ll be totally different from the ‘essays you struggled with at school’ just because you’re writing about things you know about – practical, useful things that are really meaningful to you at this point. I think it’s a totally different ballgame from school. I’m sure you’ll blitz it.
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