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Apparently, I’m a university student now
At 47, I have started a degree in finance, investment and banking.
That sentence makes it sound like a single, confident decision. In reality, choosing a course involved a lot of thinking about interest, money, attendance, home responsibilities and what my health would allow.
I could not simply move away and arrange the rest later. There are bills, a home and two spaniels. My body also needs consideration, although I do not recall it submitting a helpful written response to the prospectus.
I am studying online and part time. Finding a route that fitted my life was part of making the decision possible.
I want to understand the subject
Finance interests me. I enjoy patterns, analysis and understanding why something happens. The questions behind a decision are often just as absorbing as the decision itself.
Economics has already given me plenty to think about. Scarcity, choices and opportunity cost feel particularly relevant when I am deciding what to do with limited time, money and energy.
Studying those ideas does not magically make the decisions simple. It does give me a useful way to question them.
I want to do more than read lecture slides and recognise the words. I want to discuss an idea, test what I think I understand and discover the part I have missed. Preferably before I have confidently built an entire argument on it. If handwritten study notes suit you, Oxford Campus pastel A4 lined notebooks (Ad) are one option for keeping questions and lecture notes together.
Interest helps. It doesn’t do all the work.
Learning has always appealed to me. I like the moment when something clicks, and I am quite capable of becoming absorbed in an interesting subject.
That helps me want to study. It does not remove the practical work of studying, or the need to make it fit around other things.
Brain fog has been part of my experience since treatment. Physical discomfort and varying capacity also affect what a day looks like. Starting university has not suspended any of those arrangements.
I have to learn the subject and learn how to manage the process in the life I actually have.
There is also the small matter of not turning every interesting point into a separate research expedition. Sometimes following a question is useful. Sometimes I need to return to the module I was meant to be studying.
Beginning before everything is settled
I am not starting because my health, finances and future have all fallen neatly into place. I am starting while I am still working them out.
That makes the degree part of this blog’s story. It is one of the things I am doing to give myself interest, purpose and the possibility of more choices later.
I cannot tell you how the whole experience will turn out. I have only just begun. There will be things I find easier than expected, things that take more work and probably quite a few rabbit holes.
For now, being a student gives me something worthwhile to concentrate on—and a perfectly respectable explanation for having so many questions.
I’m sharing my own experience. This blog is not medical advice.