Marie has CFS, dyslexia,
autism and severe social anxiety. She tells us how she went from leaving
mainstream school with no qualifications to her name, to graduating with a BSc
in Psychology.
Education never seemed
like it was meant for people like me. It was for smart people with a chance of
being successful. Growing up, my family made it clear I was too thick for
school and school taught me I wasn’t worth the effort. Even so, I loved maths
and I didn’t need to be well-read to get it. Its rules and structure helped it
all make sense and I secretly dreamed of being a maths teacher. But I found
everything else difficult, especially when work turned to reading. Words would
jump around on the page, I’d fall behind and inevitably fell through the
cracks. No one was willing to stick their neck out or waste their time trying
to help me, and if I’m honest, by the time I was facing my GCSEs, I had been
diagnosed with CFS and as a result, my mental health was in such a bad place I
wouldn’t have been able to accept the help anyway. I left school with no
qualifications, no understanding of my needs and no self-esteem.
In my late twenties,
as my mental health improved, I started to look at areas of my life I was
unhappy with and kept coming back to education. By now I’d also been diagnosed
with dyslexia, Autism and social anxiety and had found small ways to make the
words on a page “behave”. I knew I was smarter than people thought, and I had
more to offer the world. I spent two years building up the courage to get back
into education and re-take my GCSEs. I started science at the local college and
English in an adult learning facility. Sadly, with science I found the
pressures of attending weekly, sitting with people I didn’t know and a teacher
that didn’t understand me all too much. I didn’t feel I could ask for extra
support and dropped the science course after just six weeks. With English, the
teacher was so much more accommodating. She spotted my grey overlay and spoke
with me after the first lesson and asked if there was any way she could help me.
I’ll admit I cried, a lot. I’d never had that offer before and it was more
kindness than I’d expected. She gave up nearly an hour of her own time that
afternoon and we came up with a plan. She set most of my work for me to do at
home and when I was there, she didn’t pick on me to answer questions or read
aloud unless I volunteered. She let me email her if I had questions I couldn’t
voice in class and, most importantly, she helped build my confidence. When I
got my ‘A’ grade, I’m not sure which of us was happier!
Having this proof that
I wasn’t stupid spurred me on. I wasn’t satisfied with just getting my GCSEs,
but I knew I could never commit to going to college or university every single
day when there were times my anxiety left me housebound for weeks at a time.
Then I saw an advert
for the Open University. The idea of distance learning had never occurred to me
before. But after signing up, I informed them I had additional needs and both
the OU staff and the tutors couldn’t have been more supportive. The tutors made
regular contact and I was constantly directed to areas of extra support. While
I didn’t use them, they also have grants and specialist equipment available for
students with additional needs. Tutorials are done online (with a few optional
in-person ones throughout the year). You can join in via voice or text and the
tutorials are recorded so you can watch later. Being able to access these
materials whenever convenient was really helpful and it allowed me to study at
my own pace.
It wasn’t all plain
sailing though. A bout of serious illness saw me completing assignments from a
hospital bed in my second year. Other times, I got overwhelmed and even
questioned continuing and there were whole weeks where I couldn’t face picking
up a book.
Learning has never
come easy to me, but making adjustments and finding what suited me meant education
didn’t need to be out of reach. I plan on continuing my studies now and with distance
learning I have tons of options for how I’ll do it.
Would you ever
consider distance learning? If you could go back into education, what would you
study and what would you change to make it easier?
