To go part time or not...

This question has been looming over me for several moths now.  I have recently had to decide whether to go part time this year or not, here is the decision process that I have been through, and ultimately the decision made.


I know that I am not (really) well enough to do my course.  My health declined in my firs year, and is likely to do the same this year and the next unless something changes.  This is not a sustainable pattern!

If I were to go part time it would make it much less likely for my grades to be effected by my health.  I don't want to look back on my degree knowing that I could have done better if I only I had given myself more time.  (I've spoken about the way that my grades affect my health here.)

Degrees cost a lot of money and take a lot of time, this is probably the final part of my education that I will ever do, I must do it right.



At the start of my second year I turned 22, most of my school friends have graduated in the summer just gone.  If I choose to go part time now it will make my degree five years long and I will be nearly 26 by the time I graduate.

When I was at 6th form college I was a part time student, which was fine for the first two years alongside my school friends.  Once they had left I stayed behind and started making friends with the newcomers who were two school years below me.  I really noticed the age difference and struggled to cope, I wasn't very happy at all.   I don't want to knowingly put myself through the same experience at university.

Recently I had an appointment with a student advisor at my university.  She told me that all students are funded for four years  by Student Finance, in case of a resit year or study abroad.  A fifth year of study is not automatically funded.  If I go part time on medical grounds I will have a good chance of getting funding, but can only apply a few months before starting my fifth year.  This means that if I go part time now, I won't know if I will be fully funded until three years time! The advisor also couldn't guarantee how much funding I would get if my request is accepted.  University fees would be halved for any years that I do part time, but accommodation and living costs etc would obviously be the same as normal.  This is a big risk to take.  I was advised very strongly towards doing a four year degree if at all possible.

May of my friends are taking a year out, so will be at university for a total of 4 years, meaning there will be plenty of people around that I know I'm my fourth year, but not my fifth.

Decision:

You guessed it, I have decided to stick it out this year as a full time student (or at least close to that with some exams over the summer), and then go part time next year to make my degree programme a total of 4 years!

London, Part 2

Oh dear, it's taken me a while to get the second half of this post up!  Its because I've been unwell, but also because I found it difficult to write.  There are some negative comments in here, but I wanted to be honest!  On the whole I thoroughly enjoyed London, but there were some things that were not very M.E. friendly, and I wanted to be real about that.

Find part 1 here for more about what I got up to when I went to London!  

This part is going to be about the attractions that we went to such as shops, museums and galleries.

One of the first things on or list was to visit the Tower of London.  I wasn't in a wheelchair so could technically go any where I wanted.  However there were lots of steps and uneven paths and very few places to sit down.  I'm glad to say I've been, but I wouldn't go again due to the lack of accesability.  I'm sure they have done there best to make things as easy as possible, there is a limit to what they can do without ruining the integrity of the building!  It was very busy and a lot of the buildings were hot and noisy.  Perhaps it is somewhere to visit when it is not prime holiday season!  

My grandpa had lent us his fold away stool which was really useful for queues, I'm ok walking on my feet but am terrible at standing around.  It came in really handy for queuing at places like the Tower of London.  Even for bus stops and at the tube station!

The London eye was obviously a must, we bought fast track ticket, which saved a lot of queuing time and did the 4D experience before hand which was free and I would recommend.  It really set the scene and was a nice little extra, I am surprised at how much it stayed with me afterwards.  It was a good thing to do at the end of the holiday because we were able to recognise the different buildings that we had been too.  I would love to do it at night in the future!  I took the fold away stool with me, and was glad of it!  There weren't enough seats for everyone, and I was able to move the stool around the pod to get different views.  It was great to be able to sit right up close next to the glass!

We went to a few of the old traditional shops like Harrods, Liberties, Selfridges and Hamleys.  I would love to go back to Harrods ...it mad me feel fancy!  There is so much to see there that you could stay for hours and still not be done!  If I get the chance to go again, I would love to spend more time in the food hall and visit the haberdashery.

I was impressed with the museums and art galleries, most of which had wheelchairs to borrow and good accessibility.  It would have been very difficult to take a wheelchair on the bus and tube, so this was a great option.  I did have a spot of trouble in the Science Museum (see below) but for a different person on a different day it could have been fine!   It so great that all of these things are free, for a city that is famous for being expensive we didn't spend very much!

As I study biochemistry I had a special interest in the Science Museum.  The highlight for me was seeing the reconstruction of the first DNA model.  We had studied how this was made in my first year!  Unfortunately we didn't stay long though as the accessibility really wasn't good!  They persuaded me to use one of there extra special wheelchairs, as opposed to the normal ones that they had.  Quite frankly it ruined the trip!  I'm sure those wheelchairs are really good for some people, but we really didn't get on with mine!  There was no suspension and it was really difficult for whoever was pushing me to steer.  For a several thousand pound chair this isn't acceptable!  I think they were designed for people who are self-propelling.  ...but no one had told us that!  The lift system was also a problem, not all of the floors can be reached by all lifts.  Dad ad I spent a very long time trying to get to one floor in particular, in the end we had to go down to the ground floor and almost the entire length of the building just to use another lift so we could get to the floor we wanted.  There were no staff on hand to help, and the signs were badly labeled.  It was also very hot and noisy on the upper floors.  We ended up leaving to go to the V&A instead!

The V&A was my favourite museum!  Perhaps because we hadn't planned to go, so it benefited from having the element of surprise.  I was quite tired by this point, so only properly looked at the fashion section.  We skimmed through some of the other sections too and had a look of the architecture of the building which was amazing.  The best bit by far was discovering the courtyard (that I now know to be the John Madejski Garden).  It has a large shallow pool surrounded by grass followed by pavement.  On the day that we were there it was really hot and there were children running around in there swimming things and playing in the pool.  I really enjoyed sitting around the edge with my Mum eating snacks.  There was a little kiosk and lots of tables and chairs, we even found a spot of shade.  The courtyard had a lovely atmosphere, and it felt like we had found a mini oasis in the middle of London!  

We did so many other things in London, I have written about the bits that stood out for both the right and wrong reasons.  I was surprised at how easy it was to manage form an energy point of view, and how much there was to do for free!  All of the credit goes to my Dad, he planed everything and did a really good job!  I never would have expected to have such an enjoyable time in a big city whilst so unwell.  It would be impossible to see everything in four days, but I now feel that I have done London!  

I hope you all had lovely summers too, now on to autumn! 

Perspective

This post was written in early September and for one reason or another I didn't get around to posting it at the time.  I feel that it is still relevant though, so here it is!

I have realised recently that I have lost my perspective on my health.  About three years into my illness I was really good at taking the small victories, and being happy about my achievements.

Since being at university I have been surrounded by people who (with a few exceptions) are healthy.  I haven't been spending as much time with the on line M.E. community due to uni work, and it is really taking it's toll.  People at uni haven't known me for very long and (through no fault of their own) don't have a very good gauge of my health or what is "good" for me, nor how far I have come (my fault for not telling them enough about it).

In this environment I have begun to compare my self to others and expect more of myself than is realistic.  I have enjoyed the anonymity of being at university, as it is nice to get the feeling of escaping for a while.  But being healthy or "normal" is not a reality, I will always come crashing back down to earth.  

Having recently received my end of year grades for first year (despite having to take one and a half modules or three exams over the summer) I have done well; grades that any healthy person would be happy with.  But I was not... although I was not disappointed with my results, they were what I expected.  I did not feel any satisfaction in getting them.  They just were.   I always think of what I could have got if I was healthy, not how I did despite being ill.  At every round-up of grades at the end of term, I look for the assessments that I could have done better in "if it wasn't for my M.E", and I discount them form my overall grade creating my new "healthy average".   

In my mind its the only grade I deserve, and I wouldn't be happy unless I couldn't pick out any assessments where I feel my performance was affected by my health.  At the most, my ill grades have been four whole grade boundaries below my "healthy average" which is a non-existent benchmark of course.  So as I'm sure you can imagine these lower grades really do affect my overall grade.

In my mind every low grade is an off day, a blip in my otherwise normal life.  But looking back over the year, there have been quite a few blips, and my life doesn't seem as normal as it is in my head.  You could almost say that these days are enough to constitute a chronic illness... oh wait I do have one of those.