Changed your mind....?

Hello! A question on the Ask Me site recently led me to reminisce about the process that you pre-university folk are still engaged in: UCAS. I came to university in a pretty roundabout way and I think it's important to reassure you that even if things don't go quite to plan, or you find yourself in a minor identity crisis, you will find a way to be happy in what you end up doing. It was around this time three years ago that I was back in the second year of my BTEC National Diploma in art and design, having left school during my AS levels due to illness and after a brief dalliance with an access to higher education course where I studied English and Politics. This access course was really engaging and enjoyable, and I truly believed that a degree in English Literature was the way forward for me because, to be frank, I'd been educated in a very traditional girls' grammar school which left me with a minor complex relating to the validity of non-‘academic' courses. By the time I realised my mistake and reconfirmed my deep-seated love of the creative problem solving involved in visual communication, I had already used up all my UCAS choices on English Literature degrees.

So what was I to do? It was quite humiliating to tell everyone that I'd changed my mind again, so I had to be totally sure that I really did want to embark on this change in direction. At first I thought the solution would be to try to appeal directly to the universities, but that turned out not to be an option. Then I found out about UCAS Extra, which is a system available to indecisive individuals like me, as well as people who don't get into any of their chosen courses. It involves having to reject any of your current offers/pending applications and, to add to the risk factor, you can only make one new choice. I chose Illustration & Animation at Kingston because not only is it well respected but it has a similar culture to my BTEC (the second year of which is the equivalent of, and undertaken with the students from, the art and design foundation course) in that there is 6 day a week access to studios that are dedicated to each course and emphasis on regular peer to peer and peer-tutor interaction.

Luckily, I was on a really good, supportive course and all the fantastic tutors were dab hands at helping us students put our portfolios together. I went up for my interview, had a good conversation with the tutors, and got in! The risk had paid off and what's more, the course more than fulfilled my appetite for academia, especially with writing my dissertation in this last year. My appetite wasn't just fulfilled through written tasks though - there is an emphasis on research and solid conceptual thinking in every project, and 3 years on, despite notable ups and downs in my relationship to the course, I'm still happy with the decision I made and the risk that I took. I also know that those ups and downs I just mentioned are a pretty good sign: it shows just how invested I am in my studies, both emotionally and intellectually, and I think that's important to recognise.