JOURNAL: The Journey Begins

I have just been offered -- and intend to accept, of course -- a place at the University of Oxford on its Undergraduate Advanced Diploma in Local History. This equates to... roughly... an intensive final year on an undergraduate History degree, or, to use another analogy, a kind of "graduate degree level" conversion course for someone like me who has an undergrad degree (in my case, a Bachelor of Arts) in one subject (in my case, law) who wishes to pursue post-grad study in another subject altogether (in my case, history). 

There aren't many opportunities like this, to let someone change horses mid stream. I've been resisting the overwhelming consensus that I would simply need to start over from the beginning, studying for a BA in History (or Fashion/Dress History if I could find the right programme). Because - well, funding and time. I'm 52 this year. 

With the offer now in hand, I am thinking ahead on how best to prepare myself mentally for some of the processes and hurdles to come. I spend some time last winter chatting with Dr Jade Halbert at the University of Huddersfield about research proposals for doing a masters degree there, and while in the end I decided that wasn't the course for me, I realised that preparing a research proposal takes time. And I'd rather get a great deal of that "cogitation" done sooner rather than later. 

My friend Danielle is "PhD shopping" and she mentioned that she is currently completing a FutureLearn course offered by the University of Leicester, aimed at helping prospective PhD candidates devise and refine their research proposals, while figuring out their purpose and motivations and coming to terms with the signnificant investments involved in completing a PhD. 

So I signed up for this course, too. 

One of the first recommendations was to start - and keep - a reflective journal. And it was suggested that a blog can be a useful tool or platform, as it can be easily accessed and shared. 

So here we are: blog created, first background post written. 

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