When the reason for doing anything is strong enough, and personal enough, you have the best chance of overcoming every hurdle in your way.
I began my association with Unisa as an undergraduate student in 1985 – a lifetime ago. I was studying part time while working and having a personal life. As there’d been a few years gap between matriculating and embarking upon tertiary education, and the freedom that comes with being a Unisa student, I found myself in a whole other world that required discipline, focus, commitment and courage. And it all had to come from me. No one was imposing it on me, or making me do anything, or monitoring my progress day-to-day, and no one could do it but me. I understood about personal responsibility and personal accountability. It was all up to me even though I had moral support. The opportunity was there. I just had to take it.
Despite the odd hurdle, I got my BA, majoring in Psychology, a subject I was in love with long before I started formally studying it. I went straight on to register for honours as soon as postgraduate registration opened. Being capped for my BA was thrilling even though my parents were not in the audience as they were unable to get a flight back in time from the US where they were visiting my brother and his family. I, however, was fully in the flow of honours, including having weekly extra lessons for “Stats”, the dreaded Research Methodology module – eek!
A few short weeks into honours and within a few hours of my parents returning from the US, my father passed away suddenly. As with any major loss, life for the family and for me changed. I suddenly found myself with a whole pile of other responsibilities and things that required my attention, over and above studying, working and living my life. It was a lot to shoulder and while I didn’t have a choice regarding having to work, for example, I did have a choice about studying: I could stop there and then, and focus on taking care of the family, thereby letting go of one of my big dreams. I did stop, but only for that year and I re-registered the following year. My “why” was very strong.
Boy, was it tough to do honours in this changed personal environment, which included a few other personal changes and challenges. One of the challenges included my not having worked on all the assignments during the year for one of the papers, and I discovered this on a weekend, 48 hours before having to write the second of the most vital exams on Monday morning. This was because of serious distractions during the year, but I again had a choice: I could just throw my hands up in despair that I hadn’t studied most of the curriculum for that subject for that year, and not write the exam, thereby throwing away my chances of finishing honours. But I figured that if I didn’t at least try to write the exam, I had zero chance of passing. So, I took a deep breath, settled down, and tried to find enough in my personal library to try to equip myself for Monday’s exam. I wrote the exam, I passed both the exams that year, and I went on to complete honours. I was capped early in 1995, and this time my mother was in the US and couldn’t get back in time to be at the graduation ceremony. But we have photos from both graduations. Small compensation.
And then nothing regarding Unisa or formal psychology studies for 17 years, but only because life carried on and didn’t include Unisa or psychology at that time.
Fast forward to early January 2012 and a sudden inspired feeling to check out the requirements for doing master’s (again part time). From the moment I had the thought (a burning desire actually), my spirit has been fully immersed in Unisa and Psychology. I worked hard to get the necessary approvals to submit a topic outline, and find a supervisor, and through all this, I had the support and encouragement of the Department of Psychology in various ways, and other people in my personal environment. The day I was notified that a willing and able supervisor had been found was one of the best I can remember. Then came the next phases of registering for the Research Proposal module and working on the proposal.
The challenges I have experienced to date are that I have been out of a formal study environment for almost two decades, and we all get into a groove of working and living in a particular way, so doing something different requires a new set of skills. Technology has changed virtually everything, even communicating with Unisa… registration, doing a literature search, relying on the internet that is often unavailable or slow, going backwards and forwards on various sites, getting permissions… but the greatest challenge for me so far has been the search for relevant literature, reading it, assessing it, and deciding to include it in my research proposal – but having to do all this on a small laptop screen, not on hard copy. Working with technology has its advantages, but the challenges were great.
Still, there was never even one second when any of the challenges threw me off my goal or the enjoyment of doing this. My “why” is so strong, and so personal. And I think this is what keeps us going. This, and having periods of intense focus within overall life balance.
*Written by Beba Papakyriakou, 5 July 2012
