I live with my boyfriend
and his family in Southport
and I'm studying Childhood and Youth
Studies via distance learning.
Living with the boys,
I get to spend quite a lot of time
with them.
I try and do a bit of reading
with them as well,
where they don't feel that pressure
to like, I have to do well
or do this, but
just try and enjoy things.
My sister, she's
16 years younger than me,
and seeing her develop
right before my eyes,
I became so fascinated,
and so I thought,
"Do you know what, I want
to know more,"
and then I
embarked on a module
with my university,
from there it developed
into what is now
my Childhood degree.
My boyfriend's kidneys failed
when he was about 22
and he's been on dialysis since,
so he goes Monday,
Wednesdays and Friday evenings
after work,
so he comes home
from work, quickly
gets changed and
I take him to dialysis.
I've also been suffering
with fibromyalgia for
the last five or six years now.
When your
nervous system doesn't respond
as it should:
it's sending pain signals to
your brain.
So it affects my whole body,
as it were, but mainly my back,
and my fingers,
they start to hurt.
I get like fibro-fog,
so I can't concentrate.
Tried all the medication
that I could,
I got a bit of side effects
with quite a few of
them: anxiety, depression,
so I don't take
any medication now,
and I started running
as well,
and when I was more active,
it seemed to keep the pain
at bay for a bit longer,
so now I'm more
focussed on doing things that
are natural and that
won't be as harmful to
my body.
I think distance learning
with my fibromyalgia
has been good for me:
it's more flexible,
and also I'm not as anxious
because I know that
what I miss, I can
always make up.
On the bad days I
sort of have to
email my tutor and say,
"Can I just have an extension?" and
they've always known,
because every time I
register for a new module,
they're told that
I've got this condition so
just be a bit more supportive, I suppose.
So in my modules my assignments
were mainly just,
your normal 3000-word assignments.
I used to use the P-E-E format
to do my assignments and it's
point, example and explanation.
So any time you make a point,
you have to have an example,
and you have to explain how it
relates to the question.
So I used that literally
religiously with all my assignments,
and it helped me just stay on track.
I always had a plan.
So I'd split up the word count
so if it's four paragraphs
then I'm going to do 400 words here
400 there, 200 for the intro,
200 for the conclusion. I had
a little list of like words
I could use,
just to jog my memory
'cos when you're writing
an assignment, you can't think
of all those things,
and if I wanted to
add another point,
there would be 'additionally',
'furthermore' or if I was
contrasting that point,
'however'
or…
Each time I did an assignment
I'd pin up my list of words,
my plan and everything else,
and little key words or
like bubble points
of what I needed to put in
so any time I got
stuck, I'd just think,
"Right, look at your plan."
'Cos I used to write
trigger words as well,
so for each paragraph,
there were trigger words –
things I'd have to include which
I got from the assignment sheet.
Whenever I needed help,
whenever I was stuck
with my assignment,
I'd email my tutor and
then I'd say
'Can we arrange a call?'
and within less than a day,
literally, she'd come
back to me.
I did enjoy academic writing,
I think more so in the end
because I was starting to get
a grasp of it.
My top tips to anyone
who was starting to do
academic writing,
I would say:
be patient;
don't be so hard on yourself.
You can't possibly get it
from the beginning,
but be open to feedback,
and also, just give it a go.
Go the distance.