I chose the distance-learning because with a day job and with a business
career the course was perfectly designed for me to keep both elements in balance.
Firstly because of the university's global reputation as a research
university, but more specifically because the university offered a course that
would enable me to balance career and my academic life on a part-time
distance-learning basis. As regards the structure here at Birmingham I found it
very appealing that I was able to speak to my supervisor and communicate with my
supervisor on a monthly basis, as PhD research has got a reputation in
academia sometimes for being a solitary journey, and the support I've been
getting in my first year has been excellent, and the monthly meetings have
helped keep me on track, and keep a focus on the big picture. I found it very
useful being able to communicate with my supervisor by email and living within
two hours of the University, I've had monthly face-to-face meetings, but also
the ability to have a tutorial on skype is very important because it'll be times
when neither my supervisor or myself will be able to see each other face to
face. One of the most rewarding things about being on the part-time distance
learning programme is the ability for the university to support you when
you're not on campus, and the course has been exceptionally well designed so that
I can get access away from the campus on, or get access to, journals to get access
to academic publishing, to electronic books, and the course seems to support
the distance learning programme very well, and it understands that
perhaps the demands a part time distance learning student has might be different
from someone who's based on campus. I found the postgraduate community of
the students really supportive and the students seem to be very adept at sharing
ideas, experiences and being inquisitive about your research. That has enabled me
anyway to to be able to better vocalize what I'm doing to a non-academic or a non-
specialist. For me the most enjoyable thing that I've done in my first year is
share my other postgraduate research with undergraduate students as a guest
lecturer. That was very fulfilling and will live long in the memory and I found
that to be hugely rewarding. I've found the residency has really helped in
getting closer to other students and to share our experiences, and also to better
understand the great resources that are here, particularly to get to know as a
distance learner the great stuff that's in the library and how I can make use of
that online when I'm not at the University if somebody is looking into a
role of the University of Birmingham on a part-time distance learning basis I
would encourage them to come to Birmingham because support you get from
every element of the university is excellent. It's a University with an
incredible history and with a great reputation that is very well deserved,
and if you are studying on a distance-learning part-time basis you
will naturally have to juggle a lot of elements in
life apart from academia and there's no way that will support that balance
better than Birmingham.