I wish I had a university degree. There. I’ve said it out loud. I don’t have one and it makes me feel… well, bad and embarrassed and less somehow, like I’ve wasted an opportunity or failed or that I’m somehow lacking in the mental discipline to apply myself to the task of furthering my education.
I have tried to complete tertiary studies. I completed a few subjects post-HSC, but had to eventually choose between university and being able to earn enough money to eat and pay rent. I tried later to return to studies via correspondence, but family commitments, finances and various other issues got in the way.
I know many people who managed to get through uni post-school on a shoestring budget with a diet of 2-minute noodles and all-you-can-eat pizza nights at Pizza Hut. I know single mums and stay-at-home mums and working mums who have completed degrees, so the whole ‘no time, it’s too hard’ thing really does feel like an excuse, not a reason.
Most of the time it doesn’t bother me too much. It’s a quiet, niggling regret at the back of my mind. I’m happy for friends who are studying and I’m excited for my 15-year-old son who has been able to start an advanced placement subject this semester that will count towards his eventual degree. I don’t envy others their academic success. I’m lucky that I don’t need to be ‘qualified’ to be an author or to do many of the writing jobs that I love so much. I can achieve in my chosen career without a degree on the wall and letters after my name.
I think my regret is stirred-up most acutely when I read about post-graduate studies that touch on the areas that interest me, particularly anything related to literature for children or teens. A brief thought of ‘oh, I’d love to study that’ is generally followed by ‘if only I had a degree’.
I know that I can study anything I want without university. There are plenty of places I can gather resources both online and offline. I can pick a topic and explore it for as long as I want to, without the issue of examinations, HECS (or whatever it’s called now), having to attend lectures or tutorials, or justifying my area of interest to a lecturer or senior academic.
The complete freedom to study whatever I want for as long as I want has its own challenges of course. If I can study anything, where do I start? Without some sort of boundaries or framework, it all just becomes too much, too vast, too directionless.
Self-directed study also lacks one of the things I most crave about completing university studies – the interaction with others who are interested in the same things. I don’t just want to study a particular subject, I want to bounce ideas of others who are interested in that same topic but who perhaps view it from a different perspective; who can help me refine my ideas and explore a topic more deeply than I would alone. I want to debate and discuss and share ideas.
For those trying to fit study, family, work and all those trivial little annoyances like eating and sleeping into their weekly routine, yes, I am aware that what I’ve described above is closer to some utopian academic ideal than it is to real life. Very few people have the time, energy or inclination to indulge themselves so completely in their studies.
Yet I can’t help but wish that I could wind back the clock a little (well, okay, a lot) and take better advantage of the opportunities I have had in the past to study. To not be so easily discouraged or persuaded that there just wasn’t any point in trying to return to university. I wish that my careers advisor at school had focused on what I loved (books, reading, writing, analysing) instead of looking at my academic results and suggesting that I pursue studies in law and medicine. That someone, somewhere had encouraged me to pursue my academic interests and passions. I wish I had understood myself well enough to have known that’s what I should do.
With the cost of supporting three children with their own tertiary study plans on the not too distant horizon and a small but persistent HECS debt from previously unsuccessful attempts to study myself, my dreams of university qualifications seem out of reach unless someone knows about a scholarship for people who took too long to work out what they want to be when they grow up.
It seems self-indulgent to want to pursue studies at this point simply to satisfy my own desire to Know All The Things and, if I’m perfectly honest, to still that small voice that sometimes whispers that I’m simply not qualified to share my opinions or to even have an opinion in the first place. I know that’s silly, but insecurities often are.
For now, despite quietly wishing that I’d chosen a different path to get to this point, I’m about to embark on the adventure of having my first book published and I’m looking forward to whatever literary adventures might be around the corner. Who knows, that might even include a return to studies in the future, or maybe not. I guess time will tell.
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