Profile on: Christine Long BA French graduate,UK

You might be forgiven for thinking that bringing up two young children (aged 13 and 11) while holding down a part-time job teaching music would be enough to keep the most energetic person busy. Spare a thought, then, for Christine Long. In between the scales and arpeggios on the one hand, and the pressing demands of a teenager and younger sibling on the other – a lifestyle which she sums up rather neatly in a single word: hectic – Christine took the bold step of registering for a BA French degree through the External System.
“A French degree was a natural progression for me since I’d lived in France for four years and both my children were born there. I’d left school after A levels, believing at the time that I was incapable of studying at that level, especially as no-one in my family had ever been to university. The children were now both at senior school and needing me a little less. It was the right time and I had something to prove to myself.”
To be able to fit her study around family and work commitments, Christine developed a strict routine, to the extent that she timed all her study hours on a desktop stopwatch. “It sounds very disciplined, almost obsessive probably, but time was in short supply. After a while it became a habit and I ended up timing myself throughout the whole degree. But it was also a comfort as it allowed me to plan and pace my study. On average, I think I only did two and a half hours a day, but that’s a 7 day week. Some days the hours would fly by, some days I would struggle to get an hour on the clock. Some days, if I felt like it (or didn’t feel like it!) I would do less but then I would see the overall hours drop and I would be spurred on to catch up. In the last year, when the weighting for the degree is greater, I gave up teaching.” The good news is that the blood, sweat and tears paid off in the end: Christine is now Journals Assistant at the academic publisher Palgrave Macmillan.
“I'm proud of myself. I got a 2:1 by home studying. Not only that but I got a full-time job within six months of finishing. Not bad for a 46-year-old who had been out of the workplace for 22 years. My degree was my passport into full-time employment. I hadn’t been out to work since I moved to France in 1984, so I think you can see the value of my degree not only as an academic qualification in itself but also as proof of skills that you learn by studying – discipline, the power of analysis, prioritizing etc. After five years of living with my precious books and studying some of the world’s best literature I feel I’m very lucky to be in an academic environment now.”