I’m four years into a degree in the humanities. What have I learned so far?

I left school at 16 and after a full and successful career, I am working towards a degree with the Open University (OU) later in life. I’ve been all STEM all the time ever since I was 12: maths and three sciences at school; sonar engineer in the Navy; software engineer ever since. I even started an OU degree in maths 30 years ago but 70 hours a week at two jobs, a move to California and a brand new baby got in the way and I had to abandon it halfway through.

Now that I have a bit more time on my hands, I thought I’d give it another go but this time I’m studying the humanities. I’m four years into it with one year to go so I thought I’d stop and reflect on what I have learned so far. And maybe rant a bit.

I wanted to study philosophy but the OU doesn’t have a philosophy degree. You have to mix it in with other stuff. The official name of the degree is Arts and Humanities (Philosophy) and the first couple of years are a mishmash of all the humanities. Only then can you focus on your chosen subject.

A111 (Discovering the Arts and Humanities) covers architecture, art, classical studies, colonialism, creative writing, drama, history, literature, music, philosophy, poetry, religion, and sculpture with a different topic every week.

A113 (Revolutions) dives deeper into history, music, philosophy and religion and weaves them all together to explore what happened in The Reformation, Revolutionary France, World War One and The 60s from various points of view.

A222 (Exploring Philosophy) taught us the techniques of philosophy with brief dives into Self, God, Ethics, Knowledge, Mind and Political Philosophy.

A229 (Exploring the Classical World) took us back to ancient Greece and Rome where we enjoyed some drama and Greek statues, read some Roman poetry and interpreted some Roman tombstones.

Here’s what I learned.

I learned to enjoy poetry again. I had a spell in my 20s where I read everything that Byron ever wrote but I’d forgotten how moving poetry can be. Willliam Cowper’s Epitaph on a Hare seemed so modern and so full of humour, I could scarcely believe it was 250 years old.

I loved skipping from topic to topic, week by week in A111. I imagine this is rather like studying in the USA where your degree covers a wide spectrum of materials. Over here, if you are studying biology, you learn biology and they don’t expect you to know anything about Shakespeare or the Constitution. If you are studying literature, you don’t need any calculus. I think our way is better but it was fun to start with a little tour and I learned a lot.

Who knew that Ancient Greek drama could be so moving (Antigone) or laugh-out-loud funny (Lysistrata)? I had read The Iliad and The Odyssey 40 years ago but I understood what they were about this time. Achilles was even more heroic than Brad Pitt and he sulked even more too.

I’ve got to say that going to the British Museum with your Classics teacher is pretty cool. All those ancient bits and bobs in the cabinets actually mean something when there is someone to explain what they are.

I learned to write an essay the way the OU wants me to write it but I really don’t like writing essays this way — or reading them. I don’t understand why anyone does. I’ve tried blogging in the academic style but it sends me to sleep even while I am writing. It’s much more fun to write like a human being. It’s more fun to read too.

I learned some cool writing tricks along the way though. I’ve always saved the punchline for a big reveal at the end but the OU wants you to say what you are gonna say in the introduction. This steals a little of your thunder but it gives the reader a chance to decide whether she actually wants to read what you have written. Probably not.

I learned that philosophy tutors like you to write your introduction in the first person (In this essay, I will show how Sartre’s existentialism will lead to a life of misery…) but tutors in the classics don’t like that at all! Not even a little bit. The third person is required and one can better avoid subjectivity if the passive voice is employed (It will be shown in this essay that use of the first person will result in your distinction being lost).

Philosophers like you to argue with them too. Classics tutors… not so much. That’s a shame because I enjoy arguing with tutors.

The zeitgeist had led me to expect lots of woke stuff but there has been hardly any — they managed to cram it all into a chapter about music in the 1960s. The women in my class seemed to enjoy that much more than I did.

I learned that it’s much easier to study a topic you enjoy rather than one you find boring (Roman tombstones are not as much fun as they sound). I can’t imagine doing a whole degree on a subject that I don’t like but so many people do. I’m not sure why.

I’ve always been fascinated by religion and was inspired by the Noble Eightfold Path. Learning what the monks have for their dinner was less inspiring. Likewise, there’s so much I would want to know about Mary, Mother of God before I might want to study Spanish women who rub statues of her on their tummies. If I were designing a module on religion, I would make it have something to do with God and Jesus and the Qur’an and stuff like that but maybe that’s just me.

Tutors give very little feedback when you are doing well — except Dr S. (*) in my first module. He was brilliant. Dr F. was good too. When you watch movies about university life, there is always a great tutor who inspires and challenges the students to go above and beyond. They don’t have many of those at the OU. Most write “very good… very good…” after each paragraph which is nice but it doesn’t inspire the way that Robin Williams does in Dead Poets’ Society.

(*) Unfortunately, Dr S. was terrible at adminstrivia and even disappeared for a month without telling anyone. But I will happily trade poor admin skills for great feedback. Dr S. wrote me several 1000-word emails challenging me to dig deeper in my study of the philosophy of mind. Dr S. is the only teacher in my whole life who has done that for me.

I wonder if tutors are overburdened with students who struggle. In the old days, OU students were mostly older and were studying to improve their career prospects or because they were enthusiastic about a topic. The number of younger students has increased in recent years as the expectation that everyone must get a degree becomes oppressive. I wonder how many 18-year-olds who might struggle at any university come to the OU because their mum said so (*). This is pure speculation but perhaps tutors have to spend more time helping students who struggle leaving less time to inspire students who don’t.

(*) To be clear, I think the Open University is an excellent choice for an 18-year-old who wants to learn. It’s just not a great choice for one who doesn’t. Likewise, I have no issue with students who struggle. It’s the ones who don’t even want to be there who bother me.

As you might expect, it’s hard to make friends when you are studying at home. Most of the WhatsApp groups seem full of 18-year-olds who don’t want to study and they certainly don’t want to talk about the materials they are studying. Drinking and partying and football are usually hot topics though. Luckily for me — perhaps because I forgot to update my address and the OU still had me down as a Californian — I was initially put in a group of international students who were interested in talking about art and literature and we had fun writing poetry together about our absent tutor.

Elizabeth was the only international student who accompanied me to my second module and our WhatsApp group was so appalling we ignored it entirely and had our own discussions every day. About halfway through the course, Elizabeth pinged me to say she had just been diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. I got my diagnosis a couple of weeks later and Elizabeth was the first person I told. We had even more to talk about after that but sadly the cancer took my study buddy away from me right as our final assignment was due.

Philosopher Agnes Callard wrote an essay about heterodidacts. ‘Heterodidact’ is a word she made up to mean ‘someone who learns with other people’ as opposed to ‘autodidact’ which means ‘someone who is self-taught’. Almost everything I know, I’ve taught myself and that has barely changed with four years at the OU. The textbooks are excellent which makes it easy to teach yourself but apart from the occasional online tutorial, you are mostly on your own.

Educating Rita is a movie about a mature student at the Open University and there’s a scene where she finally gets to hang out with some ‘proper students’ and her subject comes alive. That doesn’t really happen. Back when I was doing my maths degree, I flew home from New York for summer school where I hung out with students like me for a week. The OU doesn’t have summer school any more. They’ve even cancelled face-to-face tutorials. We really are on our own. Working from home too means that I rarely meet a human being I am not related to.

English people don’t like to talk about their grades unless they are getting crap grades. Barely a day goes by without someone on Facebook asking if they can still pass if they got 42% on their last three assignments. This is a big difference from America where they celebrate people who are doing well. Over here, getting a good grade is something to keep to yourself like a dirty secret. But… in each of those awful WhatsApp groups, I’ve had someone ping me and say “Do you mind if I ask how you did in that last assignment?” In every case, the person pinging me has been doing well and wants someone to talk to.

The OU came alive for me when I started my philosophy module. Not only because I was finally doing philosophy but because I found the loveliest group of philosophy students you could wish to find — and argue with. We are still friends two years later as we begin the next philosophy module together. We even managed a pub crawl in London to celebrate our results. In my next module, my fellow students were back to talking about parties and football and Ingrid was my only secret collaborator.

Now that the end of my degree is in sight, I am thrilled to be starting another year of philosophy but I am eager to be done with it all so I can dive deep into the topics that I really care about. My bedside table is piled high with Nozack and Rawls, Sartre and Beauvoir. I want to learn what I want to learn. And I want to write about it.