Hitting the books again

It’s October which can only mean one thing! That’s right, halloween studying! I have a full time career in a very corporate IT environment, plus a family, and way too many hobbies that I don’t get to spend as much time on as I’d like. Yet, since 2019 I’ve also been studying part time for an Environmental Science degree at The Open University. I took a study break last year to concentrate on some house stuff, then procrastinated about that for most of the year. But now I’m back at the books again as the new academic year kicks off and I start my first level 3 module.

So what makes a middle aged man, with a good career and lots of other commitments decide to go back to uni? After all, I already have one degree. A BSc (no honours) Computing for Internet and Multimedia which I coasted through twenty years ago only because I hadn’t managed to get a job with the HNC Computing I coasted through before that. Late teenage and early twenties me was not one for working hard and getting top marks. Drinking lots and cruising to mediocrity was much more my thing.

What else I had in my twenties was a very clear sense of right and wrong, with a firebrand commitment to causes of the left. Fuelled by many, many hours listening to Rage Against The Machine and System Of A Down albums, and as many anti-globalisation books and websites I could find. I was a sparkly eyed idealist who was about have all that crushed by the big hammers of society – having a career and a mortgage.

I live in Aberdeenshire and decided to have a career working in IT. As you do around here, I wound up working for a very large IT services company who’s main client, in Aberdeen and the UK, was one of the supermajor oil companies. Almost twenty years later and barring a couple of short detours, I have only ever worked in corporate IT for the oil industry. Teenage me would be fucking mortified.

For someone who is still very much left of the left of centre, working for the oil industry for twenty years does result in some soul searching over time. Even more so now I have kids and someday will have to explain how we let the planet get into such an awful state. To say nothing, to do nothing, is consent. However, I need to pay a mortgage, don’t want to move elsewhere and the North East of Scotland is very much dominated by the oil industry. So what can I do?

Occasionally when things haven’t been going well at a company (there’s often a cycle of redundancy/outsourcing threats or new management changing the department and office culture) I’ve looked around at the public sector or more environmentally conscious organisations for job openings, but they have little need for my particular IT skills (supporting large applications for oil companies) and I don’t have the knowledge or experience they do need. While I would like to leave behind the world of corporate IT, I don’t really have the luxury of being able to study full-time, retrain, or start from the very bottom again in a new career.

I decided the best thing I could do, for my conscience, and my family, was to look at the kind of organisations I would like to work with one day and then think about what skills they would value. My thinking is that if I never train to do something different, then how can I expect things to change for me? So while I have the money to be able to afford to do another degree I should take that opportunity. Then I can study part-time and build up some skills and experience while still keeping a roof over our heads with my current career. A couple of years ago, a friend told me I was wasting my time doing an Environmental Science degree as there was no money in it. As if the only reason anyone would ever choose to do anything, was to get rich at the end of it. I have to admit, this really upset me at the time and still bugs the fuck out of me today when I remember it.

Even if I never manage to fully jump into working in conservation or helping the environment, at least some day in the future I will have a degree that might help me get volunteering opportunities to try and help manage my local environment or assist with wider projects. And in a roundabout way, I’m putting the cash I get from the oil industry to good use. It’s not about the money or trying to get into a more lucrative career. It’s about looking back at the person I was growing up, the beliefs I held then and think I still hold today, looking at my children and the world I’ve brought them into, a world that’s overheating while our politicians put their heads in the sand and pretend it’ll be OK, without taking any meaningful action to prevent catastrophe. It’s about looking at all of that and being able to tell myself I didn’t just help big oil companies make this planet worse, but I also did a little bit to make it better one day.

It’s hard work. It’s hard to find the time to sit down and read the material, let alone the 12 – 20 hours a week the modules generally say are required to read the material and complete the exercises. I pick an hour here and there through the day – lunchtimes, evenings in front of the TV. Then try and block out chunks at weekends or when the kids are at swimming lessons etc. All while still doing my bit home and spending time with the rest of the family, plus still scraping time for my other hobbies. It really is hard!

But at the same time it’s really enjoyable. I like learning. I love nature and the environment and after four modules I now know a lot more about the natural world and how it’s changing than I did before. This year is my first level 3 module, which would roughly equate to the 3rd year of a normal 3 year degree (for England, here in Scotland we do it a bit differently studying over 4 years normally). After this one I just have two left – a small final module and an honours project. The end is in sight! What comes after that? I’m not sure. I’ll keep my options open, but if nothing else I’m enjoying being a student again and get to spend some of my spare time learning about an important subject, doing so with interesting people from all over the country, and learning from the fantastic staff at the OU campus in Milton Keynes and the superb tutors locally.