So why did I choose to do my degree with The Learning Institute?

There were a few reasons really.  Firstly, a friend of mine had already started her degree in the previous September, she told me about how great it was, and how flexible it could be.  I was having breakfast (well, post school run breakfast!) with her one day and she showed me the assignment she was doing, and I thought "that looks like something I could do".  And that did it for me, which was the spark that I needed to think that maybe returning to education would be the thing for me.

So I looked, and not just at TLI, I looked at local colleges and access to higher education courses, I looked at Worcester University, I looked at distance learning degrees.  The conclusion I came to was that none of them seemed to suit my life, my family commitments and my aspirations as well as TLI did.

I attended an information session (pre-covid) and met Ginny.  I chatted with her for nearly two hours (I think I made her late leaving to drive back down south – sorry Ginny!).  She reassured me that this course would suit what I wanted to do and she gave me her experience of how she had managed to fit things in around her home life.  She really reassured me that this would be the course for me, although she did say that I should look at other courses just to be sure.  There was one other person at that information session, and Ginny spent time talking to them about how the degrees might not be the best fit for them and how they should look a some information and gave them the contact details for the best people to contact to discuss things.  This really made me realise that TLI don’t care about the numbers, they care about the people.

This was reinforced by my experiences with Caley, who as far as I’m concerned is a super star, she went out of her way to make sure that I was ok with the whole process of applying and getting everything that I needed.  Caley explained every step of the process to me and really put me at ease when she could tell that I was getting a bit flustered by it all.

As part of my application process, I needed to have a discussion with the course leader.  This led to my first conversation with John, again this conversation probably lasted longer that he had anticipated as I have a tendency to chat a little too much!  John was brilliant, it was one of those conversations that really reassured me that I was making the right decision to study with TLI.

As soon as my unconditional offer came through there was no hesitation in my mind over if I should accept or not.