Hi. My name is Wen, and I am a chronic overthinker. This has caused plenty of issues in my life, but the one thing that is most affected by this is my University journey. A journey that has started in 2020, and has been full of doubts, sleepless nights, and not being able to make a decision.
It all started when I came across an Instagram post of a blogger I used to follow, in which she showed that she was studying a degree at the Open University. I was intrigued and decided to look into it a bit more, and discovered it was a distance University for which you didn’t need any entry requirements (except for the odd occasional degree). This seemed like a dream come true to me because I quit school when I was 16, before even doing my exams, and have no qualifications or diplomas or anything, which is something I have regretted for most of my adult life. After discussing it with my husband (well, fiancé back then), and him confirming that it was a real University and that the degrees were 100% real, I decided to enrol into a degree in Forensic Psychology. Sadly, shortly after that decision, I had the worst flare up of my chronic illness and needed two surgeries within 1 week, so the idea of the degree was put away for a bit while I worked on recovering of said surgeries (which ended up taking 4 and a half years).
A couple of months later, I decided I was “okay enough” to start my degree, but by that point I was having major doubts about whether or not I was doing the right degree. The flare up of my chronic illness and the (lack of) recovery had humbled me, and my motivation and reasons for wanting to gain a degree had changed. The main reason for wanting to do it was to prove to myself that I can, that I am capable, and to rectify the mistake I made when I quit school. I wanted to pursue a degree for myself, and nothing else, and I decided to choose a subject I genuinely loved, not for career purposes, but just for me, and so I contacted the University, cancelled my enrolment, and instead enrolled for a degree in History, as this was (and still is) a subject that I have always loved and have always been passionate about.
Fast forward some more months, and I was having doubts again. Not about wanting to get a degree, but about the subject. I don’t even remember why I was having these doubts, but I do know that a part of that was the fact that I found the choices for the history modules lacking variety. After voicing those doubts to my husband, he asked me “why don’t you do a degree in Creative Writing? You’ve always loved writing stories”. My brain didn’t even think of this as a possibility before he said that, I never thought I could do a degree in Creative Writing, let alone that I would be encouraged to pursue one. We discussed it some more, and I thought about it for a couple of weeks, and decided that this was it, this is what I wanted to do. I was going to pursue a degree in Creative Writing. This was all still in 2020, and over the next 5+ years, the doubts stayed.
Over the years I have changed my mind countless of times, and even started multiple degrees/modules. While I did start the first module of the degree in English Literature and Creative Writing, my brain kept telling me that there was no point in it, that I had to choose something that would allow me to build a career that would earn me plenty of money, and so I quit that module, and changed to a degree in Computing & IT. While I did quite well for the few months that I was doing that degree, and got really good marks, I hated every second of it, I didn’t feel like myself, and I felt like I was on the wrong path. I switched back to Creative Writing, but, surprise, surprise, it didn’t last. I decided to take a break from studying all together until I could figure out what it was exactly that I wanted to do.
That break ended, and I came out of it feeling excited to start a degree in Criminology and Psychology. Why this subject? I can’t even remember. Granted, I find it a fascinating subject, but again, I didn’t see the point in studying it for my own enjoyment. Once more, I had to take a step back and really think about what I wanted, and suddenly it dawned on me; I always ended up going back to Creative Writing.
In 2024 I finally, properly started my first module, A111 Discovering the Arts and Humanities. After attempting the module so many times, I had some resentment towards it, and while some chapters were a struggle to get through, I did thoroughly enjoy the chapters on Literature, Writing, Art History, and I surprised myself by discovering that I really liked Philosophy. In 2025 I handed in my last essay of the module and felt the biggest sense of accomplishment. After quitting so many times, I finally finished the first part of the degree I wanted to pursue!
I would love to write here that from that moment on all the doubts were gone, and I continued my degree that following October, and in a way I did continue, but I also had to quit, again. In between handing in my last essay of my first module, and starting the second one, I had a surgery on my throat which took a longer recovery than anticipated. Next to that, I was also getting married to my best friend that December, and I knew I couldn’t juggle it all at the same time, my brain was already starting to feel overwhelmed, and so I deferred the module and decided to just focus on my health as well as living my life for the next year. And I am so glad that I did! I managed to recover quite well from the surgery (other than still having a sore throat all the time, hurray for scar tissue), had my dream wedding, and enjoyed being newlyweds without the added stress of essays and deadlines, but I also had the biggest flare up of my chronic illness in years, since the surgeries in 2020, and I was bedbound for a good amount of time. While I know there are plenty of people who would have managed just fine with all of that as well as their studies, I am not one of those people, and that is okay. I am hyper aware that I could have finished a degree by now, but in a very weird way I am glad that my journey hasn’t been that straightforward. Are the doubts still there? Absolutely. But here I am, doing the second module of my degree in English Literature and Creative Writing, because I know deep down that no matter how often my brain fills up with doubts, this is the right path for me.
Leave a Reply