Glengormley man Callum Craig tells of his journey with The Open University, and how he went on to achieve his degree while experiencing struggles in his personal life.
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00:00So I did have a busy couple of years in my personal life.
00:08Me and my wife were trying to start our own family and found out that we had these things
00:11called recurrent losses.
00:12We kept having miscarriages.
00:16It really impacted me in terms of my studying, in terms of my work, everything obviously
00:20goes the other way, I think if I was in an actual university I would have just gave up.
00:29My name is Callum Craig and I studied Business Management with Marketing at The Open University.
00:36I always knew I wanted to go into further education so I left school and went straight
00:39to Dublin, went to do university there and I spent more time working than I did studying
00:44and I needed to get something more flexible.
00:49When I came back up to Belfast there was a period of time where I didn't know what I
00:52wanted to do at all.
00:53I only came across The Open University and that's when I really decided to take the leap
00:56and go into Bath because it was a much more flexible option.
01:01The reason for continuing all my studying was I didn't want to be overlooked for roles
01:04and I knew I could do it and I knew I had the skills to do it but I just wasn't even
01:07getting an interview.
01:08So I thought the best course of action was to have accolades to back up my experience.
01:13The teaching styles and practices of The Open University I found pretty quickly suited me.
01:19Getting the books and them being more of a textbook format, being able to just go right
01:23to the next module, the next page, was brilliant.
01:29Whilst at university I went through a pretty manic time in my life.
01:32I bought a house, I threw a rupper, I got my first car, I changed a job.
01:37We did go through a bit of a difficult time in my family.
01:40My brother's best friend took his own life and that impacted the family quite hard.
01:44After I left university my best friend took his own life.
01:47Obviously I went through my trials, we had losses and we had our struggles and having
01:52kids but whenever I was going through hardships I reached out to my course leader, my course
01:57director and they were who were able to guide me the best.
02:00More than anything they were able to tell me what the next steps would be for me in
02:04my degree, in my course.
02:07Whilst studying there we did in fact go on and get married.
02:12We went on and then had two kids.
02:14Having two kids is the proudest moment of my life.
02:25I did touch on how I lost my friends.
02:28So a friend of mine, Sean, and I reconnected after the loss of our close friend Jamie and
02:33we realised we all want to still play football like we did years ago.
02:38So we started as a five-a-side again.
02:41We realised pretty quickly that we wanted to, you know, form this team, get out and
02:46talk.
02:47Goat.
02:48Which coincidentally was Jamie's Xbox gamer tag.
02:53It's good to talk about things but sometimes it's good just to, you know, vent via exhaustion.
02:59I definitely think that the OU studies helped me personally grow.
03:02Not to sound egotistical but I feel like I could go into any organisation and any team
03:06and lead that team because of what the university taught me.
03:10If I didn't have the confidence in myself that I gained through my course in OU, I don't
03:15think I'd be able to do the job I do today.