An innocuous looking brown envelope arrived in the post on Saturday morning, postmarked Blackburn. In it were my final results for my degree… and I’m proud to say that I now have a B.Sc. (Ordinary) in Internet and Information Technology, with a grade of Distinction.

It’s certainly not been the cake walk I thought it was going to be and it wouldn’t have been possible without Kate’s and my works full support. Together they made it a lot easier to focus on doing the work involved.

I’ve been doing the course part time for the last two years and the last year in particular has been hard work. The first year was a real joy, I had a year long group project and worked with a couple of chaps who were highly motivated which really helped push me along. The second year just wasn’t the same and to some degree infuriating.

It’s ironic that the module I enjoyed the most, Website Design & Management, I got my lowest mark of 62% (why I don’t know, it’s never been explained to me), whilst the module I really, utterly, despised doing, Computer Communications, I got my highest mark of 84%. Although with the latter, I think that high grade might have something to do with my excellent comparison of bit stuffing to stuffing a turkey (hey, I was having a hard time making one of the assignments interesting).

However, without that low mark in Website Design I wouldn’t have been motivated to do MPQ Archive. It was a combination of annoyance that the code I’d written for that module was so lowly regarded and my peaked interest in QExpo and Quake at the time that got me to do it.

As to what to do next, well I’m taking a year out, which was my plan even before the car crash (all that has done, is re-enforce my decision). I would like to go on and do the honours, and have been offered a place on the course at Blackburn College, but I’m unsure as to whether I’ll continue there.  There are various reasons for not going straight on to the honours, primarily because I’m a bit burned out from it all and secondly it’s another two years work. There is also some really interesting stuff coming up at work that I want to give my full attention.

And whilst I might grumble at some of my individual module marks, the overall result is good and it’s a nice feeling to have that all that work now counts towards a proper qualification. Plus, it ticks another item off my to do list :)