“Law school taught me one thing: how to take two situations that are exactly the same and show how they are different.” — Hart Pomerantz
So we heard back from The Claw and the verdict is that my wife was accepted to Nottingham Trent University's distance law degree program! I had told her not to worry, that she had a strong application. It was probably a good thing that she ended up speaking with the ultimate decision maker, though. Evidently there was some question whether she'd be evaluated as a university age student or as a mature student. The latter had a flexibility she needed when it came to things like A-levels, so it was in her favor that she got to explain the situation carefully. In the end she was evaluated as a mature student, and that made all the difference.
So now we have other things to worry about, such as buying the absurdly expensive law books she needs and, of course, paying tuition. As a U.S. permanent resident she's eligible for federal financial aid, which would be helpful were she actually going there to attend school (even though it's foreign), but is not because she's staying here and attending by distance. Now, I'm not sure what the rationale is for the difference, I mean, by staying here she's contributing more to the U.S. economy than the British one, so one would think that would be an American policy maker's preference, but alas this is not the case.
Anyway, by next month she needs to have sent in a deposit, after which she'll receive her books list for the first term. The way her program works, she'll study one subject intensively at a time, three subjects per year, for four years. She's glad for this sort of format, as it allows her to be single minded about each thing during its time.
Now that the stress of getting the application in and the response back is over, it's also finally sunk in that she's really just signed up for four years of something pretty intense. She's confident about her ability to succeed, but fortunately she's not overconfident. She's asking me whether I really think she can do it. Yes, I do — in fact I think I'd be more worried if she were saying things like, "Yah man, no problem, this will be easy."
Next up, multimedia and the future of education.