It’s September, and a time where many apprentices will be facing their first term, so I thought this blog would be timely. Before starting my degree apprenticeship, I had no idea what university would be like for a professional. I had always assumed university was for 18-year-olds, until I walked into the University of Winchester at 25, ready to start a four-year degree. Our cohort of degree apprentices, around 15 of us, sat in the large lecture room of the old business school with the head of the department, dark wood panelled walls lining the ornate carvings and floor to ceiling windows surrounding us. We were sat on individual exam tables, and I immediately had a flashback to my GCSEs at 16 sitting in a cold exam room.

“Time is moving anyway, so you might as well do something useful with it,” the head of department stated matter-of-factly as she wrapped up her induction. I looked around, with a mix of ages around me, all thinking the same thing – what have we got ourselves signed up for. 

I was overwhelmed, working a demanding role within mergers and acquisitions to deliver short-term projects, and a day a week out to attend class and write essays was overwhelming. Within the first year, Mondays were our university days, so we all attended class from 9am to 6pm with an hour break for lunch in the university canteen. We studied modules from marketing, HR, business functions, and academic and professional skills. The workload was intense, with our first term deadline 12 weeks from sitting in the lecture hall, with three essays due, each of around 3,000 words. 

The structure of class would be a mix of lectures (sitting in a room of 300 students all listening to a lecturer for an hour talk through academic content on that module) and seminars (classroom sized groups of exercises and discussion together on the content of the weeks’ lecture). As a normal student, these classes would be spread over the entire week to give breathing room for studying, working, or relaxing. However, as a degree apprentice, this was crammed into one day – so a lecture might be happening at 3pm, with a seminar on the topic at 11am. The intensity meant that we had no time during the day to write essays or read the assigned reading. Tasks like that were done outside of the university halls, crammed on tables at Starbucks or on the sofa at home on the weekends.

One of the most memorable modules that term was the academic and professional skills module, which involved a mix of academic learning and reflective essays. The module was designed to be a safe introduction to academic skills for students – the assignment at the end of term being three things: an essay on a subject of your choice, a reflective essay for a book review, and a reflective essay for the first semester. The lecturer taught us about academic referencing, report writing, academic reflection models, and critical thinking. As a mature student, I felt like I was starting from zero, having no idea how write an essay – work had never required that I read an academic report.

We could choose a subject for our report, and the quirk of a degree apprenticeship meant that it had to relate to our workplace (or for other reports, directly about our workplace), and I chose whether COVID impacted workers mental health. I was still in my infancy as a student, with most of my references being websites and clearly missing the point of an academic paper which I developed over the next three years.

The reflective essays were easier for me, being a naturally introspective person, but reading back, they were probably too honest for a university lecturer. A particular note being that I commented on my lack of confidence and perfectionism as a barrier to writing essays, and I combated that through breaking it down into smaller chunks.

The university gave us plenty of prompts and guidance, with the module handbooks including detailed information on how to gain a first, what they expected in the report structure, and even hints on what to include in the essay. As a mature student, my researching and writing muscles hadn’t been exercised for 7 years, and so it did take most of the first year to understand what the lecturers were after.

Most of our lecturers and seminars were taken with other university students paying for their degree, which felt odd when I was getting my education for free through my employer. However, we did have modules that were different. For example, in the first term we had work based studies modules. These were designed to focus on how our role in the business contributed to business success, personal development plans, reflective essays on our workplace, and analysis on our department. It was a way to bridge the academic and workplace worlds that felt very far apart. We had at least one of these modules in each academic term. 

These modules were part of the criteria for the apprenticeship, and it meant we were asked to write reflective diaries and goals, which was a lot to ask when you were doing a full-time job as a mature student. My day-to-day role was demanding and I was a professional, not an apprentice learning to adapt to the workplace which made the process significantly harder. I was dealing with acquisition founders, developers, and senior executives daily and the stark contrast to a university did cause my head to spin at times.

The largest challenge that we had was that I began my degree in 2020, during the height of the COVID lockdowns. This meant that I was frequently in online classes and unsure whether university was open in person, but that got easier as the course went on.

Looking back, the first term felt overwhelming. The essays were harder than expected, balancing work and study was exhausting, and I often felt like I was playing catch up academically. However, by the second term things began to get easier. The challenge wasn’t intelligence, it was adapting to a different way of thinking.