Today I'm applying to a course I like the look of. Of course I've researched it, emailed lecturers and got some responses. I've filled in most of the form and my lecturers from the first degree have agreed to provide references.

All that stands between myself and the application flying off to a dusty admin's office is my Personal Statement. It fills most A level students with dread- this is what gets you noticed, decides whether potential tutors leap with joy or toss your application into an ever-growing pile of rejects.

I've already written one of these, quite successfully as it happens, four years ago. I'm an old hand at it, right?


Of course, it does help if the course description gives little clues as to what the lecturer wants to hear. Unfortunately, this particular lecturer chose not to reply to my attempts to draw him into discussion. He also chose not to write anything on his website about the course he teaches.



One thing that worries me about postgraduate study is financing it.

I'm working like a good little bee at the moment. It's full time in a £17,100 job a year for 4 months, plus bonuses. To get said bonuses which could be anything from £400 to £1500 a month I need to push my stats up. Unfortunately, I work as an arrears collector. This means that to get the bonuses (and avoid being put on disciplinary for being below standard) I have to be mean, hard and pushy on people; a particularly nasty job considering the credit crunch and the rising mortgage prices.

One option is to apply for postgraduate scholarships. As a British citizen, female and applying for courses in the Environmental sector, I qualify for zilch. Nada. Nothing. If I'd been foreign, male or studying social sciences (or all three) I'd have money thrown at me by our delightful government. But then I suppose foreign students bring foreign money into the country. Does it matter that they then take all those new skills and never come back?

My choice then, is to apply for a taught course and save up my earnings then take out a hefty career development loan (at an equally hefty interest rate) and be up to my eyeballs in debt until I'm 50- or 75 if I ever get on the property ladder or (shock horror!) take a brief holiday abroad.

The other choice is to get paid to study; which means get paid a measly sum (but supposedly livable on) to do research into something I find vaguely interesting. But would a specialist research not pigeonhole me? After a year of peering down microscopes and firing light at objects would I be employable in anything to do with the environment, or would I be forever resigned to living out my days in a dark laboratory continuing said research and passing on the knowledge to people who could actually make use of it?