Because my previous job required a lot of kind of taking information, summarising it, writing about it that, part of it, that part of studying didn't worry me but I was worried about going back to sciences especially maths, statistics, IT. What I didn't expect and I'm not sure whether they didn't have it first time round or whether I just never asked, I was very surprised, positively surprised by the extra maths support offered at the university I chose. That was a real power house, it was a place where you could just turn up with a maths problems regardless to whether it was from the Maths course or from Biology course and tutors would try and talk you through it and teach you the maths behind it or put you on courses.
That was a real surprise and although for me, I think I used it more as a double checking service, yeah, I've used them more as a double checking service but the fact that they were there and you didn't have to kind of admit to the lecturer if it was a different topic that you were struggling with however that graph was constructed or we had one lecturer who was famous for skipping so many steps in an equation because he had done it so many times so he could just get from that line. For me to sit down and to say "I have no idea how he got from here to there" and for somebody to put the five lines in between for me and then I could do it bit by bit, I just had to, it had to be broken down for me, smaller because I hadn't really done any algebra or anything for 15 years.
So that was, yeah, I was really impressed by that because that was one of the topics I was really worried about. I've also, I think one of the things when you are older is that you make maybe more use of support services because you feel, well I feel I've paid for them, I might as well use them all, I might as well try them all and if I don't like them I don't have to go back. So stuff like maths support or study advice, if I did get stuck I just tried them and sometimes they could help me and sometimes they couldn't but I just, knowing that that kind of support network was there and that this time round I felt I could use it, that was quite a surprise to me as well.
