I've kind of neglected this blog over the last few months, but I do have what I think is a pretty good reason.
A few months back I set the ball in motion for me to hopefully attend university in 2014. I had to get together all my previous academic stuff (no simple task when you think that pretty much all of it dates from 20 years ago. I had to sign up with QTAC (Queensland Tertiary Admissions Centre) and submit all that documentation along with my preferences for what course I wanted to do and what uni it was being run at.
Because I never finished High School (I completed Year 11 twice) I never got a rank or an OP or any other useful score that could be given to QTAC so I had to sit a STAT exam. Basically this is a 3 hour multiple choice test of 75 questions across a variety of subject matter. On completion your scores in the 3 areas they measure are calculated, then combined in order to give you an overall score which is then used to determine your Rank. I needed to achieve a rank of 70 in order to be considered for the course I wanted to do.
I had to wait 3 weeks before the letter was sent out from QTAC telling me my result. I'd done a selection of test questions prior to sitting the STAT that have been made available online, so I was confident that I would do ok, but even at the end of the test I really had no idea how well I'd done. Turns out I'd done better than I had ever expected. The highest rank attainable is an 88, any score on the STAT that exceeds this is assigned that rank. I got a rank of 88. To say I was a little bit stunned would be an understatement, but I was over the moon as well.
All this got lodged with QTAC and the "long wait" began. The normal uni offers are not made until January, so I was expecting to have to wait till then. One afternoon I was checking the QTAC site and noticed that the offer dates on the course I wanted to do had been updated and now included dates at the end of October and November as well as the date in January. I mentioned this to my wife and she suggested I contact the admissions department at the uni to check it out. They must have heard us as the following day I got a phone call from checking to see that I had received some promotional material they had posted out. I told them I had and also asked about these new dates I was seeing on the QTAC website. I was advised that these were the dates for "early offers". If you had everything in with QTAC prior to those dates then there was a chance that you would receive an early offer from the uni.
So, I crossed my fingers, my legs, my toes and anything else I could cross and I waited. On October 31 I received an email saying I had correspondence on the QTAC site. I checked and there it was, an official offer from Griffith University in regard to my application to attend the institution to complete a Bachelor of Game Design course over the next 3 years. Of course I accepted it straight away.
So there you are. The reason I've not been sharing my thoughts here over the last few months is entirely due to putting my energy into attending uni next year. I've told my employer and I finish up there at the end of January which will give me about a month before classes actually start. We've been sorting out bits and pieces as we go along as well. I got any early Xmas/congrats present yesterday when I got a laptop for use at uni. Picked up an Acer Aspire S7 13.3" unit for just over $1100 and I spent most of last night setting it up and getting Office installed which was a bit of fun.
Next on the list is to get the bike back on the road, it'll need a service and tune along with a new battery but that should be about all. I'll also need to replace my helmet (it's over 10 years old) and get some new gloves as well. I'm sure there will be a few more things that I'll need to do along the way, but I just can't think of them right now.
It's a bit scary, going back to school after such a long time. And I know it's only going to get scarier the closer to starting gets, but I think I have a couple of advantages. Firstly, I have a wife that I could not do this without, her support and guidance will be invaluable. Secondly, I'm not straight out of high school, I've been out in the real world and worked, and had a family and done "stuff". That is going to allow me to bring a totally different perspective to this and in theory it also means I'm less likely to get sucked into some of the stupidity you hear about going on. Finally, I know what I want to do, I'm not going there with wide eyes thinking I'm going to make a billion dollars and create the next monster video game. Sure, that might happen, but I know that I want to make things, I want to create the characters, the environments, the building blocks if you will. That might vary a little along the way, what path doesn't, but it gives me a big advantage out of the blocks as I know exactly which direction I want to head in and can tailor my classes accordingly.
So there you have it. In 2014 I'll be at uni chasing my passion. It's a very liberating feeling.
