When I was working in adult lit. my teamleader/co-tutor and I were looking into full teaching qual courses for me (recent legislation meant that anyone working in the field needed to have a level 4 teaching qualification by 2010). We talked for a bit and I was considering tagging the one year top-up qual onto a straight academic degree, rather than doing the pure teaching route.
She was so supportive. She told me all about her experience being a mature university student and really boosted my confidence on it. The thing that totally struck me though, was that she told me I was a 'born academic'. She said she could see me going off into academia and just never coming out again *grins*. Having put the academia bee into my bonnet she then persuaded me not to go for the easier-to-get-into university, but to try for a respected one.
It was such a freeing thing, to have a boss(and friend) who a) could and would talk at length about philosophy, history and literature, b) saw more value in spending three years learning something with passion and drive, than the same amount of time gaining a qualification to prove what I already knew I could do, and c) saw in me something I had stopped seeing in myself.
Those conversations with Christine set me onto a new path and for the first time in my life, I am doing what comes most naturally to me
