I've been with the Open University for a couple of years now. I started off with a 10-credit course in web page design - hence the shape of this site, and I do hope that you're not finding it too irritating. I didn't take the work seriously enough and had a mad scramble to finish the end-of-course assignment, but I passed (phew!).

From September 2007 I did two introductory courses, MST121 which is equivalent to a single maths A level I think, and M150 which is a starter for computing. I did well - 95% in each - though as they were pretty much revision for me that's not saying too much.

I started MS221 in January 2008. It was still mostly stuff I'd done before (yes, I'm afraid I was a maths whizz at school) but the exam - taken in October - was quite difficult. It was the first formal exam I'd taken in 26 years! But it was okay in the end - 86%, a distinction.

I've now started two new maths courses, M208 and M343. I also want to take some more short courses on web design. I've decided that maths is my true love, though I enjoy computing. But I also think the Cambridge professor got it right when asked what programming language he used. He replied, "Graduate student.".

My only gripe is the horrible software we had to use for MS221, and will have to use for other Maths courses - it's called MathsCad, it's non-intuitive, it's got bugs, and despite my love of computing I do think maths should be mostly be done with paper and pencil - though I'm happy to use a calculator for non-trivial calculations.