Minsk to Mist

I have very few nice memories from the times I was a school. It is basically just a bleep on my timeline with a few nice glimpses because of a fantastic history teacher we had in the last two years or a couple of school friends with whom we went completely insane when we were ten or eleven. The uni time is a complete opposite.

Even though studying in a Belarusian university was no picnic, in the grand scheme of things, I enjoyed it.

We had great professors, many of which were distinctive and memorable characters. Somewhere at my mum’s house, there’s a still a bunch of my old uni notebooks where, among scarce notes from lectures, I wrote down funny things our professors interjected now and then. (This is probably why I’m a lifetime clown these days).

I had fantastic friends at the uni, and anyone looking at us and having no context whatsoever probably thought we were high or pissed – or both. The funny thing is, when we go together, we never needed any alcohol (and certainly not drugs) to enjoy ourselves and to go completely insane.

And despite some subjects at the uni bearing zero value (‘ideology of the Belarusian state’, huh?), most of the time, I studied the things that I liked – foreign languages and relations between different nations and states.

University degrees in Belarus are somewhat unconventional, in the sense that they have preserved the Soviet system of a 5-year specialist degree. No Bachelor degree diplomas – except for those of my friends who were foreign citizens and got their Bachelor diplomas in addition to the Specialist one. (They only got them handed out after having completed the 5-year course, though). Back in the days, this map was circulating around Belarusian web pages with a title ‘what does a doughnut and a Bologna process have in common?’

Either way, when you settle in a civilised European state that boasts one of the best higher education systems in the world, you start thinking how future-proof your original Belarusian degree is. And you realise it’s laughable.

Having pondered on who I wanted to become when I grow up, I realised that starting a completely new degree from scratch would be too much for me – both financially, intellectually and mentally. Building up something on top of the existing education was a more attractive option. Since I have long been intrigued by nuances of managing larger businesses, understanding the intricacies of operating different organisational functions and understanding how to navigate the ever-changing environments, a postgraduate diploma started shaping up as a viable option. ‘Why the hell not an MBA then, anyway?’ I thought to myself. Thank goodness I’m ADHD and have horrible time-blindness and no fear…

When I started researching MBA courses in UK, I was absolutely lost. How do I know which one is decent and which one is a scam? How do I choose between all the online and semi-online options? Will I even be able to afford it? Will they accept my Belarusian diploma – or will they just laugh at it and ask if I can read and write at all?

With some common sense and some help from my friend named ChatGPT, I figured out there were three things that really mattered to me when choosing an MBA program in the UK:

• Decent accreditations – no point in paying for a degree that would be just as laughable as my existing one;
• Tuition fees – Oxbridge is not something I can afford, and owing that much money to my employer did not sound very appealing either;
• Part-time and fully online – I am in the UK on a work visa, and I simply cannot afford not to work.

Having sifted through all the online prospectuses of multiple educational institutions, I opted for The Open University. Its business school is triple-accredited, the fees are lower than the UK average thanks to… the fully online nature of studying, and it seemed to check all the boxes for me! Additionally, I appreciate the very philosophy of the OU, in the sense that education has to be open and affordable to anyone.

The entry requirements were not very straightforward to me as someone from, let’s say, an exotic country. ‘A bachelor’s degree awarded with honours from a recognised UK university or the equivalent, but an ordinary UK bachelor’s degree or its equivalent will also be accepted on certain conditions’ does not directly map on my Specialist 5-year Diploma with Highest Honours in International Relations. Having paid for a legal translation of my Diploma and reminiscing on some subjects I had at my Belarusian uni (‘The place and the role of Eastern European countries in international relations’, my goodness, did I really study that?!), I submitted my application and waited patiently to hear back from the University.

I got in about a year ago. And that’s where the fun began.

To be continued…