Tommy Lee Goes to College

Those of you who has ever watched the show ‘Tommy Lee Goes to College’ can easily relate to this, as well as those of you who have never really studied much after high school.

Tommy Lee is the hard-core tattooed drummer of 80’s rock band Mötley Crüe, and a couple of years back, TV channel VH1 did a reality show about him going back to school to get a degree, and how he struggled to fit in to that world. Tommy Lee has always been a ‘work hard – play so much harder’ type of person, and for him to go back to school and really focus on learning new things and passing exams, was an interesting concept to watch, and I am sure a great personal challenge for him as well.

I have already established in previous entries that my company is a very good employer, and keen on employee development. Now, my company has kindly and graciously offered to sponsor me for a ‘Professional Certificate in Management’ through the Open University here in the UK. I am of course very grateful and will hop on this train as soon as I can. Can’t wait to take the next step, and Open University is definitely my preferred way of studying as I can study in my own pace to some extent and study whenever I can, on the bus to work, in the evenings, etc.

I never got around to studying after finishing Swedish ‘Gymnasium’, 12 years of school all in all, the equivalent of high school, because I wanted to start working straight away and I even started my own small business after graduating. After that, I have just kept working and have been very comfortable doing so. I am therefore a bit curious to see how this will pan out from a personal point of view. I am not worried about results and performance per se, it will just be a bit of an adjustment and a change in mindset to get the ball rolling on this.

As a matter of a fact, until quite recently, I had never even been inside a university, so picking up the books and figuring out study methods and ways to retain knowledge through study materials will probably be a bit challenging at first, but as with everything else, once you get into a flow and get a structure on certain things, you’ll be fine. Hopefully.

The course curriculum that I am set out to take looks great, and most of the topics covered will be very applicable to what I am doing in my current role at work, and I am sure the rest will come in very handy in the future. Hopefully, I'll also get an opportunity to draw from personal work experiences and my previous experiences from coaching and training. I bet Tommy Lee couldn't do that when he went to college!

The good thing with this course is that I can keep building on the Certificate and the next level would be a Diploma, and then I would be eligible for an MBA program – but that is way in the future.

I was always of the opinion that ‘you don’t need a degree to make it in this world…’ and I still am, but at the same time, it is one giant leap in the right direction.