Are you a stay-at-home? Are you worried about what the future holds, and what career options you have? Maybe the recent changes in benefits have or are soon to impact on your family once your youngest child reaches seven years of age…
…whatever your concern, training can only benefit you in the long run. And you can do it – thousands of people do it every day, and so can you.
Don’t use time as an excuse
Being in work or having children is no excuse for not studying. While your children are at nursery or school, or when they are asleep, you can take an online class or two, read your textbooks, do your assignments – or you can attend classes in person. You can even work toward a degree from home these days, because institutions have realised that people need flexibility around learning.
If you work, you can make better use of your lunch breaks by reading a chapter or two, or your journey to and from work – isn’t it better than reading the daily trash, or magazines about everything and nothing? They won’t get you further up the career ladder.
Online classes usually consist of lectures posted once or twice a week, along with assignments and tests. You can read the lectures at your convenience during the week. Then you can submit your assignments to your instructor online as you complete them.
Career dilemas
If you aren’t sure what you’d like to study, you can take a look online at university or college prospectuses. We have lots of career profiles you can browse through to give you an idea of what’s out there. You can also search the government’s National Learning Directoryto find out which courses are available in your area.
Most community colleges offer a lot of continuing education options. If you still have questions, you can call the college for additional information. They’ll be able to help you decide how you can achieve your educational goals.
If money is stopping you from pursuing continuing education, ask the college about scholarships, grants and other help. If you are on benefits, pop down to your local job centre – they may be able to help fund your course or degree, and help you with the cost of childcare for when you are studying – especially if you are a lone parent.
Be realistic when setting your goals
To avoiding becoming overwhelmed or discouraged as you pursue your continuing education goals, set a realistic timetable for yourself, if you are doing a degree for example, you can decide that one or two modules is all you can handle per semester – and that’s fine. It may take a few extra years, but you can get through your course this way. The important thing is that you stick with it.
Help – I have never studied before!
If you have no qualifications at all, you can still work towards the career of your dreams. What it may mean is that you will have to work your way up through various Access courses and other foundation courses to fill in the gaps.
Even if you are not great with reading and writing, you can still achieve your goal – it just takes willing, and taking that all-important first step.
ontinuing education offers you many opportunities – but you’ll never know if you don’t try.
