As an adult, one of the questions you might find yourself asking is ‘when is the right time to study?’, whether you didn’t make the most of your time at school or you just followed the wrong career path, at some point you are going to start thinking about your options and future.
The annoying truth is, there really isn’t any right time to study for anyone. When you’re a kid at school it’s not the right time because you’re desperate to do anything but study, you want to learn about the world, have adventures with your friends and probably sleep! As an adult, you are too bogged down with responsibility, family and bills, so how could you possibly take time out to study?!
Then again, with that said, if you want to change your career path, earn more money or have another go at getting your dream job, then chances are you’re going to have to find the right time to study and find it soon. Thankfully, with the advances in education and training, it’s now more feasible than ever for people to study in their spare time and achieve their goals.
What to Consider when Thinking about Studying again?
First things first, what do you want to achieve by studying again? Do you want to go to university? Do you want to improve your career? Are you looking to be able to help your kids with their homework? Once you have the answer to this question, you can start working backwards from the goal to make sure you have a plan of action.
For going to university, you will most likely need either an Access Course or relevant A-Levels. So you need to do some research, either get yourself on Google and get searching or get in touch with UCAS and their helpful team to find out which subjects you need to take to get an offer of a place on a course at university.
If you’re looking at just improving your CV for a better job or to get a promotion, then you most likely need to look at more vocational courses, so Diplomas and Short Courses are the way forward for you. These are great as you can complete them in relatively short time scales and there are no exams to take into consideration.
Improving your basic knowledge and abilities, whether it’s so you don’t go into panic at work when you have to work out sums or because you want to be able to help your kids with their homework, you are best served enrolling onto functional skills courses or even studying GCSEs to build your foundation knowledge.
So, now you know what your goals are and what type of courses you need to look to enrol onto and study. The next step is going to be deciding how and when you’re going to begin your studies.
How and when to Study?
How and when to study your chosen courses all depends on you and your commitments, most adults have several commitments already in place that they just can’t skip or ignore while they study, so part time study is usually the best way to go. A few years back, this would have meant having to attend an evening class, which would fill most people with dread and loathing! Imagine finishing a full stressful day at work, only to be greeted with the notion of going to a cold classroom to put in a few hours of study.
Thankfully, that’s no longer the case with online learning. You can log in and do a spot of studying as and when you fancy. Long commute to work? Log in and get some work done! Quiet lunch hour at work? Log in and get some work done. Free Sunday afternoon? Log in and get some work done. As you can see, online learning is flexible and convenient, it fits in with you and you can do it almost anywhere.
When it comes to the right time to study, it really does depend on the courses you need to study and your goals. Always make sure you take the time to do your research into which courses will be the most beneficial and useful for your goals. If you’re looking at courses with examinations at the end, make sure you enrol and give yourself enough time to get all the materials covered and revised before you have to sit the exams. If you’re doing vocational courses, make sure you understand the learning outcomes and you get the most from the courses by doing all the activities and set tasks.