STRUGGLING WITH EDUCATION

Just a quick post about something I came to realise today.

I was always of the thought that at university, the 'youngsters' didn't work much and were clueless.

But I was stereotyping and tarring everyone with the same brush.

Whilst I am sure there are a fair share of slackers in uni as a whole, on my course at least, the young uns' are hard workers. They do their reading and they know their stuff. I believe this is partly due to the type of course but I also think that having just left school and still being in the education frame of mind helps greatly. As mature students, there is a mix of those who are working in the way I thought we would and others, who like me, are not doing as much as we could. I'm not disrespecting them or anything and I know they will put the hours in soon when the work builds up.

But as for myself,  I thought that returning to uni as a 28 year old I would be motivated, efficient and just in general work hard. But I guess I didn't think of the effects that being out of education for so long would have. You would think I would be ok. For one, I recently completed a home learning course in sociology. Showing evidence of recent study was a requirement for entry onto this course but it obviously wasn't enough to get my mindset right for full-time education again. Secondly, earlier in the year I worked as an academic support worker at a local university. This meant supporting disabled students and taking notes for them in lectures. We were trained in taking useful, concise and detailed notes. What better prep than that you say? You'd think so wouldn't you, but apparently not.

I'm not being any of the things I thought I would be when returned to education. I turn up to everything but i'm not reading, i'm not making my notes into something useful, i'm not passionate, i'm not doing anything. Being away from education has had a huge effect. When I was working I liked going to my job, doing my hours and going home and switching off. I'm not saying being at uni means you have to work any extra hours than you would at a standard job, but outside of our contact hours i.e. lectures/seminars I struggle to make myself do anymore work. I only have part-time contact hours yet when a lecture has finished i've essentially switched off and don't do anything else ,as I would with a job, and this is not good.

So yeah, being a mature student hasn't meant what I thought it would. Although only 28 (yes only, shhhh) I thought life experience and knowing what actual full-time work was like would make me a better student. I was wrong about that and I was wrong to judge the 18 year olds. Some young uns' are hard workers, some are not and it's exactly the same for us mature students. There are other reasons why i'm not at all motivated but I shan't go into that right now. I'm not sure even I have sifted through it all myself yet.

But essentially what i'm saying is, returning to education is a struggle and I was wrong to judge.