Single Mum Studying a Masters

[Fairy2015]

I have been accepted onto a Masters which is a total of 20 hours a week, with one full day at uni a week.

I am worrying about my capability/work load, the degree is exactly what I want to do (MSc Counselling Children & Young People), however I fear I will struggle as I am a single mum to a 3 year old too.

Has anyone else studied a postgrad whilst being a full time mum!?

Do you mean stay at home mum? (Full time is a little offensive to us 'part time' mums)

How many hours of childcare will you have? Does your 3 year old go to bed easily? I ask this because my biggest working time used to be evenings but I now spend hours every night just getting my dd to sleep and keeping her asleep so have no time for work anymore

I'm currently studying (BA) and I get the majority of childcare paid for my 3yo son to go to nursery. Have you looked into this? You'll get 15 hours free from the government but then if you need extra days student finance do childcare grants and I assume they'll cover masters courses.

I put him in a private nursery so I can condense his hours over two days (my mum has him one day too) because if he had 5 mornings sessions a week, I'd literally have to turn around and go home the second I got to uni to pick him up.

Would putting your 3yo in nursery for long days be an option?
If you aren't working then I'd say it's definitely possible OP!

I can't wait to do my masters!

Yes, I did. I also worked 30 hours a week in the NHS (including night shifts and on-call duty) while I studied for my MSc on my days off. Ds was 6 when I started so he was at least at school some days.

It was tough but I just had to be very organised, and got used to working in the evenings! You can do it.

I am not a single parent but currently studying a masters, MSc Psychology over 2 years. This is a conversion course, so it may be different to yours in some respects, but I have found that part-time I put in 15+ hours a week, sometimes over 20 as the reading is huge, especially for assignments. Those doing it full-time are doing 20-30 hours, some with kids, jobs or both. I'm sure it's doable but you need to be really disciplined and organised. My kids are 6 and 8 and it has still been hard, especially making myself work in evenings and weekends to make deadlines. Good luck!

I'm just finishing my Masters as a lp. I waited till DD was school age before starting, but I also work 20 hours/week.

I find the work load was varied over time. On an average week it was very easily manageable, just background reading to prepare for lectures etc. But once the assignments were set there was a lot more work. And the end of year essays were always manic. The dissertation (mine was 25000 words) wasn't actually as much work as I thought, compared to all the shorter essays. Basically, sometimes it was easy and other times it was very hard. I had to rely heavily on family taking DD during school holidays at times.

And it was hard sometimes to motivate myself to work in the evenings when I was tired, but that's really the only time. Aiming to do around 20 hours of work a week and not impact too much on time with DD meant I had to work pretty much every evening from when she went to bed until 10-11pm (I also worked in my job a couple of evenings a week so that cut down on study time). I just finished last week and DD was on a trip - it was the first day I've had to myself with nothing to do (except housework) for the last 3 years.