Don't want to finish masters

[Jollofoldmaninaredsuit]

Currently doing my masters in a work related subject.
I am a single parent to two, full time full on job in the health service, work to do around my job for CPD (quite a bit, half a days work per week), elderly parents, three bed house to look after and not much money.
I started my masters for career progression but I just can't find any time to do the research, I'm really behind. Proposal is due in November. All my spare time is accounted for.
I just feel like quitting. People on my course say they feel the same, but with all due respect no one has as much on as me. People in my life say 'find time here and there' but it doesn't work like that, you need to be fully in it for hours. There's just no way I feel I can pull a dissertation together for June with my job getting more and more busy and no extra child free time. I use all my childcare time up working and all my annual leave this cover holidays.
I don't want to sacrifice my weekends, which I know is a choice and I'm sure others are, but I really need that time to decompress.

Don't then

But I'm aware I'll never get this chance again, as it's funded

Then I would sacrifice a day of my weekends. Short-term pain for longterm gain.

Why did you agree to it - were you pushed into it? Will you have to pay back the funding? Will it lead to better pay?

If you can't do it, you can't do it - but if I had to pay back the money I would be finding a way.

Can you pause?

@Ohfuckrucksack yeah I will have to pay it back. I've limped through the first year. I'll probably limp through the second.

@Jollofoldmaninaredsuit Then you're going to need to be selfish about it and just get through.

The house will have to be left to it's own devices. Your parents will have to rely on other siblings, friends, neighbours or adult social care if necessary and you will have to give up your weekends, grit your teeth and finish it.

I have been there, mentally wailing that I hated it and didn't want to do it anymore, didn't have time - but once it's done, it's done and it will be worth it.

Speak to your personal tutor, they are there to support you and the worries you have are 100% within their remit. You won't be the first (or last) to struggle with workload and they will be able to suggest ways to manage it but if they can only help if they know about it so either make an appointment or pop along to their office hours and tell them.

You need to either sacrifice one day of your weekend, and occasionally both, or give up.

There seems to be no other way around it.

Can you switch to part time?

Tell us about the CPD. Any movement at all there? Because that sounds like unpaid work you can't afford to do.

There is no real answer if you are full up with working FT and need both weekend days off. You'd need to clear a couple of evenings (ready meals and TV for the kids) or weekend time, or adjust your working hours to maybe compress them or something. But in healthcare you probably don't have a lot of flex on that. Is there anything you're doing that feels like an obligation but actually the world won't end if you stop doing it? Eg working through lunch breaks, CPD, stuff for your parents, taking kids to clubs they don't really need?

Don't quit..you are so lucky to have it funded. The sacrifices you make now are only short-term.

Speak with your tutor.
You could get an extension. You can get support in place. I thinknthat can help take the pressure off.
But I think you'll still need to dedicate 1 day a week to the course.

Will work let you do some in work time?

Do or do not, there is no try.

FYI, I did my degree aged 37, fishishedmy my phd aged 45. Academia is hard, I had to sacrifice things others wouldn't have even considered, still dealing with the PTSD now. There is no such thing as a work/life balance with further study (I coach degree apprentices and I always have to disabuse them of this notion). If it was easy, everyone would have a masters/phd.

Also check your Trust's rules on study leave as some of them will offer paid leave for this, I know mine allowed up to 30 days with a discretionary extension if needed. This might be enough to get you back on top and to sort out some strategies to relieve the pressure on you.

Do you have siblings? They need to step up and help out, it's unfair for you to be doing the majority of the support for your parents. Or could you request an assessment from Adult Social Care to see if they'd get any help.

For the house and the DC, look at where you can make time savings. Do a blitz of the house - declutter, tidy, organise and then it's just a case or keeping it ticking over. Give the DC age appropriate jobs to take some of the burden off you. Get a slow cooker and meal plan so can put stuff in on a morning and dinner cooks itself then just needs dishing out.

Do DC see their dad? Could he take them after school and additional day each week and keep them either until bedtime or overnight to give you an evening in which to study?

Having done a Masters while juggling lots of other commitments including being a full time carer for my DH I understand the pressure and the feeling of “it’s impossible” particularly when working on refining your proposal. I spent time doubting myself and wondering if I could do it - I got there eventually but did Defer after starting my final year and went back after 12 months having banked my proposal 🙂

You can do it, but you do need to sacrifice other stuff ( and be a bit selfish sometimes to get all the reading done ) and be creative about grabbing short bursts of time for reading i.e. coffee break / lunch / on the bus. Grabbing short slots was how I managed a large volume of my dissertation research. I found getting the proposal formulated was in a way the toughest bit as this shapes all the future reading and research - after this it does get better as you have narrowed your research down and can be much more selective on your reading.

Are you trying to read every element of all the research papers or have you got a strategy to sift setting parameters which enables you to keep / discard which saves a lot of time. I started trying to read everything and speaking with others realised it wasn’t needed at proposal stage. Have you spoken to your tutor or student help desk ? Are you really too far away from having a proposal so that you could submit that, bank it and then defer ?

BUT : you really do have to want to do it and it might be that you aren’t in that head space at the moment. It is a huge commitment. You can always go back to it / defer - accepting that there might be financial implications for quitting ( i.e. you won’t get all your fees back) and might impact future career progression in the short term.

It’s ok to say no if you really are struggling with everything else going on in your life at the moment and defer. You are already doing so much to keep family and work going the Masters might be the one thing too many at the moment and it’s the one thing you can let go of. Be kind to yourself and if it does feel impossible defer - it will still be there if you want to go back to it .

Don't you have the option of not doing the dissertation & qualifying with a PG Dip rather than the MA/MSc?

I was in your position 3 years ago. I paused for 2 years - I completed the first year but just didn't have the time, much like yourself. In the end I quit. I felt bad for a little while but ultimately my MH was more important.

If it's not working, it's not working. There's no shame in stepping away.

Chat GPT or similar to get you over this hump.

Only joking! 🙃

Two years is part time. Full time is one year.

Yeh I know. I'm just thinking when I did mine full-time some people switched to part-time mid-year when it got tough.

Honestly, this is a funded masters. Just give up what you need to of the weekends until June. You are unlikely to regret it and more likely to regret giving up.

I was you.
I took a weeks sick leave to write the proposal. Made the scope of the research as succinct as possible. Decided that the literary review was something that was easy to do ( ie there's loads of research already available so easy to pull together). Getting the proposal right is the key to making the dissertation something that you can do in the time available. I was also reasonably blunt with the supervisor that I needed something that's passed, rather that something super academic or groundbreaking.
So, for example, my dissertation was about contrasting short lived incentive schemes with annual ones in the workplace.My review was on motivation (easy, loads available). The research was contrasting results from a local incentive scheme that was in place vs annual bonus. All of this I could readily access( or dare I say it, I could have made up entirely). I think I threw in a staff survey, could do survey monkey now).
You can do it I reckon. What you probably don't want to try is reinventing quantum theory.

What type of masters is it? Probably some people oh here that could help?

I would make every effort to push through but having said that, don't feel any shame in accepting, if you need to, that the sacrifice is not worth it. I completed a masters a few years ago and, looking back, if I had my time again I would not go through it again. It's not always worth the pain.

Do speak to your university though, they are usually exceptionally good at offering as much support as they can to those who need it.