NEW BOARD!

[EdmontinaDonsAutumnalHues]

Welcome everyone!

Thank you to MNHQ. This brand new board is the progeny of this thread:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/site_stuff/4327788-Is-there-a-specific-Mature-Study-Retraining-board?msgid=110096218

and about a hundred others that people have posted recently, asking whether they’re too old / have left it too late to start or return to education or training at any level.

Not all mature students will feel the need to participate. And I know ‘mature’ is an imprecise term … If you’ve wondered if you’re too old this is definitely the place for you!

And if you’re in the middle of your course, or have finished and have the time to share your experience, please do!

It needs to be said that universities and other educational or training institutions really welcome potential candidates who are older than the standard age. And they are generally perfectly willing to point you in the right direction if it’s years or decades since you last studied anything.

If you’ve started a thread on this subject recently do feel free to ask MNHQ to move it here. If you’ve read or posted on one, you may want to let the OP know this board now exists. The idea is to gather all possible knowledge, support, and advice - on funding, courses, locations, career prospects, etc in one place.

Enjoy the new board!

Thanks for getting the new board. I've been looking up possibly doing a masters and/or PhD. I've been procrastinating over this for years!

I did the same, felulageller, and then just stumbled over the perfect thing. (Which suggests that all the courses I bypassed probably were not the right thing.)

At the moment there are just over 60 threads on the new board - so an hour’s browsing may well turn up something you hadn’t thought of. I was particularly taken with the train driving thread!

At the moment there seems to be a preponderance of Health / Social care / Psychology amongst re-trainers - I don’t know if the reasons for this are obvious or more subtle than I have comprehended. There are fewer threads on moving into creative careers or craft at a professional level - again, I don’t know why this is so. (My own second career is so niche I’d be immediately outed if I talked about it on a thread. )

At the moment … I’m clearly not concentrating on editing my posts!

I already did the mature retraining in a vocational HSC field. Big mistake. I'd much rather go creative now and wish I'd done that 10 years ago but prioritised feeding the kids. (Not that they'd ever appreciate the sacrifice!)

Bumping this for new readers not yet aware of this wonderful new board.

Great new board - thank you!

Spring bump!