To Quit or Not?

[PotentialQuitter]

I’m currently in year two of a two-year programme to become a healthcare professional.

I’m not enjoying the course. I find the content unnecessarily complicated, somewhat politicised and too focused on academic learning processes, instead of practical, useful content. Assignment questions are very difficult to decipher – its like another language! Lecturers are distant and give little positive feedback.

Placements have been mostly fine, although tiring on top of parenting / everyday life.

I’m disillusioned, disengaged and losing interest in pursuing this career. I don’t have a long-established previous career to fall back on.

Any words of advice please. Has anyone been in a similar situation and quit? Did you regret it?

Thanks in advance.

Did you enjoy the placements? Can you see yourself working in the field?
Training courses are very different to the reality of the jobs. A lot of theory, assignments that you maybe don't see the relevance of so you struggle, seminars on daft things that you are unlikely to need etc.

How far into year two are you? It would seem silly to quit right near the end. If you are more like at mid point of the whole course, it's really normal for that time to be a stumbling block in healthcare courses, we were warned about it when I did nurse training as that's when most drop outs happen.

I think you should stick it out. You're already over half way to completing it and whether you choose to go straight into the profession or not, you have the qualification to fall back on. It's short term pain for potential long term gain in terms of opportunities.

Stick with it! Do just enough to pass and get through. I felt similar, was overwhelmed and quit, but all I did was swap feelings of exhaustion for feelings of guilt! Luckily I managed to cancel the quitting after a week of intolerable guilt and they let me back on the course! It feels so good to know I stuck it out. Resilience is a skill.

If you like the job grit your teeth and push through it as best you can. I had to do that with my PGCE. The course was total rubbish and the lecturers were abysmal but I liked being in the classroom so that pushed me to keep going.

Once I'd qualified, none of the "academic content" was ever used or useful again. I'm sure they just invent half of the theory for these sort of jobs to make it look like a legit uni course for Ofqual.

What really helped was printing off the week-by-week calendar in full and ticking off every single day counting down to the end of the bullshit.

Thanks for the encouraging remarks / words of solidarity. I'm about 3/5ths through the course with half the marked assignments left to do :-(

I also feel quite isolated on the course, being quite a bit older than most of the other students. Its nice to know people can relate to my frustration re the irrelevant and unnecessarily complicated bullshit! @SisterMichaelsHabit

@Sunflower8848 interesting to hear what happened with you. Well done to you for sticking it out. How have things been since finishing the course?

I got to third year of my BSc in my health related degree years ago and nearly dropped out but decided to tough it out and push through to get my qualification. I had put in too many hours to throw it all away. OP keep going!!! You can do this. Don't give up💪

Thank very much @Vettrianofan Well done for sticking with it. I'm currently hanging in there.
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Wondering how it went? Which course are you doing??