Retraining as a mature student - what would you do?

[MrsWhites]

Hi everyone,

I’m a 40 year old stay at home mum, my husband has a job that includes a lot of travel so it made sense for us as a family to have someone at home full time but my youngest is now coming towards the end of primary school so I feel like it’s time for me to start looking at getting back to work in the next few years. I am looking at starting an access to higher education course this year with a view to starting a degree afterwards - preferably through the open university.

Before becoming a stay at home mum my job was in Health and Safety with some facilities management but I hated it so don’t want to go back down that route. My interests are mostly in history but I don’t want to spend years on a degree that won’t open doors for me careers wise so I’m unsure of whether a history degree would be right for me either.

Has anyone else been in a similar position and would recommend (or not as the case may be) the degree and career route they took?

Thanks!

My experience of OT has included shower/bathroom/kitchen redesign. Ramps etc. Some people really value the small inputs of help that mean they can stay at home for longer. Relatively young clients with MND for example, a stairlift can make such a difference.

But it is basically all about cost saving, how to keep someone at home and out of a care home in a lot of cases.

Childrens OT is much better funded and there are more opportunities to do things that would help their standard of living.

I retrained as a nurse

Fucking awful job with some of the nastiest most duplicitous people I've ever met

I'm no longer nursing and have a job elsewhere

I retrained as a podiatrist. Love my job. You can work privately or in the NHS. A few apprenticeships around now as well.

(I work in the NHS, quite a few people do both)

I’m an occupational therapist, I quite enjoy the job and there’s a lot of different areas you can go into (mental health, paediatrics, rehabilitation etc) but the salary is terrible and I actually wish I had chosen a different career due to this. I actually found this thread googling how to retrain from OT to a different career lol! Wish I had gone into something like the civil service, marketing, just anything that pays a decent salary really!!

Hi, I’m really interested in the degree you pursued. Could you tell me where you studied and what the requirements were?😊