Masters and being a carer

[Madness6539]

I'm a full time carer for my mum and will be for about 2/3 more years. I have been doing it for about 3 years already as I've managed to work it around my children and supportive husband. I really want to get back into work and my siblings have agreed that they will take over the majority of my mum's care. One of my sisters is pregnant and will be the main carer once her child is in preschool.
I am taking this opportunity to retrain after mostly working in schools teaching (unqualified) and supporting. It would make most sense to finally qualify as a teacher but the idea of actually returning to teaching fills me with dread. After really thinking about what I want to do, I settled on wanting to work with books. I was looking at a Librarian course but then recently discovered a part time children's literature masters course which would open doors for working in publishing too.
I would be starting next year if I go for it. I keep flitting between being excited and optimistic to quite anxious and negative about it. I'm getting thoughts of what if I can't motivate myself (the courses will have to be online due to needing a flexible schedule), what if I regret taking on a massive course like this or what if I'm just not capable. I'm not sure why I'm so down on myself. I have a Law degree so I know academically I'm more than able.

So I guess my question is how do I move on from the anxiety of it? If you're a carer or work full, how did you fit in a masters in with kids etc? (My husband will help but he does work long hours).
If online, how did you motivate yourself on the days where it was hard?

Maybe I'm just mad and should leave it.

You are more than capable, and the course sounds ideally suited to your particular working experiences, so you’d take a lot to it.

Can I ask - would there be any face to face element at all? I think there’s more than one such course available - if possible I’d advise you to move heaven and earth to join one that enables some meetings with tutors and fellow students. On a good postgraduate course - where everyone is bringing some life experience - you can easily learn as much from your peers as from the formal teaching. And (again, if it’s a well thought of course) the contacts and network you build can be influential in all sorts of ways once you’ve graduated.

Yes, of course, it might be terrifying and exhausting (and possibly a slog if entirely online) but you owe it to yourself to grasp the opportunity. You won’t be doing the whole course in the first hour - you just take it day by day. (Read some of the other threads here!)

Have you been in touch informally with the course providers to ask all your questions and find out about the future prospects of graduates? It would be sensible to establish which possible areas might be swallowed by AI, and which will be left for humans.

But don’t dither. Seize the day.

Thank you for replying! I would love to do it in person but none of my local universities are within a reasonable commute. I would have to travel about 2.5/3 hours each way to get to my nearest university that offers this particular masters. So unfortunately, it would have to be the online option for me. I think they have a weekly/fortnightly talk with the tutor. Other than that, it's all up to my own motivation not to get too overwhelmed.

I’d really check the job prospects afterwards. Start looking now to see if suitable jobs come up. Don’t want to be a downer, I retrained via a masters and loved the course and the new career. (From education /academia to health) But I checked job prospects first thoroughly and even then it took a while to find something local enough to work with being around for teens during the exam years. Maybe start from the other end and look at all the masters courses offered locally and look at local jobs/remote jobs and see what is interesting and what qualifications you would need to get for those jobs.
Im sure a course in children’s literature would be lovely but if you need it to kick start a new career I’d be more hard headed and see if the publishing thing is realistic. And/or whether there are many librarian jobs in the era of council cutbacks.

i loved doing mostly face to face learning but did it part time so commuted into London a day or two a week which I could work around other commitments. Some face to face masters might not have that much face to face so it would be worth checking as this might widen possibilities. Some are set up where you go for a week at a time to do the face to face in blocks to facilitate apprenticeships so it might be that that would work for your siblings if they can take leave to relieve you of caring.

There might be some way you can build on your law degree and combine it with your knowledge of children. I find some mixture of heart and head works with these things, good luck!

You can definitely do it OP!

Be protective of your time to study, plan it out in advance and make sure everyone knows you won’t be available during that time.

It will be a slog sometimes but it will be worth it.

Completely agree with the poster above. I’m sure you’ll love and be very capable of doing a Masters, but isn’t childrens publishing extraordinarily competitive? Uni jobs are getting the chop so being a research librarian might be a difficult one. Would you need a masters to work in your local library?