Feeling very down, thinking about dropping out of college

[Dancergirl]

I've been a SAHM for 12 years since my oldest dd was born. I've been very happy at home and always wanted to do that, but the plan was when they're older I would do something new work-wise as I was never very happy in my previous job (insurance, yawn).

After spending many years thinking about my options and considering all sorts of different things, I went back to college last September to study mobility and habilitation training with blind and visually impaired children. It's a 2 year course, one day a week in college.

I have now just started the second year but I realised a few things during the first year: even though it's just one day a week, you are expected to be shadowing/observing professionals throughout the week and getting hands-on practical experience. I did try very hard to do this and make some contacts but as I'm not working already it's been hard. Everyone else on the course is working in this field already and therefore much more in the loop.

I passed Module 1 (written and practical) back in March. All well and good. But then I found out I failed the written part of Module 2 and will have to re-write my work to get it to a pass grade. They have said I have until Christmas to do this and in the meantime I carry on with the second year (modules 3 and 4). This worried me as re-writing my work is going to take some time and effort and I might fall behind with this year's work. Once you have passed Module 2 you have a qualification in its own right - you qualify as an assistant.

Also, I am finding studying with 3 dc much harder than I thought. It's very difficult to detach myself from the day-to-day issues and focus on my work and my motivation is been quite low. I've started to wonder how much I want to do this job and I'm not sure any more But I'll feel like a total failure if I give up plus the course fees were expensive.

I thought about maybe taking the year off, re-writing Module 2 and hopefully getting a pass in that and then see how I feel. But I just feel so down about it all. After all this time considering carefully what I want to do I thought it was all sorted. And if I decide this isn't for me, I have NO idea what to do.

If I were you I would complete this qualification and have that as my main aim. After that, I would break it down into chunks and try not to get too demoralised; for example look at how many pages you need to re-write and how many a week you could get done. So for example, Sunday night 2 pages, Monday morning 2 pages and so on.

After a few weeks see how much progress you've made and if it is not enough see what's getting in the way and if you can fix it. If you feel it is too much then you could do what you suggest. It sounds to me that you are demoralised because of the hurdles rather than because you really do not like the job. But that's only from what you have written down in your OP. Hope this is mildly helpful.

Thank you.

The problem is I have to decide fairly soon if I'm going to defer this year. I was supposed to enrol and pay my fees 2 weeks ago, I've delayed it whilst I'm deciding. I don't think I can carry on too much longer without enrolling for the year.