Sometimes I wonder how I ended up back in university at all…<\/p>\n
After I finished my undergraduate degree, I didn’t expect to study again. I had struggled through my final exams and thought that was it, I was ready to go into the working world, and that was what I did. I had qualified as a dietitian, and so off I went working in clinical dietetics, which meant working in several hospitals in Dublin.<\/p>\n
I loved working, but at some point, I felt stuck in a rut \u2013 and just like that I decided to study again, after 4 years of employment. Slightly scary. Fortunately, the decision was made easier by the fact that I was a good saver. I always put money aside at the start of the month as soon as I got paid and put it straight into my bank account. Again, slightly scary to spend all my savings taking a risk on further education, but, as they say, you only regret the things you don\u2019t do. The bank also allowed me to take out a loan to cover further costs, a benefit of regular saving.<\/p>\n
Getting back into \u2018study mode\u2019 was a little difficult at first, but made easier by the fact that the course I had chosen, MSc Nutrition and Behaviour, was a mix of ages and stages \u2013 some people coming straight from undergraduate degrees, some people coming back after working in a totally different area, some people who had been working for decades coming back to education. So there was always encouragement, especially in our very busy WhatsApp group!<\/p>\n
Another helpful support was the Study Skills workshops. If, like me, you had completely forgotten how to search for scientific papers or collate references, you could book in for a session and brush up on anything you felt was a little bit rusty. The lecturers were so supportive, and it didn\u2019t take long for me to settle back into an academic mindset. I\u2019ll admit, I miss the money coming into my account each month! But I know it will be worth it, and I\u2019m really enjoying learning more about topics I\u2019m passionate about.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t for a minute regret coming back to university \u2013 I think I\u2019ll look back at it as one of the best decisions I\u2019ve ever made.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sometimes I wonder how I ended up back in university at all… After I finished my undergraduate degree, I didn’t expect to study again. I had struggled through my final exams and thought that was it, I was ready to go into the working world, and that was what I did. I had qualified as… Read more » about Leaving the world of work and returning to university<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3178,"featured_media":20257,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1644,1645,1663,12],"tags":[1780,2225,2284],"class_list":["post-8742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-employability","category-fees-funding","category-postgraduate","category-student-blogs","tag-career-development","tag-returning-to-study","tag-study-break"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3178"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8742"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20552,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8742\/revisions\/20552"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}