When I eventually decided to further my study as the part time learner, I realized that I need to adjust myself to so many changes in my life. I had to share my responsibility as a mother and a wife with my new responsibility as a part time learner. These are part of the challenges that I need to go through in order to achieve my life-long ambition to get a Master. Within two and half years being a part time learner, I have to deal with so many problems. All those problems arose because it had been almost fifteen long years since I left school. Moreover, now I also have my own family and career that I really need to take care of as well.
One of the main problems that are always on my mind is lack of confidence to be a good student. In my own opinion, all this happened because as a part time learner, I have to cope with different style of studying. The learning process as a part time learner is primarily student-centric, which is totally focused on the student himself. What I have done is that I tried to share my problems with my family, members and friends, and see if they have better ideas or insights on how to overcome this problem. Definitely, all the support from them helps me feel more confident to be a good student.
Apart from that, I also need to deal with challenges on time management. As an employee, a wife and member of the society, I need to juggle the various responsibilities and commitments I have within my twenty four hours day time to be shared accordingly with the added responsibility as a student. What I have been doing, I have to arrange my schedule realistically and discipline myself on having extra hours to really focus on my studies.
Fatigue also poses a problem to me. After the whole day working, I need to avail myself to study until late nights and that is quite tiresome. I always remind myself to focus on my study and keep on going. I should develop my own self instinct to learn and persuade myself that learning is interesting and self-rewarding instead of feeling being pressured or dragged on.
In addition, I also face a challenge to establish an environment that is conducive for learning. Understandably, learning at home with family and kids around will always get my concentration occasionally disrupted and carried away by them. To get around this problem, I make myself studying in working hours if i got no classes to attend to. During my free time, I also try to study at the library in order to create a suitable environment to help me concentrate on the subject matter at hand.
Learning workload also adds up to the list of challenges. These include attending video conferences, intensive courses, completing assignments and preparing for examinations. To handle all this workload, I have to devise and follow my own study timetable categorized into year, month, week and day breakdown.
Lastly, financial problem has been with me ever since I enrolled myself as a part time learner. I have to pay off education fees for each session. Luckily the educational fees for distance learner at USM are not so high and i got loan from MARA. However it also impacts my overall financial planning. To reduce my financial burden, i have to cut down unimportant expenses so that I don’t have to overly worry about our finances.
In conclusion, part time learners with own families and careers, i have to confront problems and challenges to achieve my dream for a better future. What is important, patience, discipline and perseverance are very important in order to be successful in life.
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