When it comes to further education, there’s often a belief that you’ve got a limited window in which to pursue your ambitions. College is for the young, or so the mantra goes. However, more and more, people are starting to break from this tradition that higher learning has to take place in your early twenties and embrace life-long learning.
It goes to show the thinking behind education, that when we talk about studying later in life, we’re probably talking about your late twenties upwards. This idea is changing, though, and with the advent of more flexible online courses, there are great opportunities for people of all ages to get back to learning and follow their passions and dreams.
This is certainly true for nursing degrees, and when these people do return to learning “later in life,” they often find there are some great benefits to be had.
Career Boost
Studying at a later stage in your life is a great way to get the professional skills you need to take your career to the next level. When you study at a later point, you have so much more experience in the professional world, which means you know exactly what you need to help push your career on.
This allows you to be extremely focused on what you’re doing and understand the benefits of working hard.
For example, a Registered Nurse, has had time to get hands-on experience in their professions and analyze what further steps they need to take to further their career. This might be an executive nurse leader program that allows them to learn new skills that can give their career an extra boost.
Change Direction
In years gone by, people picked a career and stuck to it. The problem is, for many career paths, we have to commit to them at such a young age. Not many people know what they want to do for the rest of their lives when they’re just 18 years old, so, naturally, people fall out of love with their careers after time.
A young person may not have considered nursing as a career, but as they have gone through life, they might become attracted to the field and want to get into it.
Studying at a later stage in your life gives you the benefit of time – time to dip your toe (or your whole body) into the professional world and see what you like and what you don’t like. This experience allows you to make a better decision about what kind of career you would like to have.
Whatever it is you decide, there will always be a course available to you to help you achieve it, and they are becoming more and more flexible. This means you can take steps towards the nursing career you crave while shaping your learning around your life.
Greater Sense of Responsibility
There are lots of young students who are brilliant at taking responsibility for learning, and likewise, there are plenty of mature students who aren’t. However, you do tend to mature with age, and with this comes a greater sense of responsibility when it comes to your learning.
When you start university as a mature student, you should have a good idea of the kind of work ethic and motivation that it takes to succeed in the professional world and be able to bring this into your studies. You simply don’t have a wealth of experiences to draw upon when you enter university at 18, and this can be a big advantage for older students.
Fewer Distractions
College, particularly when you enter straight out of high school, isn’t just about academic learning. It’s about learning about life, forming relationships that will last throughout your life, and much more.
This is one of the great parts about going to university, but it also means there are a lot of distractions from academic learning. When you study as a mature student, you’ve already done much of that “life learning” that takes place in the university, so it means you can be much more focused on your studies and learning the skills you need to develop your career.
Choose When is the Right Time to Study
Studying later in life means you can wait until you are absolutely ready to take on a degree.
Everyone has different things going on in their lives, and at many points, we’re just not ready to commit to studying. When you choose to study as a mature student, you can ensure you’re completely ready – emotionally, financially, intellectually, and time-management-wise to give yourself the best chance of success.
Different people will find this period comes at different times in their lives, and education should be flexible enough to reflect this.
Stronger Financial Position
The last point was waiting for the right time, and this certainly plays a part in a financial part of the view. Education is expensive, and while it’s certainly an investment, you want to make sure you’re getting a good return on that investment.
Being a mature student gives you time to build your financial position, so you’re less reliant on loans, putting you in a stronger position when you come out with a degree. Having already spent time in the working world, you will also have the experience that can make you stand out on a job application.
This means you can end up spending less on your degree and start reaping the benefits as soon as you graduate.
Conclusion
Everybody learns differently, and education should reflect this. In the past, it’s always been a case of you do your learning when you’re young, and that is that, but this notion is changing.
There are lots of great reasons to continue studying throughout your life, and lots of different ways you can do this. The internet has helped open up education, making it much more accessible for older students, and there are exceptionally high-quality nursing courses out there.
With experience on your side, this allows you to get the most out of your education, while still fitting your studies around your day-to-day life. Whatever point you’ve reached in your career, there’s always a course out there that can help you take things a step further, and it’s never been more accessible.
