Online College Course Forum

I'm having some difficulty settling down to study with this new online PhD. The problem is not the online program, but rather my personal difficulty with creating a routine that allows me to do the amount of studying I want to do.

I decided that I would give myself a shortish deadline for finishing my online program. I am no longer as young as I was, and if I take years to finish my PhD, it will not give me all the benefits I want to gain from it; so the sooner I finish the better.

This means that I need to study quite a lot each week, and fitting this in means that I have limited time - sleep, meals and washing all all activities I am considering cutting out of the schedule. But I just love the study, and I think that as I settle down into the routine, I'll find that it's actually quite achievable. I just need some more patience, a quality that has always been in short supply in my life.

One of the students at my institution who is studying an online degree came in for a tutorial yesterday, and bought her 18 month old daughter. I knew this was her second year of study, so I stopped and had a conversation with her.

She had first signed on for an online degree in law when she was seven months pregnant. She and her husband had planned for her to stop work to bring up their family. She decided to study during this time, so that the career break implications would be minimized for her. She got off to a good start during her last two months of pregnancy, and then took a couple of months off for the early days of looking after her baby. Now she studies in the afternoon during nap time for her daughter, and early in the morning when her daughter wakes up but is not too lively. She uses a laptop so she can babysit in the appropriate rooms in her house.

Brave lady!

When you are doing an intensive course of study such as an online degree you need to know how to pace yourself. I find that one way that helps me deal with the stress is to promise myself holidays. I like to make sure that if possible, one day every week I will not have to think either about work or about study, and for me the best day for that is Sunday.

There are some real advantages. You know that you will have some relief from the grind of having to do certain things. And you also give yourself a chance to process your thoughts subconsciously. I find that on Monday I come up with solutions to problems easily, and suddenly find that answers are in my head. Taking time out is really important when you are going to study online programs for long periods of time, so do timetable time without stress.