What To Consider When Going Back To University

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Whatever your age, background, or employment history, returning to education may be a way of developing your skills and experience in a way that will take you to the next level in your career. Whether you have been to university in the past yourself, or whether you took time away and decided to focus on working, travelling, or having children, returning to study is something that is open to you at any point in your life, and you should not be put off from doing this. 

You may have already completed an undergraduate degree, and got as far as you can go with that level of qualification in your specist field. Completing a postgraduate degree such as masters or doctorate level qualifications could open the doors to much more rewarding and lucrative career paths. 

But when it comes to going back to education, you will need to think of a few important things. 

Deciding On Your Course Of Study

Whether you want to do a course in music education online with Kent State or you want to go and complete a taught course in your local university, there are so many options out there to choose from it is hard to know where to start. Decide on the following:

• What skills do you want to obtain from the course?
• Are you willing to relocate to complete it?
• Are you planning on doing this course around your current job?
• How important the rest of the university experience is to you. 

Answering these questions will help to narrow down what you want to get out of your studies and then you can start looking for the right institution that offers what you want. 

Watch Your Stress Levels

University study can be very stressful, especially if it is coupled with a full-time job. That is not to say that it is not possible. Many people manage to do it just fine, and you can too, just make sure that you go in with your eyes wide open and understand the workload involved. 

Try and create a schedule for yourself so that manage to get all of your work done across the whole year. Many students manage their time poorly and find that around deadlines they have an intense and unmanageable workload. Start your research early. 

Make Time For Your Family

Your family and your relationships are vital. Do not neglect them. Make sure that you keep a day each week to spend with them. This will give you a break away from your work too so that you can relax a bit. 

Look After Yourself

Try and get plenty of sleep. Eight hours is the ideal amount. You’ll need to keep yourself sharp and a lack of sleep can really hinder your ability to concentrate. In order to give your studies the attention they deserve, you need to give yourself the attention you deserve. This also means eating well, getting some exercise, and drinking plenty of water. 

Financial Problems The Nation Can Relate To

Financial problems seem to be coming in thick and fast at the minute. It's that time of year where if anything is going to go wrong, it will go wrong in January, or in the next few months that follow. It's a time of year where we just don't the same amount of money as in the summer, for example. Because of everything that Christmas and the New Year has us paying for, and the fact that we often get paid earlier than we're used to, means we just don't have any money. But for many of the nation, this applies all year round. The price we pay to live in the country we do is much higher than it is in other countries. Even though we have all of the perks that we do, some of the unique hardships we face can leave us, well, financially screwed. But with better knowledge and better planning, we think financial problems can come to an all time low. Keep on reading to find out more. 

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Healthcare Costs 

Healthcare costs have been on the rise for the last few years. Whilst it has never been more accessible than it is now, it's not always going to benefit everyone. If you ever require serious medical treatment, it can completely wipe out your finances and leave you bankrupt. You need to have good insurance. You need an innovative healthcare finance program that will cover you when your health begins to drop, and will cover you for a wide variety. It will obviously all depend on the money you have and what you're able to afford. The better a deal you can get, the more you're going to benefit. It's crazy to think that countries such as the United Kingdom get their healthcare for free. It's easier to want to live a healthy lifestyle when you know the cost of not living one! 

The Price Of Living

The price of living is going up all around the world. But in the United States, it seems to be higher than ever. It means that having a well paying job is more sought after than ever before. However, we think that everyone can benefit from learning how to be more careful with money. If you use money management apps, your ability to manage money becomes far easier. It sets out your money for you, and gives you updates throughout the month. Long gone are the days of doing a money plan and losing it a few days later! 

Starting A Family

It's most people's instinct to want to start a family, but it does come at a cost. The cost of providing healthcare for them, the cost of clothes and food, the bills to live in your home. Everything goes up. So if starting a family is something you are only thinking about doing, plan everything financially first. Many forget this crucial step, and find themselves in financial hardship for many years. You need to feel financially secure before you make the decision! 

How To Talk To Your Children About Immigration

Immigration is an incredibly difficult subject to talk about. Many people have been touched by immigration in one way or another, whether it has happened to themselves or their family, or they know someone who has to go through the process. It can mean that it stirs up lots of emotive feelings, not all of them welcome. However, it is an important subject to talk about, particularly if you are encouraging your children to grow up to be empathetic and caring members of their community. If it is something that they are likely to face, or someone close to them is going to face, it can help them to get the answers to any questions that they may have and make it all seem a little less daunting and confusing. However, when it is such a big thing for an adult to get their head around, how can we make it easier for children? Here, we look at how to talk to your child or children about immigration.

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Use straightforward and clear language.

Like the majority of legal concepts, immigration comes with a lot of technical terms and jargon, all of which can be very confusing for even an adult to understand. If a child is bombarded with words and phrases they do not understand, alongside a vast concept, it can make them switch off and become unwilling to learn, or even frightened about the topic. Instead, use language that is clear and child-friendly, while not infantilising it. You may want to avoid words such as ‘illegal immigrants’ and use terms such as ‘undocumented’ instead.

Find out what they already know.

Immigration is such a big topic, and it is very hard to avoid hearing or reading about in the media. You may be surprised about just how much your child or children already know. However, they may also have picked up some inaccurate information from playground conversations, or misreading/hearing/understanding what they have come across. Before you bring up the topic, gently try to tease out what they already know, and, just as importantly, what they want to know.

Focus on the people that help.

When we talk about immigration, we can often be talking very negatively, about the people that they may be moving away from, or the people that may be stopping them from settling in a new place. It is important to talk to your child or children about the people that are helping someone in the immigration process, such as the attorneys from Davis & Associates. Demonstrate that there are good people out there, helping and righting the wrongs.

Encourage and bring in empathy.

This obviously depends on the age and emotional levels of your child or children, but perhaps ask them to think about how they may feel if they were separated from their families in a strange place. Encourage them to talk about their feelings - encouraging empathy is more likely to make them want to do something positive in the future to help!

The More You Know The More You Grow

The more you know, the more you definitely will grow as a person. As someone going through school, you're either going to have loved it or hated it. Some people have the best experiences at school, and some have the worst. Whatever experience you had, you're going to have your own opinion on education and how it benefited your life. Two people can leave school with totally opposite grades, and still end up in the same job. It used to prove that you don't have to have a high level of education to succeed in the job that you want. But that used to be an old way of thinking, and acting. We're now going through a time where the high paid roles are requiring education to the highest level. You can't just walk into a role without having some level of qualifications, or at least be getting them at the same time whilst doing an apprenticeship. Not only that, but learning becomes fun again when you get older. You appreciate the knowledge you're soaking up and how it's going to help you. So, we're going to show you how the more you know the more you grow, and how you can begin to learn more. 

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Online Courses

This is the option that's going to be the most appealing to the majority of people. When you think about sitting back in the classroom you often think of all of the negatives. Having to get up and spend hours a day in a room listening to someone talk. But online educational courses change all of that. You can sit in the comfort of your own home, and whilst you won't receive support that's intensive, you will still follow a course that you have to pass. The education is in your hands, and you're more in control of how well you do. It can be harder to find the motivation if you're not actually getting up and going into a class, but this way just works for some people. 

Getting Back In The Classroom

Getting back into the classroom might suit you more if you're doing a course that requires a lot of work, and is far more challenging than some of the basic courses you can do. You have to find a university offering your course, and one that has a high success rate. You might find what you're looking for through Bradley University, for example. It allows you to be more disciplined with yourself, and it's a great way to make new friends in your adult life. 

How It Can Benefit You 

It can benefit you in terms of opportunities, jobs, and money. Higher education allows you to be more qualified than the average Joe, especially if you go up to masters level. As long as you have a career that you know you're truly passionate about, you should always pursue education to allow you to progress more. Although it might be an investment of time and money, it will most definitely pay off as the years go on. 

6 Ways To Document Your Memories

The older you get, the more things you have to remember and the more other memories start to fade. The big things that happen, often stay with you, but the little day to day things that make you smile are sometimes forgotten about. In the moment, you vow to remember it forever, but a few months later it might as well have never happened. There are ways that you can combat this and keep track of memories that you want to remember in the moment, so that you can look back at them in the future and give yourself something to smile at. You could even keep track of the exact age you were when certain events happened so you can reminisce about how far you have come. 

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Journaling

There is no correct way to journal. It is a collection of your thoughts, feelings and events of the day. You can even just write about whatever you want to at that time. You could decide that you are going to write in it at a specific time every day, or carry it around in your bag so that you can add to it whenever you feel like it. There are absolutely no rules! If you want it to look pretty, make it look pretty. If you want to scribble all over the pages, scribble all over the pages. Don’t worry about how everybody else's journal looks, because your journal is a way for you to relax and record things, it isn’t for anybody else to look at. 

If you don’t know how to start, you should aim to write one sentence a day or answer the same few questions and see how it develops from there. You can even set a reminder on your phone so that you remember to journal as it can be challenging to keep up with a habit when you first start to do something. There is no need, however, to feel guilty if you do forget or just don’t want to some days. 

Journaling and writing, in general, is an excellent way to remember things because you write about how you felt at the time, exactly what was going on, and what you could see, taste and smell. It can bring the memories flooding back to you in a way that just looking at a picture will not.

Journaling can not only be a great way to remember things about the everyday, but it can also have many benefits to you. It can help you slow down and take some dedicated me time. It can also help you to work out how you are actually feeling about things and give you time to work through issues and emotions that you need to. It may feel like just writing, but it can have a positive effect on your life. 

Blogging

Blogging is slightly different from journaling because you are posting whatever you write online where anybody can see it. Blogging started off as a sort of online diary that people post to, but has branched out into other things; you can now choose if you want to use your blog for business or keep it personal. You could blog about anything you want, or you could decide to keep it to specific subjects. Maybe you travel a lot and want to keep track by writing about each trip or perhaps you want to document your days out with your kids! 

With a blog, it is easy to include pictures relevant to what you are writing, so when you can look back through your posts, you can look at the photos as well as what you have written. 

If you want to start a blog about your life or your hobbies, it could help you to connect with people who have similar interests to you. It can also be an excellent way to share while doing something that you love.

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Scrapbooking

Scrapbooking is a great way to organise all your keepsakes and photos together into one place. In your scrapbook you can put tickets from shows, tickets from traveling to new places and other sentimental bits and pieces. Mixing these with photos from the same day or event will give you a clearer picture of what happened when you are flicking through. You can even write dates and information.

There is no right or wrong way to scrapbook. There are, however, a lot more things that you can buy to help and inspire you with scrapbooking. You can purchase scrapbook albums and a whole load of paper, tags, pocket and labels etc., to help you to come up with different ideas on how to display the items and photos in the book. It might be a good idea to walk around the scrapbooking section of a craft shop to inspire you. 

You can create scrapbooks of one-off special events, or it can be something that you continue to add to throughout the year. However you decide to scrapbook, it is nice to have something tangible that you can flick through to remind you of specific times and events. Photos get kept on our phones or in files on our computers to be forgotten about. By scrapbooking, we make sure that our memories are always to hand.

Posting photos online

This is a way that you can take all those photos that are sitting on your phone and use them. You can post them on websites like Facebook or Instagram or any other social media that you use with information about them. There are challenges that some people do, like posting a photo of their day for a whole year. Posting your photos can be something that you do privately for yourself to keep track of things that have happened, or publically with your friends. 

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Yearly Diary/Planner

Your yearly planner is not just something that can be used to keep track of upcoming appointments and events, but it can also be used as a way to jot down things that have happened during the day. 

If you want to get fit, planners can be a great way to document your fitness journey. When you make progress, you can look back at what you could do when you first started, and compare it to what you can do now and feel proud of yourself. If you have a child, you could write down all the new little things they have learned each day. Children grow up so fast, so it can be hard to remember precisely when they first smiled at you or when their first tooth cut through. You don’t need to go into much detail, but just seeing how much has happened over the year will amaze you. Diaries can come in week view and day view, so you can pick a design that you like with as much space as you think you will need. If you don’t fancy using a diary, you could do the same thing with a calendar.  

Record 1 second of your day

One second may not seem like a long time, but you can get a good feel of your day from that second. This could be a great option if you don’t really like to write or don’t like the thought of uploading photographs to the internet. There are apps that can help you to document the short video and put them into a longer, more manageable video, preventing you from being overloaded by one-second videos saved individually to your phone. Some apps even give you the space to write an entry about what was happening at the time, so you have the option to write a little bit if you want too. If you have children, this could be a great way to document how much they have changed over the course of the year!

Take the time to document your memories

You are continually evolving as a person, and writing something at the time that it happens will capture the most accurate representation of what happened and how you were feeling at that moment. We will never remember anything completely without prompting. Reading something that you wrote a few years ago can feel like you are reading something written by a completely different person. We can witness our growth and see how far we have come. When we have goals that we hit, we often don’t appreciate them enough before we move onto something else, but if you can see how much you wanted something and remember that you managed to achieve it, it can give you the chance to feel proud. 

There are so many ways that you can document your memories that there is sure to be one that works for you. You don’t have to stick to any guidelines, and you can choose who sees them and whether you write, take pictures, videos or save small items, or do a mixture of everything! However you decide to record your memories, one thing is for sure, you will be happy that you did when you come to look back through them in years to come.