Study with young children

[Karina]

I have a 2 year old daughter and I'm studying full time. I'm in my first year of a nursing degree. Its a 3 year degree. My uni is really supportive of students that need flexibility in their timetable. They let me rearrange quite a few of my classes to fit around childcare, which was very helpful of them. I'm studying full time and I only go to uni mondays 11-5, tuesdays 9-1pm and wednesday 9-12pm. What are you thinking of studying?

I suppose you could always have a look at studying part time, if full time is going to be too full on for you? I'm probably going to go to part time next year as we have lots of prac and its hard to organise the extra childcare, plus there are more contact hours at uni next year. Or since you have a degree, maybe you could ask your uni if they do graduate entry for the course you are interested in. My uni does a graduate entry nursing degree which is 2 years instead of 3 years, if you already have a degree (it can be a degree in anything, it doesnt even have to be anything related to nursing).

I guess you just have to be organised, and have people you can rely on to help you out with your child/children. My parents work full time so they cant really help much, and DH's parents live a few hours away so they also cant really help. But my uni is really good with giving us extra time for assignments and things like that if we're having trouble. There are heaps of older students who have family commitments so they do try to help us out a bit.