Going Back to School - Mesquite,TX

I think that's a great idea! I am taking online courses through the local community college for Pharmacy Tech. It's hard with taking care my family and disciplining myself to study, but I need a job.

Good luck, I checked into that two year program and they said missing one day was like missing a week!! Kudos to you! By the way some employers consider you more reliable if you are older.

D.,

Unfortunately, times are going to get harder. I have been researching financial books and historicial accounts from other countries in whom we are following the same path (printing money to get out of debt). It ALWAYS leads to hyperinflation and a debaunch of the currency. We are in the eye before the storm. Your current home cleaning business will suffer even more than it is now, but if you could switch over to cleaning businesses you might be able to ride it longer.

The good news is that your school program is only a 2 year program. The other good news is that you are in health care, which seems to be one of the very few businesses that will be keeping above water. You should investigate the growing areas of the health care sector.One of them will be the cancer sector.

I hope you are not going to have to borrow money to go back to school. If you do, make sure it is a fixed rate, iInterest rates are going to skyrocket. Somewhere I heard that school loans are not inexusable in bankrupsy- that there is no way out of them. Avoid school loans at all costs.

D., You may be able to take most of your classes online, probably all the way until you get into your clinicals. If you could clean during the day and take your online courses in the late evenings, it may not be so bad. How old are your children? The hardest thing I found while I was attending college with a 12 yo was my studying took away a lot of time I should have been spending with my son. He grew up being nurtured by the t.v. and internet. He is almost 20 now and I have a lot of regrets due to this. Not sure if you are interested or not but Medical assistants attend school for one year. They are in high-demand. You could also take out student loans and clean p/t to get your thru. Don't worry about you being out of school for awhile. You will pick it up. It may take more devotion and time in the beginning but it will eventually make sense. Best of wishes to you!

S.~

D., I'm proud of you for going back to school. My twin sister is a respiratory therapist. She likes it. The one thing you might consider that has been HUGE for her. Most of the respiratory jobs are 12 hour shifts. It has been very difficult. If she worked at 7-7 at night. She had to miss their ball games, putting them to bed. Also not getting much sleep because she would get home intime to get them off to school and get home and take a shower then sleep. By then it was only 6 hours until she had to pick them up for school. Something to think about!

Respiratory Therapy is a hard field for me to every consider. I could not watch someone basically suffocate to death.

I think for this field you might try a local Vo-Tech or Jr. College. The financial aid won't be as good but it should pay for all classes and fees. You may have some left over for personal expenses too. I loved being a non-traditional student. I lived on campus in married student housing, all bills were paid out of my FA and I only had to provide food for myself and my daughter. I had Voc-Rehab, state aid, federal financial aid, and a scholarship once I got good grades a semester or two. It's very easy to be a student if you like learning. The studying wasn't really hard for me, as an adult I knew the value of scheduling time every day and I had better study systems than many of the younger students so I got better grades.

There is enough free money out there to NOT get loans, they will haunt you the rest of your life, what if you can't find work or there just aren't any patients in your area. The payments skyrocket if you miss even one. Financial aide advisors will be able to guide you to where to find the best aide for your situation.

I hope you find a major you can thrive in and really enjoy.

I would check that there are good job prospects in the area you choose to study but anything in health care is probably a good choice. It may be a lot of hard work but it is doable. My friend recently finished a 2 year degree as a physical therapy assistant. She definitely worked harder at this degree that during her 4 years getting a liberal arts degree after high school. But it was partly because it was a medical related field and the courses were harder.

You may want to check if you can get any kind of grants or scholarships as a retuning student or a mother.

Going back to school at our age is scary, I am considering it so I understand where you are coming from. You might be right about having trouble getting hired 50+ with no experience. I would weigh all of the factors, can you get financial aid in the form of scholarships not loans, what is the cost of tuition, what are starting salaries for RT, How much more is that than what you are making now, considering that difference how long will it take you to repay the cost of tuition. Could you do school and work at the same time? I would talk to someone in HR at somewhere that hires RT to find out what the job market looks like. Any medical jobs are usually in high demand but you need to hear that information from someone in the field not someone from the school. The people who work at the school need to get students to fill the classes so they might not be as objective. Good luck, it is not an easy decision.