On the 18th of September, it will mark one year since I stepped through the doors of my local college, where I enrolled onto a 9 week fitness course.
I remember the morning well, it was a grey rainy September morning, as most ‘back to school’ mornings are, and it felt like I had been transported back ten years, as I stepped into the reception ready to pick up my student badge and find my class room.
My last dip into education was six years ago when I left university, it’s been eleven years since I left school, so going back to college (albeit just for nine weeks) was quite strange as an adult.
During those nine weeks of my college course, I feel like I learnt more about myself than I did on the course, and well today I thought I would write about that, as I never anticipated to go back to college as an adult.
My college course was to qualify as a fitness instructor, as last summer, I decided that I wanted to become some sort of personal trainer, I’m now not so sure about that, but hey, I have my level 2 qualification which means I could go on to train to be a PT if this whole blogging thing dries up.
So without further a do, here is what I learnt from going back to college as an adult.
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I’m Not 17 Anymore
So this may sound weird, because of course I’m not 17 anymore, but I guess in my head, I still felt like I was. It seemed about five minutes since I was at college and I didn’t think a lot had changed. But from sharing a classroom with actual 17 year olds, I realised a lot has changed.
I’ve grown up, I’ve gotten older and I realised that at the age of 26, I had a completely different mindset and attitude to the younger people in my class. At first this shocked me, I thought I was ‘old’ but then I realised this is a natural thing and I don’t know why it was such a shock.
If anything, it made me appreciate how I have grown as a person over the past ten years, and I think I appreciate this new mindset and confidence that I now have.
2. You Can Do Anything If You Put Your Mind To It
I remember coming home from my first day at college (the rainy day) feeling like my brain was a big bowl of jelly. I hadn’t ‘learnt’ anything for a good six years, and having three hours of Anatomy and Physiology, made my brain go to mush.
I had a panic that evening that I wouldn’t be able to do the course, that I wasn’t clever enough, I wouldn’t be able to learn it, how did everyone else know where the tibia bone was?
However, I soon realised that if you work hard enough, your hard work will pay off, I spent hours revising the muscles of the body, drawing diagrams of the way blood pumps through the heart, and wrote up revision notes, and when it came to my exam, I got something like 46 out of 50 right, not bad for someone who couldn’t tell you much about the body four weeks previously.
I realised that if you put the work in, you can do it, I realised that spending hours learning paid off, I’d taught myself all this stuff and I wasn’t stupid, or dumb, because I’d shown myself I could do it.
It made me realise that you can do this with anything in life, and it’s never too late to learn new stuff.
3. My Mindset To Work Has Changed
If I could have summed up my mindset to work when I was younger, it would probably be ‘cba.’
I could have always tried harder, I was bright but a pretty average student, never aimed for A’s, just did what I could.
These days, I feel it’s a different story, and I hadn’t realised that till I went back to college.
I realised I’ve become super organised, I like to do my homework the night I get it (square of the year award over here) and I always want to try my best, work hard and try to come top.
Basically I have become incredibly competitive, but mainly I just want the best for myself.
I do wish I’d had this mindset when I was younger, but hey it’s better late than never.
4. It Gave Me More Confidence
At the end of my nine week course, I emerged not only a qualified fitness instructor, but a more confident person.
I learnt a lot about myself and realised that I was more capable, clever and sociable than I thought.
Although I haven’t done much with my qualification (yet) I do feel like doing the course was valuable for me as a person and it really did help me to learn some stuff about myself, and give myself a bit of credit.
I’d recommend for anyone to do a college course, it never hurts to add another string to your bow, and you may learn some interesting things about yourself like I did.
Please let me know if you’d like a post all about my course with a bit more detail about what I learnt, how I got onto it, etc… as I’d also be more than happy to write about that!
But I hope you found this interesting, and I’d love to know if you’ve ever gone back to education as an adult?
