Not Enjoying Studying

alan • 6th May 2009 • Articles

I’m in a bit of a quandry – I should be sitting finishing off another assignment for the Open Uni course I’m doing – BSc(hons) in Technology, except I’m just not finding I’m enjoying it any more.

A lot of it is to do with the course I’m doing – T214, Understanding Systems: Making Sense of Complexity. While I think it should be an interesting course and of value to me (whether I stay in IT or not), I’m just not finding that the set work, or the assignments, are providing me with any benefit in improving my understanding of the subject. The course is all about all the different skills and techniques and mental frameworks that can be used in looking at systems wholly, which is not going to be easy for a literal and linear thinker like myself, but it’s been OK if challenging up until now.

The problem I’m finding now is that I just don’t actually care about the subject. While it’s interesting, I can’t sustain the interest in a way that leaves me with any desire to answer assignment questions, to read on, or even to think about doing another month of this, let alone another year and five months of it.

I could stop now, and apply for a BSc (open) – I have enough existing points for that. It would draw a line under the degree, and let me move on and focus on what I want to do from here. I’m working on moving careers, out of IT and into another organisational / project management field. Spending all that future time hating what I’m studying in order to get an honours classification that will be irrelevant to my future plans doesn’t strike me as sensible.

Yes, this is all self-justification. But I’m not successfully pass a course when I’m not interested in it. This was (one of the) mistakes I made when I was studying full-time first time around, and I don’t intend to make it again. I can always go study something more relevant and interesting instead, and I intend to. There has been a change in direction in my life, and I should be following the paths that complement it, not the ones that lead back to what I was doing before.