underwater wrote:
Hi guys, I have a slightly complicated question to ask. I'll try to be as brief as possible.
Background: Due to having no clue about neurodiversity, I made some really poor choices about what degree to pursue. I've spent a lot of time trying to learn maths and physics, and although I scrape by in calculus and statistics, I remember practically nothing of what I've spent years learning, and I've flunked physics more times than I'm happy to admit.
Fast forward to me being almost forty, unemployed and with unstable health. My biggest issues are executive functioning, office politics and sensitive eyes. Fortunately I've escaped sound sensitivity, which makes work easier.
In the past I've done very well in some nice, smallish workplaces. I found out I have an ability to edit text unusually quickly, due to very good reading ability and an eye for detail.
Now I am starting to see that having a degree would help me a lot in reentering work life. I have two options:
1) Spending a year and a half on completing a master's degree in a related subject to the one I was studying. This would give me a degree in a field where I don't want to work, but I figure just having a master's degree would be good. It would require spending a lot of time in an open plan office, though, which seriously impairs my ability to work.
2) Start something entirely new where there are better chances of actually being offered a position, even though it takes more time.
In the event of choosing option 2), I was thinking of learning programming or something IT-related. During my studies, I've been learning a lot of complex software, so I'm reasonably good with computers. At one point I actually took a basic IT subject that included some HTML and JavaScript (way back when). I gave up on IT at the time because I couldn't find a way to learn the basic stuff. So many of my fellow students had been into computers since they were teenagers, and the groaning from the back bench whenever I asked a question was pretty discouraging.
Nowadays, there are plenty of courses available online, and I can learn at my own pace before entering university. I've just started looking at Python, and I find it interesting, which is encouraging. Also, I learn most things quickly.
So I have three questions:
1) Is it possible to learn IT stuff even if I'm rubbish at maths and fairly old?
2) Are there any particular fields in IT where getting a job is easy, due to people finding them boring for example? I can do boring. I just don't want to be involved in huge development programs that eat my life, due to having limited energy and wonky executive functioning.
3) Is there any IT field that can be done part time?
Sorry for the long post, but if I didn't provide background, the questions wouldn't make sense.
Have a nice day, guys!
It is difficult, but possible. At the age of 78 I taught myself equilibrium thermodynamics.... which is harder than programming.
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20 Oct 2016, 7:04 pm
