Juggling a Master's and a full-time job.

What a lovely way to spend a Saturday. Grocery shopping, putting together an IKEA storage system and spending hours reading educational journals.

Doing a masters degree is a challenge. Doing it while working full time is even more challenging.

I've done my PGCE while working, but it was very different: I didn't have a full teaching timetable at the time and my life was much less demanding in general. I've started my two-year part time course last year and I can already say that this year is much more challenging. I work more hours this year and I have very limited time that I can actually commit to focused for on my thesis.

By next September, I have to have my thesis completed regardless of work circumstances, however, so I had to quickly find ways of making it work. Part of it is simple organisation, part of it letting go of my ideas what studying should look like.

And so I've created a schedule. I love planning, so it was was an easy task for me. The key is to be both realistic and specific about what needs to be done. By Christmas, I should have my literature review ready (ha ha ha), but it is not a specific enough goal to have. So I broke it down into manageable weekly tasks: reading specific articles, books, calling my supervisor etc. It is not a perfect schedule and will evolve with time, but it gives me some structure to begin with.

Now I've also created a home office in the spare bedroom so that I have space dedicated exclusively to working, be it school work or MA work. I don't have a massive need to have a special room for work, I live on my own so I don't have many distractions here (bar a cupboard full of delicious tea and chocolate), but sitting in my little office puts me in the work mindset straight away.

Finally, I had to accept that whole day study sessions are not likely to happen this year. I might manage to spend a couple of days over half terms working on the thesis, but on the whole, it will be just using these little pockets of time here and there. I need to find my own rhythm. I usually have a little bit of time in the evening between dinner time and relaxation, so I use that time to read an article or think about my ideas (I sit around thinking a lot. And talking to myself). But this is probably my biggest struggle at the moment. I'm used to long stretches of time dedicated to studying or writing and I don't get many of those now. But the only way to do it is to make it work.

I must say I have a love-hate relationship with this Masters programme: it's yet another thing that I need to do think about and schedule into the week, but at the same time I really enjoy reading articles and learning about new perspectives on the Mathematics curriculum. I know that this is probably the best time to do it, before my careers becomes even more demanding and before I become a mother; and I will benefit immensely from it in terms of my professional and personal development. But for all of you out there thinking about studying part time and working full time at the same time: it's not  piece of cake. But you can do it with plenty of cake at hand.

Enough, back to juggling now. :)