Satisfying my curious mind

Lately, I’ve been doing my best to get better. Though I'm not sick, I can tell that I am not the best version of myself these past couple of months. I’m not sure if this is just the quarantine messing up with my extrovert self and I am just having a hard time coping up with things. It could also be due to transitioning from a teenager, a dependent for almost 2 decades, to a full time adult which my family member depends on now.

I came across a Facebook post the other day and it was a discussion about where to find online courses and a lot of people recommended, some require payments, others are free and some you can apply for scholarships to take. 

I browsed some of the sites and I applied for a scholarship in Project SPARTA by the Department of Science and Technology (DOST)  and the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP). It offers courses relating to Data Analysis, Data Scientist, Data Engineering and many more. 

I am actually part of the Data and Analytics Team in our company and we strive to develop and improve the audit methodologies with the extensive use of Data and Analytics in the near future. There’s a lot of projects that we are launching and are about to launch. 

Taking this course, I would really find it useful not just in my current work which is audit but for my future work too. As we are striving towards digitalization and the data streams that we encounter everyday is enormous, managing and understanding data will be quite useful, especially in the near future as we are expecting more transitions from traditional ways to automation. 

I only applied to this scholarship but I’m ecstatic about it. I’m not sure if I’ll get in so I browsed through other websites for free online courses. I wanted to take something about stress management and I found one in Coursera, unfortunately it is being offered by University of Pittsburgh and the whole course was in Russian. Though there were subtitles, I’m not fond of it and I’m having a hard time understanding and absorbing the whole lecture. 

I found another course about Positive Psychiatry and Mental Health by the University of Sydney. I finished my 1st week before writing this article and I am thrilled to have the chance to study again. I was always enjoying studying, even way before. Maybe that’s why I quite excelled in my studies before because I did fall in love with studying in general. I love satisfying my curious mind and loving back stories about theories and how each one of them correlates with each other. 

The course was all about well-being and how to strive to have a good one, which is what I need right now. A lot of factors come into play and I’ll admit I neglected some of them. I am currently working on myself for a better overall health. 

As most kids would hate going to school and some college students go to school just for the sake of complying and having certifications, I had a great time during college. I mean, I get it, studying is really not for everyone and we have different journey to take on. But for me, I genuinely had fun and of course I had sleepless nights and cried myself to some, majority of it I was happy.

I did plan on taking a Master's Degree in Business Administration (MBA) but due to the pandemic, I haven’t had the chance to get to enroll in any school. Probably because I really prefer a face to face set up rather than the online course. I think I'll learn more if it was a face to face set up and one of the major key getaway in enrolling for MBA is building connections which is quite a hard thing to do when you only met them through a zoom meeting.

After finishing my MBA, I was supposed to teach accounting subjects in either senior high school or college but most schools, especially elite ones require MBA for you to be able to teach. I tried applying last year but I got rejected as they were searching for a full-time faculty and I just can’t let go of my job and always wanted to do teaching as a part time job only.

I'm really happy to get back on my feet again and try to enroll in courses. I hope to get my MBA soon or finally get the chance to study photography and dress making. All of this is just making me realize that learning isn't really confined in schools anymore, that learning should never stop.

Lead image: Photo by Justin Peterson on Unsplash