8 Things You Should Realise If You Think It’s Too Late To Start Afresh

Your career is never done for, even if you are well past what you think is your “due date”.

This wouldn’t have been true a few decades ago. The only way you could get a job was if you went into a specific field and studied and worked hard to gain experience. Any other course other than the one you chose was not really accessible. Today, it is common to see people foray into education they find interesting even when they are in middle age.

The truth is, that starting afresh is never too late. Yes, there is always insecurity gnawing in the form of a doubt, but there are many reasons that will put your mind to rest and with resources like edX, the leading nonprofit online learning destination founded by Harvard and MIT, there are plenty of courses and programs from top universities and institutions that you can access for free.

1. Do not think that your career is too old to start over. If you think that you want to learn about video gaming at your age, it’s still very possible!

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We all have that one childhood aspiration that faded away as we grew up into adulthood. And then one day we find ourselves with ample of time and money but doubt takes over. How can I start another career this late, especially a career that is a childhood dream?

Many of us while playing video games might have thought about career options in video gaming industry. Now the time is absolutely ripe to do it. You can become a designer, tester or even take a course about the history of video gaming! Yes, you read that right! You can become a video game historian by taking a course from Rochester Institute of Technology and The Strong National Museum of Play, the world’s largest collection of video game materials.

 

2. And not just once, you can literally restart your career, however many times you want. You can switch from engineering to arts to geography and never stop learning!

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A recent research study says that it takes a person approximately 7 years to learn and perfect a new trade and reap benefits from it. So ideally, if you are one of those people with the thirst to do something new, restarting your career is actually beneficial.

Laurie Pickard, a political science student who did her masters in Geography and in the end went for her own version of an MBA “without giving up her job OR paying any additional fees.” To complete her “no-pay” MBA, she took courses from MITx and DelftX. She says,

“I wanted to do so without incurring any additional debt, and without stopping work. The first time I heard about MOOCs, my very first thought was that I could use these courses to get the business education I had long considered going back to school for.”

 

3. And if you are worried about getting a new job in the new career path, you have to put your mind to rest about that too. Job interviews are also sorted with help from online courses.

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Your new start will make you learn new skills that will accentuate your overall skills. Let’s say it has been over 10 years since you have faced an interview. Now you can just enrol for a course designed by The Hong Kong Polytechnic University that will teach you how to face a job interview – a skill that will get you updated about the recent developments in interview techniques.

An invaluable skill indeed.

 

4. Students who want to go back and learn more about their original field of study can do so too – without enrolling themselves into college again. Classic example – C++ basic course for CS students!

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There are many computer science students who go back to the drawing board to learn a specific programming language again. They enrol themselves into expensive coaching classes. But what if there was a simple way to learn C and C++?

Yes, there is. At edX, you can just take the course for C++  from experts at Microsoft again after/during your college. And use the skills to land better jobs!

 

5. You do not have to limit yourself to only the desi education options. You can always prepare yourselves and go for foreign universities too by studying for exams like IELTS

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Yes, you will have to prepare for exams like IELTS and TOEFL. They may seem a bit daunting, but with a little help from professionals and friends, you can crack them easily. edX provides comprehensive support for IELTS aspirants designed by The University Of Queensland. Right from the procedure of the tests to the study material, you get it all!

 

6. Starting a new career can sometimes be inevitable. Cheryl Troell, a 52-year-old old woman who was laid off shares her story.

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After working for 20 years for the same company, she was laid off. This is very much the classic scenario in the volatile job environment today. Managers make tough choices. And in such a scenario, you have to do whatever is needed to keep yourself employable. Most of the times we go for the career we have experience in.

But Cheryl went for Web development, a career choice she worked towards for the past few years. She studied at a community college, took HTML5 courses on edX, and found the course very comprehensive.

 

7. Starting a new career doesn’t always mean a job. Sometimes it also means doing your own thing. You can also study to be a good entrepreneur.

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There is a reason start-ups are the “in” thing nowadays. People leave their current jobs and want to start their own ventures. But many of these startups fail. Not because the ideas were not good. But because the execution wasn’t. And this is why an entrepreneurship program taught by professors from IIM Bangalore is a great first step.

 

8. Do you feel like your present career is not taking you anywhere and you need to jump-start it? The tools to restart it are out there! And taking the right courses gets you rewards – like the story of James Peacock!

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Even if the money is good, sometimes we just feel too stagnant in our present career path. That is exactly how James Peacock felt. He had been away from formal education for the past 10 years. He suddenly had this urge to learn more, but he did not have the money to sign up for a masters course. So he took up online courses from MITx and HarvardX and worked hard to ace them.

He later won a whopping $25,000 scholarship at the University of Bradford to study for an MBA!

Inspiring.

There are people who will suggest that you take a safe path and stay in your career. Security, safety, and stability appeal more.

But for us, who have the zest to learn more and achieve greater heights, sometimes it is prudent to start over again, even if it means to get out of your comfort zone.

After all, edX has got our backs!

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This story is brought to you in association with edX

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