Here we are again, at the end of week 1 of term 3 and back on the books.  Despite my concerns I did rather well last term with a distinction in the Economics and Accounting in Australia units.  Fortunately my wife is in the UK at the moment, I say fortunately as she wants to give me a good slap for daring to be concerned about the exams.  She has far more faith in me than I have.  Which is even more surprising considering we met at university in 1992 and I was definitely less than a model student.

Term 3 brings with it Australian Commercial Law and Statistics for Managerial Decisions.  Both have started well. With Law, apart from a different text book and higher expectations (it is a Masters course after all) there doesn’t appear to be many differences to the the Law unit I took in term 1.  Lots of reading and making sure I’ve good notes in preparation for the exam.  No worries here.

Statistics is a bit different.  Lots of reading and lots of working through examples, both on the computer and by hand. This one will just take practice.  It’s been 25 years since I last did stats, having read the first chapters of the text book, I’m not overly concerned.  Practice, practice, practice.  Then in 11 short weeks I can walk away with a Grad Cert in Professional Accounting!! A bona fide qualification that I can do something with.  That’s something to aim for.  All this is great, unfortunately outside of Uni stuff it’s been a pretty tough week, which prompted some thinking.

Which brings me to the question, why didn’t I do this sooner?  I’m really enjoying the learning experiance, I’m meeting great people and rising to teh challenges of teh course.  so why didn’t I do this earlier?  This is what I’ve been thinking.

In 2014 I was made redundant, in a very nasty way when the Bluetongue Brewery in NSW was  closed down.  As part of the government support package I was given the opportunity to do an Advanced Management Diploma, which I started and enjoyed, but didn’t finish.  This was a mistake.

Due to the nature of the closure, missing out on a job in California and some other corporate nastiness that caused significant stress, with hindsight I believe I was not in the best place to make decisions and as a result we packed up and went back to the UK.  If I had been thinking straight and beyond the career that had defined me to that point, a Master Brewer with an international career, perhaps I would’ve realized that there are other opportunities out there.

I think as I was so used to being the “big man”, at home, as the primary wage earner and at work as the leader and expert, suddenly not being in that position was a shock.   So my aim at the time was to get back into that position.  Which I have done sort of.

I’ve spent over 20 years as a brewer so I know a lot of stuff about my particular field.  I can walk through Dan Murphy’s and see dozens of beers that I’ve brewed.  Some of which were first perfected in Australia due to my skills.   Now I make soft drinks and rarely drink beer, I’ve come to the conclusion I’m really not that interested in the beer culture anymore.

This is part of my mindset change that started me down the accounting path. Move out of what I know and can do with my eyes closed into something new that I can do for a very long time to come and do anywhere in the country.

If I’d realized this in 2014 I could’ve done this course in NSW, my wife would’ve remained teaching at a school she loved and I wouldn’t have paid out thousands from my redundancy to move from NSW to Northamptonshire in the UK and back to QLD.  However the move did provide new experiences for the family, so it wasn’t all bad.   As they say hindsight is 20/20 and I can see it all clearly from the lofty heights of  2019.

I’ve just read through this post and it’s taken a completely different tone to what I had planned, what it has done is remind me that experiences bad and good all help define the direction we take and the person we are or wish to be.  If I had done this in 2014, life would not be the same, but then I would’ve had different experiences in the last 5 years which may not have given the same result.  So I’m quite happy where I’ve ended up.

Throughout these first two terms and into this one I am continually glad that I have taken this opportunity to study and aim for a new career.  I hope those of you reading this feel the same.

Happy studies