Studying with mature reflection

Noreen Brennan Donoghue is a new mature student in general nursing at Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology in Castlebar, Co Mayo.

This course is not "Mature Friendly". The timetable is all over the place. When the powers that be decided to recruit mature students, did they think of and plan for the problems that mature students would have, problems that, say, a group of Leaving Certs would not?

Last week, my typical day ran as follows - get up at 7 a.m. Children at child minders and on my way to Castlebar by 8 a.m. Home at 6 p.m. Make dinner, clean the house, wash up, do lessons with the children, put them to bed at 8.30 p.m. Go for a walk? Watch television? Study? Or collapse into bed?

I get to bed about midnight. I was wondering if I went to a doctor and explained my day as above, what advice would I get? I need to study, but I don't have time, when one only has three-and-a-half hours out of 24 to call one's own.

A mature student has responsibilities that have to be addressed. When Bord Altranais produced this framework for the three-year diploma in nursing, for whom was it developed? A group of people living in the nurse's home, eating their meals in the hospital canteen, studying all evening and in bed at 10 p.m. I think it is time that the planners spent a bit more time at the drawing board.

I feel guilty when I don't study and I resent the time I spend on my family. I feel guilty when I do study and I think I am neglecting my children. I am going to speak to one of the tutors. We were told if we had any problems to come and talk to them. Imagine that - but I will reserve my opinion. When one was reared in the school of hard knocks, one does not think human nature changes that much. Still it is 2001 and I have to remind myself that the idea of the Berlin Wall crumbling when I was last in education was ever more remote than holidays on Mars are now.

The course itself is great. We have social sciences, hard sciences and nursing studies. The subjects are interesting - with one or two exceptions.

I have to pay tribute to the younger students who take the time and trouble to explain things I can't grasp. If the electrical activity of my brain were measured at the present time, I am sure it would register on the Richter scale.

One lecturer, whose identity I am going to keep between myself and the wall, seems to understand more than most that when one has not sat in a lecture hall for years, one cannot speed-write and listen at the same time. So this lecturer allows us to write, then explains what we have written, and still manages to get through reams of information.

The dispute with the Western Health Board is still without resolution. We had a ballot on an offer that was very unpopular and it was rejected.

I see in the literature supplied by Bord Altranais that students are actually entitled to three free meals a day, seven days a week. I am sure that it would be a revelation to meet the person who could do this on less than £20 per week.