I was going to write about the upcoming Philippine Homeschool Conference happening on October 7 at the Treston International College today, but just before I logged in, I opened an email from Coursera letting me know of new courses that they think would interest me.
And I got to thinking, maybe I should write something different. Like adult homeschool.
Our eldest child was homeschooled in elementary. Then she moved on to a Science high school. She’s now in college, and doing pretty well. Our two younger children are still homeschooled. Not showing signs of wanting to leave our home academy yet, but each year, I prepare for that eventuality.
Homeschooling our children taught me a lot of things. In fact, I may have learned more from them than them from me. It depends on how one views learning, actually.
I think our approach to homeschooling is more on guiding our kids to be autodidacts. Maybe because I’ve found my happiness in being an entrepreneur without ever taking a formal course on how to become one. I learned on my own. I was in adult homeschool from the time I left my corporate life. And I think it paid off.
Benefits of going to adult homeschool
I’m earning more.
Well, not that much. But more than what I would be earning had I stayed in employment. I’m staying competitive in today’s job market because I am teaching myself new skills. I can offer other services using skills I didn’t imagine I’d know when I was working in a conglomerate. It’s just like, send-more-entries-for-more-chances-of-winning type of thing.
I’m growing my circle of friends.
When I enroll in a course, I make sure that I visit the forums. I meet people from different countries and stay connected with some. Also, with my increasing knowledge base, I become confident in offering new services. In the process, either I find myself serving a new client, or working with a new colleague with a different set of expertise. Either way, these newfound contacts are amazing.
I’m enjoying my life more.
When I learned how to crochet, it was a revelation. I never thought I’m a creative person. But I am. I know that now. I’m claiming it.
When I learned how to set up online shopping carts and websites, you are not going to believe the happiness I felt. Like I was doing the jig in my mind, only to realize I was actually doing the jig, period.
Each time I troubleshoot a site, adding a bit of code here and there, it felt like my chest would burst with pride.
Adult homeschool changed me from being a passive consumer of knowledge to actively choosing what I want to learn. From crochet, knitting and quilling, to affiliate marketing, coaching and coding. And as I learn each new skill, I enjoy the positive feeling that comes with finally doing it on my own. Of becoming a master, later on.
Common Barriers
Time.
I know a lot of people would wonder how I find the time. But the thing is, I don’t. I don’t find time. I make time.
I have a busy work life. My virtual assistance business is busy. I have more crochet projects than I can comfortably handle. We don’t have a househelp. And we homeschool. So when do I get the time to be in adult homeschool?
I make time.
I download the course videos on my phone, and listen to them on the drive to and from the grocery. Instead of being online on Facebook, I’d spend my downtime watching the videos. Or if there is just audio, I crochet while listening to the lecture. And whenever possible, I choose a course that allows a student to finish at her own pace. Or at the very least, something that will not require too many exams.
Cost.
You can do this for free.
Here are my top picks on free education:
Coursera – This is my go-to site. They work with top universities to offer free online classes. I have a few certificates from the courses I took with them.
Khan Academy – I enrolled my kids here, and then I got hooked myself. My favorite part is practicing my math.
Code Academy – There’s free, and there’s PRO. Depending on your needs and your end-goal. For now, I’m staying with free.
Udacity – This is like Coursera, but more on technical courses.
CreativeLive – Needless to say, my favorite section here is the Craft and Maker Topics.
YouTube EDU – This one, I discovered through my son. He found it himself. Told you, he knows more than I do. There’s primary and secondary education, there’s university, and you can also subscribe per subject.
Duolingo – I have bookmarked this site, but I have yet to try it out. I have once taken a foreign language course in Coursera. It’s called Financial Accounting. So maybe I’ll try this site soon. I might fare better here.
There are hundreds more sites you can learn courses from, absolutely free. The list above are just the ones I have tried out. But if you are really that hungry for knowledge, just go to Open Education Database, or Open Culture. Those sites will give you more than enough choices.
Here’s an example of a video from YouTube that my son watches.
Location.
I’m writing about adult homeschool, remember? So unless you are planning to bring your learning materials with you to the grocery, the doctor’s clinic or to a boring get-together at the beach, your location should not be a problem.
Study in the car, on the dining table, even in bed.
I do all these. But mostly, in my home office. I really like my office. A lot.
So anyway, learning new things can also help beat old-age ailments like dementia and Alzheimer’s. It keeps our brain healthy.
To enjoy learning, here are a few tips.
Adopt a growth mindset. Was it Oprah who said, “What you believe, you become“? Believe that you can learn new things, and you will. One is never too old. I learned crochet when I was forty-something.
Change your idea of learning. Forget the idea that you need to sign up and pay for a class to learn something new. Or that you need a certificate to show that you actually learned something.
Set your goals. Like I give myself at least three goals a year. Migrate a site. Create a pattern. Read 5 books on self-development. Anything. Whatever applies to you, and whatever you think will make you happy and accomplished at the end.
Identify resources. I already shared with you my top picks for my own adult homeschool, so start with those, and add your own.
Ask questions. Your family. Your friends. Maybe reach out to the author of the book you’re reading. Or take on an accountability partner.
Join groups. Start with the people you know. Find people who have the same learning goals as you do. It’s more fun to learn that way. Unless you really are the introvertest introvert.
Put your knowledge to work. Learning crochet is not much fun if you only have one set of hooks. That’s me trying to justify my 4 sets, and another one to arrive soon. But seriously, take some action. Listening to podcasts about health and fitness will be wasted if you won’t even follow a healthy diet or get a good workout once a week.
Share what you’re learning.
I just did.
And I promise to write about the Philippine Homeschool Conference next time. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoyed this one.
Do you have questions, comments or feedback about this post? Please leave a reply below, or post them at my Facebook Page.
I’m not a religious person. I rarely go to church or attend service. What I am is prayerful. I say a prayer of thanks for every little thing. When I wake up each morning with my husband beside me and our children nearby, I say a prayer of thanks for the gift of a new day with them. When my daughter in college responds to a text message promptly, I say a prayer of thanks knowing that she’s safe. When I see my mother preparing snacks for me and the kids, I say a prayer of thanks for her long life and her tenacious approach about her health.
I’m also a person who tries to find the good in a bad situation.
When there is an unannounced power interruption, I focus on appreciating the time I can spend doing housechores or chilling with the kids instead of working at my computer.
When my husband lost his employment (in the guise of being given an early retirement), I focused on being happy that he gets to work at home with me and be with the kids more.
When Glenda happened, I was grateful that we stayed dry while the storm raged outside. When we were burglarized, I was grateful no one in the family was hurt.
Now that we are in the middle of another storm, figuratively, I’m again trying to focus on the blessings brought about by the trials.
For the past months, I have been experiencing that minty feeling at the back of my throat. It was only last week that I thought of Googling it. This article is helping me identify my symptoms now. Because I don’t have the symptoms for GERD, I’m now trying to rule out anxiety. However, with the recent problem with Camella, I don’t think I will do very good on this. So I’m really hoping that Camella will offer a resolution soonest. 🙂
A month ago, I was going to a client meeting in Manila. On the trip from Ibaan to Lipa, I lost my left peripheral vision. Like it was really dark on the left side, and I had to move my head sideways to see what could normally be seen peripherally. I was thinking, if this persists, I will have to cancel my trip. Take the van from Lipa back to Ibaan. I started taking deep breaths while flexing my fingers open and close. The vision cleared before we reached SM Lipa, so I went on to the meeting.
But on Thursday night, it happened again. My vision just started to blur on the lower part, like when staring at my monitor, the desk in front of me was blurred. I didn’t tell anyone about it. I just shut down my PC and went to bed. I was thinking that my eyes were just tired.
I was feeling better when I woke up Friday morning, but by mid-day, I was again experiencing blurred vision. Like there was a haze in front of me. Imagine being on the road on a really hot day, and you stare at the hood of your car? You’ll see a haze, like the heat in the air forming some shapes? That’s what I was experiencing. So again, I lied down, closed my eyes and rested, with the decision that I was going to see my ophthalmologist the next day.
And I did.
But what my ophthalmologist told me worries me now. He said: “If it was your eyes, it would not have resolved that fast. It would have persisted.” And my eye tests were good. In fact, my myopia is gone. Although my astigmatism is a bit higher. Pressure on my eyes are the same as they were in 2013.
So what could be my problem?
“You might have had a mild stroke and you didn’t know it.”
Wow!
My sedentary life is causing me to lose circulation, my brain is being deprived of oxygen, causing to impair my vision.
That’s my assessment. Not the doctor’s. But I know I’m right.
And I’m thankful that I get to write about it. I’m a survivor.
“Making it” is the operative word, because the search is for Top 60, and they only listed 52, and I’m number 49. So yes, good of me to make it. And very grateful!
I mean, I’m not even blogging regularly. So maybe if I did, then I would have fared better? I’ll never know now. But this fuels me to blog more frequently.
I think I’m the only one from the Philippines in the list. Mostly are from the US and I saw some from Australia, Canada, the UK and Kenya . Cool!
The email asked me to put a badge on my site, just for bragging, you know. 🙂 And I’ll do that soon, when I have more time, but for now, I’m just putting it here within the post, with gratitude.
Now, if only they will send a real medal in the mail… But that’s already asking too much. 🙂
Do you have questions, comments or feedback about this post? Please leave a reply below, or post them at my Facebook Page.
Just got off the phone with the office staff of Camella in Lipa City, Batangas, and I’m shaking and crying with dry tears. My world is in shambles, and the only way I can stay sane is to write. Writing is a balm. A refuge from the storm of emotions raging through me right now, so I’ll just write.
Let me share with you my story from the beginning.
Back in July 2016, we decided to avail of a house and lot package with Camella. I requested for a quotation on the bigger house models they have available, particularly the Drina and the Elaisa. The Elaisa home is bigger than Drina, with five bedrooms and three baths, compared to Drina’s four bedrooms and three baths. But what made us want the Elaisa more was the fact that it has the master’s bedroom downstairs. We are investing on a house in the city to prepare for our retirement.
We already have a house in the town just next to Lipa, but we thought that having another house in the city will be beneficial to us when we grow old, as the location is right at the center of everything. It’s just a tricycle ride away from Mary Mediatrix Hospital (and whether we want it or not, growing old means going to the doctor more often than we are comfortable doing); it’s near De La Salle Lipa, where our eldest is attending college, and where our two younger kids might go, too; it’s near a mall where we usually shop, and traffic is not as bad coming and going from that area.
So the Elaisa model is what we have agreed to avail of, and we communicated this to our agent. We wanted to get the Elaisa model, but we were afraid that if we applied for that particular model, we would not be comfortable with sudden spike on our monthly financial obligations. We wanted to have time to adjust to the new financial responsibility.
Upon the advise of our agents, we then decided to avail of the Drina, which, like Elaisa, was also being offered with free tiles. Drina is less expensive, and would be deemed to be more comfortable to pay. Our plan was to live the next 17 months like we are paying for Elaisa, saving the difference, and pay the difference of the downpayment cost in lumpsum at the end of the downpayment period. Having decided that we would upgrade to the Elaisa house before the turnover for construction, we made sure that the lot we paid for would accommodate Elaisa. We have also added the cost of provision for a garage/terrace in the dowpayment so the contractor will include it in the construction.
All of these were discussed during the orientation. Everyone in that office were aware that we were going to upgrade to Elaisa before the end of the downpayment period. Even at the time that I was signing the blank contracts, I was asking my agent if there won’t be problems with the upgrade. I was assured there won’t be.
I even posted this floor plan on my social media account back then. See the carport?
January 2017, we learned that the lot adjacent to ours, with the same cut, was still available. By this time, we were already confident with our cash flow, So we inquired if we could also avail of that lot, but lot only, no house. They were more than happy to accommodate us.
July 2017, nearing the end of our downpayment period, we learned that Elaisa is now Ella, and that Ella is no longer offered with free tiles. We have also been told that the terrace will no longer be part of the construction. And Ella is now more than 200K more expensive than Elaisa. The new computation they gave me was 3.8M.
Ouch! Now talk about being blindsided, huh?
It is really disheartening that a developer would change the terms of their packages in a way that is detrimental to the financial capacity of the customer who is already paying for the downpayment. So I wrote them a letter of request. I appealed for them to consider extending the free tiles to the Ella model. Because the Ella model is now more expensive than what we have prepared for, I was hoping they could give us some consideration. Add to that is the fact that we are twice their customer, having also started paying for the lot adjacent to us.
So here comes the nightmare.
The letter I sent them was in July 27, 2017. I received a call tonight from their office in Lipa, telling me that hey, the request for free tiles was approved, but the Ella model is now 4.2M.
But no, that was not the nightmare.
After some lengthy back and forth with the office staff, me telling her that it does not feel like they have actually granted me the free tiles. I still have to pay for it with 400K. And all she could say was, it was what came from Marketing. She cannot do anything about it.
That was still not the nightmare.
After a few more minutes, I finally conceded that I cannot do anything about it. So I asked the lady on the other end to please send me new monthly computations for the cost of the house.
This is where the nightmare starts.
She asked if I was still pursuing the Ella.
Hello? Isn’t this what the long conversation has been about? The emails, the text messages, the appeal? We are doing our best to get the Ella.
This is the nightmare, folks.
They have started construction of the Drina. On our lot.
I couldn’t breathe. I was crying, but no tears came out.
After all the back and forth, I was doing it for nothing.
If you were in my shoes, what would you do?
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However hard it is to come up with a topic to write about.
Because the ideas, the experiences, the struggles that I share on this tiny space in cyber just might reach someone who needs an affirmation that every idea can be developed into something great; every experience leaves a lesson to be learned; and every struggle is an exercise in becoming stronger.
This is why I blog.
I’ve had this blog since 2009, and it’s only lately that I’ve been confident enough to show up, write something real, however short, however weird.
Before 2014, my insecurity was… my site looks hideous! Who would bother to visit?
So I had it designed.
The next insecurity came to be… what will I write? Who would be interested to read what I have to say?
But came some words of encouragement from people who found inspiration in my posts.
I’ve been told, just show up. Write something. Anything.
And that’s what I’m doing now. Some days, it’s easy. Some days, it’s not. But I trudge on. And I just go ahead and type whatever comes to mind. Like today.
I have a long work queue, which is a blessing, so I really don’t have much inclination to write about finances, or homeschool, or crafting, today. But I needed a little bit of encouragement for my writing. I needed that tiny whisper in my ear to never get tired of showing up. So here’s to me, and to you. Let’s tell our story one short post at a time.
Do you have questions, comments or feedback about this post?
Please leave me a message, or post them, at my Facebook Page.
Back in June, I had my first Work-At-Home 101 workshop in Lipa. It’s the first time I was running a workshop in the province, so I had to personally set up everything. In Manila, I have my own event coordinator who takes care of my logistics, but since I don’t know anyone in Lipa who offers this service, I had to make do with the only resource I have. Me.
I was gunning for Café de Lipa. I’ve had a couple of business meetings in that place before, and I just love the smell of freshly ground coffee. I also considered Taza Mia at Robinson’s, as it is usually quiet on weekdays.
But then a new acquaintance mentioned The Candlelight Café, not far from the city center. And because she mentioned that the place is also offering art classes, I was really interested to find out more.
Husband and I went to check it out one afternoon, and as luck would have it, the last batch of their summer art program was due to start the following Monday. We decided right there and then that it was a program that we’d love our middlechild to be enrolled in.
A Treasure Trove
We were graciously welcomed by the owner herself, Dr. Marichu Carstensen, who, we found out, is also the Doc behind Doc’s Candles. She gave us a tour of the place and I just fell in love.
Dr. Carstensen teaches mosaic art.
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She also teaches painting in pastel and acrylic.
Inside one of the sheds where she teaches painting. these caught my eyes.
The subject. Or reference, however they are called.
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And the painting.
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Another subject.
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And the corresponding painting.
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And look! The good doctor’s daughter is also into crafting. She embroiders!
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And they serve good food!
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There’s an upright piano at the café, and one time that we were there, one of the art students played a few broadway pieces, and well, I just sang along. How cool is that? We can jam anytime!
I’m looking forward to the day that we can do Craft Buffet at The Candlelight Café, too. 🙂
How To Get There
Coming from Star Tollway, exit at Leviste/Bulacnin Toll Gate. Go straight to the direction of Lipa City and upon reaching the corner of Levi Town, turn left at Jollibee, going to the direction of Malvar. Now watch out and keep your eyes to the left of the road, driving around 400 to 500 meters from where you made the turn. Look for their signage which is a bit high, and enter that small road leading to the back of the compound. Don’t be shy. Just drive in. At the end of that short road, you’ll find a clearing, and you’ll be at The Candlelight Café.
The place, I found out, also happens to be the home of the Lipeño Youth Arts Club. And I’m hoping that our middlechild gets to be a member of that club, now that she has taken a more serious turn in her art journey.
I’ll be sharing my daughter’s finished projects here soon, so I hope you’ll watch out for my blog post on it.
Photo credit: Dr. Marichu Carstensen for her daughter’s embroidered jumpers.
Do you have questions, comments or feedback about this post? Please leave me a message, or post them at my Facebook Page.
Now, if only they will send a real medal in the mail… But that’s already asking too much. 🙂
