I really suck at Maths!

So it is the beginning of a brand new year and as a result, I have been doing a lot of soul searching and reflecting on last year. And to be quite honest with you, I really cannot say that there is too much about 2011 that I can be proud of. Mind you, this is not a case of me being my usual self-deprecating self; it is me being brutally honest about myself, and to myself. This brings me to the point of this blog post. I want to make 2012 really count and one of the ways that I want to ensure that this happens is by studying towards another post-Matric qualification. Yes, I said it. I Want To Go Back To School.

What can I say? I guess I was inspired by the Matrics and the pass rate, and especially by all the eager young hopefuls queuing outside institutes of higher learning, blah...blah...blah. So I did my research and I can happily report that the options are boundless and limitless, if you want to study for sake of studying and having something nice to add to your CV so that you join the long line of other hopefuls who are also trawling sites like Career junction and Bizcommunity in search of work. However, if you already have a degree (that you now realise is as good as having just a Matric, because it happens to be a Bachelor of Arts in Corporate Communications, and in the job market, it may as well be called a ‘Bachelor of Everyone-who-hates-Maths-has-this-degree’) then studying something postgraduate to augment the qualification that you already have, will prove to be a little more challenging.

So I look in a couple of newspapers at potential jobs (with good salaries) that I could really sink my teeth into, in order to help me decide which direction I want to go in study-wise. It brings me to the realisation that without Maths and other subjects that require me to work with numbers, then I’m pretty much screwed. The problem is I really suck at maths! And I certainly will not be queuing to do Accounting in a hurry. So where does this leave me?

May I just add that one should not on reading this assume that I am one of those mediocre students who just managed to scrape through Matric. Quite the contrary actually, I got 3 distinctions, it is just that they happened to be for English, Afrikaans and History, and not for Maths or Science, although I did in fact pass both of them too. But I digress.

In order to earn what I would like to be earning, in a field that will not require me to be even remotely at home with numbers, algorithms or graphs, then what should I be studying? This is when I realise what the problem for so many school-leaving peeps is; the study options for people who excel in subjects other than the sciences are pretty much limited to: Tourism/ hospitality studies, Communication and Journalism, Marketing, the Arts, fashion or working in a call centre and so forth.

Of course there is also the increasingly popular option of being self employed and running your own business. I have personally been avoiding taking this particular path out of the fear that it may lead to hunger and possible bankruptcy. The irony is that I keep finding myself at this juncture every time I have to confront the prospect that I could be stuck in my dead-end full time job for another year. So here I am again, at this juncture, and that is why I have decided to study a business course that will help me in the event that I may want to start my own business. Now I just have to settle on an institution that offers great part time courses that will be relevant to what I want to get into, something that will help me to have the edge that I will surely need to survive as a young entrepreneur.

The morale of this particular story is that I did eventually find a great course that I want to study, and I think it is the perfect course to help give my current Communications degree some teeth. The problem is? Yup, you guessed it- I will not be able to avoid passing Maths, and like I said before. I really suck at Maths!  Do not be dismayed though, I will not give up. It just means that it is going to take me a little while longer to get around to breaking bank with million dollar pay cheque.