*breathe out... and relax... again*

I'm transported back to a post I wrote back in the day about having finally finished and submitted a TMA.

So here goes... "breathe out... and relax". I passed my exam. It's subject to confirmation that I didn't try to cheat (they use your web cam and microphone to record your activity, so unless they think one of the cats was mouthing the answers to me I should be okay) but as far as the actual scoring of the test goes, I passed. By quite a good margin too.

I finished answering the questions with 17 minutes to go of my allotted 60. Foolish, you may think, that I exited the exam with so long left, but I knew if I went back through my responses I'd end up doubting myself and run the risk of mucking it all up. So I went with my gut and ended it once I'd given a response to them all.

Everyone who knew I was sitting the exam was sure I would pass, but for once, I genuinely wasn't. Perhaps my past failures have bred a more apprehensive nature in me. Perhaps I feel I've been away from education for too long now to go back. I cannot describe the relief washing over me right now knowing that I was wrong and everyone else was right.

This exam is the start of a whole new direction for me. After this I move straight on to the Practitioner level of the qualification which will see me gain the requisite skills to fully assist the project manager and potentially play more of a role in company-wide projects. But that's not all I've got planned.I have a burgeoning list of things I want to do - both qualifications I've got in the pipeline and methods, techniques and new skills I want to learn on a more auto didactic basis. I get far too carried away with myself and my incredible friend Hannah regularly tries to rein me in by telling me to concentrate on one thing at a time, and she's right. I know she's right. But I really do struggle with this.

I'm nowhere close to being in the kind of financial situation where I could afford to pick up my postgraduate studies again. I think that's a long way off to be truthful so for the time being I'll have to make the best of any alternatives that are out there to me. I have a couple of small qualifications in the running to follow on from the Prince2 Practitioner. A Green Belt in Six Sigma is next on the agenda, along with a Level 2 qualification in Lean Organisation Management Techniques. The latter is actually a BTEC. Who'd have thought - 34 years old and studying for a BTEC! The qualification is actually free via Vision2Learn and is worth 15 credit points so to be honest, I'm not going to look that particular gift horse in the mouth and it will teach me some good foundation skills for my new role. There are umpteen other things I want to do too, but I'm taking heed of Hannah's advice and concentrating on one thing at a time. I'll get these actual qualifications done and dusted first. Then, and only then, will I move onto spare-time learning and/or something bigger.

I've got to prioritise here, and episodes of learning that have tangible outcomes are by far the most sensible for me to allocate my resource to at the present time.

It's almost like I'm project managing my own progression.