Everything, everywhere, all at once: thoughts of a working, parenting, distance learning student
Today’s post is by Marc Lamaison, a Master 2 student registered with ECMA from a long, long way away!
I had not set so much as a toenail upon the steps of an auditorium for nine years when I finally gathered the courage to join, albeit remotely, the very same university where I had started my licence degree in English. I had had the time to study other things, to move across the world with my better half, to become an expert at a boring job and to meditate on my professional goals – or lack thereof. So, when I received my student card, I did so with a feeling already of achievement, with the thrill of finally setting things up in motion, of standing at the threshold of a life-changing adventure, at least until I completed a Master’s Degree. I was leaving the Shire to hunt for an ancient treasure. I knew it would take organisation and patience. And it does. Here are my thoughts and advice, as a seasoned “distance learner”, to anyone who considers studying remotely.
I am now weeks away from the end of my Master, and I still have not got the hang of it all, because each year is different from the last, both at university and at home. Nevertheless, I did pick up some organisational techniques along the way.
First, keep your schedule up to date.
Save the important dates: exams, videocalls, assignments. For this, the phone is very interesting when you live in a different time zone, because it automatically calculates the time difference between the university and yourself. But I feel like a paperback diary offers a clearer weekly view than its digital counterpart, and perhaps more importantly, I simply enjoy this medium. In a context of distance, dematerialised learning, having a material diary makes your studies somewhat more real and palpable. Plus, it is nice and pretty, and kind of makes you feel important.
Tidy your lessons in a nice, orderly fashion: what I have been doing is to download all my lessons into an online drive. That way I can access them whenever and wherever I need, on whichever device I am using at the moment. I used to print some of them, but I found this impractical and costly, whereas the university provides you with an online drive for free.
Unlike on-site students, we distance learning folks do not have a weekly schedule, so, devise yourself a weekly work plan, with some time allotted to each subject, each week. It is okay not to strictly stick to it every week: this is mainly to avoid forgetting about one subject until the day before the exam! Do not forget to plan some time for your dissertation as well.
In addition, or alternatively, I designed a table that I thought was pretty useful. Here is an example (any resemblance with existing courses is not completely fortuitous):
| Unit | Subject | Last worked | Comment | Deadline 1 | Type |
| HLADU25D | South Africa history | 21/02 | Lesson 1 p. 7 | 21/03 | Assignment |
| HLADU25D | Australia history | 15/02 | Lesson 2 ok | 15/03 | Written exam |
| HLADU26D | Dissertation | 02/03 | Survey ongoing | 06/03 | Videocall |
By the way, knowing how to use a spreadsheet software will help you heaps in staying organised during your remote studies. For instance, you can automatically paint the boxes according to the date, it will help you visualise on which subjects you have not worked for some time, or for which of them the next deadline is the closest.
There, these are the main tools I have been using for the last five years. They were instrumental in keeping my mind clear, afloat. But they are only tools. My experience showed me that a carefully planned schedule is still but a guideline. The plan must be dynamically adapted to life, for the other way around is hardly possible. That is when you need patience. When I started my L2 again five years ago, I knew I was aiming for at least four years of studies, but I accepted that it might take more than that. When my son was born, I put my studies on hold for a year to focus on him and my wife. Ever since then, I only work on my lessons when he’s been put to bed, and I am not too exhausted from having played cat and mouse for an hour. Adaptability is essential to prevent frustrations.
There were times when it was hard psychologically: to keep working at a job for which I got more and more overqualified; to be too busy with work, life, parenthood, to be able to study; to be too busy with the studies to be able to spend quality time with my wife and son. It is important to keep watch over one’s mental health so as not to give in to stress, anxiety and weariness. There are no secret ingredients, but I did learn better than to underestimate the importance of maintaining a good communication with my spouse and my son, to dissociate them from my anxieties about my studies, to avoid checking my e-mails while spending time with them. I have also tried to plan myself some weekly leisure time, practising sports, arts or just hanging out.
There were times when a lot of things seemed to pile up and I wish I had taken more time to unwind. That would have spared us some marital arguments, and I probably would have put on less weight! But I have been told that I could not do much more than my best. And in moments of doubt, I clung to the thrill I felt when I started it all, that initial push that gave me enough momentum to go all the way there, and back again!
OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Laurence Lux-Sterritt (4 avril 2025). Everything, everywhere, all at once: thoughts of a working, parenting, distance learning student. EN-globe. Consulté le 10 novembre 2025 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/13ory


