[monkeycantype]

I'm a software developer, and had got into a rut of working for finance companies, because they have the money. I'm in my early 50's with four kids, three still at home, and I'm working my way slowly through a biomedical science degree, already it's given me the domain knowledge to able switch industries - I'm still a software developer but now in a biomed startup and much happier for it. One of my colleagues just completed his PhD, he's about to turn 60. Personally, my experience is that higher education is much easier now that I'm older, I'm more mature and disciplined, and I have a different attitude, I only do classes because I want the knowledge that class will present to me. Sure I could read the text books on my own, but I find knowing I'll have to front up to an exam on a fixed date motivating.

[wbc]

Can you talk more about the transition? Did you start over w/ bachelors in biology? Are you taking classes online/on the side?

I'm in a very similar situation as you and want to jump into grad school, but it looks like that's not possible w/o undergraduate degree.

[monkeycantype]

Well I'm definitely not FIRE.

Prior to the pandemic my partner and I were thinking of taking our family to Italy, I'd begun lining up a remote part-time job, and was looking at doing a masters in Italy at the university of Padua, one of the world's oldest universities, you can study in English and it's cheap.

You already know why that didn't happen.

I decided to start over with an undergraduate degree in biomedicine, because that's what I wanted to do. If you want to go straight to a masters, I wouldn't discount the possibility.

Here are some sites I found useful:

https://www.unipd.it/en/ https://www.unibo.it/en

https://www.mastersportal.com/ https://www.distancelearningportal.com/countries/

During the pandemic local universities that normally have large numbers of foreign students were desperate for new students, fees were lowered on a number of subjects and everything went online , and they got very loose about deadlines - everything was asynchronous, so I was do all my school work after hours and on weekends, and I used leave to take time off for exams - in Australia we have a minimum 4 weeks annual leave. I live outside Melbourne, which had the longest sustained lockdowns anywhere, maybe it's been surpassed now, officially there were ~260 days of lockdowns, things are only really starting to open up again now. I used this time to do the introductory science subjects that normally have long in-person lab sessions. Classes are still only partially back on campus, and will probably remain mostly asynchronous forever. So that's how I have been able to study and work. As to how I made the transition, I applied for jobs, but it's was through word of mouth that I got to speak to the biomed start up I'm now working for. I think it was pretty novel for them to meet someone who had a strong software background, and was interested and contributing to a discussion about physiology so we hit it off and now I'm working with them full-time, and more productive and satisfied with work than I been for, well ever actually.

[dev_0]

You can do that only if you are FIRE