Thinking about pursuing a degree? You might already know what you want to study, or where you hope the qualification will take you. It’s harder to picture what studying will actually feel like once you’re fitting classes and assignments around work and family. In Grenada, management consultant Carlana Charles McGuire learned how much that part of the decision mattered when she found herself close to finishing a master’s programme and ready to walk away.
She had already earned a postgraduate diploma through another university. During the pandemic, she said, it became difficult to get the academic guidance she needed. She began looking elsewhere and found that she could pursue an entire degree at Edinburgh Napier University for less than it would have cost her to finish her previous programme.
Charles McGuire went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in business with human resource management and a master’s degree in human resource management at Edinburgh Napier. She went straight from one programme into the next, taking full course loads while keeping up with work and family commitments in St David, Grenada.
For her, one of the clearest differences came in the weeks before a paper was due. When you’re working through a module largely on your own, she explained, you can spend weeks developing an argument and only realise when the grade comes back that you’ve misunderstood part of the material. In Edinburgh Napier’s live classes, she could talk through an idea with lecturers and classmates while there was still time to rethink it. Discussing real situations also helped her see how the theory might apply to the work she was already doing.
“You have this community there supporting you,” she told Saint Lucia Daily Post.
That mattered outside class, too. Charles McGuire said administrative staff often replied to her emails the same day and that, in her experience, a response took no more than 48 hours. When she was balancing client work, family and a full course load, getting an answer while she still had time set aside to study made a difference.
Across the Caribbean, Edinburgh Napier graduates have had different reasons for going back to school. Saint Lucian journalist Kendall Eugene, known as Scady dotP, put off enrolling for almost a decade. He credits his MBA in Leadership and Innovation with helping him move into his role as an information officer at the Government Information Service. For Karalisa Joseph, pursuing an MSc in Business Management (Finance) online made more financial sense than relocating. She valued how the coursework pushed her to think more critically. Charles McGuire has already found herself talking a colleague through the decision she once faced herself.
After spending years advising clients on workforce issues, organisational development and design, governance and institutional strengthening Charles McGuire’s two degrees gave her a stronger theoretical grounding for that work and more confidence in the advice she brings to clients. “You bring an academic lens to your work,” she said. She is now pursuing a second master’s degree, in technology and public policy, as her consultancy, https://paperclipgd.com/ takes on more work in those areas.
When her colleague finished a bachelor’s degree and began considering a master’s, Charles McGuire encouraged her to look at Edinburgh Napier if she could find a programme that fit the career she wanted. For Charles McGuire, that was what made going back to school worth the investment. She could bring questions from the work she was already doing into the classroom and return to her clients with a new way of looking at them.
You can fulfill your higher learning dreams too. Sign up today at https://www.seidegrees.com for the January intake.
