The Secret of Success

Imagine you are standing outside one of the fifty entrances to the West Edmonton Mall. If you have never been there, imagine the biggest mall you know, double it in size and add an ice rink, an amusement park, a porpoise pool, a wave pool with water slides, and a Chrysler dealership.

Now imagine that a large part of the mall is undergoing renovations - some shops are closing, others opening, some are moving, some are changing how they look. Now imagine that you don't have a standard body shape and even before you go in, you know that in that whole amazing pile of stuff there's going to be very little that fits you.

This seems to be the position of women who want to go back to school to upgrade their skills or to retrain in a different career. There are a lot of programs and a lot of information out there but by the time a woman has figured out what she wants to do, what is available to her, what she has time for, what she can afford, and what programs she can get into, the field has narrowed down quite a bit. I would say that "Lots of stuff - few choices" is the central contradiction for women seeking education or training.

This is why I think the mall is a good analogy. You can use your mall shopping tactics to find what you want in the education and training fields. Even if you hate malls and refuse to go in them, you still shop. If you can shop, you can "access the system."

At this point you might be wondering, "Why bother?" Well, you might find exactly what you're looking for and be thrilled to bits or you might find something even better that you never even dreamed existed. Also, unlike most things found in a mall, education really can change your life.

Finding the education you want is more of an adventure these days because of the renovations. The field of education and training is changing in response to changes in the job market and in technologies. Job market experts are encouraging us to think of education as a lifelong process. This is not a new idea but it's a good idea. Some of the women I talked to were years ahead of the experts in figuring this out. When their educations were interrupted by marriage, children, ill health or lack of financing, they just waited until their lives opened up a little and then they went back to school - as many times as it took.