However, I feel that there are still enough short-term courses that can be taken for fun, like street photography (my husband did that over two weekends) and sketching at places like NAFA.

During my early motherhood phase, I did start this little initiative with my moms’ network, where we paid one another $20 to learn a skill, and this included sewing! Maybe among ourselves, we should start our own community initiatives.

Perhaps there could be another category of SF courses which are not so work-related, which are subsidised but to a lesser extent? I’d love to be able to do some craft-type courses, or even repair/mending courses, not necessarily to start a business, but just for myself and others? I recently tried to sign up for a clothes-mending/upcycling course, but found that although it’s listed under SF, it can only be taken as part of a much longer and expensive course intended for those who want to start a business!

This came up recently as a conversation topic, when an MP questioned if SkillsFuture should cover courses like wine appreciation:

One take was that this is a very narrow view of the “SkillsFuture mission.” In fact I heard that a manager/director type actually encourages her team to go for such courses, to better relate to high net worth individuals!

Personally, I think that we can (and should) split our time between upskilling and having some fun. That’s what makes us interesting. In fact, later in the year, I’m planning to sign up for dance and rock drumming classes, but those aren’t covered by SkillsFuture!

By now, I’ve taken 3 programmes that are marketed to career switchers, and just to share some tips about outcomes, based on my personal experience:

• Ideally, choose courses based on personal interest, but temper your expectations about job placements. It’s healthier to view each course that you take as a stepping stone towards a new path, as opposed to guaranteed employment.

• Placement success rates will vary by cohorts; anecdotally, those over 50 years old will likely experience job hunting challenges, especially for tech-related roles. Depending on job availability, offered placements may not be in an area related to the training course that you took. However, these may still be rare opportunities to work in MNCs or emerging smaller firms, so it’s good to keep an open mind.

• Ageism exists. Some advice that I’ve personally received: remove all dates from resumes, trim work experience to about 10 years, and expect a low response rate for applications (when I was trying to look for a career switch role, my callback rate was about 12% and I was told it was actually not too bad for that season).

• Job hunting can drag on for months, and this will usually take a toll on your morale, especially if your financial contribution to the family is needed. It’s important to have your support networks in place.

• In every course/programme, there are success stories… don’t be too swayed by these. Ultimately, your ability to thrive depends on your own skill set, personality, and drive. Be flexible about what it means to “succeed”: there are also individuals who return to their previous industries to take on different opportunities with their new skills/perspectives!

No fault of the instructor, it’s more that I don’t have the patience for fiddly things, and tend to wing it!

For everyone else sharing any feedback on courses, do feel free to post the link of the course that you did, and also to let us know honestly what you liked and didn’t like regarding the teaching style, schedule, etc.

These are two courses that I’ve audited on edX, but they don’t fall in the typical “fun” category. I enjoyed them tremendously though!

Harvard’s CS50 — beginner computer science course, the lecturer is superb at making classes come alive: https://www.edx.org/cs50

I used this to prep for my business analytics specialist dip, and be less afraid of numbers. I found this very reassuring! https://www.edx.org/learn/statistics/university-of-notre-dame-i-heart-stats-learning-to-love-statistics

@sharonkhoo Could you share the link for this course? Yes I would’ve been much more informed in many areas, if we had gotten access to all of this in our schooldays!

It’s included in the annual subscription to EdX which I used my expiring SF credits on last year.

I just checked, and it seems you can audit the course free but you won’t get a certificate or completion (if that matters to you!). You can pay for individual courses if you want to get a certificate. I have never tried it this way, but here’s the link:
https://www.edx.org/learn/art/universidad-carlos-iii-de-madrid-european-paintings-from-leonardo-to-rembrandt-to-goya?index=rv_product_summary&queryId=caec8aa9f24c397ded3b17d435d97917&position=1

https://www.basedbookarts.com/workshops

Will update once we’ve done it!

Am going with some gfs, as a birthday treat to one of them. In recent years, we’ve taken to gifting experiences as presents, especially for the types who already seem to have everything they need!

Who’s conducting the bookbinding course? I tried a half-day bookbinding course run by Society of the Physically Disabled as part of the Singapore Writers Festival a couple of years ago - it was quite fun, but I haven’t tried it again. We made a small notebook with cloth-covered hardcovers. Let me know how you find your course.

Do you power through courses by watching several lectures/episodes at one go? I find that I get sleepy — the Netflix duration of 45mins is about all I can take in one sitting!

I too have some free time now that I’m on a school break till April! I’ve arranged with friends to take a bookbinding class in March — we used Culture Pass, not SkillsFuture!

https://www.basedbookarts.com/workshops

Am quite busy these few weeks, but will try to do another one once I have a few free days. I wonder what to do next?

I’m in the process of writing my 3rd coursework essay, and once that’s handed in, it’s term break!

What I like about the Republic Poly specialist diploma courses: solo projects and no tests/exams.

For the current course that I’m taking, they’ve also built in gradable review components; i.e. a midpoint check-in + post-submission q&a, partly to give you chances to score, and also to check that you know your submission well (a safeguard against AI copying).

I’ve done both a STEM course and a social sciences course at Republic Poly, and social sciences is definitely less stressful (for me), and easier to juggle with full-time work and other commitments.

As for my husband, he completed his photography/videography course, which was held over two weekends. It’s ultimately a Leica-endorsed workshop, so you get to go to a Leica store and use Leica cameras (we already own one). He had to film a video as part of the course, and practise his street photography skills along a market. There was even an open-book exam, and he got a certificate at the end of it

https://hustle.com.sg/courses/leica-photography-course/

It’s not just the SkillsFuture site that puts people off.

Until very recently, participants in all SkillsFuture classes had to spend 10-20 mins every lesson just to scan attendance, because only one person could scan the QR code at a time. I experienced this at specialist diploma classes as well as for short-term courses — everyone fights to scan the code and it feels like a lottery win when you finally get your attendance marked! I don’t have the skill of fastest fingers, sadly!

It’s only been improved to allow multiple scans this year

But one thing is that the SkillsFuture site is super messy and hard to browse!

I agree! They should some librarians from NLB to help improve the search features. I found (being a librarian) that IT people like to think the full text searching of an unstructured database is always better than using controlled index terms to search a well-indexed database. They loved to tell me, “see, you get 1000 hits!” (mostly irrelevant) as if that would be more useful to a searcher than 30 relevant hits.

But one thing is that the SkillsFuture site is super messy and hard to browse!

I took Eng Lit at NUS. I had dropped lit in sec school (laziness) and was a triple-science kid, but it was not a good fit for me, and the MA was to “make up” for that period.

I actually had a really good experience at NUS; I did modules like “Women & Mythology” and authors that we had to read included Charlotte Bronte (Jane Eyre) and Louise Erdrich (The Antelope Wife). But I struggled for the renaissance lit module hahahaha (Paradise Lost… shudder!).

I like what you said about going with your interests! My aim is to read more books this year, especially the ones lying around at home untouched.

@sharonkhoo Wow you’ve read the Odyssey!!! What are some tips that you have for reading (and appreciating) the classics? I find it hard to want to reach for those. I have Moby Dick unfinished, on my list.

I don’t have any tips! As an adult, I find that my time is too precious to read things that don’t interest me, or if I don’t appreciate the style of writing. (That’s part of the reason why I refused an offer to study Eng Lit at university level!) But I am curious enough to want to know about things that are not immediately in my sphere, including something about what others consider “great literature”. If I feel that the book has made great contributions in some way, or is very famous for some reason, I might look up the wiki summaries!

When I was still in sec school/JC and had more time on my hands, I made an effort to read some of the recommended books that I kept hearing about, including the Odyssey (in translation, of course!). But they were mostly novels of later periods (18th century onwards) and random things I came across in libraries. When I was younger, I was more prepared to be impressed by what others considered “great” even if I didn’t really like the style!

Now, I read mostly fiction in the mystery genre (NLB reports that I read over 200 such books in Jan-Nov last year!). So this course is really my lazy way of finding out more about these “important” texts, some of which I have never even heard of before.