One of the many reasons why I’m so busy at the moment, is that I’ve just started a course. You may remember I mentioned it last week and that I’d said only the week before that I’m definitely NOT studying anything this year! But a course on branding caught my eye, and as an ex-marketing student, I thought it would be a great way to keep up-to-date with new developments in the world of branding and hopefully learn something new. The online world certainly keeps you on your toes, with new ways of communicating being launched almost daily, so stepping out of the world of learning for any length of time would mean being left behind – and I’m too much of a branding-techy-geek to allow that to happen – hence the course.
So I signed up and during the month-long wait until the beginning of the course I starting to doubt whether this was really a good idea. How many lessons would the be? Will there be assignments? When would I even get time to do this? As I re-read the course information, I started to think that all this might be beyond me now as I’ve not studied at university level since 2010. Still, I gathered together my notebook and pens and got ready to follow the course on my tablet, but soon realised it was going to be more of a laptop-job – it was much more involved, multi-media course than I’d expected. So for the next 10 weeks I’ll need to carry my laptop with me at all times in order to keep up with the slide shows, videos, audio and articles that I need to study in order to pass the assignments.
At the moment, the laptop hardly ever leaves the house, therefore I have no bag or way of transporting it safely. That proved to be a big mistake with my last laptop when it unfortunately dropped out of the boot of the car. Okay, it was my own fault – I’d put it on the parcel shelf and had completely forgotten that it was there, until I opened the boot outside the postoffice and it thudded onto the ground. So I’ve found another necessity for this course: a laptop bag. This is turning out to be quite a costly period of study!
As you know, I love to distract myself with a bit of online window shopping and, whilst browsing for a sensible laptop bag, I came across the glamourous Teals Boutique website. I found myself drooling over the soft leather and stylish bags (I got a little distracted in the handbag section, but we all know that I don’t need a new handbag!!) and I actually preferred the men’s holdalls and laptop bags to the women’s one’s. There were more designs to choose from, with gorgeous distressed leather and delicious dark chocolate colours, plus I know that hubby will no-doubt be using the laptop bag too, so in order to be couple-friendly, I’ve veered towards the mens. I’m hoping this means that he will actually invest in it himself – I’ve sent him the link to my newly-created Teals Boutique wish list – and I’ll be able to save my pennies this month haha, we’ll see!
So far (1 day in!) the course is going well, and I’m carefully working my way through the course materials – I’ve been sat at my computer for the last 2 hours chain-drinking tea and getting to grips with the subject. I needed to force myself to browse for a laptop bag just to have a break! But I am enjoying it and I’m joining in with online discussions with fellow students; it’s great to get other people’s’ perspectives on the same articles that I’m reading. It’s definitely serving as a good refresher and I can already tell that the world of branding has greatly evolved since I last studied it – in fact, I can feel my brain growing as we speak 😉 I’m off to check out the first assessment details and will update you on my progress again soon!
