Talk to me about having both partners in school

[pinksprklybarefoot]

I am currently a full-time student that will be applying to pharmacy school tis summer (meaning, with any luck, I'll matriculate in the fall of 2011).

DH lost his job in October. He was overpaid for what he did (chef at a non-profit) and is extremely intelligent. He reads things I would not want to read in school for fun.

We are toying with the idea of him becoming a full-time student in the fall. We had always assumed he would pursue a bachelor's after I was done with my Pharm D. The job market stinks, he wanted to change careers anyway, now seems like a ggod opportunity to get a start on a degree.

There are a lot of unanswered questions - childcare (would we be eligible for help in that area?), unemployment (I am assuming he will no longer be eligible). Those things will work themselves out. I am worried about the day-to-day reality of it. Especially with three kids.

Any wisdom?

[Kristine233]

You can still get unemployment while in school. In fact, he may qualify for dislocated workers funds which pays to retrain people who decide to go back to school for something else.

My husband lost his job last Feb and we decided to both go back to school. He is getting ready to finish phlebotomy and is on the wait list for Radiological Tech. I'm in a nursing program. He'll get his rad tech paid for by dislocated workers. The dislocated workers program will pay for childcare as well.

We are VERY lucky that we live in a low COL area. We can make our bills and pay our mortgage on part time jobs (or in his case, unemployment). Our kids are also all in school so most of the time we are in school the same time they are. My job offers free afterschool care for when I'm working and he happens to be in school. . Its a win-win and we have great circumstances for which to attend school and I have a very flexible job.

[nolansmummy]

Originally Posted by pinksprklybarefoot

There are a lot of unanswered questions - childcare (would we be eligible for help in that area?), unemployment (I am assuming he will no longer be eligible). Those things will work themselves out. I am worried about the day-to-day reality of it. Especially with three kids.

Any wisdom?

With childcare, dh and i were able to work it out so that one of us is always home with the kids because we don't qualify for childcare help because you have to be able to work during the daytime at least a certain amount of hours and we couldn't. Our university offers daycare but the wait list was too long.

As for unemployment, I'm not positive he would qualify, but my dh did a few summers back. His work lays him off in the summers since they run on a university schedule. He got unemployment fairly easily even though he was taking summer classes.

The day to day reality is that i never see my husband. He works part time at night, and i don't work at all. We alternate our class schedule and he sleeps most weekends due to his night job. Its really not ideal, but we get enough grants to pay for school and supplement our pt income with loans. We are glad we are in school now, and hopefully the job market will turn around just as we will be graduating.

Good luck.

[sparklett]

Right now, DH and I are both SAHPs and we're both full-time students. We really like the current arrangement- we're both going to school on-line and we're spending gobs of time with DS. We're both on unemployment and living as lean as possible. We managed to put a heap of $$ into savings before DH lost his job, so that has helped.

We do most of our schoolwork after bedtime. During the day, we take turns with DS so that we can get work done. I usually do a 2-hour shift in the morning to work on school and then DH does 2 hours in the afternoon.

It looks like I'll be going back to a "real" job next month, on top of being in school. If that happens, I'll just deal with it on my end and we'll put DS in preschool a few days a week so that DH can do schoolwork. DS is chomping at the bit to go to preschool, so we thought 3 hours a day, 3 days a week would be beneficial to both DH and DS.

If you are concerned about childcare, have you considered having your DH attend school on-line while you are finishing up pharm school?

[pinksprklybarefoot]

Originally Posted by sparklett

If you are concerned about childcare, have you considered having your DH attend school on-line while you are finishing up pharm school?

I know that this is one thing that we cannot do. There are a few reasons for this. The first is that it is basically impossible to do schoolwork at home - te kids climb all over you, they always need something, etc. We bought me a laptop last fall specifically for this reason - writing papers at home was a ridiculous proposition.

The other issue is that even if we could take some classes online (I can't - most pharmacy schools frown upon it, from what I can tell from their websites), it would not be possible for all of them (I have quite a few lab sciences in the pipeline, and he is toying with the idea of engineering).

Last issue is that online courses require an insane amount of discipline and self-direction. DH is 31, and has never been to college. He nearly dropped out of high school (not due to intelligence - just existential angst). He definitely needs some time in the classroom and some time learning to study before attempting anything online. I think that part of the draw of college will be the face-to-face interaction, the discussions, etc. I like tis part, too.

DH did a little research and it looks like we probably qualify for daycare assistance, and in theory (according to the website), there is no waiting list. I'm not sure how much it covers, but anything would help.