Our Pat Underwood shares with us how the ICT skills learnt on her MS Word Processing and MS Excel Spreadsheets courses have helped build her knowledge and confidence that have supported her with a new business venture. . .

Pat says, “Over the past 30 years I have enrolled on 3 different IT courses in colleges and attended a few times and then dropped out as I could not grasp it. The courses with Addysg Oedolion Cymru | Adult Learning Wales have allowed me to learn and absorb it at my own pace. At times over the last 3 years since redundancy I have felt totally useless and disheartened when I could not do what appeared like basic tasks to others where IT was concerned, since attended these courses it has helped me feel more positive and actually sparked an interest in learning and developing these skills more, even though I still see this as more of a necessity than a pleasurable activity.

I enrolled on the MS Word Processing and MS Excel Spreadsheets course because I recognised that my lack of IT skills was holding me back in all manner of ways. I had worked for the same employer for over 15 years in the admin department. Most of the admin tasks used a paper filing system. Following redundancy and going to work for another agency, I was expected to do all my own admin and maintain spreadsheets, this was very stressful. I realised that I was well out of my depth with everything connected with IT. Following leaving this post due to the pandemic, I was then employed at a residential rehab where all admin regarding clients was carried out electronically. Again, this was very stressful and at times really affected my mood as younger employees would complete tasks so much quicker and I would frequently have to ask them for help.

Due to working most Sunday evenings and not finishing until late, I feel my commitment to learning was to be organised and ready to attend for an early start for the Monday morning courses and to actually start putting into practice what I was learning with regard to my business venture. From 2017 I had started a part time business as a Holistic Therapist. This had been more of a paying hobby to fund additional training courses in my passion regarding health and wellbeing, but following the funding ending in my paid employment I decided to take my business a step further and become completely self-employed. I needed to be more computer literate to be able to build and maintain a successful business including networking.

The support I have received from the tutor Robert Meredith and fellow learners has been fantastic, the tutor has been so patience when I have forgotten something and asked for the tenth plus time how I do something. I have learnt how to maintain accurate records in an orderly way, design handouts for the workshops I intend to run, print and design my own forms and save time and money with managing my own accounts. Having just completed a Clinical Hypnotherapy qualification, I will be expanding my business offering more services, I would also like to do more at a community level regarding health and wellbeing sessions to people that would not normally know the benefits that a holistic approach to health and wellbeing can bring.

Most importantly I have lost the fear I felt regarding IT and have actually started to embrace learning new IT skills, recognising how beneficial the courses have been to me. Knowing what I can do with Word is going to be invaluable to me in the future from accessing and saving information in an orderly manner to designing handouts, leaflets and posters! I have also told a friend about the course who then enrolled - she said that she has also learned a great deal!”

We would like to congratulate Pat and wish her well with her Holistic therapist business!

If you would like to improve your IT skills, click here to view our courses.