Elisângela Minhano is a student in Fapuga’s Business Administration program. Married for 16 years and the mother of two daughters, at 42 she decided to go to college and invest in her personal development.
She says that since she was a teenager she had always wanted to pursue higher education, but she struggled to understand her true calling. “I actually started college twice, but I didn’t find myself in the education and industrial design programs, so I dropped out,” she says.
As the years went by, she recalls, life took ‘its natural course,’ and in the meantime she married, had her daughters and began working in the administration field, and then realized she was happy in that area.
“I kept gaining experience, but I always felt that at a certain point in my work’s progress something more was missing, and that ‘something’ was my college degree,” she explains.
However, to start this dream she still had to wait a little longer. Discover Elisângela’s story in today’s ‘I Am Fapuga.’
Business Administration: The Dream Goes On
The decision had been made: study business administration. However, enrolling in college had to be postponed, since her daughters needed their mother full time. “So I stopped working to stay with them. It was a very good choice as far as raising them, but I suffered a lot, because I felt I had put an end to my career,” she recalls.
Last year, when her sister got a scholarship at Fapuga and was happy with her studies, Elisângela’s eyes lit up again. “I thought about how studying would open new paths for me and how I needed to invest in my personal development,” she says.
She says she is gaining a great deal of knowledge at this stage. In fact, early on she got a job that helped her put into practice the concepts she was learning in college and, currently, she has landed another job at a large hospital where she hopes to build a long career in administration.
‘Hybrid learning is fantastic’
There is no longer any doubt that hybrid learning is here to stay. Introduced in a hurry because of the Covid-19 pandemic, this model was a way to keep delivering content while protecting the health and safety of both students and professors.
This new way of studying was well accepted by the entire university community because of its convenience and ease, and even more so by Elisângela, who had time for her studies and for her family.
“Hybrid learning is fantastic for someone like me, who needs to be at home but also wants to study. This whole phase of studying that I’m going through has not taken me away from my daughters; I have been able to stay close to them and also set an example of the importance of being committed to your studies,” she reflects.
Challenges and the Job Market
Elisângela says that, after managing to return to the job market, she needs to reorganize her routine to dedicate herself properly to her studies, and this is her biggest challenge right now.
“Everything in my life is divided down to the minute, and even that organization I learned at Fapuga. The Time Management course helped me with that, and I can’t measure how important the things I’ve learned are to me,” the student concludes.
