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How Lillie Blackburn is shaping others’ lives as well as her own

We caught up with Lillie Blackburn, winner of the Citizenship category at the Kaplan Apprenticeship Awards 2024, to hear her experience.

Kaplan · 15 minute read

Reducing stress through Live Online - a student story

Kaplan · Published 23 April 2020 Share article

We love to hear from our students, and Peter Criddle is one of our Live Online advocates. He tells us why it worked for him, and how it can work for you.

Hi Peter, how did you end up choosing Kaplan?

I started my studies at BPP, but moved to Kaplan during my Professional level.

I heard great things about Kaplan. Whenever I turned up to exams, I’d see all the students holding “Kaplan pocket revision guides”, so I started asking around and people had very positive things to say. When I went on the website and saw how much easier it was to book a course through them, my mind was made up.

And what do you think of Live Online?

Kaplan’s Live Online platform is reliable, everything works, and everything is useful. Really, that’s all the students need.

I was working full time whilst studying. Fortunately, my company gave me time off for exams, and a couple of study days for each module I took. However, we had our second child in the middle of my course, so there were a lot of sacrifices that had to be made!

Studying through Live Online was so much better for me than having to go to a classroom. It meant that I could stay in the office, or go home and study, and it meant I could spend less time commuting and more time with my family. It also meant that when I did get home, I could just enjoy the time that I had with my family.

As I have been working and studying for so long, I've had to sacrifice a lot of time with my family. People should be prepared for that because it’s never easy, but it will all be worth it in the end.

Thanks to ACCA, I'm now able to interview for a new role, and that will bring with it more money and added flexibility in terms of working hours. This will mean that I get to enjoy more time with my family in the long run.

Any tips for those considering Live Online?

Find somewhere to study that works for you

I found that the best thing for me was to use my office as a place to study.

It’s best to find somewhere where you can regularly go and get work done, whilst spreading it out over your course (rather than cramming at the end).This is really important during the key revision dates at the end of your course. You can’t afford to get distracted at that stage.

Use the online resources

There’s a wealth of really useful online study materials and you should definitely take advantage of these. I didn’t use them at first, but once I discovered them, I pretty much stopped using the textbook. It’s so easy to find the information.

My Tax textbook is 1200 pages long, so it’s really hard to find information. Kaplan’s online materials saved me so much time, and they were so useful for my exam.

What’s next for you?

I’m considering a new role and have a lot to learn. I think I’m going to specialise in tax or treasury. Whatever I end up doing, I’m glad to have done Live Online with Kaplan - it made my life a lot easier and a lot less stressful.