Find the right distance learning programme for you

Your personal strengths determine which tasks you can easily access and quickly develop solutions for. They are made up of innate talents and skills learned over the course of your life. If, for example, you have always had an affinity for numbers but not much pleasure in reading and formulating creative language, then a degree in Business Administration is far more suitable for you than a degree in linguistics and literature.

While skills are about hard skills, soft skills are about character traits. They determine how you behave in certain situations and react to your social environment. Therefore, they are also extremely relevant for your choice of study and career. Soft skills are divided into different competencies:

• Personal competence concerns how you deal with yourself, for example, through self-confidence, self-reflection and self-discipline.
• Social competence describes how you interact with other people. It determines, for example, how well you can put yourself in the position of your fellow human beings, whether you are a team player who is willing to compromise or how you react to personal conflicts.
• Finally, there is methodological competence, which is closely linked to the other two areas of competence. It is responsible for the way you work and for your problem-solving strategies. This competence concerns, for example, your time management, skills to cope with stress or to motivate employees, but also presentations in front of an audience or dealing with new media.

Studying and working will be easier for you if you deal with content that makes you curious and moves you. So you are not working exclusively to earn money, but also to improve your knowledge and skills within your field of interest. Sometimes, it is not so easy to become aware of one's own interests. You can explore your interests by consciously asking yourself questions like: What could I talk about for hours? Why do I enjoy my hobbies? Where would I volunteer? With such episodes of self-exploration, you get to know yourself better and find out what really interests you.

Even if you don't have a concrete career aspiration yet, you may already have some ideas about the working conditions of your future job. These preferences are important because they define your future field of activity more precisely. For example, do you want to be out in nature or in the city, do you want to travel a lot or do you value a fixed location, do you want to work with other people or would you rather do your tasks alone? A degree opens up or facilitates your path to certain professional fields. Therefore, it makes sense to choose a study programme that is geared towards professions with the working conditions you want.