Did anyone do any part time courses or degrees while serving their time in National service?

During NS, I think the best way to upskill is through online courses. These courses are usually through videos and simple exercises and you can take them during your free time / admin time.

I would suggest to stay focus for NS (sounds pretty dumb right, ya i know, but it'll be worth it) especially during BMT and/or SCS/OCS (if applicable, or any other specific training institute that you'll be posted to).

Thereafter, when things are all settled down, and life starts to become clockwork and predictable, then start to look into enrichment options, such as online classes as I heard now more camps are allowing laptops for whatever reasons (again, if your conditions permit so).

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Reason for my suggestion so that you can stay focus in each stages of the NS, and not let it hinder your enrichment process and vice versa. In fact NS itself is a pretty enriching journey (funny as it sounds but it's true).

During your BMT, you will be in camp most of the time (except weekend) and might not have any free time. Once you get through your BMT, you can then decide whether to pursuit for your study when you are posted to your vocation post. It depends on your team leader and the team dynamics whether how flexible are they in accomodating to your study schedule. You can consider some reputable short term course/certification to help you gain an edge when you ORD. Like what other have mentioned, you can also use udemy, coursera, or even youtube to beef up your knowledge first, if those are still managable then you see if you are comfortable to proceed further with a regconized industrial certification or part time degree.

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Although I did not take up any part time degree during my NS time, I did part time study and full time work after my NS. Given a choice to go back to my NS time, I will probably start some self-learning courses to ease my learning curve and then proceed with full time work with part time study after NS.

Hi Anon, I think it ultimately depends on your vocation and workload. Personally, I did not have time during NS to take online courses or degrees. I did manage to read on average 2 books a month which allowed me to explore my interest in finance and economics.

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My advice would be to always have a resource with you (such as a book) and read during the little pockets of time (there will be many). all the best for the 2 years!