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Making the Transition to University?
fracex asks: "I am currently finishing my last year of high school, and have some important decisions to make about next year. Pretty much all my life I have seen myself as going to university as soon as I finished high school, but recently I have been considering taking a year off from school to work and travel. Not only this, I'm not even totally sure what I want to take in university, is what I still want to take. So, taking a year off could give me time to find more direction and focus. What was your experience with your transition between high school and university, and are you glad you made the decisions you did?"
Personally, I would go to the University. In my experience most of the classes you take the first couple of years are not going to be useful for you (in a specific sense) in the long term. I took Scandinavian literature in translation, for example. I think if you knew exactly what field you wanted to take you would be very frustrated because only 20% of your classes are actually in that field. Get the broad stuff over as fast as possible.
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If you really want to go to college, then just go. If you decide to "take a year off" odds are you'll never actually end up going.
My recommendation would be to go to school. If it's not to your liking after a semester or two - drop out. It's much better to say that you've tried at something than to never have even attempted.
In addition, it's much harder to go back to school later in life once you start the drudgery of "life maintenance" : I work because I have to pay the bills. I pay the bills because I need a roof over my head. I need a roof over my head so I can sleep after working. It's a viscious cycle.
Taking a year off to travel etc sounds nice now but it's the beginning of a very slippery slope known as sloth. Too much laziness will propel you into a life that's mediocre: it'll be okay but not great.
There's a gorilla from Manilla whose a fella that stinks of vanilla and has salmonella.
I didn't go to college but ended up with a degree anyway. I was advised to attend college by just about everybody, but I started work and took my degree postal with an accredited University.
If you can get accepted to a university do so and then delay entry for a year, most colleges will allow this.
During the year off either travel or work like a dog. Either way you'll be in a better psotion to judge next year if you want to go.
I took a year off to work/travel six years ago, and here I am, working like a dog, and still haven't returned to school. Go, and at least finish a bachelor's degree, or a diploma in something.
Take a year off after you finish uni. You will be more cultured and appreciate the places you travel much much more!
The idea of traveling is great and all, but seriously, there's a lot of opportunity in going straight to University, and exploring your options there. There's always the option of studying abroad, which I HIGHLY reccomend if you have the bug to go see Europe or Asia or whatever. Not only will you get to see what you want to see, you'll be that much closer to the ultimate goal, graduation!
Travel aside, University is an experience that I am grateful every day for having done, and would repeat again in an instant. I often have dreams about quitting my job and going back to school, and I like my job! Do yourself a favor and go, don't think twice, try everything that comes your way no matter what, and in the end you may even have a few good memories to reflect on along with an education.
If you don't go right away do something like CityYear or another kind of job with a built in ending. Otherwise you run the risk of staying too long and never going to school. My "just for a year so I can decide what to do" job lasted 7 years. I would have stayed too but there was no room for further advancement without a college degree. Also, expect your social life to take a huge hit if you don't follow your age group to college.
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Don't take a year off unless you're going to be working an incredibly shit job for absolutely no pay. Then you'll be glad to get out of it and into school, and you'll have a realistic idea what grad-school is like.
You may not realize it, but the time you've spent in highschool has developed habits of self-discipline which are all too easily lost, and hard to regain. I would recommend against taking a year out from school for this reason.
To ease the transition, I would heartily recommend doing what I did, which is to take a year or two of classes at a Junior College (two in the California Bay Area are DeAnza (where I went after highschool) and Homestead). The atmosphere was a pleasant middle-ground between highschool and a "real" college, and they offered many "prep" courses specifically for students making the transition. It is also a good way to get some of your pre-req classes out of the way (the really basic, low-level classes) for a fraction of the cost (tuition at a Jr. College can be a tenth that of a Univerisity). I also lucked out in that some of the courses at DeAnza (higher levels of calculus, et al) were taught as three classes, whereas UCSC crammed them into one or two quarters. I feel that I retained more from these spread-out classes than I did from the crammed courses at UCSC. About 80% of the units I took at DeAnza wound up transferring to UCSC. Also, there were some courses offered at DeAnza (like Asian History) which were not offered by UCSC, so I got exposed to a greater variety of subjects this way.
One of my mistakes was to take too many pre-req's at DeAnza, which left me with nothing but hard courses to take at UCSC. This made my quarters more difficult than they should have been (taking four hard-core CS courses per quarter wore me down).
Some people say that the quality of education at a Jr. College is inferior to that from a University, but I disagree. Both will have some good instructors, and some not-so-good instructors, and the low-level classes are something you can learn pretty well from anywhere -- Calculus, for instance, hasn't really changed much since the 19th century :-) and the books will probably be the same no matter which school you attend. I know that my career has not suffered in any way for having attended two years of Jr. College before going to UCSC.
Good luck figuring out your major!
-- TTK
Take the first year off. Get your own place to live. Nothing will motivate you into your studies better than a crummy job for a horrible boss.
You will learn several life lessons required to succeed in your choosen occupation, and in school life. My year off working in a store as a department manager gave me a extreme advantage to those who came to the business classes with only high school and mom's cooking under there belt. YMMV, this happened in 1980.The university environment will provide much better guidance than you could ever provide for yourself. If you take a year off, you'll probably end up just hanging out, and come a year later you'll still have no clue what you want to do. At that point, you'll go to university and figure it out. So why waste the year? Go NOW.
On the other hand, if you're on some kind of soul-seeking quest, that can only be done on your own. But it sounds like you're trying to figure out what you want to study. The best place to figure that out is at the university.
Being a mere sophomore, I remember my transition quite well. In my opinion -- it's not a big deal. More than anything make sure you're happy. If you're not, you can always transfer but keep that to a last resort. Going into college you don't have to know what you want to do but a general idea helps -- take as many diverse classes as possible. Learn as much as possible. I will say this, coming in with AP Credit can help a bunch in the self-discovery process so you can bypass the basics and get to the good stuff to find out what you really want to do. Study hard. Party hard. Sleep and BE SURE to try to do things that interest you in your free-time instead of just hitting up the video-games (though that's never a bad thing)
Now then, Dmitri, you know how we've always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the Bomb...