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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?"
I got burned out at college very quickly because I knew exactly what I wanted to specialize in, but saw three years of B.S. keeping me from getting there. Instead of focusing on classwork, I focused on my employment and building my skills outside of school. I've now got a 7-year-deep resume in a variety of very marketable fields, but no degree. I think that had I not known what I wanted to do I would have been more receptive to the "fluff" classes (which are valuable in their own right!), and might still be in school today.
My advice: keep with it, and keep an open mind. Don't confine yourself to any major until you've got your A.A. (mid-bachelor's). Dabble in as many things as possible, until you find something that really ignites your passion. Then, and only then, should you begin to flirt with the idea of specialization (as loose a term as that is w.r.t. your Bachelor's degree).
B
I started university this year, I took a year our between 6th form (rough UK equiv of High School) and I really enjoyed it, I spent the year working for a large multinational company in the eBusiness section, although much of the work wasn't technically very difficult at all, the experience of simply being in the workplace was fairly enlightening.
;) will ask you to return after uni, and you won't even have to job hunt!
However, if you're thinking of taking this route (a year working) make sure you leave plenty of time to travel if you want to, make sure that the work is something related to your chosen area of study (it doesn't need to be that close, just to give you and idea of what kind of jobs you might be looking at, all you really need is a placement in IT somewhere, it will open your eyes enough - assuming you want to do a computing related job). I highly recommend you consider going straight to university however, if your chosen area of study is highly theoretical. I originally was due to study Maths and Computer Science at university, however, I have completely forgotton most of the maths, and consequently lost interest in it, so after the first year is over I will be doing computer science exclusively.
Whatever you do, enjoy yourself, and get some good experience. If you have work experience like that on your CV (an entire years worth in a relevant job) that will kick ass at job interviews, compared to all the straight line academics. You may even find the company you work for during your "studying break"
I wish you the best of luck at university/in a job/whatever you choose.
.sigs are for losers
The only other things I'd add are:
Yeah, right.
My recommendation is to not to do it between high school and university.
Premise is that you are American, and are "average" when it comes to social adaptation.
University is a great place to continue your maturity, learn to live away from home and parents, make good decisions and bad, and learn something academically as well. When you finish school, find a job and work for a while.
After a few years of working (paying off student loans, saving up a little cash, deciding what you like and don't), then you are allowed to take off as much as a couple years. Don't set a timeline. Go to some place that interests you (and where you can live cheap and work a little), move around a bit, and challenge yourself. When you run out of money, figure out what to do next...
This is what I did. I know that going back to school after spending a couple years on a tropical island wouldn't work for me. (Honestly, learning to write again was hard...) Also, I personally needed the extra time to "grow" as a person that college allowed me. I have noticed that the vast majority of Americans have this same need. Most Europeans tend to be considerably more mature at 18 than their US counterparts.
I spent most of two years scuba diving on an island in Thailand, with trips off to Cambodia, Laos, Burma, Malaysia, Singapore, and Ireland. When I was done, I was ready to go back to engineering. After a few more years of engineering, I'm ready to head back again for a while. It was fun, and I am happy I did it. I am also happy that I waited until I was over 25 to do it, where I had some financial backup and a better sense of how things really work. It was also easier for me to find "good" work being a little older.
I've seen *many* smart and logical people get sucked into the work vortex never to fully return to school- usually with regrets. Myself included.
Many of them also took time off later in college with only a year or less to go. Same reasons- burnout, 'gain more focus', explore, etc.
Most people don't know what they really want to do and change their majors several times. It's really common and once you're in you'll connect with people studying some very interesting things that you probably haven't been exposed to yet.
Keep in mind the university isn't the real world. When you lean toward a field of study that leads directly to a career -investigate that career before going too far into the major! Don't trust the university to show you the real world version.
For instance, architecture/arch engineering. In the university it draws many to the program and encourages / demands artistic expression. you get to sculpt and engineer! great! Walk out with a diploma with the zeal to build futuristic cities. Join the best architectue firm you can. be a CAD slave for 20-45 years drafting someone elses crappy designs from their napkins and then maybe when you're grey you can take over and do your own design, but then realize 90% of the 'design' is mosly just a million warehouses with a cheap facade stapled on to it.
This happened to 3 of my friends who didn't check out the actual career first. The 4th one did an internship and talked with every architect he could early on. He kept studying architecture because he liked it, but changed majors. He also wasn't too thrilled with the 'culture' of architects. The other 3 are kinda bitter about the whole thing.
Go to school, travel next summer. It's really not that long from now. Get a part time job if you need to, in fact definatley get a part time job if you can swing it. It can help keep you grounded from some of the academia glaze.
best of luck!
Firefox &
If you don't know what you want to do in your year out, go to uni. If you want a year out sometime during uni then fine - most places are cool with that. But if you take a year out and spend the whole time sponging off your folks and watching the TV, you will find it *much* harder getting a job later.
One big thing *not* to do in your year out is to do a year out with a sponsor company. In the UK, there are sponsorships going with engineering companies (to attract students to work at those companies afterwards). The deal is usually that you work two years with them, of which one will usually be before or during uni. I got sponsorship and decided to do a year out beforehand.
Big mistake. HUGE! Why? Well, your typical engineering company needs graduate-level people as a minimum standard. If you've just come out of high school, you can't help them. Result: you spend a year working on the production line. Now some time on the shop floor is a good thing, but most intelligent people do *not* want to do this. Eventually you settle into a rut, because the job needs no intelligence so you "switch off". And boy, is it hard to switch back on again when you start uni! To be honest, I didn't really start getting back into it properly until the fourth year of my course.
If you've got a real definite goal in mind, then great. "Me and my band are going to try and make a living off it." "I want to go to Africa and work with Oxfam." Or even "I want to travel round the world, just because it seems a cool thing to do." Excellent. This is the time to go and do it, while you've got no other committments. Get out there and go for it! But if you're not driven that way, you're wasting your time. A year flipping burgers is *not* a good use of your time and brains.
Another thing to consider is that you will have forgotten at least half (and probably more) of everything you learnt in the previous year at high school. That's all the stuff you need as the base for your first year at uni. So you'll be starting at a disadvantage, and if you're unlucky then you may never completely catch up.
Grab.