How to Choose University Career
10 things that I have learned as a university student and as a mother:
2/10 – Try a Foreign University
4/10 – Sciences or Humanities?
5/10 – What if I have no idea about what to do?
6/10 – What I want and I like or what I reason I have better job opportunities?
8/10 – What if I «make a mistake»? Descartes or Hume…
9/10 – Take a sabbatical year and travel around the World
9/10 – Take a sabbatical year and travel around the world
Your parents will kill me! but I’ll give you the idea: take a year, a course, sabbatical and go around the world.
Let’s evaluate this possibility well.
Minimum requirements:
- You have approved 2nd Baccalaureate
- you have done the university access exam: this is essential, you have to do it in any case, otherwise it would be imprudent, because you need it for the return. You already know that the university access exam note lasts two years and, therefore, save it to start a year later the University.
- you do not know very well what to study or you have that feeling of about do not know what to do with your life
an excellent plan is to go around the World.
Pros:
- you will see world, you will know different cultures and during the trip you may discover other possibilities to dedicate your life to and what you really like and want to do
- you will learn or practice English always so necessary for any kind of future work
- It is a good life moment: you are young and you are full of energy and you still have no family responsibilities or a job that prevents you from
- You will visit countries that need the help of recently finished university students and you will learn that it is nice to help and collaborate with their people. This empathy is an inherent part of the idealism of the age you have now, take advantage of it a horizon will open up, «a world of possibilities»
Cons:
- the economic, very important:
Here I will tell you that there are agencies ( like for example: Sabática) that organize a sabbatical year that consists of preparing the destinations of the trip and in each one they are looking for a job to raise money and continue to the next destination, they help you with visas … and they make the trip a controlled adventure with the possibility that you finance yourself and free your parents to spend extra money.
You do not go as a vacation to a hotel, no, you work to pay it and you go a little bit like a backpacker from one country to another, that’s the plan, it’s not exactly a holiday, but a unique and unrepeatable opportunity.
It is not about spending your parents’ money, you are getting older and you are learning to become independent, that is also the purpose of studying a career and finding a job. If you intend to go around the world paying your parents this option loses all the grace, for that, they will prefer to make them the trip.
- «I prefer to do it when the university career ends»:
It can also be but normally at the end of the career it is the time when it is more possible somebody offers you some work opportunity that you should not miss or that you already have a partner who can not go. Now you are free, you have no charges, take advantage of this moment.
- «I do not want to lose a year»:
Do you lose a year? … you are again with the rush that society imposes on you. Think about it, travel enriches, you’ll come back fluffy after so many years of studying sitted in your school desk
It’s not really a year either, it’s a course, the next one you will start the University with more experience and maybe with clearest ideas.
Reflection:
I know that this option sounds very «Out of the Box» that’s why I tell you, because nobody from the «system: teacher, tutor, counselor …» is going to propose it, at least in a group, it is too risky, the parents of the school would probably protest the vast majority if they give you a talk that includes this possibility.
That’s why I tell you, from my blog, so that at least you raise it and discard it if you want. Maybe it does not go with your way of being, or maybe you could go with a companion who is like you …
Reflecting on a phrase that I like very much:
«The problem is, what we do not know we do not know.» Daniel Kahneman
You can not give up something that you do not know exists. We can not choose to discard this option unless we have raised it beforehand because it is mainly an alternative that is not usually considered at the time of choosing career and it is difficult to think of it. So, I’ll leave you there, even so it is only for you to tell me that «it’s silly» or «that is out of place.»
And now the wrapping of the gift package would come:
«It’s better to act by exposing yourself to regret it, than to regret not having done anything.» Giovanni Boccaccio
And be careful with your unconscious brain because at night you can play a dirty trick and when you wake up in the morning you can find yourself preparing the suitcase… 😉
«The World is in your hands.»
