This is not me... just so you know
I’ve already noted my views on education, high school and GCSE’s but more recently I’ve been thinking about Uni, I never really had the University experience that others did, I worked 2-3 jobs throughout my first and second years and then took a whole year to work full time, because of this I have no student loans or debts (at the moment).
So my final year, I’m not able to attend full time because if I did… I wouldnt be able to afford to live 
, I carn’t help but wonder is it worth it, its 2009 and I’ve got a lot planned, doing the course at home is proving difficult and its not all the mets fault, sometimes I forgot or just get confused about certain things.
Theres a hell of a lot of work to do and I’m already quite behind, I don’t know if I’m too far to catch up or not.
My options at the moment are
- Try and catch up with the year and try and scrape a degree
- Defer for a year and start from afresh next year
- Drop out completly and use the time for something a bit more productive
I know family and some close friends will be disapointed if I drop out but I honestly think its the best thing to do, I spoke in the last post on this topic about my lack of GCSE’s and how it didn’t matter, when I started at my last job I was already earning more than many of the graduates there.
Going to uni seemed to be the right thing to do but to do it properly, I won’t be able to do it at home, which will mean moving to part time job wise and I don’t think a) I could afford that and b) I would be able to keep up.
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I’ve been considering this a lot myself recently and am thinking it’s going to be a long and hard decision… but really, do what feels right for you. And remember if you need it, you can always get a degree in 10 years or something… but somehow I don’t think you will.
Caius came up with an interesting point about me doing the final year part time, that could work for me and I will have to investigate it
I think I was both lucky and very unlucky at the same time. I wouldn’t have swapped my university time for anything else in the world, for a range of reasons. But I think some of that was where I ended up as well, even looking at it from a purely academic standpoint I’ve used more from my uni education than I thought I ever would. And I’m constantly surprised by the lack of quality of graduates currently coming out of university who lack the basic ability to think.
Good Lord, if you’re that close you might as well finish it! Little to lose; lots of time and money and work invested already, so why remove the pay-off? Even if you don’t NEED a degree right now, your CV will look all the better for one in the long run. Everything moves so fast these days; none of us know where we’re going to end up in the long run.
Well – I never did a degree as I didn’t have the chance. Not having one didn’t appear to do me much harm, career wise, but looking at it more closely you can see that for some people it helped them a lot. It all depends on where you go to work – some organisations fast track people with good degrees.
And the last two words are critical there. We get a lot of applicants who’ve clearly spent three or four years dicking about. We can spot the work of an Adobe tutorial a mile off and that’s not going to win anyone a job as a web developer or designer.
What a reasonably scientific degree does is to formalise your knowledge and give you analytical skills. Liberal arts, or even fuzzy degrees like MBAs or Computers in Business and suchlike can be harder to quantify. Personally I’m much more interested in a Comp Science graduate than a History graduate, but I remember in my ICI days it was the Oxbridge History graduates who started on higher salaries than I was making in my mid-twenties.
If your degree is anything like the one I did, you’ve probably learnt very little from your lecturers, but at least been given an opportunity to do some personal research and develop your skills in your own time. Back in 94 when I started “Media Systems” (wtf?) Website design was a single module mixed up with TV and Radio production, electronics, film and effin’ Turbo Pascal programming. I hated most of it, but enjoyed the hand coding of HTML and subsequently did quite a few projects for some charities in the area which really pushed the boundaries at the time. Anyway, I finished my degree, I even got a First (which was particularly enjoyable as I got 2 D’s at A-level).
Whilst a degree itself might not be of any use, it demonstrates commitment that your employment history currently doesn’t I guess. You mentioned a couple of posts ago that you want to take things more seriously – surely completing a degree would demonstrate the all-new-serious-hodge? I can appreciate your dilemma though – I’d try and complete it myself and discuss with employer and university if there are any ways you can try and address your work/uni balance. Surely your employer can see the benefits of a more educated Hodge?
Anyway, I would never employ anyone off the back of a degree alone, work experience is far more important for me. You’re only as good as your last gig, or something.
Thanks for the comment’s, I think I’m going to email the head of the course and see what my options are, I know i’ve got a project due and I think i’m going to use think visibility as my basis..
I don’t know weather to go back part time or not but we can work that out when people get back to there offices
I’m the first to admit that my degree in Business IT (from Leeds Met incidentally) didn’t really teach me a great deal, nor have I really got a job off the back of it since graduating, but it does look good on a CV for the future.
For what it’s worth, my uni mates and I all hated our last year of uni and it was a real slog to keep on going through it, but I’d certainly look at finishing your degree in some way, even it you do it part-time over a couple of years.