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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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Be 17 or so. And if you are, that's great. You are planning ahead. you are looking at the world of academe and of work afterwards. Oldies (!) you have the chance to say what you maybe SHOULD have done. Current generation what you WANT to do. And I donlt care whetehr you think you are good enough or too good for university. Just dream........
So let's assume university, a degree and a career.
Where is your idea university. anywhere in the world......
WHat course woudk you study?
What would you want to do with the degree?
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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I'll start you off. Unless soemone beats me to the punch!
I messed up my degree and my life. I kmow now precisley what I want to do. AND how hard it is. My son is studying the ocurse I want at the university I want. We differ on the career afterwards
I want to go to a good college at Cambridge University
I want to study Law, even though it means 80+ hour weeks and a prodigous amount of work
I want to be a Barrister (the type of uk lawyer who stands up in court) working in commercial law.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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I should NEVER have gone to University direct from school - in my case it was UEA reading Biological Sciences, but it would have been the same anywhere reading anything - dropping out was inevitable. I needed to get some serious "wild time" in, and do some serious growing up.
My ideal Uni and course - exactly what I did in my 20's: Scientific Anthropology at University College London (interested in sex/gender issues, and human evolution - what a suprise for a gay man!). Also a lot of time working Entertainments and Drama. And a sabbatical year as Vice-President over the road at ULU, which gave me level of management & financial training that was unsurpassed!
And definitely London. At that time, and still, a city that accepts (all kinds of) diversity probably better than any other. A cultural leader. A place where one can be as gregarious or solitary, as involved in the local community or completely anonymous, as one wants. Not a 24-hour city, but a fair approximation.
All of which set me up as a generalist, not a specialist ... which I remain to this day. Leading to my first career - in technical theatre. Everything from fringe to mega-musicals: London is and was the place. I simply cannot imagine any more fulfilling thing to do ... and NOT having come from a drama-school background was a very definite plus.
Lest I seem smug, I must point out that since I got too old to regularly work the 36-hour shifts that at that time were a regular feature of theatre production periods I've been pretending to be a respectable Local Government Officer. Definitely NOT an ideal occupation.
Some of us are just not cut out for a straightforward school (choice of A levels) >>> Uni degree related to A levels >>> single career related to degree !
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
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nobu
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Getting started |
Location: somewhere between north a...
Registered: June 2005
Messages: 16
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OK, bit of a recent lurker on this forum, but the question just seemed like the perfect opportunity to join in...i'll do a formal intro later, maybe.
i'm 21 now, and just finished my first year at westminster doing creative media practice. I would change first and foremost, where i did my art foundation, which was camberwell, and choose central st martins (both are good london art colleges). After that i took a gap year because i didn't get into the BA courses i wanted (westminster offered me this course back then but i was being idiotic and refused). i should of took it coz then i would be in my second year instead of my first.
But of course, being the snobby art student i am, and a consumate dreamer, i would prefer to study in NY or san fran....i wish it wasn't so expensive.
I try not to think too much about where it all leads to in the end.
nobu aka Jose
...eight priests!!! It looked impressive!
We Wrote Letters Every Day by The Fiery Furnaces
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I want... to go to school, in wisconsin.. I think, it is my current dream school, and where I will be attending. what I would really like to do is study outdoor eductaion to become a kayaking instructor. My utter disdain for people may cause some issues with this though  Then again whatever, dunno it is what I am interested in. Hopefully it will all work out and be peachy...
Why are you wearing that stupid man suit?
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currently i guess you could say i'm living the dream... i'm studying the course i want at the university i wanted to go... and i AM enjoying it, and havuing a good time, so maybe i don't appreciate how lucky i've been, which is why i'm prepared to throw it all away by not revising properly and stuff like that... only my exam results will tell i guess (just finished my first year)
i'm at Keele University, studying Law with Criminology, and while i'm loving the law, i'm not too fond of the criminology (though strangely, my first semesters work was rated 1st in crim, but only 2.2 in law.. bah)
with luck, this will lead me onto becoming a solicitor, and then a solicitor advocate (like a barrister, but without the high costs involved in the training!)
however, in the likely event i screw up, i'll take a complete U-Turn in my life, and join the navy instead... and just hope i can hack the discipline and physical work that comes with that.
Odi et amo: quare id faciam, fortasse requiris.
Nescio, set fieri sentio et excrucior
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Timmy, that is a very good question.
When I left school, I started straight away at the University of Bath, studying Computer Science. The reason I was studying Computer Science was that I had not given any other subjects much thought; I was a computer geek, and Computer Science was just about sufficiently old-established for my (very traditional) school to recognise it as an option. Even if I intended to go on and work in the media, I should go and do a "proper" degree first, was the consensus.
It didn't go well; I was disorganised, a long way from home, socially isolated, and unhappy. So I stopped after a term and a half, and came home. Luckily I found work almost straight away at a web hosting company fairly close to where I live.
I reapplied for a place at university, this time settling on Royal Holloway University of London. As I had nothing to lose, I applied for a Media Arts degree, which would probably be called Film and Television Studies at most other universities. This was something I found interesting for its own sake, rather than a "stepping stone" to another career.
On the whole I have found the degree fairly interesting. It has taught me a lot about film (though not the film industry) and firmly cemented in my mind what I want to do: I would like to be a Director of Photography in the film industry. Unfortunately, the department is run by academics and much of the material we cover is entirely unrelated to a career in film or television. In addition, the film industry is seriously difficult to get into, and a degree is practically irrelevant to it. The really important thing is industry experience, and the department hasn't given us any of that.
I'm now in the position that I am working (or trying to find work) for extremely long hours at practically no pay, right at the bottom end of the industry, with the hope that if I can get enough experience now I will be able to get a reasonable job when I leave university.
I also have to decide which is more important: the degree itself or the extra experience that I could get instead; i.e., should I continue with it?
Getting back to Timmy's question, I also wish that I had gone to Cambridge, because I have been to Cambridge and I think it is a charming university and there are some marvellously intelligent and creative people there. Plus it's a "conventional" place for people from my school to go. And of course it is the best university in the UK. But I am having to rethink that, actually; (a) what course would I have wanted to do?, and (b) would I have been prepared to put up with the workload of being there? I have a great friend who is just finishing his second year at Cambridge, and he is one of the nicest people I know, very clever and creative and original. But he has been terribly stressed out about his work, and if he is, then I (as a lifelong procrastinator, disorganiser and so on) would be beyond breaking point.
David
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I seem to have managed to waffle rather a lot there.
If I actually *want* to do a degree then, at RHUL, I am at as good a place as any.
I probably wouldn't recommend it to someone looking for a career in the industry as the course is highly non-vocational. I think there are probably more industry-oriented courses available. Perhaps even ones that use real 16mm or 35mm film (ooooooooooh).
You need to be happy to learn for learning's sake. Which is not necessarily a bad thing... I am just very impatient.
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Guest
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On fire! |
Registered: March 2012
Messages: 2344
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When I was young circumstances were such that I maneuvered myself into a position to attend any university I chose.
My Gram left me some $$$ and I had a very good paying (parttime) job and with those as resources for tuition opted to attend Brown (my best decision thus far in my mife) where I excelled in my field of study (philosophy) and also met my significant other.
He later recieved a chance to go to the London School of Economics for his graduate work so I decided to follow him and further my education at Oxford where I completed my graduate studies.
All of that I wouldn't change for the world.
However, after loosing my partner I tended to drift from one position to another. Never for more than 2-3 years in one place.
If I were to do it again I would have chosen a place to teach and stick with it.
But all that aside, my life has been full. I have done a great many things that most never even get the time to think about.
Which has ultimately led me to my present life partner Kevin and with him we are growing a new business and a great life together as well.
As for looking back and doing all the "what if" or "if only I'd" retrospectives..... Well all that doesn't change the present at all and doesn't do alot to make this today a pleasant one. Each of us are who we are because of the choices we make and although there is ALWAYS a second chance few (for whatever reason) ever act on it.
Thus it is a moot point.
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