Choosing the college you want to attend is no small task. There’s a lot that goes into such a decision. Firstly, you need to find a subject you care about and you’ll be able to study about for years to come. Secondly, it needs to be a basis for a career at some point.
A lot of practical considerations such as the cost and the location of your university are also important and shouldn’t be overlooked as mere technicalities. Also, have in mind that all of this needs to be done by a young and inexperienced person.
Reasonable expectations
It’s imperative to set reasonable expectations early on. If you think that a career you plan to choose should feel like you won’t be working a day in your life, you might end up disappointed. Every intellectual field has its interesting and invigorating facets, but there’s a lot of grunt work as well.
This is something you’ll need to take into consideration. Firstly, it should motivate you not to give up during difficult times, and secondly, you should ask yourself whether you are able to take the more mundane and boring parts of the job.
Learn from others in the field
The best way to choose a college is to give it a trial run and see if it fits your needs and your interests. However, this isn’t an option for most people due to its cost. The next best thing is to use a service such as ThinkSwap and experience the college from within without being its student.
ThinkSwap offers you a chance to browse, explore and learn from the notes made by the students attending the university you’ve chosen. This a great learning tool for those already amongst the students, but it can also help with picking the right university as a high school student.
Learning on the job
Many also find it useful to experience the industry they want to get into first-hand. This is a unique experience and it could inform both the decisions about your education and career as a whole. Have in mind that many also feel disappointed after such trial jobs and decide to move their career in a complicity different direction.
For those who enjoy the job, it can become a source of small income used to fund their college education. Such an arrangement requires a lot of hard work and isn’t for everyone.
Nothing is fixed
In the end, you need to have in mind that no decision is set in stone. It’s perfectly fine for you to work towards a particular goal and a particular university and to abandon that goal once you’re sure that it isn’t a good choice for you.
It’s also possible to start and build a career that you haven’t formally trained for. This happens all the time and many successful businesspeople make their way in the industry without a degree related to it. All of this is to say that you should be open to new possibilities.
Choosing a college is a big decision and it needs to be done based on practical as well as academic concerns. It’s also helpful to use the experiences of those who have been there before you and especially those who already work in the field you’re interested in.
