It has come to a stage in my life where I am compelled to look at my future and where my life is heading.
The most pressing issue is what to pursue for future education. I can either achieve 5 A*-B grades and return to landau to study ICT, Mathematics and English Language and Literature at A2 (full A-level) and Business at AS (half A-level); go to Derby College (Joseph Wright + Mackworth) to study the same A2 subjects + Photography AS; or take a completely different route.
Subject wise it is a no-brainer – I have a passion for photography and my business teacher is unbelievably unstimulating and inexperienced, and sod’s law suggests that I will have her again if I return for A-Level. However, Landau’s average pass-rate for A-Levels is something like 95%, around 20% higher than Derby College if my sources are correct.
Then there is the desicion of what to do post-college. Further education (uni), gap year, employment? I want to go to university, but don’t know if I can justify the cost and if a degree would be relevant to any career path I might take.
So I guess my desicion rests on what I choose to do post-education.
- Be a photographer? Unreliable and often poor pay.
- Be a web designer? It’s a new, volatile, and still-developing market.
- Be a programmer? Ahh, but a programmer of what? Which language? What focus?
- Factory or shop work? Where would it lead? What would I use as a geekery outlet?
- Be an entrepreneur? It’s a risky business saturated with dedicated hopefuls.
- Be a musician? Have I got the guts and the dedication and can I put up with the travel and poor initial pay?
Each option has its pros and cons. I am not interested in any sort of grade in music. You don’t really get degrees in programming, apparently it’s wiser to take a degree in computer science – much of which doesn’t interest me. I am constantly learning photography techniques from the internet, books and magazines, but technique can obviously only get you so far and certification in photography isn’t that respected anyway. Factory and shop work is mindless, as I have learned from experience – although certification in business studies could lead to potentially interesting promotions. Web design is a hobby.
I could always be an entrepreneur, but it’s not the safest career for someone whose experience with business is small to none. Picking a good field to venture in (or invent) is tricky too. I had the idea of selling clone pictures to teenagers a while ago, but that didn’t come to anything. I don’t know, perhaps I should set up a chain of support groups for suicidal lemmings or something.
This lack of sleep is getting to me. I have overdue English, Geography and Business. Oh well, there’s always tomorrow.
dannn.
it will all get better!
and become alot clearer soon, i hope.
i feel the same too. that business teacher is also mine and is really pathetically bad.
lets hope things sort out!
just been listening to your radioblog all business lesson it kept me entertained! thanks dan.. xxx
You’re welcome 🙂
I’m playing around with radio.blog 2.5 on my home server and will probabally upload that before the end of the week, complete with a competely fresh playlist.
hi
I was looking for pics of graffit in derby on google and stumbled across your flickr site then your blog, because I’ve just started one and am intrested in how others are doing them. And saw this bit about careers and thought, maybe I was meant to see this? Maybe I am supposed to tell this chap anything I can to help.
So here goes.
When I graduated from University as a designer in 1990 Art and design was about craft. Now everyone I know is stuck to a computer screen. I was both a multimedia Desiner for Dorling Kindersley and then a Web designer until 7 years ago, and scrapped it for the following reasons.
I didn’t want to be pressed up a gainst a monitor like a machine having my creativity sapped out of me anymore.
I got sick of having to learn new stuff all the time and be on top of technology. You might think its fun learning all this stuff now, but wait until you’ve got a wife n kinds (or similar) and a life in your thirties when other things become important too and you just won’t want to spend your weekends buried in a 500 page programming book.
Another big point to make and I have lots of agreement from my equally aging peers on this….
If you don’t follow your real true career interests but instead opt for something on the basis of family pressure or fear of not being successfull or biggest future income you may be setting yourself up for one big midlife crisis!!!
Imagine that life is one big amount of time to spend doing ones favourite hobby. Think of what activity/hobby you would like to spend the rest of you life doing, or to put it another way, if you won enough on the lottery to never have to get a job, what would you do for the rest of your life, for excitement thrills fun etc.
Then think what sort of career is closest, forgetting whether it’s going to earn a lot of money or whether you chances of success are slim or not. (try to pick something that benefits you fellow man)
Then go for it and my guess is that you will succeed because then you will be enjoying yourself so much, you will be darned committed. For exmaple my father in law is now approaching seventy but won’t stop working full time because since his teens he has literally lived and breathed architecture.
He originated from Rural india but his enjoyment of architecture wasn’t overruled by the fact that there wasn’t much call for it in the Punjab in the 1950s.
Add to this the fact that your generation will probably have to work well into your seventies, it would be best to pick a career that you will want to do till you keel over (like my father in law).
I treated him as a mentor and dropped out of my career, went back to uni to do a fine art MA, in full knowledge that had little chance of offering me an income, but am much happier now, because I know eventually I will make some money and success even if it’s when I’m ninety. The alternative was to ‘clock watch’ my life away waiting for a boring retirement.
P.s go for the college with the best grades, teaching and facilities (I bet landau)
go to uni because it’s brilliant fun! there’s plenty of time for jobs.
also don’t think that you need to pideon hole yourself. It is possible to be a “musical/programming/entrepeneur”
If you have any advice for me on how to get my site ot come up on google I’d be very grateful
thanks
Well for me it’s a no brainer, but thats cause i’m a drummer. :-p
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