I’ve got two more years of undergrad, then at least a year of grad school, probably more.
I’ve realized I’m going to be…well, not young by the time I finish with the schooling and get on with the real-world-ing. I didn’t mean to find myself on the five-year degree path but here I am*. I’ll be almost 23 by the time I finish my undergrad degree. Assume one to three years for further study, depending on what I finally decide to do with my life**, and I may be over 25 by the time I can really pursue a professional career.
In high school I was talked out of trying to graduate and thus start college early. I can’t for the life of me figure out why - why do we want to make formal education take so damn long?
*At this point there’s no choice; I took a year off and can’t ‘compress’ by taking a crazy course load because (long story short) I go to a silly school.
**21, halfway through college, still can’t decide, and everything I’m leaning to means A) more years of school and B) not a lucrative career. Because I’m an idiot.
Hey I’ll be 27 when I graduate with my BA, and 30 when I’m finally done with everything; 31 if I land an evening program instead. And those are assuming I don’t end up taking time off in between.
My husband’ll be 37 when he’s through with law school - could be worse Don’t sweat the idea of having to be on some sort of schedule - it may be a *little *more rigid in undergrad, but grad school will be filled with people of all ages.
I just graduated last May from undergrad and would love to go back already. College was an amazing experience for me, a lot of the privileges of being a grown-up without all of the responsibility. Want to trade lives?
Wow, 23? Do people LIVE that long? Holy shit… I, like, read this freaky shit about how redwood trees can live to be, like, 25 or something. I’m just completely blown away you could actually be 23 when you graduate. Will you move directly from your student housing into a retirement community, or do you think maybe you’ll just have the hearse pick you up directly?
And you’re 21 and do know what you want to do for a career? Oh, you’re doomed. Nobody ever changes careers anymore, so once you’ve chosen a job you must do that job forever. Not that it matters in your case because you’ll be a senior citizen when you graduate.
Don’t forget to get a handicapped permit for your car and start eating dinner at 4 PM.
I’ll graduate from university next May (I’ll be 22). Last fall I got really tired of school and spent most of the semester whispering ‘only 3 more semesters’ to myself. Then I went abroad , which of course meant I spent more time touristing and less time studying, and now I’m in week 11 of my sometimes fun sometimes soul-crushingly boring summer job. I cannot wait to get back to uni, go buy my books, start my classes, see all my friends, and so on. I’m more than a little terrified about graduating and having to find a real job that I’ll be able to handle for more than a summer. Want to trade and let me stay in school for another 3 years???
You can’t wait? I have one year left, and don’t know what I want to do. (I just changed my major a year ago and am still unsure what I want to do with the degree I’ll get) I’m terrified of graduating! Part of me (appr.10%) is so done, but the rest of me doesn’t want to have to deal with moving, finding a job, all that BS. I’d rather keep taking out loans for my rent and having free time.
I have three more semesters, and I would graduate next summer if they offered computer science courses at a senior level at my school. Unfortuately that means I will have to take 6 credit hours next fall.
I started school when I was 26 and I am 30 now. I will be 31 when I graduate. Yes, it will have taken me 5 1/2 years to graduate with a B.S. Unfortunately I did switch my majors twice, once from pre-pharmacy to Biochemistry, then from Biochemistry to Computer Science. I had a lot of biology and chemistry classes that transfered in as electives so now I am stuck taking all non=electives every semester as I don’t need anymore electives.
Oh, and 23 as old? MWhahahaha. I’m 30 and don’t even consider that old.
Meh. You’ll get your degree at 26, you say? I got my PhD at 26. That’s a perfectly fine age to start your professional life. I have no complaints with how things turned out for me professionally and personally. 26 just seems old b/c you are so young.
Not entirely surprisingly, this was pretty similar to my mother’s reaction. My father, for his part, informed me that if I stop being young, then my parents are by definition old, and that’s clearly not the case, so I shouldn’t worry.
I guess I’d just like to be done with all the nonsense junk in college: the academics are all good, but the dealing with the administration/dorm life/always being broke/feeling like I’m not able to contribute anything useful to society stuff bugs me.
As a college student, you have a more flexible life than you will for some time. Why not participate in some local volunteer efforts? Tutor at an elementary school, work at a food bank or something, there’s tons of opportunity if you look around and usually something that will fit into your schedule.
I’m 25, just got my MA, and am already missing being a student.
I know a lot of people my age are already in fairly stable careers, but all my friends (who are between 23-30), like me, are just starting off, now that we all have our MAs. I don’t think it’s late at all.
Besides, grad school is different from undergrad. You won’t have to live in dorms, and you’ll have a BA so you can probably do some part-time work on the side, depending on the program (our MA program was an intensive one, so very few people were able to pull that off). Plus your studies will be more focused and you’ll be studying with people who are just as serious about academics as you are. I got a lot more out of my one-year MA program than I did from my four years in undergrad.
My purpose was not to show off (or, at least that wasn’t my main purpose ),
but just to assure **NinjaChick ** that starting one’s profession at 26 has been done and is not a bad thing.
Aside from the “always being broke” bit, I’m not clear at the impetus for your hurry to start your professional career. Not that I would encourage you to be a perpetual student, but it’s not as if you graduate and suddenly all is wonderful; indeed, all of the flexibility of schedule; the socializing with different groups of people (if you do that); angst over relationships that are destined to last no more than a few months until someone graduates or goes on vacation; and trying to figure out which flavor of ramen to have tonight is replaced with…employers who expect you to show up every day at an ungodly hour to attend pointless meetings and process paperwork no one will actually look at; socializing with the very same group of mostly dull people all complaining about their cubicle furniture and who gets the station with a view of a window through some supervisor’s office door; angst over relationships destined to drag on for years until you get mutually fed up with each other, married, or both (those being not mutually incompatible); and trying to figure out whether to have pesto or cream sauce with your overpriced, all-organic pasta.
The upside is you have money; the downside is that you find out that money–while it lets you eat better, drink good wines, and purchase entertainment media at will–doesn’t actually make you intrinsically happy. If you’re unhappy now at school, there’s a good chance you’re going to find a slight variation of that same disquiet in your professional life.
Personally, I’d go back to school full time in a heartbeat if I could figure out some way to do it without working three jobs or going massively into debt. There are parts about the various professional (engineering) jobs that I’ve enjoyed, but the day-to-day stuff is largely drudgery and growing piles of paper. It’s not the most fulfilling thing in the world, especially when the program or product I’m working on gets cancelled, or better yet is continued for months with knowledge that it will inevitably be cancelled. But it does allow me to fill my liquor cabinet with some very nice whiskeys and load my bookshelves with a large collection of classic books and Criterion Collection DVDs that are even now sittting unread and unwatched. If that’s not what it’s all about, then I don’t know what is. Actually, I just don’t know what it’s all about, and the liquor and books are just a salve on my wounded conscience which begs at me daily to return for an advanced degree in physics, but it mostly only comes out at night. Mostly.
If you don’t really know what you want to do with your life, you really shouldn’t be planning to go to graduate school right after your bachelor’s. Graduate school is hard, and the students who are dedicated quickly set themselves apart from those that are just cruising.
Spend a few years working and find what you really like to do, then go back to school once you’ve decided. The HR people at my last job looked down at people who went straight from undergrad to complete a Masters, unless it was a terminal degree like an MFA or a JD. They said it was a “slacker signal”.
I can sympathize with this outlook… except I didn`t like the academics either. I worked a lot of hours while in school to support myself. No time for clubs or whatever people do in college. School was expensive, so I took a lot of classes to finish my bachelors in 7 semesters, with two of the semesters being part-time. It was so tedious to me. The whole time I just wanted to finish and get started with my life.
Does your school force you to live in a dorm? I only lived in a dorm one year and felt much better after getting out. Our first apartment was a pretty typical college apartment but was nonetheless much better than a dorm. After that we lived in the nicest apartment I’ve yet lived in. It really made a big difference for me.
And if you want to feel like you are contributing to society, you should really think about volunteering. Maybe find something working with children or the *elderly. Form a lasting bond with an under-privileged child or be a friend to a nice old person. That’s a great contribution to society.
Maybe that’s why I can’t relate. Only freshmen live in dorms here, so I’ve chosen my roommates, made my own meals, etc. I also volunteer as a guide dog puppy raiser and am really involved in my campus. Yeah, that sounds sucky.
Don’t sweat the idea of having to be on some sort of schedule - it may be a *little *more rigid in undergrad, but grad school will be filled with people of all ages.