College Choices

Granted it is indeed that cycle of the year again where hankering and impatient scholars must finally commit to their top ten chosen courses and college preferences in the hope of securing an elite place in late August. Although the majority of applicants will be unpretentious leaving-cert venturers full of impeccable aspirations and desires for their educational and proficient future, there will be a scatter of veterans (like myself) who have given the outright process a quest in the past but for whatever reason are retreating back to stage one in the hope of a better outcome of events.

After deferring my bachelor of arts degree just over half way through its completion, I am back to the drawing board and undoubtedly the whole process is twice as startling second time round. This is predominantly down to the comprehensive expense of first year back to education fees which will ultimately require me to market a kidney to the Sicilian Mafia or traffic my bright goldilocks hair into an upper-class weave auction.

My inaugural pursuit into university life involved one eager beaver all transfixed with the opportunities of third-level education (more importantly the social life). Now my endeavour into college life was very much different to the mass of students and I do acknowledge that my issues were for the most part down to my own ignorance or naivety of the difficulty of college. Likewise, I understand that these faults for ninety-nine percent of students wouldn't be a predicament but this is my experience and my story. An arts degree resembled a fair outset to continue with the subjects I enjoyed and thrived in at school. The intention was to acquire my niche and with the monstrous subject variety this wouldn't prove a problem. That was not the case (for me) as I found the overall competitiveness of my degree somewhat diminishing. The huge class size for every lecture and module made me feel like a number not a person. In my own experience it was in essence drilled into you the emphasis to succeed over your fellow academic scholars and the element of opposition didn't dwell well with me.

I disliked the transition from leaving cert subject to college module. I enjoyed English in secondary school but in college it is completely different. All the syllabus focusses on is studied texts meaning you could graduate with a first class English degree without ever writing a short story or freelance/independently themed discussion piece. Similarly although I was bewildered by leaving cert maths, the college curriculum was simply demented and on a different psychopathic wavelength.

What will be my outcome this forthcoming August? Shall I seize my first choice and pocket a career in teaching? Might I even snatch an offer at all? All these questions are unknown, all I hope is that I won't be writing a blog-post similar to this in two years time or else I will unmistakably be joining The Fimbles.