Drop Out
I have a bad habit of starting and not finishing bachelor degrees. In 2004, I started restudying to be a civil engineer. In 2005 I started a theology degree. In 2007 I was offered a position in the arts program at UQ but never enrolled in any subjects. In 2008 I continued the theology degree a bit more and now I’ve decided to drop out once again. I can’t justify spending thousands of dollars a semester to do a degree that I’m only studying because I find it interesting. I was under the misapprehension that having received FEE-HELP, the cost would be spread over many years but alas I am in a high income bracket such that my repayment rate is higher than the rate at which I have the time to study.
The source of this educational angst is the perhaps unfounded belief that somewhere out there is the right career for me TM. Perhaps it is as John Carroll suggests in Ego and Soul that I am following a modern construction to try and fill a void that religion might have once filled (even though I still think of myself as religious).
A friend once told me not to look for fulfilment in some glamourous shit-hot career but that I would find some kind of simple contentment if I were to embrace the everyday, the daily routines of the mundane.
But I can’t help it. I want the glamourous shit-hot career. Just something that when people ask me what I do, instead of their eyes glazing over and them stifling a yawn, they light up and say “wow that is sooo cool!”.
Me: Hi I’m Matt
Them: Hey there Matt, what do you do?
Me: Oh this and that, I mainly build ten foot tall robots that breath fire and eat cars.
Them: Oh right. I’m a tax accountant. Do you have any hobbies?
Me: Yeah, I collect stamps
Them: Oh my God, that is sooo cool!
Me: Oh well, you know, it’s just a hobby
Maybe I just need an interesting hobby.
[tags]careers, study, hobbies[/tags]
Well, I’m not saying this to make you feel worse about your decision (it’s your decision and only you know what is right for you, financially, intellectually, and temporally—for want of a better word), but selecting a degree simply because you find it interesting isn’t necessarily a bad decision. (At least, not on the interesting grounds. It may be a bad decision for, oh, so many other reasons.)
Remember, universities aren’t just there to provide job training. Many degrees enrich your life in complex but less definable ways.
(Again—not trying to induce you to rethink any decisions.)
Agreed. When I first started theology in 2006, it was a means to an end which had more to do with vocation. Starting it again this year was because I found that theology is an amazing area to study because of the way it intertwines with so much of our history, art and literature and even sets the scene for a lot of science fiction. I really believe we can’t truly know ourselves today if we don’t understand how we got here. But yeah, studying for the joy of it seems to be a privilege beyond my means.
It’s a privilege beyond many of our means, alas.
That’s one of the legacies that a government who genuinely believed that universities are job-training centres and that degrees are worthless unless their value can be quantified economically has left to the current generation.
And it’s not unique to Australia—Thatcher did the same thing in England twenty years ago. No, closer to thirty now, isn’t it?
That beautifully balanced sentence (if I do say so myself) belies how furious the whole situation makes me.
But you’re a reader.
You’d be in a fair worse position if you weren’t a reader.