Library by Iraqiguy
Feeling a little unsure about school? Are you losing sleep over university stress? Lifestyle editor, Amelia Wilding, addresses all the stress and uncertainty that comes along with your degree.
All of us have asked ourselves this question once or twice.
“Why am I in school? What am I doing here? What do I want to do with my life?”
Being a student can be frustrating and confusing. More often than not, thinking you’ve discovered a road to go down, you are confronted with more possibilities that cause you to question yourself over and over again.
Some people express this by constantly trying different courses before the course finalization date. You can find them endlessly pouring over syllabi, calculating which class they will enjoy the most versus how it affects their credits. Maybe you are this person, I certainly am, and your final decision comes with the final day of class decision. You say a prayer to the academic gods, hoping that you’ve made the right decision, and enter the class with hesitation.
Eventually, being forced to make a decision and buying the books, you could be stuck in a class that you hate. Being in a class that you dislike only makes the rest of your education more unpleasant then it has to be.
So how do you avoid feeling like you’ve lost your direction and are heading to a life of unemployment?
First off, remember that this is university. It’s supposed to be hard, it’s supposed to challenge you and make you question why you are there.
If you don’t know why you’re in university and you don’t like what you’re studying, you probably shouldn’t be there.
Not to say that should be a permanent thing, but sometimes it’s important to separate yourself from the thing that is troubling you. Having space to discern about what is best for you, without any negative influence, is essential.
If you find that you know why you’re in university, but you aren’t enjoying yourself, you need to find out what is causing this feeling.
If a certain class isn’t turning out the way you thought it would and is causing you to feel upset, it probably isn’t worth keeping as the rest of your year will be affected by it.
Dropping from a full course load of 5 courses to 4, really isn’t that bad. There are so many opportunities to catch up on your credits over the summer and through unique opportunities such as exchanges or internships.
Take courses that interest you now, not those that you think might help you in the future.
However, this isn’t to say that if you aren’t in school you won’t be able to have the same opportunities. If you aren’t in school, you can constantly be searching for opportunities that are specific to what you want to do without the constraint of university specifications.
If you want to be a photographer, this isn’t something you need to wait to do. You can do it along with your studies at your leisure. You can devote as much time to it as you want.
This is the same for any form of writing. There’s no rule that says you must have a BA in English to write a novel. Start now, treat it as important and have your university experience cater to your interests and your goals.
After all, universities exist as places of learning. If you aren’t learning anything, or dislike what you’re learning, make the appropriate adjustments. This can be anything from dropping a class, switching your major, or taking some time off school to do something different.
I suppose what I’m trying to say is that higher education is here for you and you can enjoy it as much or as little as you like. Universities should be a place of happiness, where you find yourself challenged, but challenged in a way that causes you to explore new interests and discover more about the very large world around you. To find satisfaction in discovering new things, should be the essence of education as a never-ending process.
“What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.”
-George Bernard Shaw
