Living the life of a student, the debt and the freedom

I joined university later than most at the age of 21, 18 being the age of access to higher education. The years in between I was searching for what I was meant to do in life or what I wanted to do. I did two years of accountancy and only needed one more year to become a qualified accountant, a job many would say can pay well, but it just seemed too boring, just making sure peoples books added up and around April going mad to file all the tax returns of all your clients, just to do the same thing over and over again, people may enjoy the mundane office life, but it’s just not for me.

After that I got a job, just at a local MacDonalds, and no matter how many people look down at people who work there, it is a good job to have, as long as you put work into it and many people can make their way up the ladder and become managers and business managers and get the company BMW and be content with the money, I worked their full time for a year, and had to do something else. If I started my life was going to stagnate like a still pond, void of life in my soul. I still needed to know what I was meant to do. So off onto the next part of trying to understand myself.

So off to university, spend some time looking at my options and after nearing going to university at 18, finally bit the bullet and joined aged 21. Now what to study? You may see a theme developing here, I didn’t know what I wanted to study, I just knew I had to study. So much of the media and employers said a degree would be beneficial and I wanted to grow and experience something outside the 4 walls of my home town.

So I decided to study computer programming, mainly aimed at making games, I liked playing games so making games should be a natural progression from there right? Well not really, it seems obvious now and I’m sure someone could have told me if I asked, but just making a character move requires a lot of well-planned out code and time. Coding is all about time, plus on top of that you are basically learning a foreign language.

I failed my first year, one of my units wasn’t up to par, and when the resit came around, I said I couldn’t do it as I worked at home for summer and couldn’t take the time off work. I continue to work at home to make money so I can survive the next year, reguallry coming home £800 or more into a £1000 overdraft and needing the summer to get me out of the red and into the black. In hindsight that was one of the worst decisions I made. It required me to redo one unit for an entire school year, the unit started in November and finished by April, the year started in September and ended in July. I’d done the one thing I’d tried not to do by moving on from things I didn’t like previously, wasted a part of my life I could never get back.

I let the debt scare me into thinking I needed money now, but just as the stock market and trades in cryptocurrencies show, it’s all about the long term investment, investing in the future hoping for good returns on your time and effort. Short term gains that damage future success is the lazy way, by building good foundations a mighty house, in this situation your well sculptured life, can be built.

I must make university sound awful, the debt involved and the scraping of rent month by month and for most having to sacrifice some of your studies to get a job, just to continue to have a roof over your head to study, but although I’m not really sure if I’ve learnt any life skills, and unsurprisingly I still don’t know what I want to do with my life. I’ve managed to get out and experience life, met people from other corners of my little island nation as well as meet many people from across the pond or the English Channel. I must have learnt something as I’m still at uni, but what I’ve gained most from branching out was experiences. Experiences that help shape me as a person, likeminded people who want to continue to understand more about this world and access the great tomes of knowledge stored away waiting to be unlocked.

University is a daunting experience, for most it is the first time they spend living with strangers and away from family, but to grow you have to put yourself outside your comfort zone, nobody has everything figured out, many people who seem like they know what they are doing are just working with what they are given just like most. Not knowing what you are meant to do isn’t a reason to give up, if anything it should be seen as a challenge from the world, it is your goal to find out where you fit in the puzzle that is this Earth, and no matter how long it takes you, as long as the journey was worth the uncertainty and pain of being constantly put into a precut mold decided for you by society, you can come out of any situation, not just university and hold your head high as a champion of your own life.