NOTE: This is just one student’s perspective, and should be taken as such.
Choosing university courses was one of the hardest things for me. I changed preferences at every opportunity, and my first preference ranged from Commerce to Arts, Business to Science. In the end, I picked and received a second-round offer for a Bachelor of Science. The main things I learnt from all of this, and the advice I would give anyone thinking about courses, would be to thoroughly consider your decision; in particular, by doing the following three things.
Give yourself time
My biggest mistake was not doing this. All my choices were last minute and made with max two weeks’ worth of thought. This is a decision that will significantly affect your life, so it would make sense to allocate a similarly significant amount of time to it.
Start early. Looking back at it now, I honestly didn’t do this because I was scared of making the ‘wrong’ decision for something so important, so I just pushed as far back as a I could. This, however, just put unnecessary stress on me when I actually had to decide and was probably what led to the decisions that didn’t really reflect what I wanted. And plus, thinking about it logically, I couldn’t make the ‘right’ decision either if I didn’t make a decision at all.
Don’t make your decisions quickly. Every time I changed my preferences, I thought I had like an ‘epiphany’ or something (lol), treating the new first preference as the course I was destined to do and not giving much thought to my decision afterwards. Don’t make this mistake. You might want to do the course now but that may as well be a spur-of-the moment thing if you wouldn’t pick the same course on a different day. Think about it for a few days, weeks preferably, and come back to it with a fresh perspective before going and changing your preferences. Even when you’ve thought that ‘this is the course’ after a good amount of pondering, continue thinking about it. Is this the course for me? If it is, you’ll just reassure yourself that you’ve made the right decision; if it isn’t, you now know that you have to go back and think about it more.
Will this make me happy?
I know this is some pretty clichéd stuff, but I think we can all agree that living a happy and fulfilling life is what everyone should strive for. Why would you then do something that makes you anything other than happy? It’s important to note, though, that happiness doesn’t necessarily mean finding and doing something you’re passionate about it. Sure, if you’ve found that thing and are happily pursuing it, great, but surely others who haven’t can’t all be unhappy, right? People can find happiness in things other than their profession. People can also be passionate about multiple things, and not all passions can be realistically pursued as a job.
So, if you think money will make you happy, do whatever it takes to get you loaded quick. Passion equals happiness to you? Pursue what you’re passionate about. If you don’t know what will make you happy in the long term, think about what makes you happy now and pursue it. It will in one way or another lead to long-term happiness.
Make an informed choice
Yes, research your course – clear-in ATAR, prereqs you have to do, what it entails etc. – but what I’m trying to get at here is, realise that you’re 18 (or thereabouts) and most likely have some naïve, romanticised views about certain jobs. I know, blunt and harsh, but it’s probably the truth. I honestly was guilty of this with how I viewed teaching as a profession solely about dispensing knowledge to people entirely willing to learn; reality, however, quickly set in and I realised that this was from the truth. So, before you choose a course in order to get into X field, research it first. Each job has its ins and outs – no job is entirely ‘perfect’ for that fact – and it’s important to consider both the pros and cons.
Try and get some advice from industry professionals so you can get a realistic perception of the job. Ask your careers counsellor, family members, or anyone you know if they know someone in the field and if they’re willing to help you out. If you get no luck there, the internet is a wealth of information. Reddit has job-specific subreddits where people are more than willing to answer questions (provided that you do some basic research first), and there might be an AMA from time to time if it’s a popular subreddit. Whirlpool is another fantastic forum with career-related subforums, and it’s Australia based so there’s Australian specific advice. And, of course, ATAR Notes has an entire section for employment and careers, plus thousands of topics on everything uni-related.
Despite what I may have portrayed it to be, choosing the correct university course isn’t the be all and end all. It’s only one life decision of many, and there’s no stopping you from changing your mind a few years down the track. Don’t be too worried and good luck! 🙂
