I have a question for anyone why is there such a thing about people having to go to university before their 20 etc and if they don't then it looks bad for that person?
Is it such a crime if you don't make the leap ? , it seems that the norm is for a university education is this usually the case or am i barking up the wrong tree in this?
Where do you full on this ?
There's absolutely nothing wrong with waiting a few years and figuring out whether a university degree would/could help you and also if there's something you're interested in enough that you want to study it for 3 years.
I went to university at 21, and I know I got far more out of it than I would have if I'd gone at 18/19. For one, I would have chosen the wrong degree and probably gone to the wrong university. As it was, I found myself really engaged in my course from the get go and found it far easier to stay motivated and work harder than a lot of my younger cohort. This isn't a boast, but I graduated with a first, and I know I definitely wouldn't have had the motivation to work hard enough to do that if I'd been fresh out of 14yrs of continuous education.
Another thing worth thinking about is what you bring to university and your friends/seminars. At 18 you're not going to have done much outside of school, maybe some part time work and holidays etc. If you are thinking about a year or two off, do something with it. It doesn't really matter if it's a trade like bricklaying or teaching English in Cambodia - just DO something. When I got to uni I could pretty much instantly tell the difference between people who had come straight from school and people who'd taken GAP year. This wasn't negative, but non-GAP year people tended to take a bit longer to come out of their shells and grab the uni opportunity by both ears.
Uni is probably the most people you'll ever meet in one go in your entire life (my halls alone was over 400 people) and it will help you get so much out of it if you have a little more confidence and things to talk about than the average student.
Uni shouldn't be a sausage factory, turning out bland graduates, it should be something that's for the best and brightest and people who REALLY want to go. If half the people who went to uni because 'daddy' told them to just went into some sort of finance apprenticeship instead, the quality of teaching for people who really want to learn would go up exponentially. Also, with tuition fees looking like they might go up to above £10k a year I'd think very seriously before going 'just for the sake of it.'
JC-Retro - I did the same thing of A-levels in one year. Talk about learning a work ethic... That made first year seem like a cakewalk by comparison!
