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Finishing uni

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Silent Alarm

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I'm about four days away from my final class and oral, and a fortnight away from my last assignment submissions.

I've been at uni for five years and at this stage, I'm pretty much over it, which I assume is normal. I'm sick of having no money, I have no passion left, I don't like anyone I'm in a class with, I'm just over the routine and I want to travel again and more, I want to have some more comfort.

Obviously though, there's a bit of melancholy and a profound sense of ending. Uni is where you sleep until 11 three days of the week and outside of work, footy and beers are what you plan your life around. It's a fun lifestyle and of course one day I'll look back on it with pride and joy and be happy I experienced all the things I did.

I guess my question is, how did the rest of you 'deal' with finishing uni? What did you do afterwards? What are your plans or whatever else? For those of you who finished a while ago, what did you miss the most? Was it a good feeling to get out of it with a degree and start a life where you can afford to eat out more than once a week and not cringe remembering six hours of money spent at a pub?

For me, I will miss the feeling I know I will never get back – of opportunity. I read this quote once from this musician Ezra Koenig, where he says college has this feeling of 'the neverending spring time,' and that's something I can already feel fading... next up is life. I won't have this feeling of purgatory where after this, something cool will happen – I'm weeks away from it being over and I'm not in a band, I'm not making strides, I'm not capitalising on my interests and ambitions... at uni, you can make minimal strides towards those goals and they don't feel like they're going away or not going to happen. Out of uni, you know they won't happen.

So, over to you.
 
People who take casual jobs and travel in the years after uni will find it extremely hard to land a job in their field when they decide to settle down. It's best to try to lock something down within a year of finishing uni, and then build your career from there.

In all likeliness, your life won't resemble the Instagram account of a 21 year old Insta model, whose global travel is paid for by either companies she promotes, her sugar daddy, or both.

It will most likely resemble 40-plus hours of work per week, a mortgage, and a biennial holiday to the Gold Coast.

But who says that's a bad thing? I have mates who were scared shitless when they finished uni, but they've settled into their lives pretty seamlessly. They take joy in coming home to their partners, or to their dogs, or by going for a bike ride with mates on the weekend. Grand aspirations of global travel are replaced by receiving a promotion, or by having a baby, or by getting married. Travel is usually a weekend getaway to Sydney, and perhaps a larger holiday once every few years if your workplace allows you to accrue annual leave and use it in one go.

But that's life mate. If everyone decided to hold off on a career to travel, the world would come to a screeching halt. But to be perfectly honest, you'll get over the uni lifestyle. I can't tell you how healthier I am by getting a decent sleep every night and by having a structured life. My weekends are usually mine to do with what I please. Achieving tasks is much easier when you have the carrot of a comfortable salary behind you, rather than the gallimaufry of student loans, future job uncertainty, and quarter-life crises, which most students experience. So I'm told, anyway.

You'll be right.
 
perthblue said:
People who take casual jobs and travel in the years after uni will find it extremely hard to land a job in their field when they decide to settle down. It's best to try to lock something down within a year of finishing uni, and then build your career from there.

In all likeliness, your life won't resemble the Instagram account of a 21 year old Insta model, whose global travel is paid for by either companies she promotes, her sugar daddy, or both.

It will most likely resemble 40-plus hours of work per week, a mortgage, and a biennial holiday to the Gold Coast.

But who says that's a bad thing? I have mates who were scared shitless when they finished uni, but they've settled into their lives pretty seamlessly. They take joy in coming home to their partners, or to their dogs, or by going for a bike ride with mates on the weekend. Grand aspirations of global travel are replaced by receiving a promotion, or by having a baby, or by getting married. Travel is usually a weekend getaway to Sydney, and perhaps a larger holiday once every few years if your workplace allows you to accrue annual leave and use it in one go.

But that's life mate. If everyone decided to hold off on a career to travel, the world would come to a screeching halt. But to be perfectly honest, you'll get over the uni lifestyle. I can't tell you how healthier I am by getting a decent sleep every night and by having a structured life. My weekends are usually mine to do with what I please. Achieving tasks is much easier when you have the carrot of a comfortable salary behind you, rather than the gallimaufry of student loans, future job uncertainty, and quarter-life crises, which most students experience. So I'm told, anyway.

You'll be right.
Click to expand...

Mostly washing dishes.
 

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perthblue said:
People who take casual jobs and travel in the years after uni will find it extremely hard to land a job in their field when they decide to settle down. It's best to try to lock something down within a year of finishing uni, and then build your career from there.

In all likeliness, your life won't resemble the Instagram account of a 21 year old Insta model, whose global travel is paid for by either companies she promotes, her sugar daddy, or both.

It will most likely resemble 40-plus hours of work per week, a mortgage, and a biennial holiday to the Gold Coast.

But who says that's a bad thing? I have mates who were scared shitless when they finished uni, but they've settled into their lives pretty seamlessly. They take joy in coming home to their partners, or to their dogs, or by going for a bike ride with mates on the weekend. Grand aspirations of global travel are replaced by receiving a promotion, or by having a baby, or by getting married. Travel is usually a weekend getaway to Sydney, and perhaps a larger holiday once every few years if your workplace allows you to accrue annual leave and use it in one go.

But that's life mate. If everyone decided to hold off on a career to travel, the world would come to a screeching halt. But to be perfectly honest, you'll get over the uni lifestyle. I can't tell you how healthier I am by getting a decent sleep every night and by having a structured life. My weekends are usually mine to do with what I please. Achieving tasks is much easier when you have the carrot of a comfortable salary behind you, rather than the gallimaufry of student loans, future job uncertainty, and quarter-life crises, which most students experience. So I'm told, anyway.

You'll be right.
Click to expand...
HOLD ON A SECOND

YOU COPIED THIS FROM CROWEATER, OR YOU ARE CROWEATER

Croweater said:
People who take casual jobs and travel in the years after uni will find it extremely hard to land a job in their field when they decide to settle down. It's best to try to lock something down within a year of finishing uni, and then build your career from there.

In all likeliness, your life won't resemble the Instagram account of a 21 year old Insta model, whose global travel is paid for by either companies she promotes, her sugar daddy, or both.

It will most likely resemble 40-plus hours of work per week, a mortgage, and a biennial holiday to the Gold Coast.

But who says that's a bad thing? I have mates who were scared shitless when they finished uni, but they've settled into their lives pretty seamlessly. They take joy in coming home to their partners, or to their dogs, or by going for a bike ride with mates on the weekend. Grand aspirations of global travel are replaced by receiving a promotion, or by having a baby, or by getting married. Travel is usually a weekend getaway to Sydney, and perhaps a larger holiday once every few years if your workplace allows you to accrue annual leave and use it in one go.

But that's life mate. If everyone decided to hold off on a career to travel, the world would come to a screeching halt. But to be perfectly honest, you'll get over the uni lifestyle. I can't tell you how healthier I am by getting a decent sleep every night and by having a structured life. My weekends are usually mine to do with what I please. Achieving tasks is much easier when you have the carrot of a comfortable salary behind you, rather than the gallimaufry of student loans, future job uncertainty, and quarter-life crises, which most students experience. So I'm told, anyway.

You'll be right.
Click to expand...
 
perthblue said:
It will most likely resemble 40-plus hours of work per week, a mortgage, and a biennial holiday to the Gold Coast.

But who says that's a bad thing? I have mates who were scared shitless when they finished uni, but they've settled into their lives pretty seamlessly. They take joy in coming home to their partners, or to their dogs, or by going for a bike ride with mates on the weekend. Grand aspirations of global travel are replaced by receiving a promotion, or by having a baby, or by getting married. Travel is usually a weekend getaway to Sydney, and perhaps a larger holiday once every few years if your workplace allows you to accrue annual leave and use it in one go.
Click to expand...
Couldn't think of anything worse.

EDIT: Just refreshed screen. Seen that was written by crowey. Brilliant. What a nob.

Still stand by my point. The mundaneness of the standard 40 hour week and holding on for dear life for those 4 weeks a year where you can cut loose sounds horrific. Definitely not advisable for anyone in the first half of their 20's.
 
Just been reading through the old thread. Wow, don't often look at this board anymore but the SA vs Croweater clash was pretty inevitable but absolutely hilarious.

Not sure if my advice will have much or any applicability as I can't say I ever really felt the same way about uni that SA did, but in my one and a half years out I have found the real world a lot more enjoyable than uni was. Enjoy the responsibility of my job - it has provided great opportunity to travel to new parts of Australia, make many new friends and has helped me find a new perspective. It is a FIFO role but live in a capital city with a day and a half off every week is not so bad in that it retains at least some sort of normality, but the benefits of FIFO are still there (saving, flexibility of a complete week off etc.).

The realities of life are apparent, but we've all got to face them at some point anyway. Working away it's hit home pretty hard to me how important friends are - at uni I could sometimes take this for granted and actually look to switch off socially for a day or two, but now I find myself wanting to be around people all the time to be able to enjoy the time I get off. So in that sense, the lifestyle of a week off a month is good in that it forces me to compress my old social life and to be more proactive in organising it - can see how it is so easy to fall between the cracks and completely lose touch with your old life if you aren't willing to be the one to initiate communication.
 

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If I had my time over (graduated end of 2006) I'd probably have tried to land some sort of FIFO work, skilled or otherwise. Work for a while, live cheaply and have no life most weeks, save like a mofo then go traveling. Easier said than done now, the work just isn't there.

I reckon the best thing to do now is to just do something. Profound I know, but I'd hate to be finishing uni with nothing to look forward to. Whether it's grad work, traveling, working some shitty job - it'd beat just sitting around doing nothing.
 
perthblue said:
are you going to move to Melbourne and talk about how much better things are there? seems to be the thing to do for 20-somethings who are sick of Perf
Click to expand...

I actually like Perth but I also want to experience living in different places.

Melbourne would top the list purely on the basis of AFL over League :p
 
People who take casual jobs and travel in the years after uni will find it extremely hard to land a job in their field when they decide to settle down. It's best to try to lock something down within a year of finishing uni, and then build your career from there.

In all likeliness, your life won't resemble the Instagram account of a 21 year old Insta model, whose global travel is paid for by either companies she promotes, her sugar daddy, or both.

It will most likely resemble 40-plus hours of work per week, a mortgage, and a biennial holiday to the Gold Coast.

But who says that's a bad thing? I have mates who were scared shitless when they finished uni, but they've settled into their lives pretty seamlessly. They take joy in coming home to their partners, or to their dogs, or by going for a bike ride with mates on the weekend. Grand aspirations of global travel are replaced by receiving a promotion, or by having a baby, or by getting married. Travel is usually a weekend getaway to Sydney, and perhaps a larger holiday once every few years if your workplace allows you to accrue annual leave and use it in one go.

But that's life mate. If everyone decided to hold off on a career to travel, the world would come to a screeching halt. But to be perfectly honest, you'll get over the uni lifestyle. I can't tell you how healthier I am by getting a decent sleep every night and by having a structured life. My weekends are usually mine to do with what I please. Achieving tasks is much easier when you have the carrot of a comfortable salary behind you, rather than the gallimaufry of student loans, future job uncertainty, and quarter-life crises, which most students experience. So I'm told, anyway.

You'll be right.
 

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