Should I pay for a course I'm not going to use?

[myonlymotive]

Hey guys,

 

I have no idea what I want to do with the rest of my life, and have already spent a year at university doing a business and IT degree. Although the business aspect was useful, I thought it boring and the IT component was just horrible. So now I'm after doing another degree but I have no idea what..

 

Because of my indecision I was thinking of just doing a Bachelor of Arts- but if it's not useful for my career or doesn't relate to it at all, should I pay for it anyway?? I was considering working for a year instead but I can't find a full time job that doesn't require qualifications and doesn't entail working in fast food.. plus I don't want to work for a year then spend another three to four years at uni- I already kind of wasted a year...

 

So my question is, while I figure things out, should I do this other degree? I don't have enough money to travel or do anything else so I'd have to work full time if I didn't... but at the same time- I'm having insane trouble getting a casual job at the moment, let alone a full time job.

 

What do you guys think??

 

[Caldus]

Well, first of all, the job market is, to be brutally honest, still pretty crappy in general. It has been pretty crappy for a long while now and while I see it improving this year, I think you will be much better off investing this time towards an education. If you're having too much trouble finding a job, forget it. I would go the education route. So you chose a concentration but decided it's not for you. That's OK. The nice thing is that you have credit hours accumulated for whatever. That's the important thing here. You can claim those hours as credits towards electives for whatever new concentration you pick next time. In other words, what you did before is not totally wasted. Obviously, you will have to talk with your adviser there, but in most cases I believe you should be able to utilize those earned credits towards another degree in some fashion.

 

So, since I don't think this is all wasted, then I would not go the full time job route. I would go full time school route. If you don't know what you want, try a bunch of different things. Next semester, plan to take a bunch of new courses you may be interested in. Make sure they are all in different fields from one another so that you can better evaluate what you're looking for long term. Hope you find what you're looking for eventually. Good luck!