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"Sunken Sonneratia"
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Being a year behind in college affected me in many ways. It had me thinking about options in life, and gave me a chance to explore other roads to travel.
During the time I was finishing high school 3 years back, I was preparing for my university courses. I was in the office of the highschool's career counselor whom gave advice to me and passed sheets and sheets of Holland's Vocational Typology surveys & several other similar so-called 'tests'. It was clear that my major would be about computers. And I intended to take the express route, to graduate in 3.5 years.
As soon as I successfully got into university, I went into the 'Digital Arts' faculty, where I learned what I needed for the rising multimedia culture. It was a rough journey as if I were allergic to schools! If things couldn't get any worse, I ended up in hospital sometime in November 2010 due to an unorthodox virus!
The 2-3 weeks out of college set me behind, not only I struggled to get back on track, I was also hit with stress & pressure from work. I didn't feel 100% creative during that time, especially during time pressures & competition from classmates. For the first time in my college career, I had to retake a class, and had to wait a year to do so.
My 3rd year didn't flare any better, subjects became more complicated, and I felt more pressure from competition. At this point, I started to have thoughts about dropping out & searching for alternative income sources, even trying to do freelance work online! The second term of my junior's was the time I got the chance to retake last year's class, in which I passed, with a C-. Better than nothing, but I knew that I definitely won't take it again!
And that was the beginning of 2012. The summer vacation was meant for internships. All my classmates are assigned to take an internship for a month's time. Unfortunately, I didn't take another class(in which I'll take this year), so I'm not granted to go for an internship like my friends. And I've never known if I was lucky or not. The lucky thing is that I got to help dad with the bedroom, repainting, putting a new floor, new windows. So there you go, manual labor ftw! A nice way to get to enjoy time with dad and think about things for a while. A good excuse to escape the computer screen & the internet!
As for now, I have several daunting classes to clear up and at the same time ,my friends are sprinting to the end. My 3.5 year deal extended, meaning I still have a long way. My doubts on dropping out had to be held back as I've already made it though halfway, for now it's only up to cleaning things up and surviving it for a good 2-3 years. At least the upcoming classes are more about app design than animating cartoon in which I didn't like as much and got bored of. At least apps had templates & are more rigid in terms of creating them. If that interests me, then I'd definitely pass the course! And should I perhaps... sneak into thesis? Who knows? If I do break the rules, anything could happen!
Thinking about it now, I figured that what I thought of being the perfect dream job, is not so after all. I've totally lost interest in the idea of working with animation & coding as a full-time career. It's freedom that I really want. I want to be able to breathe day in day out without a brick wall at my side. Working for someone else(a.k.a. getting a real job) doesn't at all appeal to me, not that I have a phobia, but it's more the sacrifice of freedom. But in many ways, I feel lucky that I didn't take a gap year since college opened me to some new ideas in life as well as the idea of working from home, making money passively. If I have skipped college, god knows where I would end up. A dead end job perhaps? Ugh!
Not everyone graduates in 4 years, some faster than others, some may need 6 or 7. But all that matters is that we get to do what we love and be happy no matter if a degree is required or not. But I feel college should be a place to find inspiration, not a place to do what you hate just for a piece of paper. Don't think about what others think about your life's choices, if they don't like it, it's their bad.
At least, graduating in 5 years is indeed something different from the crowd!
