A young friend of mine came to visit me at the office the other day to ask for career advise. He’s a student at Collins College halfway through his program but doesn’t know if he wants to finish it or take a break to decide if he wants to do something else. Apparently he already knows that his current choice of program isn’t the right one for him but figures that if he takes time off it may be a couple of years before he decides to go back to school so perhaps it would be convenient to finish the program he is in right now. He is already halfway through it and it would certainly open the doors for better employment options while he decides what to study next. On the other hand, he could save that money, plus he is worried that if he gets comfortable with it afterwards he might just stay with it and not go back to school later on.
I really didn’t have helpful advise for him at the time but hope to make amends at a later meeting. I can see the risk in finishing and getting used to the security he could perhaps find through it thus taking on more responsibility like starting a family perhaps. He’s not there at the moment but it could happen I guess, and if it did, then it’s definitely sayonara school. The possibilities of that are very remote though, and I can’t imagine anything else similar happening at the moment so perhaps finishing would be the more sensible option; on the other hand, suffering a little never hurt anybody and it may be a good character building experience for him. In the end this is his decision and all I can do I guess is just talk about it with him. I can’t presume that I’ll be guiding him along or anything like that, but if any of you have any insights into this situation or have gone through a similar experience before and would like to offer some advise please let me know.