How can we help our son to choose what he wants to do at uni?

Haha - my daughter wants to be a horse trainer at the age of 10.

I guess the big question is "what does he enjoy doing" - which you haven't answered yet.

I know I loved decorating my room as a child, and pottering in the garden, desperately wanted to be a policewoman, but was pushed towards law, rebelled and never did anything. Went and worked as a bank teller.

In hindsight I should've done interior design (way back 30 years ago before it was common), landscape design or followed my heart into the police force.

My nephew really enjoyed the sciences and wanted to become a pharmacist (not sure where that came from) so did Chemistry ... changed tack after the first year and is now employed in university research and loving it.

One of my stepdaughter's started law after excelling at it in HS, hated it, moved over to BA/Visual Art (also excelled at HS) and is now employed as a graphic designer and loving it.

Another started with a BA, moved into psych with IT combo, now working for the government analysing data, creating real life government programs and loving it.

Just because they start something, doesn't mean they have to stick with it ... but it helps to be something they like rather than just an end $$
 
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It's not only IT which will require Just In Time learning. The world is changing so rapidly that it's likely that there will be constant reeducation required throughout a career.

I knew somebody who was a stonemason. He spent several years learning how to carve the inscriptions into stone, such as in headstones or buildings.

Just when he completed his apprenticeship, a machine came along which did it all for him.

So whatever is studied in university, is likely not to be the end- this could also give the opportunity to cross train in other professions.

Some employers will regard a degree only as proof that the holder has a certain level of ability plus hard work. The actual studies done may not be relevant.
 
A gap year sounds good. Perhaps he could use the time to try and line-up some work experience in different industries?

I read somewhere that kids today will work in jobs that don't exist yet and also that they may have as many as 5 'careers' in their lifetime. Wow!

Hubby and I are both university drop-outs - something that our children like to remind us about when we tell them how important it is to do their homework and get a 'good education' :D. Little buggers. We then remind them of how much harder it has been and how much longer it has taken us to become relatively financially comfortable due to our just-above-average family income. We could have 'got there' much quicker if we'd become the chemical engineer and school teacher that we were planning on becoming when we applied to uni at ages 17.

However, neither of us really wanted to do those jobs. It took a year or more at uni to realise. Hubby now works in emergency services and I can't get my love of interior design and all things 'property' out of my head, so, at a more mature age, may head in that direction.

My youngest son just told me that he wants to work in a library. Interesting. Not the usual response from a 5 year old when asked the question 'what do you want to do when you grow up'? :D.
 
What you do outside of uni while studying shouldn't be underestimated either.

Attendence (sticking it out/commitment) and a degree are sometimes not enough when there is competition.

An employer will look at what part time paid and volunteer work has been done, achievements, mentoring, leadership qualities you've exhibited, etc.

wylie, I believe 'Business' is like that. Even a job at Coles over a few years from years 10/11 onwards that leads to some management or overseeing of other employees helps.
 
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Engineers: $mine money

and an 80% divorce rate. Make sure your chosen career has the lifestyle that fits your big picture.

I worked out money meant nothing pretty early on, I can only hope others do the same.


And as above, going to uni guarantees nothing. If they lack motivation the degree won't help. It's the things you do in and around uni/work that helps you in the long run IMO.
 
and an 80% divorce rate. Make sure your chosen career has the lifestyle that fits your big picture.

I'm working on a FIFO mining site, and agreed, it really is tough going. Grad engineers still will need to stick out 3 years of a grad program, it ain't no quick quick buck. The faster money would be in steel fixing, concreting or working as a trades assistant. There is a glut forming of engineering graduates, and the TER score is brutally high!

Myself? I am a surveyor. Best job in the world. 50% indoors/office, and 50% out.
 
I think a gap year is brilliant - as long as it's used.

I know some who have taken gap years and spent them bumming around on computer games ... or ... my 20yr old niece who took a gap couple-of-years and is currently backpacking/working her way around Europe. She's island hopping in Greece this week.

She is visiting places I can only drool at from afar and say "one day" ... because once you've done your degree, on the career path, in a relationship, mortgage, kids etc you can't take that opportunity for at least another 20 years.

It took us about 15 years.

The difference is that doing it 15 years later rather than in a gap year is that you will have the resources to do it a number of times, not just once.

Personally I think a gap year is often a waste of time. For a few people, it would be a good thing.
 
Myself? I am a surveyor. Best job in the world. 50% indoors/office, and 50% out.

And apparently there is a shortage ...

Gap year can be good if you go out and explore - and learn more about the world, yourself and your place in it.

Personally, we won't get to do such for another 8 years at least - by which time hubby will be in his 60's and me 8 years younger.
 
Quite a shortage, we are never short of offers and work. The average age of a 'licenced' surveyor is 56. Construction/engineering surveyors, its significantly less.

N

I work with a few surveyors on projects.

Simply put, most are going to the mines and standard surveying firms are unable to match the salary is what they are saying. Not enough people doing it.

But, by and large, every surveyor I have spoken to loves what they do.,
 
And apparently there is a shortage ...

Much like the shortage of engineers about six years ago when everyone in my son's year was advised to become an engineer :rolleyes:. Now engineers are losing jobs. It is very hard to know what jobs will be in demand so far in advance.

Gap year can be good if you go out and explore - and learn more about the world, yourself and your place in it.

Personally, we won't get to do such for another 8 years at least - by which time hubby will be in his 60's and me 8 years younger.

Lizzie, earlier you asked what this youngest son's passions were and I hadn't answered. I don't think his passions will be a help, but they are playing xbox, skateborarding (not so much lately though), working with timber, although my suggestion he get a job working with timber doesn't seem to interest him.

I cannot help but think that getting a job now means he is earning for four years whilst others are at uni. I think a "reasonably paid" job plus nous can work just as well at allowing one to be happy, invest successfully and get a head start. He could always study part time whilst earning.

Ultimately he will make a decision, and I think after reading this thread and speaking to a few people, he is leaning towards applying first choice for a business degree with QUT and also applying for the same degree with a second uni. He went to see the career adviser at school, and this was her suggestion.
 
I cannot help but think that getting a job now means he is earning for four years whilst others are at uni. I think a "reasonably paid" job plus nous can work just as well at allowing one to be happy, invest successfully and get a head start. He could always study part time whilst earning.

Another thing to consider is that uni can be a LOT of fun. I made a lot of friends at uni who I am still close with 22 years later. I met my wife while at uni (I didn't actually meet her at uni, but if I wasn't going to uni at the time, we probably would not have met).

I did Computer Systems Engineering at uni. We had one of the highest workloads out of all of the courses (measured by class contact hours + published expectations of non-contact work expected). It was common to find most of us in the computer lab working on our projects until we got kicked out by security at around midnight, then lining up to be let back in at around 7am. This was pre-internet being widely accessible. We worked hard.

Even so, we had a lot of fun - Pizza Hut had just launched their $5 all you can eat pizza on Tuesday night, so every Tuesday after our last lecture, a group of about 30 of us would head to our local pizza hut and tear little notches in our paper placemats to count how many pieces we had eaten (18 I think was the record). Or we would get those little dessert bowls and have competitions to see how high we could get the soft-serve icecream and still carry it back to the table (about 30cm was the record I think - but that involved using one arm to hold it upright - messy).

Lunchtimes were groups of 12 or more sitting around the cafeteria playing scumbags and warlords (card game), or seeing if we could get a standing-wave on the pedestrian bridge over the nearby river by having a group of people jumping up and down at the same time. Or sitting around on the grass debating religion or philosophy or how great summer at uni was.

We used our construction skills to have competitions to see who could get the most hot chips into one bucket, measured by weight at the checkout scales. Turns out the days where the chips are soggy and unappealing are ideal, because you can just pack the chips in as tight as you can and it weighs a lot more than a nicely stacked pile of light, cripsy chips (which tasted nicer, but wouldn't win you the competition). You then stuck a fork in the chips, pulled them out of the cup and ate it like a toffee apple.

Some of my friends convinced me to run for president of the student union against Natasha Stott-Despoja, on a platform of allowing sheep to finally attend university after all of these years of oppression. I got 7 votes. Natasha won.

We held competitions to see who could build the best paper plane and land it on the table at the front of the lecture theatre while the lecturer was busy writing on the blackboard. This was our standard form of entertainment for several years. We got good at it.

We discovered an almost perfect paper plane model and a group of a dozen or so of us went to the top of the nearby shopping mall that had a large multi-storey atrium in the middle and held competitions to see how far we could throw them.

We wrote stories one line at a time by passing a notebook back and forth along the row of seats in the lecture theatre. One story lasted over 6 months and ended up long enough to be submitted for publication. It was rejected on the grounds that it would probably need to be censored into oblivion.

We wrote page after page of one-line jokes about the lecturer or about the lecture topic or about some other news of the day. There's a lot of material for jokes in your typical science, engineering or maths lecture!

When our maths lecturer was late one day, a group of 5 of us took to the lectern with a copy of Dr Seuss's Fox in Socks and read it together to the nearly 300 students waiting. Much hilarity ensued.

We caught carp from the local river and filled the university ponds and fountains with them.

We did whatever we could to cope with the incredibly difficult workload, the long hours, the boring lectures, the stress of exams and everything else that uni students face. But we had a lot of fun and I remember that time fondly.

Uni is serious stuff - it costs a lot and is hard work and success or failure can have a major impact on your future career options ... but it can be a heap of fun at the same time.
 
My 11 year old has it all worked out. He and three other friends are going to be Part-time professional You-tubers. :confused: They are going to work at hungry jacks part-time when they are old enough, buy a house together and have a full time job also. :)
 
Lizzie, earlier you asked what this youngest son's passions were and I hadn't answered. I don't think his passions will be a help, but they are playing xbox, skateborarding (not so much lately though), working with timber, although my suggestion he get a job working with timber doesn't seem to interest him.

I cannot help but think that getting a job now means he is earning for four years whilst others are at uni. I think a "reasonably paid" job plus nous can work just as well at allowing one to be happy, invest successfully and get a head start. He could always study part time whilst earning.

Ultimately he will make a decision, and I think after reading this thread and speaking to a few people, he is leaning towards applying first choice for a business degree with QUT and also applying for the same degree with a second uni. He went to see the career adviser at school, and this was her suggestion.

What sort of job do you think he could go into now if he doesn't end up going to/continuing with uni? Has there been subjects offered throughout schooling to get a job straight out of school?
 
I cannot help but think that getting a job now means he is earning for four years whilst others are at uni. I think a "reasonably paid" job plus nous can work just as well at allowing one to be happy, invest successfully and get a head start. He could always study part time whilst earning.
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It does not have to be uni OR job.

Most students work part time while at uni. Even in a full time course the contact hours are not high.

By the time my kids were in their third year they were working part time in their area of study, which gained them experience as well as $$$. In my son's case his part time work meant he was successful in gaining his first job (which required experience) at a much higher level than most graduate jobs in his field. As a bonus, while he was still studying, his hours and income qualified him for independent status and he was able to access a part Youth payment as well as his job income.

A neighbour worked in the HR department of a "big 4" bank. When interviewing any job applicant, she said the very best thing they could have on their resume was McDonalds experience!!
Marg
 
What sort of job do you think he could go into now if he doesn't end up going to/continuing with uni? Has there been subjects offered throughout schooling to get a job straight out of school?
Or TAFE/apprenticeship. Uni doesn't have to be the only tertiary option- but yet many see uni as the be all and end all.
 
You are basically describing me in this thread about 7 years ago. The best advice I was given was you have to do something…. So I took 2 years off and went out in the real world and got a job…. Learnt pretty quickly that smart people with degrees (and interpersonal skills) run the show. And if I wanted to get were they are I need to get my hands on one of these pieces of paper….. Fact is I don’t think I would have had the drive or passion to get it without first being exposed to the end goal.
 
My son finished high school last year and is currently in his first year at uni studying media. He's always wanted to work in film production, but wasn't sure how, what or where.

At the end of last year he was talking gap years which I had envisioned as 12 months of x-box and really wasn't keen on. I also wasn't sure about this 'film' career he had visions of. All very well to have dreams, but at some stage you need to put money on the table.

He's really fallen on his feet this year. He loves the course he is doing at Uni and that helped him find a fantastic casual job in the industry. He's now considering a more practical application of his skills with real future prospects.

I suggested work experience in this area last year and he wasn't interested.
I'm really surprised by the difference in him from this time last year.

Don't stress too much - just keep his options open and it will all come together. Apply for anything at uni before the closing date - he can always change his preferences down the track.
 
The problem with making life decisions at 16, 17 or 18 is that you don't have good information about about your future career.

If I could make one point, it would be that your choice of degree doesn't have to determine the direction you go in. There's a possibility of changing careers afterwards. For example, I considered the law at one point, and was looking at doing a Computer Science degree before a conversion course, with a view to specialising in the legal side of IT.

Ironically I ended up working as a programmer after studying Philosophy, but someone who was a contemporary of mine at university took that path, and ended up running his own award-winning solicitors firm. (Not someone I know, I should point out.)

I'd suggest Wylie's son picks something that he's interested in, and has an aptitude for. If he's into woodworking then maybe a design course with a practical element would suit him.

Or taking the artistic side in another direction, there are programmes in things like 3D modelling. That could lead to a job in the games industry (not sure if I'd recommend it, as wages are low and hours are long), or even special effects for films. (Animal Logic are a big shop in Sydney, and it might be worth giving them a call to see what they suggest.)
 
Or TAFE/apprenticeship. Uni doesn't have to be the only tertiary option- but yet many see uni as the be all and end all.

I don't think uni is the be-all and end all, possibly the opposite. I'm targeting high schools that offer TAFE subjects while studying senior that offer courses that may interest my kids. I studied Business while completing year 12 Maths and English so I had the minimum requirements to get a govt job if I wanted. After senior I studied further at Tafe for 6 months and got credits for subjects already completed. If they choose careers that require uni, that's fine. My son says he doesn't want to be a trades person.
 
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