What's the transition from college to work like?

AlexD

Any recent grads?

markpb

Shorter day with more predictable hours are great. The commute, if you haven't done one before and have one now, will probably piss you off. You'll probably also find it harder to meet friends because you're more spread out over the city/town and people will move away.

kerry4sam

the main difference i found was the social time...you're either too tired or if you have the energy then your friends wouldn't...Most important thing i done was expand my social circle and that was a little harder than it ever was in college...you'll find your work colleagues become your family now

Dudess

Little or no week-night drinking sucks, but you really appreciate the weekends.

Electric

The weekends and bank holidays are all important! Also you'll really notice the reduced social time. I found that it was harder to meet up with friends and stuff mainly cos I was knackered from commuting and sometimes my days off didn't cross over their days off. It can really take a concentrated effort to keep in touch with people.

It'll take a bit to get used to but after 6 months, college will feel like a distant dream.

But on the plus side you'll have wages!!!!

Running Bing

Ive worked fulltime during my summer holidays and its not that bad at all.


Thing about college is you always have something to do, your never really off and I dont know if its just me but I always get the feeling I should be studying or working on that project. At least when you work you know your days off are yours, you have nothing to do at all.


Also once it hits 5 oclock you know you have the rest of the day free to yourself to do what you want. I really appreciated that, even if you are a lot more tired after a days work tha a days college.


What sucked balls is having to wake up so early five days in a row. I only have one early start a week in college and the early mornings killed me. what I also found was rather than getting used to it, it actually got worse over the summer and by the end I found it even more difficult. Im sure that is something you eventually get used to and even if you dont you just have to live with it.:(

One other thing that is bad about working is shopping and getting things done. you have to fit everything into the weekend and I hate shopping when the shops are busy.

Pythia

I left college last June.

Bad things are you can't miss a day, always have to get up early, can't drink midweek, it's a longer day. You are more tired.
It's nice that you don't have to study though and obviously the money is nice. Weekends and bank holidays mean a lot more.

SoupyNorman

Finished in May2007, Job in August.

Really miss weeknight drinking, staying up to ungodly hours ,having the option of staying in bed, Rag Week, House Parties, Getting my ar$e waxed for charity in front of 200 people.

Dont miss being broke, exam stress and working at weekends.



On the whole college is brilliant, working for 'the man' sucks big style. Its really about how eager you you are to join the working world, its an inevitable fact really.
I'll probably work for 4more years and then hit the global highway for a year!

Elessar

Terrible. Slaving away for no apparent end-purpose 8 hours a day five days a week. Coming home, stare at the walls for another few hours. Eat. Sleep. Repeat. Hang yourself.

I advise you to stay away. And don't get into debt. Ever.

Xavi6

markpb wrote: »

Shorter day with more predictable hours are great. The commute, if you haven't done one before and have one now, will probably piss you off. You'll probably also find it harder to meet friends because you're more spread out over the city/town and people will move away.

Shorter day in work? My day is twice as long. Only had 15 hours college a week and now I'm doing 37.5 in work.

Really miss drinking during the week and lying in til all hours. Getting up at 6 is horrible, especially considering I never used to surface until at least 11.

Far too much responsibility now, and even though I like what I do, I'd much rather be on easy street back in college.

fguihen

very tough. college, if you fail a test, you just fail a test. real money and credibility are at steak when you make misakes in the real world. also, your out on your own, a grown up so to speak with your own bills to pay before you spend a cent on yourself. its certainly a tough transition, at least in my opinion.

Precociousg

Im about to make the same transition and i cant say I looking forward to it either, its the consistently getting up early thing that i imagine will be the biggest struggle. However, I imagine its something u get used too the longer you have to do it!

mikemac

In college you get thousands from the government (student grant)
In work, you give thousands to the government in tax

And the minute you start working you get to moan about damn sponging students!

markpb

Make it easy on yourself, rent a house as close to work as possible. There's no reason why you should have to commute to your first job. Also, a lot of companies have flexible working hours so you might be able to work 10-6 instead of 9-5.

spaniel

jesus christ.... i'm a final year college student, starting full-time work in september, was half-looking forward to it and now i'm absolutely dreading it! Is there any-one out there who can give more advantages of full-time work? is it really THAT bad?!

SoupyNorman

spaniel wrote: »

jesus christ.... i'm a final year college student, starting full-time work in september, was half-looking forward to it and now i'm absolutely dreading it! Is there any-one out there who can give more advantages of full-time work? is it really THAT bad?!

Yes, yes it is.

And you might say, "well I wont mind working if Im on good money" Problem there is, the more you earn the more is expected and more responsibility is thrust upon you until one day you realize that you are owned.

Basically, college life is just too good!


Its akin to going from a nice warm bubbling jacuzzi to an arctic plunge pool.

Dudess

Although getting a job full of young people where you'll have a laugh isn't the worst substitute. My first job was in Cork City Council - full of young and young-at-heart people. Brilliant laugh.

J.S. Pill

The hardest thing for me was moving from a situation where I had clear goals and clear markers of success like exams, essays, theses etc. to a situation where my individual worth was defined in terms of how many calls from angry customers I answered per day.
The praise and constructive criticism I got from lecturers was replaced by invasive micro-management from low level supervisor types who justified their existence by being able to present worker productivity levels in excel graphs to middle management types.
I moved from a situation where I was working for myself and had the drive and motivation to do well to a situation where I considered 'trying not to get fired' a perfectly reasonable career goal given the limited scope for moving up in the various companies I worked for.

And the moral of the story is....stay away from humanities!!

J.S. Pill

Dudess wrote: »

Although getting a job full of young people where you'll have a laugh isn't the worst substitute.

I didn't mean for my last post to sound so moany. One of advantage of working in a sh1tty office job after college is that there tends to be lots of people in the sh1tty office who are just out of college too. I've met some of the smartest people I know through working with them in call-centres. I've made some great friends and had a good laugh as my responsibilities are gone come 5pm (or 8pm if I'm on the late shift). I think that more than makes up for the shortfall in my pension fund.

rain on

I did some exec assistant/clerical assistant temping for the year after I graduated and I thought it was grand. Wasn't looking forward to working at all but I got used to the 9-5 thing pretty quickly. Being able to leave work at 5.30 and not thinking "Jesus I really should be working on that essay or reading that book or ..." was great. And pure guilt-free leisure on the weekends was also great. I never learn though, I'm back in college now putting in 24-hour week with a min 10-15 hours work on top of that, 12-hour days aren't unusual and I don't get paid. Can't wait to get a job again.

teencitizen88

I'll be in my final year next year (all being well), and was also wondering how the transition would be to cope with.
I'm hoping that because I drive the 30+ miles to uni, the commuting shouldn't be too bad. I also don't really go out during the week because I don't live at uni. This can only benefit me, right?

newestUser

spaniel wrote: »

jesus christ.... i'm a final year college student, starting full-time work in september, was half-looking forward to it and now i'm absolutely dreading it! Is there any-one out there who can give more advantages of full-time work? is it really THAT bad?!

You can't generalise from any one person's experience.

Regarding work/college, it's not that one is worse than the other, they're just very different environments. I found the transition difficult. Actually, considering I'm *still* in college, and looking for jobs in colleges, I can't say I ever transitioned out of college! Each presents different opportunities.

But broadly speaking, yeah, most people enjoy their college years more than the time spent in their work environments.

For me the downsides are:

40 hour week instead of about 12 hours of lectures
Being in work 9-5 every weekday, meaning its impossible to go to the bank or the doctor or get anything done, and the shops are so crowded on weekends.
Where I work most people are middle aged with families - no social life like in college
The early start every weekday

The good things:

When you're finished, you're finished, no feeling you should be studying in the evening or weekends. For me, college was loads of pressure, always felt like I should be doing something.
The money - it's nice to be able to afford to go out for dinner, go for some drinks after work, on holidays, etc.

I think overall I do prefer college but work isn't that bad. I was an Arts student and everyone said I'd hate the 'real world' but its grand tbh.

nesf

fguihen wrote: »

very tough. college, if you fail a test, you just fail a test. real money and credibility are at steak when you make misakes in the real world.

It depends how seriously you take college. Some people **** around but others don't/can't.


I think the initial transition can get to people but it's not long before you start contemplating the idea of kids etc and the lifestyle of a young student living cheap and drinking a lot can be a good laugh for a while but most people grow out of it and have bigger ambitions than getting laid and stoned.



Personally, I found the opposite transition more difficult (I returned to college after a few years working after dropping out of college initially due to illness). Going back into an environment where most people are taking the piss when it's costing you 4 grand a year to be there can be extremely frustrating at times (and it's even harder when you were exactly like that when you were their age and in college ).

fret_wimp

Speaking to a Doctor friend of mine, and from my own personal expirience, there are quite an amount of students who finish college, jump into a career, cant handle such change all of a sudden and it just overwhelms. They end up being unable to do their job or extreemly unhappy which leads to mental health problems ( depression, stress, anxiety) as you were expecting working life to be one thing and got something completely different. It happens to many students, you just dont hear about it.

Advice from me ( and my doc) is that all students should take 2-3 months to do absolutely nothing, not even your CV. turn off, go on holiday, whatever. then come back and go headlong into looking for a job.

dont underestimate how big a change it really is.