Career help please.

[Crilley]

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[Tom_Violence]

Now I am an entry level Psychology student. I'm really loving it, and I'm good at the theory, but I just cant keep up with the workload. As much as I hate using it as a cop-out, I think it is due to ADHD, and so it is something I cant get around. Plus the stress of a recent, and hard, break up... everything seems to be conspiring against me getting the work done.

Any advice? Please?

I'm in pretty much the same boat, but three years down the line. There's no denying that the work is massively difficult, and frankly its just something that takes huge amounts of self-discipline to get through. Its a slog, no doubt about it. There is sadly no easy option around it. The work has to be done, all those papers have to be read, and all those exams have to be studied for. Its nasty, but we hope it pays off in the end.

As far as career things go, psychology gives you lots of options. For me personally I'm currently weighing up the choices of looking for a job straight out of my degree, or going on to do post-grad stuff. Since I'm looking at clinical, post-grad is likely going to be the best option for me, though that ugly issue of funding is certainly rearing its head once again. Hopefully your school has a decent careers department which can help out. I'm thankful that mine holds the occasional careers day in which I can meet people that are a few steps ahead of me and see how their decisions have worked out.

[Hazkali]

Any sort of degree will give you massive options later in life. Many jobs don't even specify what sort of degree that you require, just that you've got one, so finishing your degree would be a good start. After that, I've been told that Temping (doing temporary work for an agency) is a good way of experiencing many jobs you wouldn't normally think of. If you have trouble deciding what you like, that may be an option to think about.

As for your debt, Google tells me that NZ$15,000 is about £5,000. Now, I'm no financial-type person, but if you're paying a large amount of interest on that debt then it makes sense to get shot of it as quickly as possible. However, if you're still studying at University, that's going to be hard to do.

[Ceres]

Psychology student, eh? Welcome to the club! If you like it you should probably stick with it. It's extremely interesting, and the world needs more psychologists :smallsmile:

I'd suggest not to blame your disability to work hard on "out-of-your-hands" problems such as ADHD. Whether you really have such a condition or not, putting the blame on something out of your control, though very tempting, is not going to help you.

I strongly suggest sticking with psychology if you do indeed find it exiting, but this requires that you stop making excuses, get off your ass, make a schedule, and start studying hard so that you can become something!

Wishing you the best of luck :smallsmile:

[bosssmiley]

Your problem right now is lack of direction. Answer: find the direction you want to go in first.

Drop out of college and get an 'it pays the rent' job to pay off your $15K of student loans. Don't go back to college until you know what you want to do. Then get on a course that allows you to achieve it.

Right now you're just wasting time, money and effort in pursuit of...nothing in particular. Have the strength of character to admit this to yourself and make a break from the rut of non-achievement you're stuck in right now.

[Zherog]

I agree with Boss. You need to figure out a direction first, then plan on the school afterwards.

One thing I'll add to Boss's suggestion, though. Take one class a semester. There's two reasons.

1) In my experience with friends, family, etc, once you drop out completely it's really hard to go back. Just taking one class keeps you in the "habit" of school.
2) Take a variety of classes, from a bunch of departments. Take something that sounds interesting. Take a psych class; take a history class; take an art class; and so on. The idea is that you're going to sample a lot of different subject areas to see if you find something that grabs your interest. If you do, take another class in the same department. Does the second class still interest you? Then maybe you found your life's calling.

[dehro]

find a job



I know, this might sound hard...but it's the one thing that will set you straight and help you with the loans..
once you've found a job, preferably a hard one that you don't like but gives you a little time off, you can start thinking of what you would like to do instead of that job...be it going on with studies or getting a better job.

[T'ze'hai]

I have some friends who have or had that problem. They tried to study, didn't like it or could not cope, dropped out, tried something else... etc.
Now, they got a job, some time off, time to think and get some rest in the head. One started studying again, parttime, while keeping the job parttime. Another is almost certain now of what he wants to do. They feel better now, and can pay the rent.

[OCB_Aldren]

Everyone seems to have given some good advice, but one thing that I would like to add, is to not sit around trying to decide what to do. The onlyt truly wrong decision is no decision. No matter what you do the only thing you cant change is how much time it took you to decide :). Thats a lesson I learned the hard way my self.

Keep in mind that no matter what you choose, its going to be hard work. Thats the nature of things I supose. After all, if it was easy, everyone would do it.

[dehro]

The onlyt truly wrong decision is no decision. .

too true, therefore I revise my advice as follows:

find a job, NOW!

menial, unsatisfying, well-paid, underpaid...whatever, but stard doing things a.s.a.p.

[Ikkitosen]

Stick at your education. Nothing worth anything is easy.

Get a degree. Get a graduate job. You would not believe the difference in choice between graduate and non-graduate jobs.