No man is entirely useless, he can always serve as a bad example

‘If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll probably end up somewhere else…’ or so Yogi Bear once said. I can’t help but contemplate his words of wisdom while scanning over my freshly downloaded application forms for the University of Pecs (Hungary) how one physically manages to go from applying to UCC, in the safe neighbourly county Cork then a hop, skip and a week later sending various e-mails of enquiry to all 4 corners of the globe, I don’t think I will ever know. I can hear my poor laptop whimpering under the strain of the never ending series of application forms to be downloaded and pretty sure the hard-drive must be near bursting point at this stage, but that’s another week’s problem.

I’ve decided to blame the DATS test for this utter confusion because everything was going perfectly well until they came along. Biochem – 480 – sorted! But oh no, they provide you with a list down to your toes of the jobs you would be most suited to. In 5th year, if you had the time to mull over the results and consider what’s best for you to study, then it’s great to get the outside input! But in the midst of all of the 6th year drama is it really necessary to put extra pressure on us to choose what we want to spend the rest of our lives doing? So where my problem arose, at the top of the list in bold black print ‘Medicine’. Not that I wouldn’t absolutely love to study medicine, there’s just the small factor (or rather big factor…) of points. Also on the list were physeo, radiography and dentistry, so these combined to cause the mini mental breakdown that is ‘its 8 months to the leaving and I now need 600 points!’  So to balance the equation throw in some ridiculously low courses (Jar making, Arron Islands – 100pts) and add UCAS and various other universities abroad to the mix. This should guarantee you a place somewhere, but your actual CAO is at this stage effectively a shambles.

Basically, for all of you out there who are so sure about what you’re going to study in college how did you manage to get your thoughts straight and just single out one course to study??  My current attitude is to stand at the top of the stairs with the various college prospectuses, throw them down and whichever lands closest to the door goes down on the CAO first. Not a very effective method of elimination I know, but beggars can’t be choosers!!

If nothing else, I’m sure I’ll give the auld men up at the Central Applications Office something to laugh about round the water machine when they get a chance to read my finalized mesh of random courses next April.  1- Medicine (Galway) 2. Cattle herding (Switzerland) 3. Applied Acrobatics (Romania)… I need help =(

5 thoughts on “No man is entirely useless, he can always serve as a bad example”

  1. DATs in 6th year? What skullduggery is this? I’d be breaking down if I were you, so well done for keeping it together. xP

    Re: people who know what they want to do, I basically decided by asking myself what I do when I have free time — and in my case, because I’m just the coolest cat, that’s reading, going to plays, and other things of an Englishy nature. Life’s too short to put all that time and money into studying something you won’t enjoy, and the best way to figure out what you enjoy is to look at what you do without really thinking about it. Obviously, you have to be quite abstract about it for some courses, but I think the principle still holds: you can have all the aptitude in the world for a course, but if it consists of things you only do when you’re meant to do them, you’ll still struggle to motivate yourself at third level. Any good course is going to be difficult, so you don’t want to add on the stress of trying to make yourself care about what you’re studying. I hope that made some sort of sense!

  2. I agree with Naoise, I’m not too sure yet what exactly I definitely want to do, but all my possibilities are something I enjoy because there’s no point in picking something you’re good at or is a competitive course if you know you’re not going to love it!

  3. Your position is actually a good one to be in,youre really gonna enjoy looking around and i guarantee youll find loads of stuff youd like to do.So then whichever one you get,youll be super delighted.I was only saying earlier how i wish i had my mind set on anything besides medicine,cos that way i wont be disappointed on the day.Only now am i looking around for other stuff to throw down on the cao,which i never done before,and its kind of exciting opening my mind to other stuff.So go to lots of open days and stuff,and just enjoy it!!

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