As a new wave of freshers are soon to rise this September, me and my dropout buds have time to reflect on our stints at uni and what it is like to dropout of higher education.
Yes, this is frat party maths but still for future reference if you need it, thank me later.
Didn’t you just want to wait it out and finish your final year?
This is the question my best friend Lauren hates most, she dropped out earlier this year and in response says, ‘what would be the point to waste another how ever much and not do what I want’ [total shutdown – skepta].
We are both familiar to this question, I started a degree in 2013, dropped out and am onto my second – surprisingly or probably not really, journalism (it is going really well thanks for asking, seems relevant anyway). According to the higher education statistics agency [HESA], around 20% don’t make it past their first year of higher education – so that is you know a cool 1 in 5.
‘For me maybe seeing each other dropout and do better having left meant I didn’t want to just push through something I wasn’t interested in pursuing..’ – she added.
Lauren then went on to say although she would’ve dropped out anyway, having watched me and our other best friend leave HE ‘happier whilst being onestep closer to our goals’ made her realise she could too.
The amount of people I already know who have either dropped out or on graduating now hate the course they have honours in, is unbelievable – something neither me or anyone else on finishing college [way back when] could have ever predicted.
You see, when we all trotted off to university at the end of 2013 with are lives mapped out, you know thinking about freshers 2 for 1 fruity [cherry] tequilas and what our halloween costumes might be now we were officially out of our hometowns and living by nobody’s rules – apart from halls rules, which were actually pretty restricting, quiet after 11pm – there are two houses in my previous postcode so that rule was a toughy….
Oh hello cherry tequila.
No-one – not even my negative distant second cousin – could have foreseen the amount of us to be slowly chipped off the HE ladder to actually realise what course we wanted to do, or that we didn’t actually want a course whatsoever.
The next question I guess is who actually does something relevant after?
When me and my two best friends go for coffee and can each chirp-up saying we’ve all dropped out at some point is, sort of hilarious.
‘I wasn’t going to stay somewhere I wasn’t happy, and if I had the option obviously I was going to take it.’
When I first dropped out people looked at me sympathetically like I had said something upsetting or was going into rehab, but more than anything I couldn’t be bothered to repeat myself over and over again and maybe over again.
‘Why?’
‘What are you going to do now?’ – don’t know 8 year-old child of distant negative second cousin,
You have to appreciate the people going to the effort of asking, but more than anything it probably isn’t concern but a bit of nose, which is to be expected.
Dropping out isn’t really a big deal. Granted it is at first, but sometimes it’s a necessary step to realise what you actually want to do, so if you are going to do it future freshers, just do it.
Freshers throwback, potatoes are a cheap, nutritious whole food, find them out.
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