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I am writing this blog at the request of a mate. I was strongly against the idea as I don’t typically enjoy doing this kind of thing. However they repeatedly shared the need for this blog and then I experienced someone asking for advice on the very same topic. I saw that they were right and hence, this post.
The topic is school pressure. Specifically, the pressure upon college students to obtain high enough marks to be able to get into uni. In my experience this was an enormous burden because not only are you expected to already know what you want to do with the rest of your life (a massive stress in itself), but you are meant to choose the right subjects and then achieve grades good enough to be able to get in. It’s the whole concept of gate-keeping, which is where an institution sets out a series of hoops you have to jump through in order to progress to the next stage.
My story is that in college, I knew that I wanted to become a physiotherapist. However the problem I had was how difficult it is to get into a physio degree straight out of college, because, like medicine, it requires a high score. Whilst I worked incredibly hard and did everything I could to achieve this, I fell short of the needed mark, which was understandably shattering despite it being expected. So I tried to get into an Exercise Science course and then transfer into physio once I was in. However, I wasn’t able to do this because of some dodgy advice from the careers advisors and so I hadn’t done one of the necessary subjects in year 12. So instead I applied to Health Science and that is what I am currently studying. At the end of the year I intend to attempt to transfer into physiotherapy.
I have learnt so many things from this saga. The first and most important is that your college performance is not the be all and end all. Really it just determines how direct your education pathway is. Because the bottom line is that universities run like a business. And just like any other business, they want the customer and their money. Therefore universities have multiple pathways to do anything, there is always a backdoor into everything. There is always an alternate degree, or a summer school, or an exception, or something that if you look hard enough you will find. I think the best example of this is you can take 2 or 3 years off and come back as a mature age student and do anything you want to, no matter what your college results were. I’m not saying don’t take college serious, but rather get some perspective and don’t let it bring you down. There is always another door. If I don’t get into this physio degree at the end of the year it will be easy to look upon the past 3 years as a massive waste of time, effort, sleep and money. But I won't because I now know that there is always another way...
