Image via BabyAnimalz.com

What the hell are you doing?

This was a question that I asked myself at the beginning of last academic year, in relation to going back to university. And it’s the question that I seem to be asking myself a lot again just recently. This time, it is about whether I am cut out to follow this career path.

Within the first couple of weeks at university, I learnt that everything that I was doing was wrong. So straight away I feel like I took a huge leap back. At first, I didn’t let this bother me, because I was going to learn about how to do it the correct way. Right?

Well I am not so sure I am going to be learning much about coding. There is going to be some, but I am expected to learn (or actually know already) a lot of it by myself. Which is fine, so this is an additional workload on the existing university units’ work that I have to complete?

To add insult to injury, I am seeing fellow students who “know everything”; okay they don’t and like to think they do; but still, that brings me down as well.

I have some group work to do this term, and don’t feel like I have the skills to help. I tried to be diplomatic and suggest we all have a go at creating and go from there, to find out someone has updated the pages already…and by a far superior standard than I can do. So what is the actual point in me trying?

Then, there is the fact I do not have a creative bone in me. I think my brother got all of them! So, why do I want to follow a career which has a design element to it? Surely, this is just madness in a tin?

While admiring some of the sites that the professionals have done, and apart from thinking “I can’t do that”. I am also thinking “I wouldn’t even know how to think up something like that”.

Can you get taught things like this?

I know that having a degree on its own is worth nothing nowadays. We are told that we should be trying to get work experience as soon as possible, as this is what employers are looking for. Additionally, we need to get out there and make ourselves known. This is drummed into us from the start of uni life.

To get work experience, you need to have knowledge in several types of coding. This is something that I am going to need to work on so won’t be able to get the work experience at the moment. So when does it actually become too late and come graduation time I don’t have a job in the industry, and instead I am back in a contact centre (with a degree) doing a un-related career to what I want to do?

The annoying thing is, I offered my time to charities, for free, to try and get some hands-on experience with websites (mainly non-coding), but this doesn’t seem to be enough. After copious amounts of chasing (which is on the verge of being classed as stalking), and promised that someone would contact me. No one did. Even though they said, or requested, help.

Then I am told to get out into the industry and mingle. I just don’t feel like I have the confidence to do that. Additionally, I would just feel like a traitor and laughed out the room for knowing nothing.

So, if I am being told that a degree is in fact useless and that the majority of coding will be taught by me, then why the hell am I actually at university? Where’s the logic in me wasting four years of my life, having no money while putting myself in loads of debt when all I will get is a piece of paper that is worthless?

I know that I am being hard on myself. I am only in the first year of uni, and I am expecting too much of myself, but I can’t help but think that maybe this is something that I might not actually be cracked up to do.