This week is D-Day for many of our youngsters in Kilkenny who received their leaving cert results on Wednesday last and are now waiting in hope that points for their chosen career have not sky rocketed since last year.
It is a stressful time for students and indeed for their parents, but never have there been so many options for young people.
In times gone by, if you didn’t get enough points to attend a university or a technical college, you were really left with very little option other than to take up full time employment.
Considering our current climate we are pretty lucky that the 50k+ people who have just done their Leaving Cert won’t all be looking for work over the coming weeks because as we all know jobs are simply not there and our already clogged social welfare system would be thrown into even deeper disarray and debt.
But for those people out there who maybe did not get the points they need for the course they wanted — do not despair — there are so many other routes that will take you to where you want to go. They may be a little less direct route but they will get you there all the same.
There are many excellent smaller colleges scattered around the country offering exciting and more importantly accredited courses that are well respected. If you missed out on a direct route to Trinity, DCU, UL, NUIG or any other university, consider taking the course you wanted in an Institute of Technology or in a PLC college for the next year and then with this under your belt you can reapply. Many credits acquired in a Institute of Technology now can go towards gaining access to university courses if you have a certificate or a diploma and this is often a great way to get to degree level if you haven’t received the points for access at Leaving Cert level.
The Leaving Cert should be seen as a stepping stone, just like third level is a stepping stone to something that you would like to do in the future.
Your future career is so important as our work environment is where we spend most of our days and if you are not happy in your career choice — you are unhappy a lot of your waking life unfortunately. However, don’t think that the choices you make today are forever. They are not. The route you take today may take you on a long journey to where you want to go. And this journey is the fun part! You don’t want to be where you will be in 30 years time at age 18 - where is the fun in that?!!
So students go out there and make your choices — of course you will make mistakes but this will just teach you what you DON’T want which is as important as learning what you do want.
The other side of things relates to finances — this is the start for many young people learning to fend for themselves and for many parents to start funding a second household!
Not the fun part of college I can assure you — particularly when our current government believes that free education means €3k in college registration fees....and that is just the start of it. I think we are all aware at this stage that there is no such thing as a free education. Now the government is considered scrapping Transition Year and not allowing children to start school until they are five years of age — and this is in a bid to cut costs! I thought Fine Gael had been pro-education in their pre-election promises? A week in politics is a long time as they say....
