Today I’m graduating college and officially beginning my career as a freelance web designer/developer/whatever. In some ways this doesn’t feel like a huge moment because I haven’t had any classes since December 2013, so it almost feels like I graduated 6 months ago. But now it’s official!
Here are six reasons why I’m thrilled to be graduating college:
1. No more early mornings
Sorry to everyone out there who works a 9-5 job because this doesn’t apply to you. 🙁 But I’ve had early mornings my whole life. In middle school classes started at 8am, in high school they started at 7:45, in college it was a mixed bag. But now, NO MORE! I can wake up at 10:30am and have a slow start to the day.
2. No more ‘general education’
I only did two years at an American college before transferring to a university in the UK, which means I only had two years of ‘general education’ classes at the college level. But man, they suck! It’s like: here are some classes you don’t give a shit about and have nothing to do with your chosen field. Now take them.
Goodbye geology class—I hated you.
Goodbye economy class—I failed the shit out of you.
Goodbye French class—I forget everything I ever learned.
Goodbye writing class—although, you weren’t so bad. You were probably my favourite.
People say college is your chance to pick your own classes, and while that’s true to a certain extent, there are still requirements you have to fulfill even if they don’t interest you in the slightest. So now I’m saying goodbye to the subjects I hate!
GOODBYE 3-D ANIMATION! I CAN’T BELIEVE I DIDN’T FAIL THAT CLASS!
3. Now I can learn things on my own time and at my own pace
Just because I’m graduating university doesn’t mean I’m saying goodbye to learning. I’ve been teaching myself coding and web design my whole life, and I expect there to be a lot more of that to come. But there’s a huge difference between teaching yourself web design and listening to a lecture about it. Lectures are boring as hell! I can’t think of a single time I actually enjoyed a lecture.
From here on out, I’ll continue to learn new things and experiment with different coding levels and languages. But, I’ll be able to do it myself. I can go at my own pace, use my own resources, and experiment on levels of my choosing. FREEDOM!
4. No more exams or cramming
Exams are the worst!! So many of them felt pointless to me in university. Like geology! I knew I was never going to do anything with geology in my entire life, but I had to take that class. So I had to study like mad for that exam, fully knowing that I was going to forget every piece of information the second I handed in the test. That whole process felt like a massive waste of time. What was the point? I felt like I was going through so much for no reason.
Goodbye stupid exams.
5. No more buying $100 textbooks I don’t need
Does anyone else agree that textbooks are SO overpriced and SO outdated? Who the hell needs a textbook? You can find all the information you want to know online. I honestly rarely bought textbooks at uni. I was supposed to, but I knew I wouldn’t actually use them, so I rarely bothered to buy them. But when I did buy them, they were like $50-$100 each! Geeze. And people complain about spending $7 on an ebook…
6. I can go home for Thanksgiving!
The past couple of years, I haven’t been able to go home for Thanksgiving. I spent three years at a university in the UK, but I’m originally from California. Well, they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in the UK so I never had time off for this holiday. I haven’t celebrated this holiday in so long that I forget what it’s even like! My family has even created new traditions for Thanksgiving and it makes me sad that I’m not a part of them.
Although I don’t have plans to go home for Thanksgiving this year, hopefully that’s something I’ll be doing in 2015. I’ll be able to choose my own holidays so I’m getting time off for Thanksgiving, damnit!
Exams are the worst I love school, but hate getting tested. Ugh, and those million dollar text books. I have a couple of those to buy for Fall semester. Such a rip off.
I graduated one year ago, but I still miss college. College was so much more fun and less demanding than a full time job. The exams weren’t nice of course, and I hated the classes that you just had to do but where pointless for your future. But college was a lot easier I guess, I had a lot more free time. Now that I work 5 days a week from 8-5, I really miss sleeping in and having more holidays than I used to have.
But as a freelancer I think you have planned it really well for yourself, I wish I could sleep in until 10;30, haha!
I’m in my last year now and I don’t have to buy books for the first time, you are right, those things are CRAZY expensive. I’m honestly going to miss school, but I also see the good things about being done. I can’t wait to educate myself further on specific topics that I pick, but we don’t have ‘general education’ at the university. You only get the classes you really need. Some of the classes in High school did feel like a waste of time, because I can’t remember any French or most of the stupid things we had to calculate at math.
The thing I love the most about your list is that you can pick your own time to work. Sounds like heaven, because I’m very bad at waking up early in the morning.
Congratulations!
Seriously, what’s up with French? It just doesn’t stick, does it? English is no problem to me, but French just doesn’t stick in my brain. xD
Why don’t you write your own textbook about coding and design? Bet it’d be very interesting and I’d buy it just to see if I can become just as good as you are, hah! 😛
I completely agree with those! I still have a couple years left (pursuing two degrees adds a lot more time than I’d like), but I’m ready to be done. Sure there are things that aren’t bad, but it will be nice to have no more general ed or exams! Congratulations! I hope you have an awesome day!
Love this list! Can I add (because I’m almost done with grad school) no more annoying professors who are so stuck in the 1950s that they don’t even know their paternalistic attitude is inappropriate and offensive? Or the professors that can’t except you don’t want the same things they do? Ok yeah I’m clearly ready to be done lol. Congratulations!
I totally understand about those textbooks. I graduated last year, and I was sooo ready. At my college, they got this brilliant idea to make textbooks loose leaf. I mean who wants to spend $150 on a textbook that a) you can’t get rid of and b) you have to buy a binder for. Oh, but you save $10 they say. Your geology was astronomy for me. I still remember having to sit outside at 10pm drawing the “night sky” – completely pointless in my opinion.
CONGRATULATIONS on getting hitched and graduating!!!
YES! So much yes to this post. Well except the 9-5 job thing. Especially the textbooks line item omg textbooks are insane. They cost way too much and are freaking heavy and you never use them again if you even used them for the course!
I graduated two years ago and it was the second worst day of my life. I would stay in college FOREVER if I was able to. I looove learning and taking a variety of classes even if I know I won’t use that information later on. The classroom setting works so much better for me than self-teaching, since I’m very easily distracted.
I hear ya! Though it’s been years since I was in college, my 3 young adult kids were at it recently. My son just graduated, but he is going on to law school so he still has years to go 🙁 The out of touch professors, the price of textbooks, the classes they insist on which you don’t want (under the premise of making you a “well-rounded” individual)…congrats on graduating and your upcoming wedding.
I am so glad you are going to keep learning and improving your coding. Wow, you have an interesting life ahead of you 🙂
Best part about graduating college: I get to have a normal sleep schedule. I learn best at night, so I had this weird schedule where I would study till 2 or 3 in the morning, then sleep till 10, and start all over. Now I get a regular sleeping time of 11pm to 7(ish)am. It’s so much better 😀
I actually liked general ed, mostly because I filled it with psychology classes. But I also failed econ – and barely scraped by US History II. I still hold to the fact that I had bronchitis when I took my last test, and that’s why I sucked. Not because of my abysmal history skills… not that at all 😉
Congratulations on graduating!
It’s ridiculous how textbooks are so expensive and I hate it when the professor says it’s required but you only use it like once or twice. Anyways, congrats on graduating! The feeling must be super awesome! I’m an incoming freshman and I’m excited but nervous. I’ll be majoring in computer science and it sucks that everyone has to take stupid G.E. courses -___-
I hate to see my niece having to fork out for expensive books each semester. I am at the other end of the scale – a teacher with just half a year to retirement. Oh, those not having to get up so early – fast approaching!
You’re so lucky you don’t have to wake up early in the mornings! It sucks 🙁
I actually always scheduled night classes whenever I could. Sleeping in was one of the great benefits of being in school.
Yeah, undergrad was tough because of all those classes that I didn’t want to take. I loved grad school, though. That’s where I really got to take the classes I wanted and learn things I’ll actually use in my career. I also didn’t mind the books because I learned a lot from them, and I know I’ll go back and reference them sometimes. Graduating still felt really great though. Congrats!
I’m still in my third year in college now but I can’t wait to graduate and go gout into the “real world”. 😀 Wow the textbooks in America are SO expensive. In our university we are not required to buy textbooks and since my major is information technology, our professors would just tell us to Google this or that, especially if they’re teaching us new programming languages. I’m also on scholarship so the tuition is not that expensive 😀
Omigosh time flies! CONGRATS!!! Ugh, general education. That is why I dropped out of college. I hated trig class and my english classes, and especially despised anthropology. I hated sitting through boring ass classes that had NOTHING to do with my career path. I don’t miss it one bit!