Growing Up: Leaving School and Starting University

• Choose subjects to study
• Get good grades
• Choose a career path
• Get into University
• Graduate
• Get a job in chosen career

This list is only slightly different to one I made myself in my final years of High School. As I progressed through the higher years of school, the increasing pressure of finding "what is next after high school" was very much clear. When it came to my last year, I still didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, which isn't exactly bizarre when that choice needs to be made at 16 years of age, or so we're led to believe.

I chose a mix of different subjects, ranging from Sciences and Maths, to English and Geography, hoping that I would soon discover an innate ability in one of them. My last year finished, I got decent grades, but definitely not the great grades I'd previously planned - Of which would DEFINITELY be the end of the world if I didn't get - and despite slightly lacking in one grade requirement, I was still offered a place in my chosen University course.

This was the point where I came to a crossroads in my life, contemplating on the plane home from my "end of school celebration holiday" whether I continue to see through my plan I'd made the year before, despite the fact I started to feel regret for the course I had managed to get into, or whether I should do the "embarrassing" option and not take the place at university, possibly blocking four years of endured dread.

I decided to withdraw from my University course, look online at the mocked backup college courses I had applied to - which was insisted by the school - until I realised I had unknowingly applied to a very specific course that excited and interested me. My family had already celebrated the fact I had got into university straight from school, the first in my immediate family to do so; I almost felt ashamed when I had to tell them I'd withdrew and planned on going to college instead. From this point forward I decided to go with life as it comes, no more planning set lists and how things should be followed through, but instead just working on forward with a set - flexible- goal in mind.

Two years later and I have now graduated from my college course; a two year diploma which allows entry straight into work if desired or entry into third year of a relevant University degree. My worries two years ago almost seem trivial, having intrusive thoughts of shame for going "off track" with my progression in education when, in the end, I came out right on track. With a place at university for a course I show a great interest in, which would not have been discovered if I had not side-tracked, I now feel more at peace with the future than I ever did.

The moral is, if you're leaving high school unsure of whether your chosen path is right or not, don't be scared to temporarily disappoint others to find something you truly enjoy. It all works out in the end.