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Choosing work over a college degree after graduating from highschool is quite a controversial decision to make. At least it was for me and almost 6 years later, it still is!
In this blog post, I´ll be sharing my experience of choosing to work instead of getting a college / university degree right after highschool and how that decision has impacted my life so far: The good, the bad and the ugly...
The Good:
1. I have gained a lot of work-experience from different jobs
My first job after graduating highschool was a waitering job at a french restaurant in the city I grew up in. I was 19 at the time and it was a super low-paying job with 14 hour shifts without breaks, having to literally fight for my tips at the end of each day, being on my feet and carrying heavy plates of food and drinks during the heat of summer with no time in between to take a sip of water... It was demanding to say the least, but it has taught me so many lessons that I know I wouldn´t have learned this soon in my life if I had gone off to college instead:
How to stand up for myself: I have always been quite a shy person with difficulties setting boundaries. I would do literally anything for the people in my life with no regard of my own needs... Working as a waitress in that restaurant forced me to set boundaries. To say NO when I couldn´t take on any more tables, to demand my breaks when I felt dehydrated or exhausted and it has taught me that it is okay (and important) to defend myself when needed.
People skills: Being a naturally more introverted person who felt uncomfortable talking to strangers, I felt very much out of my comfort-zone having to go up to people I have never met before and starting a conversation. Granted, I only had to ask them what they would like to have for dinner, but oftentimes these questions would lead to more questions about the menue, or even full on conversations... After a few months on the job, I got more and more used to talking to strangers and guess what, even now that I am working a very different job, I am not scared of going up to people I have never seen before and starting a conversation anymore! And that is coming from a girl who was scared of even calling the pizzaria to make an order on the phone!
How to handle and manage money: Another thing my first full-time job has taught me is how to properly handle money. Something I (and my friends) hadn´t learned in school (which is absolutely insane in my opinion...) With a paycheck comes responsibility. At 19 I had already moved out of my childhood home and into an apartment with my boyfriend. It was quite liberating and exciting to have my own space and to be able to do whatever I want, whenever I want. Having that said, I also had to start paying for things like food, rent and everything else that comes with living on your own, or with a spouse in my case. At first, the money that was coming in felt like A LOT. I had never had this much money in my life before, so I didn´t really know how to handle it. (I made around 8-10€ an hour.) You´d most likely think that my first instinct was to go and spend all the money I made on nonesense, but that was not how I reacted to suddenly making money... I was actually afraid of spending it, on anything! I would think to myself, "eating this dinner has just cost me 6 hours of work", or "buying this dress would cost me x amount of hours of work" and it was rarely ever worth it for me. It was almost like, because I had to work this hard to make money, nothing seemed good enough, or important enough to spend it on... This mentality has fortunately changed after I got a job I actually enjoyed, but more on that later...
Increased grattitude for my parents and their sacrifices: This one might not seem obvious, but having a job in which I worked very hard each day, I learned to apprechiate my parents more, aswell as everything they did for me. The money they spent to raise me, the work they did to get that money in the first place, the time they spent with me. All of these things I couldn´t see as clearly when I was still in school and I know I wouldn´t have seen them as clearly if I had just attended college straight out of highschool. I am still so grateful to my parents for everything they have done for me and honestly, I should tell them more often (*sends text to mom and dad* ^^).
A year and a half of working at the french restaurant, I quit my job without a backup.
If you would like to hear more tea of what exactly happened for me to decide to finally quit my first job, let me know in the comments below!
This is also when Covid hit and my partner and I decided we needed to move into a smaller apartment.
After moving into our new studio-apartment, I lived off of my savings for a while. I felt very lost at the time, not knowing what I wanted to do with my life, scouring the internet for answers, looking for any job that didn´t have anything to do with me being a waitress...
Having a lot of time on my hands, I started posting content on Instagram.
I was passionate about vintage inspired fashion and writing, so I took pictures and videos of my outfits, wrote long captions and learned everything I could about growing an account on Instagram and social media in general, which is knowledge that has proven to be very valuable a few years later! After a while of posting as often as I could and having fun with it, I had gained a following of around 20K followers and was making some side income from Instagram.
This was not enough for it to be my full-time job, which is why I started my second job as a Nanny while still posting on Instagram.
What my second job as a full-time Nanny taught me:
I used to nanny a lot during highschool, but this job was very different, as I was employed by one family only. Both of the partents were doctors, so they needed help with their two little kids while they worked long hours.
The family I worked for was wonderful and I loved that job and still see the kids whenever I can. Even though being a nanny is far from being a mother, it has shown me the wonderful sides, but also a lot of the hard sides of what it means to be a parent, without actually being one myself (yet)... I read books on how to raise children and those helped me a lot when in came to being the best nanny I could be for those two little ones.
Working as a nanny made me so much more patient and has taught me a lot
about myself. Don´t get me wrong, these two kids could be rascals sometimes, but they were also so much fun to be around and I do really miss them from time to time :´ ) They taught me not to take life too seriously and that it is important to have fun along the way.
Being a full-time nanny made me into a more responsible person too and I truly wouldn´t change this experience for the world.
While being a nanny, I also started doing some freelance work as a social media manager for small businesses, aswell as some graphic design. Besides that, I also did some translating jobs.
I mostly just followed my interests and the jobs came to me along the way!
A year and a half later, my partner and I decided to move away from the city. We moved all the way from Viennna, Austria to a small town in The Netherlands to be closer to his family.
By not attending college right after highschool and not being tied to one location, I was able to make the decision of moving away at a relatively young age.
Moving to a new country came with its challenges, as I had to quickly learn a new language, adapt to a different culture and leave my family and friends behind. However, despite its challenges, I have learnt more about myself by moving away from my hometown than I ever have before...
After a few months of settling in and trying to learn the language mostly by talking to people, even if I could barely understand a word, I started looking for a new job.
It took around 2 weeks until I found my third job at a tech start-up company in the same town I live in. My knowledge of social media I have acquired by following my interests on building a social media presence has come in handy and I got a managing position after my first interview.
What my third job at a tech-startup has taught me:
As a very non-technical person, I felt a little like the black sheep of the heard at the office. My new job required me to know about how to build a website, how coding works (to a certain extent) and so much more...
For the first time in my life, I also had to travel to different countries for work, representing the company and bringing in new clients, which was scary at first, but something I also very much enjoyed doing.
A couple months in, I went from being a very non-technical person, to being able to read some code and fix certain errors in websites, which has lead me to eventually find the confidence to create this blog that you are reading right now!
There is still a loooot I can learn when it comes to technical things and I would not consider myself as a particularly technical person by any means, but the knowledge I have gained by jumping head-first into this position and learning along the way has been so valuable to me.
Not attending college straight out of highschool has given me the freedom to explore different jobs and gain knowledge on many topics by following my interests!
2. I was able to learn which careers truly resonate with me before possibly deciding to pursue a college / university degree later on.
After I had just finished highschool, I felt a huge weight on my shoulders trying to figure out the path I would take for THE REST OF MY LIFE... I hadn´t truly experienced enough of this world to know what I actually wanted, so I aimlessly searched for what studies were still available for that year and ended up picking a Bachelor´s Degree in Agricultural Science.
I got in and started university a few months later. A couple weeks in, I was already miserable. The classes didn´t resonate with me in the slightest and I felt more lost than ever before. I thought to myself that because I picked this study, I needed to push through and finish it.
After all, being a quitter is a bad thing, right?
Well, after about half a year of trying to force myself to study something I wasn´t passionate about in the slightest, I decided to quit and it was the best decision I could have made at the time.
I learned that sometimes, quitting takes more courage than forcing yourself to do something for the sake of not being seen as a "quitter".
The study I chose was not the right fit for me and I know that I wouldn´t have been happy in that field of work after graduating.
Choosing to dive head-first into work-life after dropping out of college freed up space for me to really think about what I want to do with my life and gain different experiences before committing to possibly acquiring a degree in the future.
The Bad:
1. There´s usually no defined skillset you bring to a potential job.
Not having a college degree put me into a position in which I oftentimes had to "prove my worth" by having a very good work-ethic. Now, on one hand that can be a positive thing, because:
I wasn´t put into a box and oftentimes could choose what to work on based on my own interests and personal skillsets, but on the other hand,
this also created a lot of preassure, in which I felt like I had to take on all sorts of different jobs and would sometimes overwork myself because of it. Over time, when I did learn more about the job however, I didn´t feel the need to compensate anymore.
2. The salary
Not having a degree oftentimes means earning a lower salary. This is not always the case though, as not all college degrees mean that you´ll be earning more money.
So I guess this one depends on which career route you´ll want to take.
In my case, I was earning just as much money without a college degree, as my collegues with college degrees were and I have learned that what´s most important is acquiring marketable skillsets, having a good work-ethic (without working yourself to the ground), aswell as a great attitude, which is probably one of the most important and most valuable qualities to have today!
3. Less oportunities in the workplace
Having a college degree can open up many doors, especially if you don´t necessarily have a lot of marketable skills up your sleeve just yet. Not having a degree means that there´s almost a sort of "missing piece" that needs to be "made up for" by other qualities. Weither that be your work-ethic, people skills, etc.
4. Society´s Preassures on having a degree
If you also chose not to go to college right after highschool, you might be able to relate to trying to dodge questions that go in the direction of "so, what did you study"...
There´s this feeling of being "lesser than" when you don´t hold a college degree, because it is almost expected of you to have one, at least it is where I live.
It is important to remember that we are not "lesser than" for choosing not to study further right after highschool.
Everyone is different and the notion that we all need to follow the exact same life path, assuming that it is suitable for each one of us, doesn´t make any sense to me.
Conclusion:
The decision weither or not to go to college right after highschool can be quite scary. At such a young age, we are meant to choose which career-path we´ll be taking for what feels like the rest of our lives and that without even truly knowing who we are yet.
For a lot of people, going from highschool straight to college is the right thing to do and that is wonderful. Having that said, this path is not for everyone, and that is okay too.
Now that I have a good knowledge of what interests me and what doesn´t, I am currently looking into studies I might want to do and this time, I am not searching out of fear and "I shoulds", but rather out of curiosity and my desire to learn and oh my goodness, does that feel a whole lot better!
Do what feels right to you and try not to compare yourself to others. You might be surprised where life takes you when you follow your heart.
Education is important, but sometimes we don´t always need to follow the path everyone else is taking and instead forge our own.
Also a little side-note: It is never too late to get a degree!
My dad is the best example for this as he started studying at age 50 and is now finishing his master´s! (So proud of him)
Let me know in the comments if you´d add anything to this list! I´m curious to hear your thoughts!
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Thank you for reading!
Sending you lots of love <3
I loved this post! So interesting to learn about your own experience! I studied after highschool but I think that when you don´t know which path you want to take, it´s good to wait and get some experience first!