Is university right for me?

Hey guys,

So I've been in and out of mundane retail work and wanted to find myself a career of some sort to myself up again.

After being unsuccessful in my medical to be a medic in the army (unrelated to fitness) and seeing how my qualifications will make it difficult to be a medic via the NHS route; I then turn to another huge interest of mine and that's teaching English as a foreign language.

The country I'm most interested in is Japan and for those that don't know, to work abroad in Japan, you need a degree.

I previously did a BTEC in Music Technology which led me to also starting a music production course - however I did a U-turn after the first year and decided to drop out.

I'm aware that the popular programmes such as JET are highly competitive and with the background I have, including only having achieved a C in English, I fear that if I were to enrol on a university course that it would leave me in a huge amount of debt for no real benefit.

One course that's interesting to me is >> This one here << due to it being focused on the type of job I'm wanting (including giving me the year abroad too which I find most important)

I'm not far off 22 and I just don't want to be spending any more time in dead end jobs when I know I'm capable of so much more.

Thanks guys.

Three legged cat

Hey guys,

So I've been in and out of mundane retail work and wanted to find myself a career of some sort to myself up again.

After being unsuccessful in my medical to be a medic in the army (unrelated to fitness) and seeing how my qualifications will make it difficult to be a medic via the NHS route; I then turn to another huge interest of mine and that's teaching English as a foreign language.

The country I'm most interested in is Japan and for those that don't know, to work abroad in Japan, you need a degree.

I previously did a BTEC in Music Technology which led me to also starting a music production course - however I did a U-turn after the first year and decided to drop out.

I'm aware that the popular programmes such as JET are highly competitive and with the background I have, including only having achieved a C in English, I fear that if I were to enrol on a university course that it would leave me in a huge amount of debt for no real benefit.

One course that's interesting to me is >> This one here << due to it being focused on the type of job I'm wanting (including giving me the year abroad too which I find most important)

I'm not far off 22 and I just don't want to be spending any more time in dead end jobs when I know I'm capable of so much more.

Thanks guys.

Three legged cat

It seems like your first interest is working in healthcare. Have you considered doing an Access to HE course and then progressing to something like nursing, radiography or occupational therapy?

Access to HE courses are one year college courses that are designed for people just like you who have been out of education for a few years and lack the qualifications to go to uni, and it's accepted by every university. It's a very, very common route into nursing in particular - though depending on subject choice you could also progress to a TESOL / language degree too.

http://www.accesstohe.ac.uk/Pages/Default.aspx

Do you mean a C in A level English?Can ypu speak any Japanese? Or have you got experience of learning any other foreign languages?I think that the degree looks like a good one due to the fact it is enabling you to live in Japan for a year. But you'd have to consider that university will involve 4 years of hard work, and in this case, time abroad in a foreign culture, therefore away from your family and friends.A lot of University is what you make of it, ie, if you make yourself more employable through work experience or extracurricular activity, you are much more likely to get a job.Could you perhaps look at doing some kind of volunteering relevant to teaching English? I spent years helping children at a local primary school with reading. It was immensely rewarding and commented on when I applied for Uni and for jobs.

If you want to teach English, come to Poland.

People will pay you 10 pounds for an hour of CONVERSING with them because you're a native speaker even if you don't have any qualifications.
A can of beer costs 40 pence.
Profit.

Of course it's better if you have a degree or something, then you can work for corporations or language centers. I knew a guy who was paid ~25 pounds per hour for giving classes to small group of corporate employees. Believe me that as an English native speaker you can have a life of luxury in Poland. My parents both earn about 2.5-3 pounds per hour and they support a family of four and two cars with that, and we're reasonably well off. So to earn 10 pounds/hour as a single person is to live in heaven because life is cheap.

If you enjoy health care, have you considered working on an ambulance? Many ambulance services are now recruiting for Emergency Ambulance Crew roles, which don't require any experience or qualifications as it's all on the job training. Your retail experience will have given you great customer service skills and that's a huge part of the job.

As you have already been to uni once you need to be careful about starting a new course. You only get one more go at student funding. You don't want to choose a degree that turns out to not be right for you.

You also need to consider whether you actually want to teach English in Japan. How much have you considered this? Are you just assuming that you'll like teaching English because you speak English so it must be easy? Have you researched Japan? I've seen a lot of people who have chosen this kind of thing but realise they've made a mistake. That doesn't necessarily mean that I think you have, but that I warn you to be careful. You might find that you just get incredibly homesick, or that you find living in Japan isolating as not everyone will speak English.

I've looked at the access courses and it's something I've considered, however my biggest interest is within the emergency services - I've read that the NHS do apprenticeship type courses to work in ambulances for example - that would be really great, but every time I've looked on the NHS jobs website, there's been no emergency care assistance opportunities near me.

I'd probably choose to go into healthcare OR TESOL and wouldn't do one and then the other afterwards, doesn't seem sensible - if that's what you were implying I could do?

You've lost me. I really don't understand why you'd spend three years doing a degree you don't sound like you're sure about, but won't wait a while until the job you really want comes up. Yes, it could be a while before that happens but you've then got a few months to really improve your application. Do some volunteering or a qualification or anything.

How about studying paramedic science at uni? For example, you could do it at Herts Uni with an Access to HE course in nursing or science http://www.herts.ac.uk/courses/bsc-hons-paramedic-science (this is just one example - the first that came up on Google - many others are available!). You would also have the option to do FdSc paramedic science (as opposed to BSc) which would mean your graduate in 2 years eg http://www.worcester.ac.uk/courses/pre-hospital-unscheduled-emergency-care-fdsc.html

On these types of courses you'll typically spend 50% of your time in the classroom and 50% of your time learning on the job - so in some ways it's like an apprenticeship with some classroom training too.

I wasn't particularly intending to imply that you try and do both a healthcare course and a TESOL course, though it's worth noting that (given language skills) healthcare degrees are often fairly easy to use abroad. I mainly started talking about healthcare because that seemed to be your first preference and if possible I'd prefer to help someone achieve their first choice not their second

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I've looked at the access courses and it's something I've considered, however my biggest interest is within the emergency services - I've read that the NHS do apprenticeship type courses to work in ambulances for example - that would be really great, but every time I've looked on the NHS jobs website, there's been no emergency care assistance opportunities near me.