Prioritising university courses and living with my soulmate...

Hi everyone! this is my first post, it might be a little deeper than usual. I'm in 6th year (last year) in scottish school, and I really urgently need to choose the university course i want to do. I don't want to go to university - the image I had of the next year would be that my partner would attend university, whilst i would work full time in what some would call a "dead-end job" in order to be able to afford a simple flat for the both of us, possibly with flatmates if the opportunity arises. That is what would make me genuinely happy!

I learnt today that my partner was expecting me to attend university, either the same or different than him, and we could either live together in a student hall or in separate ones depending on where we end up. He is currently considering a Physics course at Heriot-Watt, but my ideal course is at Edinburgh University, and since i study languages, every course I have found involves a year abroad, which i really, really don't want.

I don't want to live apart from him any longer, even if it is only by half an hour or so, and I don't want to spend a year abroad. Does anyone have any advice?

Reply 1

artful_lounger

Universities Forum Helper

Original post by Anonymous

Soulmates tend to last a much shorter time than advertised from what I've seen, so there's that...

In any event, outside of that, for modern languages courses the year abroad is basically an essential part of the course, as that is the point at which your language proficiency in the target language develops the most. However studying abroad is at most a single year, and in reality you may well plan to return home during holiday periods anyway, so it'd just be studying abroad during term time potentially.

Depending on your inclinations language-wise however, if you are interested in languages but happy to study no longer spoken languages, you may want to look at subjects in ancient languages, such as classics. As these involve a great deal of language work but a year abroad is not compulsory since, obviously, you have no speaking and listening proficiency that can be developed from such an immersion experience. If you're more interested in the general structure of languages and the abstract underpinnings of them then there is also linguistics, although studying the abstract theories underlying languages is very different from studying a language itself, so that may or may not suit.

Also consider since your partner is obviously very supportive of you continuing your studies, you may also want to consider that while hanging around not doing much of great import and chugging away at, in your words, a "dead end job" may be what you want the most, it's obvious he believes you can achieve much more and you may want to consider whether your desire to not spend even a a couple of months away from him balances out with disappointing him in that way. As that may itself affect your relationship as much or more than just the time apart...