The Student Room Group

When is a good time to start preparing for what I want to do afterwards?

I'm in my second year student, I recently saw a lecturer outside of university. She's not my academic advisor but she teaches my course. I spoke to her about the future, I don't have any clue about what I want to do once I graduate.

I do know that I want to do an MA and a PhD at some point, I don't know if I want to do it now. Whilst speaking to my lecturer about this, she informed me that now is a good time to think about what I want to do after I graduated as it's never too early to start planning and preparing.

Another option was to take a year out to work once I graduate and save a bit of money for my MA. I'd like to get some experience in my field, and would hope to be able to work a job within my field, there's not a lot of jobs going though.
Original post by estrangedstu
I'm in my second year student, I recently saw a lecturer outside of university. She's not my academic advisor but she teaches my course. I spoke to her about the future, I don't have any clue about what I want to do once I graduate.
I do know that I want to do an MA and a PhD at some point, I don't know if I want to do it now. Whilst speaking to my lecturer about this, she informed me that now is a good time to think about what I want to do after I graduated as it's never too early to start planning and preparing.
Another option was to take a year out to work once I graduate and save a bit of money for my MA. I'd like to get some experience in my field, and would hope to be able to work a job within my field, there's not a lot of jobs going though.

The best time, probably around 14.

The next best time, probably now.

As you didn't mention what your degree or field is, it's a little difficult to say what you should do. If you want to work in an area in business, you would find at a lot of the theory won't work for example and you would know what you want to believe or choose to study. On the other hand if your degree is in law, then you can go into work but it's not likely going to impact what you do in your postgrad.

If your work is in a very competitive area, getting an internship in the summer in your second year is probably the most ideal thing to have done. Since you are too late for that and you want to do an internship, then you will have to shop around with a lot of difficulty to find the sort of internship that you would want.

I think one of the prime questions that I would ask is why do you want to delay your postgrad and is there any advantage to doing this. Another question is what do you think you want and how does your life look like in the next 5-10 years. What does your ideal life look like and why does it look like the way it does?

We probably need more of the specifics before we can talk about this more or provide any further insights.

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