djaustin – thems some good reading skills you’ve got going on there….

I know, apologies, read from a Blackberry and missed the First Year part, not recommended! The sentiment stands; changing course is much easier and more common than appreciated. Talk to Student Services but don’t leave it too late in the year (I did).

Pretty much all jobs become dull and repetitive, but a dull job is a helluva lot better than no job. If you dont actually know what you want to do just get your head down and stick with what you’ve got until you do decide.

get a D in physics and you can do radiography?

OP I hear you however I did a ‘Marketing degree’ which in the real world is **** all use.

It was sort of boring doing the course. Who else enjoys coursework or sat in lectures?

However look at the rest of your life FIRST before you decided to drop out. Everyone has questions and doubts.

Think again first, did anyone on here enjoy attending lectures/deadlines etc etc?

A few people on here will have studied Accountancy, Pharmacy etc and have a ‘job for life’ which enables them not to have to drift between jobs, have the uncertainty and have a certain standard of living.

We work to live. A stable/decent job pays for the fun parts of life.

Im also at portsmouth uni and in my second year. I think i take a different approach to a lot of my friends in that if i was in your position i would just finish the degree to get it out of the way. However i dont know how logn yours is, if its medical it could be hugely long?

Just so you know, portsmouth uni have said multiple times if you start uni before 2012 your fees will NOT increase for the remainder of your time there. There are some people still going from 2005 on the £1,300 + interest pricing scheme.

also i seriously hope you didnt join the MTB club.

Hora +1

can’t be bothered reading everyones posts (sorry everyone)

Basically, my ex is a radiographer, she didn’t enjoy it at uni very much. Found it boring and repetitive and found everyone elses courses more interesting. after graduation she worked as an NHS radiographer for a year or two and now she works for BUPA part time. She has a big house, a nice car, goes skiing every winter for two weeks and beach holiday every summer for 2 weeks. She earns more than I do and i work a lot harder than she does.

I don’t know if she’s happy with her life, I’m sure her job is still boring, but it gives her the time and money to do the things she wants to do.

I hated uni, dropped out and joined the ambulance service, spent 8 years trying to get on a paramedic course as that was “my dream”. Well, now I’m a paramedic, most of the time its quite boring and repetitive, all my friends get paid more than me and I’ve not ad christmas off since 2003. That said, I’ll never leave as the money is ok, i get lots of time off, when its good its very good and I like to talk to old people.

Jobs aren’t for life, but skills are. Train as a radiographer then go work for the UN in horrible parts of the world? Travel, work in australia? drop out of life, spend all your time riding your bike, safe in the knowledge that when you need the cash you can work in any hospital in the UK?

Or, be like everyone else, concentrate on drinking, pulling, joining clubs and learning about yourself, whilst trying to get a degree at the same time.

Or, be like everyone else, concentrate on drinking, pulling, joining clubs and learning about yourself, whilst trying to get a degree at the same tim…..

then post-Uni live like a Student still in a shared-house with other transient Graduates in their early 30’s with a history of moving between jobs with student loans following them around. Still the benefit of this is you could still smoke weed and pretend you are into ‘alternative/new off the wall music).

become a pimp

Da cheddah will flow, the wimminz will know who da boss, and… you get your own teritory/corner. what more could a man ask for?

If you stick with it you’ll have the skills to do a job that you can do any where in the world. My mum and dad are back from a year in New Zealand, she worked a couple of different clinics and will be back out there in january for another 6 months.

Maybe talk with a few radiographers on the placement, you might prefer one of the more specialist areas of work. Mum mainly does mamography.

At the end of the day it’s your life so switch to something else if you want but be sure to explore your options and bare in mind that you can change your job or re-skill at any time in your life (it may prove harder later but still do able). If you can’t think of what you want to change to then stick with radiography while you figure out what else you may fancy, it can be handy to have some direction while you’re unsure.

It took me until I was 40 to find out what I really wanted to do.
In my twenties I turned down a place at uni and ended up in a succession of jobs that I ended up hating or didn’t pay enough for me not to feel permanently skint. I found out in that time that A-levels (good or bad, I had B C C) are worth diddly squat in the job market. They are just a passport to a degree course.
At 30 I went to uni as a mature student and afterwards still ended up in jobs I didn’t particularly like. The difference was that they paid enough to allow me to set myself up in self-employment by the time I was 40.

The message here is that if you stick with your uni course for now you will VASTLY increase your options afterwards. As you learn more about what you are doing you will become more confident which will help.

Maybe talk with a few radiographers on the placement, you might prefer one of the more specialist areas of work. Mum mainly does mamography.

Tell me that’s not a dream job for a 19 year old male………..

Yeah I dunno if mammography is women only but the vast majority of women being scanned are 50+ hardly the stuff of 19 year old dreams…

OP fancy doing data entry for the first few years after living Uni? Do you think there are glamorous jobs out there for all Grads?

That or you want to go on a gap year before starting work (but you cant afford/have debts) and there just seems soo much competition for all the Grad/entry jobs as nowadays of course there are FAR MORE Grads out there with similar non-technical degrees chasing entry level schemes.

Suck up your boredom now. Do the job. Trust me. I went into sales -**** ball-busting ****.

Uni just isnt for everyone you know, plus you will end up with a shed load of debt for your troubles. Try the vocational route via an apprenticeship, you will learn a trade which you can fall back on, earn whilst you learn and depending which field you choose possibly stay away from the ghastly general public…thats what i did and im not rich, dont love my job phenominally but its ok and i can live with it and every day is still a challenge and fairly interesting.

op – have you considering just spending some time working out why you don’t like it? i work in radiology (but not radiographer/radiologist and can’t say I would fancy radiography as a career, BUTa mate of mine who found out I worked in the area asked if I was qualified and was prepared to offer £600/day IIRC for me to work in industrial radiography. Sadly, I’m not qualified so tough. Anyway, my point is NHS trained radiographers are seen as the best, like army trained engineers – if your problem is the people, work out how to deal with it, if your problem is the job, take a year out and think about what you want to do, but remember no-one says it has to be NHS and patients (which would do my head in TBH, I have to listen to enough whinging from clinicians without listening to patients as well)

Work isn’t supposed to be fun thats why it’s called work.

If you had an idea for something that you definitely want to do, I would say change courses. How about just keeping going with this until you do ? Babies and bath water as somebody else has said.

You don’t say how happy you are in the rest of your life, it is easy to focus on stuff we can change when the cause is maybe something we think we can’t.

I advise sticking with it, but giving it lots of thought, talking to people etc. And getting drunk loads more you’re 19 !!

http://www.halotrust.org/home/recruitment.aspx

thank you all for such helpful responses, unfortunately personal life is pretty bleak anyway which is making everything seem worse than it actually is ..

after reading these responses I actually feel slightly more cheerful about things .. I’ll certainly look at other courses, but radiography isn’t a bad fall back option, to be honest ha. Meehaja and hexhamstu, thankyou in particular, not taking anything away from anyone else!

And a D in physics indeed, I am better than that but hated college ha, I suppose learning isn’t for me .. oh well. I was predicted a B though! 😐

I shall come back on in the new year and let you all know what I’ve decided to do.
Thankyou all again, very useful.

Be a product designer or making prototype for all.

focus on vaginas – there is a midwife shortage

As the man said to the OP, “Are you bragging or complaining?”

Sure wish I was 19 again and had the opportunity to make that kind of decision.

At that age I didn’t have a clue what I planned to do with my life. It turned out that I could never have imagined what I ended up doing, because those jobs didn’t even exist then.

but in fact quite the opposite has happened; it’s dull and repetitive

for most people that’s called work!!

and I’ve realised I’m not keen on working with the general public if I can help it ..

That’s a shame. I used to be a really self absorbed type. I’ve found working around and with all sorts of people really good and made me a (cough!) better person.

god I’m pathetic.

Nonsense. You’re 19 and a smart person, unchallenged and you don’t know what you want to do. Been there, got the T-Shirt.

Work isn’t supposed to be fun thats why it’s called work.

This is the wrong message. Let’s assume there are two kinds of fun: fun now, and fun later. Fun now is: bedding a nice girl, having a drink and a laff with mates, racing a bike down a trail; the fluffy stuff. Fun later is: committing to a challenge, pushing yourself, struggling and suffering somewhat, failing and learning, or succeeding and feeling worthwhile; growing.

Good work is a kind of “fun later”. If the prospect of this kind of radiotherapy (whatever) work bores you now, how do you imagine to sustain a 40+ year career doing it?

The reality of any work is that some of it is dull and a trial. But that’s OK as long as you feel it is worthwhile at it’s heart. I think you have already decided you picked the wrong course and line-of-work. I don’t know why you did that – perhaps weak A’level grades, limited choices and pushy parents? who knows?

I does not matter what your parents, peers or the more judgemental voices on here think. It only matters what you think. You just need to find your own way. I encourage you to think and find your way.

The decision will come easily when you find what it is you want. And once you have, you will change and fully commit to a new direction and grow and succeed – fun later 🙂

BTW. My grades were much worse than yours, and I also had limited choices and badly needed to leave “home”. I also went to Portsmouth and was kicked off my degree course in the second year for being unmotivated and lazy. It was only then that I realised I wanted to get that degree and got on with getting it – a 2.1 in Engineering and Engineering Systems. I’ve been a software and systems engineer since 1992 and have have been developing spacecraft systems for the last 10. I don’t know how the hell that happened, but I’m glad it did.

What I’m saying is: Have a bit of faith in yourself and in the future.

A degree in itself gives you lots of options in later life. You’ll regret dropping out completely IMO and unless you become a successful entrepreneur your lifetime earnings are likely to be significantly lower
That said, if you’re not enjoying it, consider doing something else.

IMO few people end up doing a career in their degree subject and in any case at 19 hardly anyone knows what they really want to do, so don’t beat yourself up about that.
My advice:
1. Speak to student services
2. Have a chat to someone well into a career in radiology and get their perspective
3. Don’t let personal things confused with degree/career satisfaction

Even the most successful of my friends grumble about their jobs loads – whilst I would never say you’re expecting too much in wanting a job you love, few people are in that happy place. But the £££ does come in handy when you have a hobby like mountain biking 🙂
Good luck