Note: This month’s blogpost is an excerpt from Better Breed’s “What Next?” Publication. It is dedicated to all those students who just completed the A’ Levels and are looking forward to grander things. Please share to someone you know….
Does school ever end? Well, yes it does, but learning shouldn’t. You did know that right? And do you know that learning is something that should make up most of our lives irrespective of if we are in a classroom or out? Now don’t get worried, you may be through with high-school but not with learning. You should never be through with that! You may wonder why? Well the answer is simple. To stop learning would mean you stop using your brain. A lot of people confuse learning with being schooled. They are wrong, but hopefully with the help of this newsletter you won’t make the same mistake.
If you are reading this you have probably just completed High-school, wrote the A-levels and between resting and forgetting all that you crammed to write, you may occasionally be thinking about what’s next. Well this is going to help you. You see you should not just “occasionally” think of what next, you should plan for it. Remember the saying often repeated before GCE “Proper preparation prevents poor performance” ? Guess what? It applies to all aspects of life, not just the GCE.
Yes, you need to prepare for what’s next. High-school is definitely not the end of education (learning as we established before never ends) But the question is what is next after High-school? If you don’t know or you automatically say “University” well then just keep reading you need a lot more info!
There are a lot of options on how to further your education after high-school (you will see a list of some options in Cameroon on pg5&6). The main goal of education is to equip the student with skills which they could use productively to support themselves and be functional in the society. There are other objectives of course, but that is the main reason we go to school. So that we can have what we need to work. Knowing that we get educated to eventually work and support ourselves, isn’t it funny that so few of us know what we want work as?
Have you ever thought about it? What would you like to be employed as in the future? You can’t know what you have to study, how you should study, where you should study, whether at all you should study until you know what you want to be! Its your goal that determines how you get there.
It is after knowing exactly what you want to be that you can tell when your time in school ends. You see, someone who wants to be a Medical Doctor (General practitioner) can estimate seven more years of school after High-School and he or she would need to enroll in an accredited (recognized) Medical school to achieve this goal.
But to become an accountant you may need to go to business school instead or enroll in an accounting department of a university and could achieve their goal in four years. And someone who wants to be a professional driver may not need any of the above, but rather six months to a year of Driving School to know how to drive different vehicles from a taxi to a shipping trailer. So you’re done with high-school? It is at this turning point in your education that you will need to make decisions that will impact the rest of your life. There are no quick answers or notes to cram so as to “get it right”. You will need to search yourself, find out what you are good at, what would fulfill you and what you can imagine doing everyday for most of your life.
When you know what that is, you have more work; find out how to achieve that goal, seeks advice form people who are doing what you wish to do in future. At this point you will have to seek your knowledge to pass life’s test, there are no teachers to hand the notes to you as to what choices to make.
So you’re done with high-school? Welcome to the Real World