Officially Finished College

So this week, I officially finished my last ever college exam. It was honestly the fastest four years of my life and while I'm sad to be moving on I'm also beyond excited to start my new job.

It was even nicer to finish being awarded with a commendation for outstanding academic performance. This was organised among our lecturers over the years who go out of their way to reward high performing grades over the 4 years in both Marketing streams. They even organised a small awards ceremony, with food and drink for the entire course. Honestly I don't know where else you would see it! Choosing to go to WIT was by far the best decision I made.

My Course

For the past four years I've been studying a Bachelor or Arts in Marketing & Digital Media in Waterford Institute of Technology. The course is full time for four years, and works completely for preparing you to work in the digital market. We had so many interesting modules from creativity and design which was all about being as creative as possible in the advertising market. We learned a lot of Adobe skills like Photoshop for example with this, that has been so useful already with the rest of college.

We had some tougher classes like accounting and financial management for example. While these were tough, our lecturers always had the best intentions of passing the class. Some put on extra classes, allowed for practice tests etc to make our exams as manageable as possible.

Another reason I would recommend this course is the option to do work placement of Erasmus for a semester. I chose to go on work placement for seven months. I went to International Living and worked as a Digital Marketing Intern. Thankfully, I had done this as I was offered a job with the company straight after college, so no job hunt at all!

Tips for Picking the Right Course:

1. Consider What Interests You - Subjects/Hobbies

Think carefully about what course your going to do because you will spend nearly 30 hours every week for 3-4 years doing this. So, make sure it's something you enjoy. Consider what subjects you thoroughly enjoyed in school, maybe some extra activities you took part in. But also consider what kind of job you will be looking to have in the future, an office 9-5 or something a little more flexible.

I always loved business, it was my favourite subject. I enjoyed everything about social media so for me this course adding practicality to something I loved was a no-brainer, especially with the 6 month placement as I thought this was an amazing opportunity.

2. Consider Location

For me location was a big one. It just wasn't feasible for me to move away from home, so thankfully my dream course was right here at home. I will say college life is entirely different if you move away or stay at home. For me, there was just no way I could've drank 3-4 nights every week I would have been dead by now. So whatever kind of experience you want the next few years, choose wisely.

3. Work Experience

This works two ways from transition year experience of what you liked or didn't like. If you had a bad experience somewhere, realistically you won't be returning to that area for the rest of your life.

I would also consider the option to take placement when in college. Not a lot of courses offer this. But I feel like it's so important as 1. you get an idea of what the workplace will be like and 2. there's a better chance of getting a job straight out of college if you have experience behind you.

4. Requirements & Syllabus

Do you need to have higher level subjects? high points? or even a language to avail of the course. Study everything in depth, but remember if it doesn't work out there are probably 6 million other options out there to get you to your dream job.

Hope this helps make your tough decision.

Char

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