The Perils of Real World Experience

Stay in School.

This public service announcement brought to you by Chris M Johnson.

As students who are going on co-op here at RIT they always caution us to stay away from the co-op to full-time promotion. It is common for a student to leave for a co-op and while working they are offered a full-time position. This can be a very tempting offer.

When you do a quick on-the-spot rationalization, on the one hand you could go back to school, keep taking classes, paying tuition, and dealing with tests and homework and on the other hand you could ditch all that and just start working and making money right now. On the surface it seems like a no brainer.

And while I think that a full-time position would be very appealing to me (since I am definitely ready to be done with school) I think that the biggest motivator for me not to stay in the work force is the fact that I have gotten this close already. 3 years into the process, why would I give up now after spending all that time, effort, and money.

Don’t sell yourself short. In the grand scheme of things, unless you’ve got the next brilliant idea that little piece of paper means everything. (And no I’m not referring to a dollar bill)