To study further or not

It’s that time again. University application time. September approaches, and thousands of students all over the world are either applying for their first year at university/college, or are preparing to compile application files to send to universities for next year (in Anglo-Saxon countries mostly).

I’m about to enter my fifth year at university, and though theoretically this application business should be well behind me, I find myself struggling with it once more. This time, however, it has an added twist: should I study for an extra degree or not?

Hopefully, by this time next year, I will have ended my “Masters” cycle, earning myself a nice Law degree. After five years of studying (more so than after gaining a first degree after three years of studying), I would be ready to work in just about any law firm, or to set up a practice of my own, or to start working as a company legal advisor or something else. Not that I plan on doing any of these things (I’m still unsure as to what to do), but these are some of the possibilities.

However, this is not a fixed future. Some decide to take a year or two off before starting to work. Some decide to do something completely different. And some decide to study some more for an extra degree.

So the question has come to pester me: should I study further?

Where a CV is concerned, diplomas are always welcome, though many other fields (work experience & languages notably) are also seen as very important.

What about the personal level?

I’ve been trying to tally up the things I like and hate about university, and it boils down to three things: I like to learn, I like the fact that I discover things I enjoy and things I don’t enjoy, and I hate exams.

Through my internship, I discovered that the first two things were very much present in the world of work. Rats. Does that mean studying further would be of no added value to me, on a personal level?

Looking closer, the programmes corresponding to the Flemish concept of “Master na Master” (“Master after Master”; basically, a second Master’s degree) offer the possibility to specialise in a certain field. Good. That could be useful.

Specialise in what?

I long thought I should specialise in European law, but what with the internship and my “memoir” (Master’s paper), I’ve set the idea aside: European law is great if you work in/with the EU Institutions or in competition law. Outside these two fields, it becomes much more abstract.

So now I must decide, something at which I’ve never been brilliant. The problem is that I have yet to find what I really like in Law: I know that I don’t like a couple of things, but other than that, I find most subjects interesting, one way or another. A friend told me he could see me doing IT law, but the only IT law I’ve done so far was contract-related, which wasn’t quite the same thing.

Still, I think it means I do want to study further. I just don’t know what quite yet.

I guess I’d better buckle up and decide fast, because the UK application procedures open very soon for the 2009-2010 academic year. And with any luck, I might be able to get into somewhere like Cambridge, LSE or Oxford this time around.

Unlike five years ago. Though I really believe missing out on OxCam was a tiny loss compared to the multilingual and multidisciplinary studies I’ve had here in Belgium (which were, on top of that, very inexpensive thanks to the Belgian system).

At least, this time, I know that if I am to study further, I want to do it in an internationally important university. Here’s to hoping!

/temporary end of random mode

To study further or not

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