Have you ever taken a chance?

[Provost Harrison]

Yeah, I am British...and teaching isn't my cup of tea and I've realised in recent month, nor is research

[Starchild]

I left my highschool in Canada (for a variety of reasons) and moved to England to attend Sixth Form. It means I'm basically repeating Year 12 and I'll be the oldest person in the student body but it puts me in a far stronger position for getting into university.

I've had to deal with leaving my mum and sister, my best most loved friends, and the country I knew to move to a "home" country that I've only spent a few summers in, living with my grandparents, and having to make new friends.

Fortunately, it's worked out spectacularly so far.

Je ne regrette rein.

[Pekka]

I advice you to join the army and go do some fighting in Iraq. Put yourself in dangerous places.. if you have near death experience, I think you know at that same second what you really want to do with your life.. Or get wounded and then you go 'Oooh all I ever really wanted to do was teaching!'. Then you know.

[Provost Harrison]

My politics and pacifism get in the way there

[Pekka]

Starchild, now that is taking chances. Sounds good, and you're making the best out of it.. that's cool. I'm pretty much the old guy too when I enter.. and I hope to really enter the university this time. Maybe I should send applications to UK schools too..

I'd be closer to Provost Harrison, if we decided to go on that killing spree anyway..

[Pekka]

But it's all good, since I'd be 27 or something, tutoring these 19 year old hot chicks who just got in and party with them all night long, every day. I heard uni girls like to get drunk, naked and go down on each other. So that's not a bad place to be for near 30 year old guys.

Provost Harrison, ok.. Well I think near death experience or getting wounded badly will do the trick too.

[Starchild]

Originally posted by Pekka
Starchild, now that is taking chances.

Once you've gone and kissed another boy, nothing else seems that frightening anymore.

[Pekka]

I think I'll have that near death experience instead of that one .

[Az]

Bored, and feel like your life is going nowhere?

Join the French Foreign legion!

[Pekka]

Azazel, Yeah.. sure.. but it's not exactly getting stationed in exotic places, and fighting, experiences and all that.. That's what I wish it would be, but it's not..

[Meticulous Man]

I had planned to study Political Science at Helsinki University, too, but then I went on this "preppauskurssi" which is a course where you prepare yourself for the entrance exam. I noticed that many of the other participants of that course were much smarter than I, possibly politically active themselves, that they had unsuccessfully tried to get in numerous times before, and that they had with fanatical meticulosity memorized the books the exam questions were based on. Yet only a few of them would pass the exam. If I remember correctly, the guy who ran the course said that he had himself read the Pol Sci book 13 times before getting in. He also told that your getting through the exam could well depend on whether you remembered correctly the birth date of some guy called Jan-Magnus Jansson who was briefly mentioned in the book. It was ludicrous, really.

After a while, I started looking for alternative education opportunities, and found out that you can actually get into the Pol Sci faculty of the Swedish Åbo Akademi in Turku without participating in any entrance exam at all. Guess it has to be easier for those Swedes because otherwise they wouldn't be able to maintain their disproportional representation in the Finnish political and business life. They did have a Swedish test for Finnish speakers, though, but it wasn't all that difficult. Certainly not as difficult as Helsinki University's entrance exams are. I don't know why there aren't more Finns that use this opportunity instead of banging their heads against a brick wall.

Pekka: http://www.cs.abo.fi/

[Provost Harrison]

They seem to make life so hard for everyone nowadays (like with those entrance exams and crap). People need to start living their lives for themselves and not having career dictate every little minute of their day. Work to live, not live to work!

[germanos]

Pekka:

Yes, I've done it, several times in fact, and never regretted one of them, even though sometimes the outcome was not what I was looking for, but that was more since I didn't know what to look for in the first place.


I have quit my (architecture) studies with only the final test (design) to go. Then, after a few months, I took one of the many opportunaties that came along (now that I had an open mind again). I went for a job in Syria , working in archaeology.

The next year I went back there, since I had to leave home for 18 months, in order to avoid the draft. I had secured 6 month work beforehand, and had to figure out how to survive there longer on the spot.

Turned out to be OK. Ended up in Beirut, Amman and other places.

Now I'm almost ten years further down the road, and now I'm directing excavations in Holland. I love my job, and I make a very good living out of it.

Taking chances has served me well.
(although it hasn't been easy )


Pekka: what have you got to loose? Nothing much from what you write. And even if you do, you seem to be very willing to put that what you have to loose on the line.

Go man, take your chance.

[Saint Marcus]

I know how you feel Pekka. I'm thinking about doing the same.

[Provost Harrison]

Well I have a similar sentiment. Luckily I am making more money than I spend and I have been able to put it aside. So if I haven't found a job yet I have enough money, I am going to bugger off round the world somewhere and f**k it...I just find it all so depressing and frustrating