It’s that time of year. The excitement of beginning the school year, meeting new people and learning new things has faded and you’ve probably either just had mock exams if you’re doing A-levels or you’ve had a shed load of coursework to do and deadlines to meet. In short, you’ve probably just realised that learning isn’t something that teachers do to you but something that you are in charge of and maybe you want to drop out of college.Lots of young people drop out of courses in January – maybe it’s because the work is harder than they expected it to be, maybe it’s because they’ve had a break for Christmas and just don’t fancy going back or perhaps a Christmas job and they’ve realised they like earning money, or maybe it’s cold and dark in January and getting going and motivating yourself is just too hard.Don't quit nowEither way, you’ve come so far – don’t be a quitter! – If for no other reason than this – when you sit in front of your future employer and they ask you ‘why didn’t you stick at it?’ do you really think that they will be impressed that the going got tough and you gave up? – of course not.EmployabilityPart of being a good employee is being resilient and dedicated to getting a job done, not to mention the fact that no one wants to feel that their employees might decide to jack it all in and let them down when they most need them.Sticking at it is as much of an employability (and life) skill as good timekeeping – so, if you really want to drop out of college think about doing this at the end of the year, when you can really say that you gave it your all – doing so has the advantage of providing you with an opportunity to develop your problem solving skills too – try to identify what is at the route of you wanting to drop out and see if you can either fix that or ask for some help with fixing it.
