12 May 2020

Have you ever heard somebody refer to their degree as a “piece of paper”?

After finishing uni, a serious number of people chuck their graduation pics onto Instagram with a caption along those lines – expressing how all they’ve got to show for their years of hard work and dedication is an A4-sized certificate that their Mum can put on the fridge.

Of course, most people aren’t actually disappointed with their degrees (you don’t chuck it on the Gram if it makes you look bad) – they’re simply being modest and trying to downplay a significant life achievement that they’re not-so-secretly super proud of.

But it does make you wonder – what do you actually get out of a uni degree?

Surely not just a piece of paper.

Let’s use Avondale University College as an example and see what else you can get out of a degree.

You build relationships

One of the most important parts of going to uni is the relationships you build. You learn how to form them, how to develop them, and how to keep them strong.

For starters, there are the mates you’ll make that you’ll have for the rest of your life. However, while making friends is an amazing life skill that you’ll definitely develop at uni, friendships aren’t the only type of relationships you’ll forge throughout your degree.

You’ll also discover the importance of professional relationships. Knowing how to best interact with your tutors, your lecturers, and the other members of your group assignments will help you develop skills that are absolutely crucial to landing your first job out of uni.

It’s not always what you know, it’s who you know.

When you treat everyone with respect and go the extra mile to keep a relationship healthy, it’s astonishing what can happen. When a grad opportunity or a cool internship pops up, your teachers might think first of the students they admire the most. Or even your old classmates might remember you in a few years’ time when their company starts looking to hire more employees. You never know.

At Avondale, their smaller class sizes mean you get to know everyone in the classroom exceptionally well. This in turn can lead to opportunity and before you know it your degree won’t just get you a piece of paper, it’ll land you a job before you even graduate!

You learn more than just career skills

Going to uni isn’t like high school where you have classes every day from 9 to 3, and teachers nagging you to get your homework done.

Nope, when you get to uni it’s all up to you. Your timetable can be scattered throughout the week, and if you don’t submit your work, then they fail you. There’s nobody calling you (or your parents) up to try and kick you into gear.

That’s why you don’t just learn what’s in your textbooks. Throughout the course of your degree, the number of invaluable life skills that you’ll pick up will make you a completely unrecognisable person by the time you graduate.

From next-level time management skills and super productivity, to the ability to collaborate with others like a pro, you’ll become not just knowledgeable in the area you studied, but a weapon at life in general.

Going to uni teaches you to be independent, and that’s something you’ll need if you wanna be successful in any career.

All of the courses at Avondale ensure that you don’t just leave with a bunch of knowledge. Even if you end up in a career completely unrelated to what you studied, you’ll still have a bunch of skills from your time at Avondale that you can use throughout a bunch of different areas of your life.

You look after your well-being

When you’re getting slammed with assessments and study, it’s easy for your mental health to be swept under the rug. You think you’ll get back to it when you have more time and, in the meantime, you bottle it down where the pressure does even more damage.

When you’re at uni, your newfound independence causes you to learn a lot about your mental health. What keeps you healthy, what keeps you happy, and what keeps you sane. Your degree will put you under stress at times, and you’ll learn more about yourself than you ever did at school.

If you head to Avondale, you’ll find that they want you to stay on top of your well-being, and they offer a bunch of support to make sure that you do. What keeps you happy and healthy differs from person to person but using any available support will help you figure what works for you personally.

If you’re interested in doing a course that will give you more than just a degree, then you should definitely check out what Avondale University College has to offer. Their courses will teach you just as much about life as they do the degree!