Hello! I’ve just finished my first year at the University of St Andrews in Scotland and it was hands-down the worst and most discouraging year of my life. I wanted to transfer out second semester, but my grades were so bad at the end of first semester so I did significantly raise them second term (2.0 to 3.2 GPA). For the past few years, makeup artistry and the beauty industry has been my number one passion and is truly the only thing I see pursuing. This is the most highlighted reason my grades were so poor, compared to my high school grades/SATS (3.85 + 2050).
I ultimately plan on transferring to FIT, since it’s close to home, financially feasible, and integrated the liberal arts which is quite important to me as well. I have a wonderfully long argument for choosing FIT and my program in particular.
Here’s my dilemma:
I don’t know if taking a gap year and doing service work abroad will help or hurt me, along with a full time job. I absolutely can not go back to St Andrews since it exacerbated my bipolar disorder and I, along with my entire family, would be genuinely concerned about my mental state.
My main question is will taking a productive gap year to really focus on myself and what I NEED for once will help or hurt me or just not really matter?
Also, is FIT still possible for me? (I would have to do all 4 years, even though I already competed a full year at university.)
Thank You!
Take the gap year. Work on your mental health, your makeup portfolio, and your transfer applications. Make some money if you can. You do not need to do service work to try to improve your transfer application. For design, your portfolio is much, much more important.
If you don’t need a portfolio, then just spend that time making money and working on your applications. Work experience - even in something not related to the beauty industry - will be very helpful to have when you begin your marketing studies.
Seems like you should take the gap year.
Good that you were able to see that it exacerbated your bipolar disorder. I don’t really understand the decisions made by students and families when there is a history of mental health issues and/or learning disabilities and yet students decide to go to competitive schools at great distances from their support system. Students who got though high school with all kinds of supports are not going to fair well hours from home in a competitive environment even if the school has some supports earmarked for mental health or learning issues. It is astute of you to recognize that and take adaptive action.
^ it’s not distance per se- you can be far and at a college with lots of resources.
The problem is that St Andrews is very hands off, has not many amenities/resourced compared to a US university, is dark with short days (not much daylight), and in a small, remote village which is wonderful to visit but harder to live in day in day out, even with the golf, the history, the waterfront. Sometimes kids are blinded by a University 's prestige and forget that environment matters (not saying that’s what happened here) or forget that American residential colleges are rather unique and universities abroad will be very different.
Op: take the gap year. Try to work for a company or a business.
3.2 from St Andrews is actually quite good (the grading scale isn’t used quite the same as here) and if someone wants to know why you left you say the culture shock was too big, or you missed your family, or whatever, everyone will accept that, no need to speak about grades or bipolar disorder.