7. Conclusion

The goal at the end of the day is to make yourself as visible to prospective employers as possible. In most cases a graduate with experience backed up by skills learned alongside a degree course and a willingness to continually better themselves will (usually) go further than one who just leaves university with a textbook education. Don’t take my word for it, go ask some of the prospective employers out there what they find with graduates.

According to the boffins in Westminster we are in a “recession” and thanks to the knock on effect graduates have now joined the ranks of people struggling to find work but graduates still have a trump card. Companies are still willing to hire on raw recruits with a view to mould them into good employees, the downside is that many are being stricter about what kind of graduate they will take on. What I hope I have conveyed in this post is that while your degree is important, there are things you can do alongside it which may improve your chances of finding not only a job, but a job that YOU will enjoy doing and will find rewarding.

Perhaps I was wrong to spend the time I did looking outside my degree, maybe it was exactly what I needed. I cannot say what is best for you to do, you are an individual and ultimately you lead your own life, what I have wanted to do is present my experiences which I feel have been a positive impact on my professional career. Time will tell if I did the right thing in my life but as much as I have complained, fought and struggled I would be lying if I said the last 4 years were a waste and that I had not enjoyed them.

So, with this post I kill two birds with one stone (I need to find a better expression), I post some advice and I also get some closure on my course. I can wake up tomorrow a graduate and not a student (granted that means paying council tax and I lose my student discounts next month), a young professional eager to get started in the very big, wide world of computer software engineering.

I would like to thank the lecturers and staff from the School of Computing at the University of Dundee and would especially like to thank Louisa Cross for her help and support throughout the years, she is the best school secretary a university could hope for. I would also like to give special thanks to Andy Cobley for being a really good lecturer and for his help supervising my honours project. Finally I would like to thank Janet Hughes for not only helping me get oriented on the course and for getting me through intact, but also for supervising my project and simply having faith in me even when I lacked faith in myself.

I wish you all the best of luck in whatever you go on to do (staff and students a like) and if you reside in the Tayside area do keep an eye out for Scottish Developers events in the area in the future