It’s been around one month since I graduated and started working life. The transition has been both easier and harder than expected in various areas – here are some random thoughts on my experiences so far…

First off, for those of you who don’t know me personally, I am 28 and I graduated as a civil engineer in data technology on February 4th 2008 from the University of Southern Denmark (more specifically the Maersk Institute). I started working in Copenhagen on February 20th (this is what I spent some of the time in between with) but still living in Odense, so I catch the train every morning (more personal info here).

Now, what’s different now from when I was studying? A lot…

Living by a real schedule
Yes, “you get up every morning and go to your classes”… But if you’re like most students, you don’t. You have (probably a lot) less than 37 hours of classes every week and you still don’t manage to get there every day on time for all of them. But when you start working, it is so much easier to get up and I don’t know why. The days are much longer, i.e. I get up at 5 every day, catch the train just before 6 and I’m home at 18:15 at the earliest. Every day. And it’s no problem!
Now, I’m not the most organized person in the world (those of you who know me well, stop laughing). But by having to live by such a schedule every day, everything else becomes much more structured automatically. And that is really great… (an understanding and very helpful girlfriend also helps quite a bit)

No more “pet stores”
Another beauty of starting to work is the essence of the word itself: You actually do work. Not some fictional pet store, file sharing service, robot vision etc. that will never be used for anything other than showing off at the exam (although, you probably save the project in a folder imagining that you’re going to develop it into this new amazing program, right? Just delete it already…).
It is so much more satisfactory to do real work. When you log on to a system, you know that you have to watch your step, really think about what you’re going to do, because people are actually going to use this. One of my upcoming tasks will be to create an interface for a payroll system for a big multinational company. The interface will be used all over the world. Not only will what I program be used – it’ll be pretty darn important! And that’s fun to program…

You’re SO far from done learning
You’ve been studying for x years (x=6 in my case) at the university and you start to work and you’re pretty comfortable in some areas of your expertise. You’d think you were ready to start working, as you’ve spent the last six years learning, but no! In my case, I had to understand a new language and a new system (SAP, biggest system in the world)… Most of what you learn at the university is very theoretical/general concepts – now it’s time to actually learn something specific…
And on top of that…

You’ll only use 20% of what you’ve learnt
Or at least that’s my experience – it depends on what you end up working with of course… I have learnt so much about mathematics, physics, robots etc. that I will NEVER EVER use! The 20% mentioned are from the actual courses I have taken that actually involve programming or something related. But the good news is…

You actually use more like 80%
At times I wish the universities would work a lot closer with businesses to teach the students something more relevant (SAP being a good example). But on the other hand, I have no doubt that my way of thinking, approaching and analyzing new projects, considering alternative solutions, the ability to quickly learn a new language and so on are a product of that combination of courses.

Money
Finally, after 28 years of existence, I have finally started to make money, i.e. the bank finally has proof that I will actually start to pay off some of the loans. But, as expected, you just spend more money (I just bought a new TV for the full amount of my pay-check). Overall, it is great to finally see some money going into the bank account…

Lastly: Appreciating when you’re at home
Wow… I have really never appreciated the weekend until now! And especially all the bank holidays! When I was studying I never paid attention to these days. I always had some shopping planned those days (for some reason) and I’d always be really annoyed that all the shops were closed… Now they are the best thing ever!
And honestly, just coming home and sitting down on the couch is unbelievably satisfying when you’ve been away for 12 hours…

Those were the thoughts that I could gather on this train trip! Overall, it’s great to finally start working… There are of course negative sides to it, but they are far smaller than the positive sides. Feel free to throw in a comment or two… Questions are welcome!