Walking around uni and hearing about how people love their degree while you’re constantly questioning yours is really rough. It’s like every day is Valentine’s Day and you can’t get a date.

It’s hard to know if you’re just in a rut or if you should cut your losses and run. Here’s some tips if you need to figure it out.

#1 Get Some Work Experience

Before you chuck it all in, get some work experience in your chosen profession. What you do in a day of work in your field is probably very different to what you do every day in your degree. You don’t really know if you don’t like it until you try it.

It might turn out that you love the industry, but just hate studying. So continuing to stick it out until graduation is probably worthwhile.

#2 Take A Semester Off

There’s nothing like taking a semester or two off to put things in perspective.

Alleviating the pressure of balancing uni, work, extra-curricular crap, and something resembling a social life will help you self-examine and decide what’s important and what really isn’t.

Chances are, you’re really young and you’ve got heaps of time to devote yourself to the grind. There’s no harm in taking some time out for your self-discovery, gap year, Eat, Pray, Love, movie montage moment.

It might turn out that this time off is exactly what you needed to recharge your batteries and remind yourself that there’s other things to life than sleep.

#3 Consider Your Options. If Not This, Then What?

Let’s just say hypothetically, you’ve ditched your degree. Now what? Are you going to search for an entry-level job? Do you want to start another degree? What about an apprenticeship?

Jumping is great, but you should probably have some idea of where you’re going to land.

#4 Talk To Someone

Although it can feel like it, you’re not the only one to have ever felt this way. Talk to the people around you – lecturers, tutors, friends, career advisor, siblings, parents – to see if they can offer a different perspective.

You could also ask people who have worked in the industry. They’ll probably be able to empathise with you and give you a really good insight into whether this is the right career path for you.

#5 Figure Out If You Can Make It To The End

OK, you’ve done all the meditating, talking to people, taking time off and work experience you can manage. The results are in and you’ve found you do hate your degree and never want to work in the industry.

But you’ve got a year or less to go. Do you ditch it and the years of hard work with it, or do you stick it out?

There are some definite benefits to sticking it out. Obviously, it will give you a degree which will look good on your resume, even if you’re applying for something in an unrelated field. Also, if you decide to go study something else you’ll have post-grad swag.

If pushing through another year of solid hell feels like too much, you can chip away at it a unit at a time while studying something else. But if you’re really done, there’s no shame in doing what’s right for you and making the cut.

Annabel is a Journalism graduate who is completeing her Law and Criminology degrees with a Modern History minor at Murdoch University. She enjoys whisky, pizza and sleeping.

(Lead image: TheSocial Network/Columbia Pictures)