Imagining post-bac
What will I eat after the bac? "Virginie Baudelot warns: "It's not after the baccalaureate that you should start thinking about your career path. Especially as young people are faced with another unknown when it comes to making their decision: the world of work.
"On what basis should I decide? How do I know which path will really appeal to me?"
New horizons
Virginie, an occupational psychologist, is in charge of "liaison between secondary and higher education" at the University of Montpellier. According to her, high school students experience the post-bac period as a real leap into the unknown. "University? High school students have no idea what that means! It covers so many different streams and courses. What they do know is certain components of the UM: an engineering school like Polytech, the faculty of science or medicine, or the IUT".
Discover the campus
Throughout the year, the university also offers many useful events. The "Lycéens à l'université" (high school students at university) operation, for example, gives students an idea of their future. The idea is to welcome high-school students on campus for a day or half-day to give them a taste of the university experience. Just enough time to discover this new world and put an end to their fear of the unknown...
More and more classes are coming with their teachers to take part in this program, launched in 2006 by the Montpellier education authority and the region's high schools. The program includes lectures and tutorials, as well as discussions with students who have volunteered to come and talk about their experiences: a particularly popular moment.
"We talk mainly about the first year, stressing the new things they'll be encountering. We provide practical information on student jobs, grants and accommodation. Above all, it's a question of detailing the different streams and types of training, to help each student find the path that suits him or her best. We'renot here to sell dreams, but to set the record straight: is university easy because there's no selection? Not true! Are professional integration rates good? True!
A player in his own training
In the first half of the year, 750 students from the region were able to discover the Triolet campus, and immerse themselves in a daily life they had never imagined. For the second semester, 1,500 students are expected. Their first major discovery was "the need to be autonomous and organized, to define one's career path, to take steps on one's own", on a campus perceived as "a small town within a town, with its own cultural, social, associative and sporting life".
In these sessions, designed to help students become full players in their own educational projects, they discover a flexible world, where it is possible (and sometimes advisable) to change direction along the way. "Reorienting yourself can be a good idea. An internship, a job, a gap year in France or abroad? Why not! In higher education, you can build your career path, even if it means taking detours, and you can even capitalize on this for selection to a Master's program or for your future professional insertion".
> Questions about your studies? The Service Commun Universitaire d'Information, d'Orientation et d'Insertion professionnelle (SCUIO-IP) guides you through your studies from high school right through to your first job.