So you're reaching the end. After spending your childhood at school learning and playing, then continuing to do the same through university, you now have to consider what you will do next.
A new and exciting phase of your life which should be looked forward to rather than dreaded but the sense of uncertainty can be terrifying.

The first place to look for help is what you majored in and why you wanted to get your degree in the first place. So perhaps you wanted to go into sales and you studied business, or perhaps you always looked up to those who where teaching you all these years and you now want to go on to share what they taught you with the next generation and become a teacher.

If that's the case it should be fairly clear what to do next. But many people end up going to college/university either because it seemed like a good idea or because their parents wanted them to. If that's you then deciding how to move on is going to be a bit more difficult.

First of all congratulations on graduating! In my view whatever you studied, you should have learnt some important skills; including how to learn, how to work with others and a certain amount of self-discipline. Regardless of what subjects you studied these skills are really very important.

So the first step to moving on is the look back at what you have always wanted to do. When you were young did you have ambitions which you have forgotten about?

Also ask all your friends what their plans and ambitions are. Ok so maybe you don't want to get married have three kids and live by a lake like your friend but at least you know something that you don't want to do. By taking an active interest in those around you, you can start to think about different possibilities for yourself.

You might be ready to heave a sigh of relief when you leave university thinking "thank God I've finished" but although you might have left the 'education system' hopefully it wont be the end of your learning.

I think that personally I've learnt far more outside the classroom than in it, either from people I've known or through self-learning and because of the way the world has a habit of changing its important that we adapt and change with it. We do this by learning. Certainly if you speak to successful business people they will tell you that they are still learning whether its Robert Kiyosaki or Peter Jones.

You may well be short on cash when you leave college and decide that although you'd love to do this that or the other you really must take a fairly average job just to get some quick cash in the bank.

Something I recently learnt from my father is that however boring the job is you should still be able to learn from it.

To give an example I was working for local government on a temporary job entering data. It was a two week assignment where questionnaires had been sent out to get feedback on service. My job was opening the envelopes and inputing their answers onto the computer.

After the first couple of days I was feeling terrible it is certainly the most mind numbing job I've ever had. I told my father what it was like and told me that I should still learn something - what were the other people like who were working there? How did they view their jobs? How were teams organized? Was it efficient?

The next day I went in I asked my manager if he could show me around and tell me what work they did and what everyone's jobs were. I learned about their work, about people around where I lived, about local crime and crime prevention and I got to chat to one of the people who was working in crime prevention who had spent over 30 years as a detective.

The point is that if you have to take some temporary work which isn't your dream job at least try to learn something from it.

Learning is for life!