The Most Underrated Thing I Did in Undergrad 🫢 | Knowing When Taking a Year Off is the Right Choice ✅ ❌

There was a time when I heavily considered if I should graduate on time or take a year off to find out what I wanted to do. If you're thinking about taking a pause on university, here's what to know!

Aug 01, 2023

👋🏽 Hey! Thanks for checking in with this month’s issue of Tyler Talks Product! On the personal side, summer is closing, which is insane. Be sure to soak up what’s left of that sun and get out of your comfort zone. I painted pottery for the first time this month, check out the masterpiece below 😍

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When I was in University, I played everything by the book. The target was to graduate in four years. However, I soon learned that the plan I set and what occurred was two different things. I did not discover the career I wanted to pursue until the end of my junior year, which I felt was super late. I knew friends who had set their ambitions on a single career before university began. Not knowing what career to pursue, I always felt like time was ticking to find my niche. I tried consulting, sales, and marketing, but nothing stuck. By the time I discovered product management, I was going into my senior year.

When I talk about my past experiences, students express their desire to explore careers more but feel it is too late (especially those in their senior year). The older you get into your university career, the more pressure you feel to find the job you’ll start at (I know I felt this). How do you slow down time so you can make the right choice? I thought the answer was to take a year off from university.

I don’t believe that taking a year off should be mandatory for all students; there are those who would benefit significantly from additional time. Before you even start taking time off, I suggest evaluating this criterion before making a year-long decision.

🎯 Does Your School Offer A Leave of Absence? 🎯

Depending on your program and school, taking a year off may not be possible. In that case, there may be some hacker-ish ways to bypass such restrictions. I would recommend asking upper-year students how to navigate this.

🎯 What Is The Goal Of This Time Off? 🎯

The biggest mistake you can make when taking a year off from school is traversing through the months blindly. I’d recommend understanding what you’d like to do with that time. It doesn’t have to be just internships but can include dedicating time to a side project, volunteering, or even travelling. Be sure that the 12 months you take off are not an extended vacation.

🎯 Does The Time Horizon Have To Be A Year? 🎯

Does it have to be a year? Can you answer the question within a shorter time span? Before taking my leave of absence, I took four months off to pursue an internship. The only reason I took a year off was because I kept interning. I had a reason too good to go back to school. More internships meant more validation that 1) This was the career I wanted to pursue and 2) I was good enough to do it repeatedly. It’s up to you to define how long it’ll take to achieve your goals.

🎯 Can You Survive Financially? 🎯

Depending on your schooling situation, you may be on financial aid or have a scholarship. If you decide to work during the time off, there is not a major concern. However, if you do pursue other avenues to spend your time, take the time to determine the financial implications and if you’d be okay with this.

Time passes by when you take time off. Duh. No surprise there. But the people you were around every day in school: their lives move too. You’ll be a year behind when all your friends are graduating and in post-grad life. It’s not something I accounted for when I took the time off. Seeing my graduating class walking that stage together without me definitely made me contemplate if the time off, socially at least, was worth it.

No Big Deal Graduation GIF by reactionseditor — If you’re not posing for the homies at grad is it worth it?

I still believe I made the right choice, but it’s a con I want you to be aware of if you consider taking a term or two off. Even if you decide to prolong your time in University for yourself, this does not mean everything around you adjusts. It’s you; you have to adjust. There’s no overcoming this other than keeping your eyes on the goal you set. Just be sure when you finish that time off, you can confidently say that the tradeoff was fair, at the least.

I took twelve months off because I wanted to gain more experience in product management. Being from a non-target and untradditional major, I needed to be exceptional in one dimension, so I chose work experience.

In Canada, the University of Waterloo is praised for its rigorous co-op program. Students complete a handful of internships and are extremely competitive candidates for employers by the time of graduation (specifically tech companies). My school had no system in place to replicate this structure. Therefore, I didn't wait for my university and took it as validation that I should do something similar. So this is how I approached the year:

I only planned for time off for Sept 2021 to Jan 2022. It did not end up turning out that way.

Each quarter, I did one product internship and a university course to lighten my course load when I returned. Usually, my semester comprised of five courses. When I returned to school in Sept 2022, I only had two classes before my exchange semester. Due to this, I took another opportunity to work another internship. Overall, I spent the year with four internships in the product space, which I felt were integral to the success I would have recruiting for APM programs.

I am not saying that time off has to be spent like this, but for me, this made the year off worth it. If you have any questions about this further, feel free to message me, always happy to go into further detail.

Hope this helps in some way ❤️

Resources of the Month 📕

Recent Things I’ve Been Into

🕸️ The Spectacular Spiderman - Animated Series 🕸️

🏃🏽 Born 2 Run - Been Getting into Running A Lot 🏃🏽

💻 Online CS Github Repo for Free 💻

On General Product Prep

Try Exponent: A PM website home to questions, company guides, and 1:1 interviews with other aspiring PMs.

Tech Talk for Non-Developers: A course dedicated to demystifying technical concepts for product managers in a more digestible way. (Fun Fact: I did this course and it helped a ton with my first PM job!)

APM List: APM season is here, keep up to date with PM job postings!

Coffee Program and Thank You ☕️

Thank you for taking the time to read this month’s issue! I’ll see you next month :)

Personal thank you to my editors (Cat and Lucus) for taking the time to read each issue before it goes out to the amazing readers!

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Until next month,

~ Tyler