Olivia Kelly spoke with some young adults quite recently emerged from the long grass of third-level education to find out what paths their lives, interests and studies are taking them.

Brenda Griffin

Music, UCC

Brenda Griffin started a science degree in UCC in 1996 but found herself "too consumed with music" to do anything else and the following year she transferred to the BA in arts - music.

"I was encouraged to do the science degree because I was told there were no jobs in music, but I knew it was what I really wanted to do." Although Brenda did not have to go back into the CAO system she did have to sit the performance exam for entry to music. The arts degree takes three years and Brenda chose psychology as a minor subject. After graduating with an honours BA she completed a further year in music to graduate with a BMus.

"It's a course that you can make of what you will," she says. "In first year there's a lot of history to do and not a lot of practical work, but I was very much geared towards performance and I specialised in jazz piano and French horn."

It also offers a lot of variety in terms of the different modules studied, she says. "In first year I studied the ewe drums from Ghana. You could go in being a singer and come out seeing so many different sides to music."

Since graduating Brenda has set up Score Factory, her own business in music typesetting and arranging. She also teaches 20 hours a week in the Cork VEC music scheme and lectures in music and computers in UCC. On top of all that she is studying part time for her performance master's in French horn at the school of music in UCC and somehow finds time to play in orchestras, wind ensembles and a jazz big band.

She recently set

up an "all-girl" blues and soul band, About Time.

Freya Hyland

Computing, Tallaght IT

The ladder system worked well for Freya Hyland, who wasn't sure what she wanted to do when she left school in 1994. "I did a course for a year in hotel management, but I left it and worked for two years."

Freya decided that she wanted to go back to college but still didn't know what she wanted to study, so she did an aptitude test which indicated she might suit a computer course.

She looked at a number of courses but eventually chose the certificate in computing in Tallaght IT. It had a business, rather than a maths/science orientation and she could attain her degree through the ladder system.

"I still wasn't 100 per cent sure it was what I wanted but I knew I could do one or two years and have something to show for it in the end rather than just dropping out if it didn't suit." Freya liked the course and progressed from the certificate to a diploma and went on to a BSc in computing.

"It was a good all round course with a bit of everything, not just programming but analysis and business too."

She is now working in the IT department of United Drug in Tallaght and she considers herself very lucky to have got the job she wanted. "A year ago everyone said companies would be lining up to give us jobs, but that turned out to be not quite true."

Peter Collins

Biotechnology, DCU

Peter Collins always intended to do "some sort of science course". Having studied all three science subjects for the Leaving, he says he didn't know an awful lot about bio- technology before he started his degree in DCU.

"I knew it involved genetics and biochemistry and engineering, but I hadn't realised quite how much engineering."

First year wasn't too difficult, he says, as the main purpose was to bring those who only did one Leaving Cert science subject and those who did two or three to the same level. After that it started to get a bit tougher. "A lot of people find second year quite heavy going, especially with the engineering and maths and I was certainly one of them, but once you get beyond that you get used to the level that's expected."

In third year, the "intra" year in DCU, Peter went on work experience in the engineering department of Guinness brewery and began to realise his interests lay in the molecular side of biotechnology, in genetics, biochemistry and immunology.

"I did my fourth-year project on immunology and then I really knew it was what I wanted to do." He has just started his master's in immunology, which he hopes to continue on to PhD level, and is working on vaccines for parasitic diseases. "I'm glad I chose the course," he says.