Travel ?? damage career?

[salisbury]

Basically Ive been working as a designer for two years now since graduating from Preston......it can be very boring and demeaning at times as I usually get the jobs the senior designers don't fancy : )

I sometimes feel that after two years I should have moved up a level, I get the odd enjoyable job but my boss is a printer and he doesnt care much for design so basically we knock out a lot of bread and butter jobs.

Thing is I know the areas in which I neeed to improve, communication, organization, decision making and building relationships with clients. I have heard that travelling does a lot of this for you........and that people thrown into the workplace straight from uni are sometimes lacking these qualities.

The thing is I have just inherited �3,000 and I am not used to that kind of money........I am very tempted to go travelling but if i took a year out, would that affect my employability?? thats my big worry.

I am stuck between going travelling and gaining qualities that might help me in my future life, or putting it in a high savings accoutnt and trying to get a house around here

Im not on massive money and it is not an amazing job, but Im just worried that if i take a year out, the 2 years of industry work i have built up will be wasted.


Any advice would be REALLY APPRECIATED : )

[WendyS]

I can see this is a big dilemma for you and you seem to understand that both options have longer term appeal in terms of future career and stability. Zacmaster's suggestion of putting a portfolio of work together is a sensible one but if you take year out without a salary you run a serious risk of falling even further behind in raising enough money to climb onto the housing ladder. Could you opt for having your cake and eating it by putting the portfolio together, approaching other possible employers (or trying to build up a part-time freelance designer business) and signing up for an evening class in some kind of business management option which will help you gain some of these skills without getting off the employment ladder?
Also, is there any professional organisation for graphics designers you could join where some networking skills might help you make some new contacts?