I feel like society has a very specific set of expectations as to where I should be in my life right now, I know that my grandparents certainly do. It goes a little bit like this: have a career in the subject that you graduated in (and failing that at least have a regular full time job), to have a husband or at the very least a boyfriend, to live in your own home, and to be starting to think about having kids of your own.
It’s safe to say that none of that looks anything like my life right now. For a start off, I’m never going to have a husband. A wife? Maybe someday, but that’s a very very very long way off, as in probably at least 10-years away long way off. Add that to the fact that in this climate anybody my age will be lucky to own their own home, and that I would much rather travel than have kids and suddenly that 2.4 life that my grandparents want me to have starts to look like someone else’s pipe dream.
You’d hope that maybe I’d at least have the career right? I might not have anything of what my grandparents expect me to have at my age, but a career isn’t too hard, surely. Except that I don’t. I did four years at university, got an undergraduate and a masters degree, and got myself in almost £50k in debt, only to decide that I absolutely hated the subject and really did not want to go into a career in it. So for the past year I’ve been floating around, working multiple different part time jobs trying to work out what on earth I wanted to do with my life.
Eventually however, it started to seem like all the signs were pointing me back to the same place, to one specific career path that was drawing me in. The only problem? My degree subject is in no way related to the career that I want to do and my A-Levels, whilst enough to get me into a university, won’t get me onto the courses that I want to do. So for now it’s time to work out how to get where it is that I want to go, and it’s looking like it’s going to be a long, hard, and probably expensive, slog.
It feels like someone has hit refresh on my life. Like I’ve gone all the way back to being sixteen again, maybe seventeen at a push. I have to pick A-Levels, and degree courses, and work out how to do the relevant work experience. I’ve written personal statements and filled out my UCAS application. I’ve regretted the fact that decisions made at 17 are now limiting the paths that I can take right now. A-Levels that made sense at the time that now aren’t enough.
On the plus side, I feel like I finally have a purpose for the first time in over a year. I have drive. I have motivation. I have a plan. I can see the career path that I want to take and the life that I want to live. Now I have to get there. And I am not going to give in until I get there, even if it takes me an extra three, five, or even ten years.
Sophie x
A Place of Mine 