I have no idea what I want to do, or be, or spend my life doing. I have no direction and I'm pretty lost to be honest. The job I had, well I probably still have working for a university has totally screwed over and communication has all gone so very wrong and its all just a lost caused. So I'm making them wait like I had too.
People, well the parents keep saying do a Ph.D., apply to go back to Newcastle. Yeah ok granted I would love to move back to Newcastle but I don't want to have to do a Ph.D., a 100,000 word Ph.D. just to be able to move back there. I feel so behind most of my friends from my year at school because they are all settled into proper working jobs, not just temporary ones . They are all settled and loved up. And there's me with a load of letters behind her name and still pretty jobless. The debt [I don't wanna think about how much] of doing an undergraduate and a Masters Degree seems to have not really been worth it.
I know I want to get out of home, and in a way I want my freedom back but I don't think I have the mental state or the drive to be able to think up and write my own research. I don't think I want to go down that route.
I don't mind working in retail but the parents are stating i'm under selling myself. I enjoy meeting people and helping them. Knowing I helped them with what they need and getting to make a few new friends along the way. I want to be doing something. I don't wanna be tied up to a Ph.D. for the next three to four years and finish it with still no decent work experience and on the verge of thinking about marriage and children.
I'm finding you could have a million letters behind your name, have amazingly good degrees but without experience your not going anywhere. Feels like i'm just at a massive junction and right now i'm just slumped on the side of the road and not sure where i'm meant to turn.
People, well the parents keep saying do a Ph.D., apply to go back to Newcastle. Yeah ok granted I would love to move back to Newcastle but I don't want to have to do a Ph.D., a 100,000 word Ph.D. just to be able to move back there. I feel so behind most of my friends from my year at school because they are all settled into proper working jobs, not just temporary ones . They are all settled and loved up. And there's me with a load of letters behind her name and still pretty jobless. The debt [I don't wanna think about how much] of doing an undergraduate and a Masters Degree seems to have not really been worth it.
I know I want to get out of home, and in a way I want my freedom back but I don't think I have the mental state or the drive to be able to think up and write my own research. I don't think I want to go down that route.
I don't mind working in retail but the parents are stating i'm under selling myself. I enjoy meeting people and helping them. Knowing I helped them with what they need and getting to make a few new friends along the way. I want to be doing something. I don't wanna be tied up to a Ph.D. for the next three to four years and finish it with still no decent work experience and on the verge of thinking about marriage and children.
I'm finding you could have a million letters behind your name, have amazingly good degrees but without experience your not going anywhere. Feels like i'm just at a massive junction and right now i'm just slumped on the side of the road and not sure where i'm meant to turn.
Don't fret, i'm in exactly the same position as you. Just got to hope that all will come right. Us twenty-somethings still have lots of time left to make something of ourselves!
ReplyDeleteI completely relate to you (I have a BA, MA, and Ph D in English, but really really really didn't want to do the Ph D). I suffered and wallowed my way through the 4 years of the Ph D at the prompting of many people including myself, because I thought that was the only way I was ever going to get a stable, good paying job. And because I had spent decades in uni, feeling infantilized and completely unstable and poor compared to my friends who went out into the work world after highschool ALL I wanted was a stable, good paying job, a house, a hubby, etc. Well, let me tell you...after racing through my degrees in record time, I secured a teaching job right as I was defending my dissertation (this is the dream for most academics). I thought I had the rest of my life sorted. I had so called employment stability as a tenured instructor, the pay was good, etc, but the level of stress and lack of balance, combined with the monotony of the job led my career to take precedence over everything else in life; it was really was a harsh reality for me that everything I thought I wanted or thought I had suffered for just wasn't completely fulfilling me. After five years of teaching college and the almost complete disintegration of my personal life due to the stresses of the job that the big pay cheque was attached to, I followed my hubby to a small village across country due to his job promotion. Now, I'm here, set to be unemployed and deciding whether or not to go back to the financially stable but emotionally and mentally brutal world of teaching. The money beckons, but then I think back to the hellish stress levels. Looks like I'm completely reinventing my career as a vintage clothing seller. Sorry I'm not trying to make this about me. I guess I'm just a walking example of how most of society (esp. parents) really value these great notions of stability and uniformity and settling down, etc., but one has to know that those things can come at hidden costs (i.e. rushing to find one's lot in life can turn into a life of monotony) and of course maybe in a way they are illusions (people nowadays have to be adaptable and able to possibly change careers many times, often doing jobs not in their field of education, esp. if you're in the Arts). Long story short: it's good to think ahead about the big picture some times about where you'd like to be, but don't be surprised if little bends in the road you can't foresee end up holding opportunities you might never have imagined otherwise, so try not to feel too overwhelmed by what you cannot possibly foretell or control, but do think of little ways you can start working towards making some of the things you are aspiring for a reality some time in the near future. xoxo.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry you're going through all that, I went through mini version this year. I found that figuring out what you want to do and coming up with a plan helps.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny because I just posted about this yesterday.
Personally I think you should move back to Newcastle because you miss it, and figure everything out from there.
Hi honey, I believe that you are a deeply gifted and wonderful person. Whatever you chose to do will be what's best for you at this point in your life. Listen to your heart, not (just) what others think you should do and strive to find your bliss (and success) in this world through the path that is best for you. Who knows, perhaps if you enjoy retail you might open a shop of your own one day or find that those degrees and letters do pay off in time in a way you never imagined possible. (I believe in you, sweet dear!)
ReplyDeleteInspiration and serenity to you, my friend!
♥ Jessica