The cycle of life

The months have melted away into nothing since my trip to and from Australia in January. Since then I have been tucked away in Southampton, continuing on with everyday life.

I should briefly account for the past six to eight months. In summer 2016 I transitioned from Spain to Southampton, working on the Pre-sessional course again. In September, I enrolled onto a masters course (Applied Linguistics Research Methodology) as a part-time student. At the end of October, I began working part time as an administrator in recruitment and admissions at the university. I began working as a youth group leader at Victory Gospel Church in September.  I also joined the gym and signed up for the half-marathon again. On top of that, I take an evening class in Russian at university. So it means that my timetable is like this:

Mondays I go to the library and study all day. Tuesdays I am in the office all day and I usually go to the gym or circuits after a long day of sitting at a screen all day so I can let out all my pent up energy. Wednesday I go to lectures and stay on campus studying or attack the gym again until 7pm when I have my Russian class on Avenue Campus. Thursdays I am back in the office and then on Fridays I am in the office until 1pm and then I usually head to the library in the afternoon. At about 6:30pm on a Friday I leave the library and head to church where I spend the rest of my evening helping out with youth group, meaning I usually don't get home til about 11:30 at night.

My weekends are free (which is necessary...!) so that I can catch up on work, do a bit of running, shop, see people etc. Having this balance between professional work and academic study is a life-saver; just when one thing gets monotonous I can turn to the other. It gives me a routine and a salary.

Lately people have been asking me "What are you going to do after next year?" As in, what do you plan on doing when you graduate and finally enter into a world where you need to contemplate a solid career.

It's a difficult question to answer. No doubt I'm not the only one who feels this way either; I know many people I've asked who don't really have a response to it either. Now I don't want to write yet another article about being a millennial and why this makes it difficult to find yourself in your twenties, why careers are only the bane of your life and why no-one really wants to stay in their job anymore... but I do find myself looking at the job situation these days and wondering if I have made the right choices.

On one hand, I have friends and peers who have already made a start on their careers, having graduated from university a good three or four years ago. If I had graduated with them, where would I be now? I'd probably have a little more money and maybe a promotion ahead.

On the other hand, I have friends like me who have not made a start on their careers yet but are maybe working their way through a masters degree or PhD (or taking another year to work abroad and keep life interesting).

Both  have their virtues and faults. I can't say that I regret the past seven years of independence since I left high school. At the same time, there is always a side of you which questions how it would be if you had taken a different path. It is also natural to wonder what lies ahead of you, what you cannot see, in the distant or not so distant future.

When people ask me now, "What are you going to do after your masters degree?" I never seem to have one simple answer. At university (the first time round) if someone asked me that question, it seemed easier to come up with a response. I was exploring the idea of being a French teacher or even just teaching English so I could easily move abroad and work. The more I did placements in schools however, I started to get the feeling it wasn't for me. I worked as a teacher on and off for about three years and in the final year of that, my mind was elsewhere in terms of careers.

In July 2015, I graduated from university with a job lined up to teach English in Spain for a year. I knew I still had to think about what the next step was though. In January 2016, I applied for funding to do a PhD in linguistics. This was halfway through my year in Spain. I loved living abroad but I didn't enjoy my job. I found myself keen to be learning again, doing research, writing about linguistics etc. A couple months later, I got rejected for the PhD funding. I had to re-evaluate my next steps a little. So I took a weekend trip to Barcelona, to see an old friend who was visiting. On the way, I met a girl from South Africa in a car share. Sometime in the four hours we were chatting, she asked me about the course my life was taking and I confessed that I was torn between two solid options:

Become a teacher? Start my career with a good starting salary and become fully qualified within two years? After that the only way is forward - you are on a career ladder and you have security.

The other option was to pursue a masters in linguistics. For me, that seemed full of risks. There was no salary, some funding but not enough to live on and after a year there was no job to just walk straight into.

Within an hour of talking to Amori, the ex-teacher from South Africa, she convinced me to do something I was more passionate about. She said "It sounds like you really enjoy linguistics - you seem so passionate about going back to study. Whereas you don't seem thrilled to become a teacher". And in order to be a full-time teacher, you need to enjoy it.

When I began university I wanted to be (don't laugh) a journalist. Until I realized that the life of a journalist is not at all glamorous. It's tough, work is hard to come by, forget being paid well and it is not at all predictable. Somewhere between my first and second year at university, I lost touch with the idea of writing, smothered the desire with the more practical plan of becoming a teacher. But then, when I was living in Spain and teaching again for the third or fourth time since starting university, I realised that I really had to make a final decision. It is hard to let go of something that you've been working towards, even when you realise it isn't for you.

So here I am, back in Southampton, almost finished with the first year of this masters degree. I have to say, this year has been a lot of fun. But every time someone asks me about the future or whenever I look at recruitment websites, my mind goes blank. I find myself thinking...all this work...for this job...or this job...or this job...?

I guess that life has a funny way of being cyclical sometimes. I started university with an idea, not fully formed, but an inkling about where I knew I wanted to go. Then six years later, after some detours, this idea came back to me in the form of an opportunity that presented itself. I met a journalist-filmmaker in town one day who was advertising for a campaign she had recently set up in Southampton. After some discussion, it transpired she was looking for volunteers to take part in community journalism for the city - "small but with potential". It all came about so suddenly - and right in the middle of academic work deadlines - but more than the project itself, what fuelled me was the spark I felt inside when I thought about writing again. She told me to call her so I found myself a couple of weeks later sitting in her workplace listening to her telling me things about her life as a journalist-filmmaker. As she talked, things were slotting together in my mind. After graduating, it felt as if my degree from university was an unfinished puzzle, which is what made me pursue a masters - as if that would help put the pieces of the puzzle together finally. Over the course of this first year, it still looks like an unfinished puzzle. But now what she was saying about her job - "...I need help interviewing...transcribing...no, that's so time-consuming - summarise! In your own words...write..."

Is this or is this not exactly what I have been doing anyway for the past five years? I thought to myself. She was telling me about the opportunities there were in her project.

"You find the story you want to pursue, find it by asking the right questions. And as a writer, you are unstoppable."

I suppose that I would finish this post by writing one final time, how the cyclical nature of life is not always designed to frustrate us. Going in a circle can also lead you back to something you started but never really finished and I think that would describe exactly what happened with me and this city.