Learning lessons

I lost my wallet yesterday. I didn't even realise it was gone until I had a number of missed calls from my parents. As it turns out I had left it on the Frankston train and some lovely soul had picked it up. Said lovely soul rang every phone number I had on bits of paper and business cards until he got onto my dad, who got onto my mum who went and picked it up from the Good Samaritan. All of this happened before I even realised it was gone! I'm incredibly lucky, I had ten cents in my wallet (which was still in it) and none of my cards were missing. 

I really can't quite believe how lucky I was to get it back.

I have been struggling to engage with uni this semester. I have been aware of this and trying my best to get myself back on track. Last week I missed an online quiz which was worth 10% of my grade for that subject. I grovelled to my lecturer to no avail and up until today I have been extremely mad at myself for missing an opportunity for some pretty easy marks. I am now trying to view the lost 10 marks as a wake up call. Even though I will be doing a different course next year, I have worked too hard over the last two years to get my academic record back on track to have blips appear on it now out of laziness. 

I'm annoyed I had to learn this lesson the hard way. Now I have to stop being mad at myself and use the frustration as motivation to knuckle down and do better. 

Speaking of uni, I have decided what I'll be doing next year. It got to the point where I just needed to make the decision. The uncertainty was making losing sleep and was making me  feel constantly nauseous. I was mentally burned out from thinking about it. I didn't think there was any aspect of the decision that I hadn't thought over a thousand times. Each time I thought about it I came up with the same three options, the ones I talked about in my last post, but was not getting consistently closer to picking one. 

I made my choice last week. I had taken the train home from uni and had started to think that one of those options might be the right one. When I got home, Mum told me that she had been reading my blog and that if I really wanted, she would tell me what she thought I should do. I said, "Yes please!" Mum's advice was to do the course that I had been thinking about on the train home, so I decided then and there that I would apply for that course for next year. 

I felt instantly relieved and excited. It will be another big change and I am committed to seeing this course through to the end, come what may. 

It is a 4 year double degree, but I should get credit for a number of units I've done this year and a few from my arts degree. I'm excited that after those four years I will have 3 undergraduate degrees all together, each very different from the other. This somewhat excessive undergraduate education will provide me the opportunities to be employed or pursue some very exciting postgraduate options. 

This educational change will be the biggest one yet. If I'm accepted into the course, I will be attending a different university, leaving Monash and the Group of Eight. One of the degrees is in a field I have never studied before in my life and the other is science related, but different again to the science studies I'm undertaking in the present. 

The hardest thing about making this decision has been finding the courage to follow a very different path to the one I always imagined I would. 

I'm a smart person and I come from a family of smart and very accomplished people. I had fallen into the trap of thinking that I should do what I perceived smart people are expected to do, go to the most prestigious university that would take me and go onto become a doctor or a lawyer or some other highly respected and highly paid professional. 

Now I don't think there is anything wrong with following this kind of path in life, if you have a reason to. The problem I kept coming up against was that I was only contemplating this kind of path because I could, not because I had a deep intrinsic motivation to. It would have been a decision to follow a path I've come to see as predictable and very socially acceptable, which made it a very attractive 'default' position. There are plenty of 'right' reasons to pursue an elite education of this kind, but these are not some of them.

I've realised that if I want to be happy, doing something just because I can is probably not going to procure that. At times throughout this process I've been concerned that if I don't do something like law or medicine, I won't be able to afford the kind of lifestyle I'd want to provide for myself or my family, if I have one in the future.

I'm so lucky and grateful to have a very comfortable life. However, as I made this decision I've been thinking a lot about what parts of it I would want to provide for a family of my own and which parts are not so important to me. For example, I don't think the last three and a half years of my private education were worth their considerable cost and whilst I very much enjoy living in a beautiful home, I would be just as happy living in a nice home in a less affluent suburb. 

I want to do things in life that I enjoy and that I'm passionate about. I want to succeed in what I do and be surrounded by like minded people, but I don't want to be consumed by my work in a way that makes me chronically unhappy or unhealthy. I am starting to realise that if I live my life this way, the calm and fulfillment might be more valuable to me than social status or large amounts of money could be.

I would be lying if I said that success and financial reward are of no importance to me. For me, this decision making process has just given me a better idea of where those two things fit on my list of priorities. 

I feel like I'm being a bit crazy going down this path, pursuing a career in a field that many would probably not consider "serious". However, this just serves as further motivation to have faith in my own abilities. Besides, taking healthy risks is part of what makes life interesting and I haven't heard of anyone who did anything truly great without taking a few.