Travel, study, or a real job? At the crossroads of impeding graduation, Eduardo Baptista was faced by general disillusionment.Toshiyuki IMAI

“Hey, Mum, I’ve got to tell you something. I really want to go to South Korea and teach English for a bit. I’ll become independent, improve my Korean, and find that bride you’ve always been talking about.”

Eagerly, I anticipated motherly approval and praise for my initiative. But no such approval came, and instead of words of praise I received a sermon on how teaching English, no matter for how long, was beneath me.

Fortunately for my mother’s cause – and less fortunately for my plans – South Korea’s preference for white, Western teachers means Korean-Portuguese dual citizens like myself have no chance of landing a job as an English teacher. However, my mother’s reaction does highlight the pressure we sometimes have to search for prestige over experiences.

As we reflect and seek advice on our future, it is important to apply any advice to one’s own context. Growing up in Seoul during the 1960s, a time when even North Korea was more developed than the South, my mother watched as her mother struggled to provide for her and her two older brothers. Although my mother’s exodus has made her considerably different to most other Korean middle-aged women – including a distaste for K-pop among other things – her Darwinian view of life remains strong: we are all in a struggle for survival, one which does not wait for considerably more privileged individuals like myself ‘to find themselves.’

Point taken, but I think that there is a difference between simply accepting the hard truths of the job market – everything is competitive – and letting them take over your well-being. Last term, I leaned towards the latter option, leading to disillusionment about the future.

This disillusionment was triggered by questioning my gut instinct. I had decided early on that a Master’s in Politics and International Relations in Cambridge was what I wanted after three years of undergraduate History. I wanted to do a graduate degree that was more employable, and also to try something new.

“There is a difference between simply accepting the hard truths of the job market – everything is competitive – and letting them take over your well-being”

However, this brought back memories from my last year of high school, when I made the last-minute UCAS switch from Medicine to History. Looking back, I think this should have made me more confident about changing fields, but instead I started to ask myself whether I was simply being erratic. Feeling like I would never be able to stick to one thing made me disillusioned about my prospects for the future.

Yet what followed was not a systematic process of narrowing down my options but rather a two-week period where I changed plans on almost a daily basis. ‘Stick to World History, just stick to one thing for once.’

‘No, no, no, be logical, go for the greater employability of Politics.’

‘Well, but then I will become a slave to the government so let’s do Sociology, that’s a bit more edgy.’

‘Oh, screw this, go to Korea for a couple of years so you can return to graduate study with that precious real world experience that you hear so many MPhil students regret not having.’

Notice how my judgement on all these decisions was based on what I assumed each choice would be bring in the future, be it employability, intellectual fulfilment, or practical wisdom. I know that choosing what you’re most interested in counts for a lot but the problem was I didn’t have one thing I was particularly passionate about. In an ideal world, I would have trialled each option for a week and then made my decision. But we don’t live in an ideal world, and coming back to reality, it was obvious I had to just make a few choices.

Talking to others about my dilemma helped me understand that this choice was really not that big of a deal. A teammate of mine just retorted: “what’s the worst that can happen?” when I asked him for advice; I was getting so wrapped up in choosing the ‘best’ option that it didn’t occur to me that perhaps I did not have to do a course which was colour-coded to my inner chi.

Listening to my dissertation supervisor talk about his own path made me realise that sometimes just going with what you get given might lead to what you’re most naturally suited to. My disillusionment stemmed from not knowing what the right decision would be, and this was only because I wanted to avoid any risk of disappointment. No wonder the future had started to look like a 3D game of chess rather than something to be excited about.

In the end, I decided to stick with something politicky and to base my choices on two criteria: learning and advantage. I’d been thinking too much in terms of the course but not the environment. Despite the reputation of Oxford and Cambridge, I decided that studying in a big city would be a challenge and thus an important learning experience. Fingers crossed I’ll be in Beijing next year, but who knows.

It helps to know where your strengths lie. Spending the last few weeks in warm, sunny Portugal, speaking my native language and interacting with Portuguese people on a daily basis, I now think that my Portuguese and Korean could be put to good use in diplomacy or something that fosters cross-cultural dialogue.

But I also accept that this is by no means a life-long commitment. Ultimately, feeling fulfilled is only partly based on career prospects. As good ol’ Epicurus once said, happiness needs three core ingredients: food, freedom, and friends. Realising I had all three of these things and more allowed me to overcome this bout of disillusionment