In November 2010 I had an interview in Sweden for a PhD position, and at the end of February this year I packed my life into a huge wheeled holdall and moved abroad.
It's a big change, not least the language (of which I knew little), the culture, the weather, the isolation.... I enjoy my job. I get paid to prod at engineers and their projects. I get money to better myself, learn new skills and experience something completely different. I am employed to get so excited about the strangest things.
There is a lot to talk about, but the most important thing I think is to explain why I think this may be simultaneously the best thing that has ever happened to me and also the biggest mistake of my life.
By the end of this 5 year period, if I'm successful, I'll be awarded a PhD. I'll have lecturing and course design experience. I'll have experience of supervising Masters students. I'll speak another language. I'll have grown as a human being, opened my mind to new ideas and ways to communicate them. I'll have observed and reported on some truly spectacular events.
I'll be employable.
But to do that, I've had to leave behind everyone that I know and be somewhere alone. Sure, we have technology and flights aren't too expensive, but that doesn't help ward off the feeling that I'm voluntarily throwing away something really special in the hopes of becoming something better. Isn't that a little selfish? All we really are as human beings is a piece in a complicated structure of relationships in all their variety. The most important are those with our family and close friends, because they are the ones that will remain in our hearts for as long as we have the capacity.
I have a wonderful loving family, and two amazing friends who have been by my side through some great times and some pretty awful times. To leave them behind feels like I am cutting off my arms.
The stupid thing is that I know it's only 5 years. I know that even if it was 10 or 20 years those relationships would stand the test, would be just as rich as they are now. Those people would be disappointed if I chose to stay in a humdrum job in my home city just because I was clinging to those relationships, hell I'd be one of the first to help a friend pack her bags if she was choosing that over a life changing experience. I also know that if I stayed, they would not necessarily have made the same decision when their time came - currently one is about to move 200 miles North for a PhD, so I know what her decision would be.
Maybe though, like now, it feels like the most stupid decision I have ever made.
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