My future: A scary experiment in 14 paragraphs

So, I think I’ve made a decision. I talked to my dad about my plans for life after graduating again and to my surprise he simply said I should do what I have in mind and that he would do anything he possibly could to support me.

That freaked me out a little because at first he didn’t seem to be too excited about the fact that I was going to get my bachelor degree in Arts & Culture. To him, that wasn’t a real thing, barely even worth attending university for and certainly not as great as medicine or law school.

I actually agree with him on that but who am I kidding? My grades are way too average to be accepted into law school and more importantly I WOULD NEVER WANT TO DO ANYTHING LIKE THAT. Who wants to spend 10 years at university to become a damn lawyer? By the time you get out you’re 30! THIRTY YEARS OLD! I would die of boredom and paranoia because I’m weird about my age.

By the time I’ll hopefully have my Master of Arts, I’ll be 25. I’m not trying to offend anybody, I’m really not, but it just seems to me that 25 is way too old to be finally starting to work and quit going to school. It feels like at that age I would already want to have a family and be well off.

Apparently, that’s not going to happen. I guess, maybe, that’s simply extremely unrealistic. And, honestly, I think 25 is the average age at which people finish university over here. It’s perfectly normal and nobody’s being as upset about it as I am.

It just seems like such an unbelievably long time to spend studying in some way, shape or form. Kindergarden, elementary school, high school (we don’t have middle school here), university - and BAM! You’re 25 and haven’t done anything except preparing for a future you’re not even sure of what it’s going to look like.

It literally scares me.

Since previous entries have been deleted, here’s my plan once again: I’ll be attending Maastricht University which is in the Netherlands, fairly close to the German border but also close to the Belgian border. From Maastricht it is also not very far to France and Luxembourg (I uploaded a map here). It’s the perfect city for someone like me who is as obsessed with foreign cultures and languages.

I’ll be attending the bachelor programme of three years in Arts & Culture and the master programme of one year which is more focused on the media in general afterwards. It’s all very abstract, expecially the first two years and there will be tons of reading to do. But I think that I will actually enjoy that. Plus courses will be held in English and that’s really all I’m looking for.

The most exciting part will be to move to an entirely different country and live in my own apartment. Most likely, things won’t be as amazing as I picture them because, obviously, everything will be running on an extremely tight financial schedule but it’ll still be great and exciting.

Whenever I went to Maastricht on the university’s open day, I fell in love with the both the city and the university. For the most part, everyone there seemed to understand English perfectly fine but I’m also going to take a Dutch language course starting this February because I think it’s rude to move to a country and just assume that everybody knows English. I want to at least be able to greet and thank people in their native language and ask for simple things like directions and such.

And, well - there you go. That’s the plan.

I know how important one’s education is and I try to take it serious but, as with everything in life, I believe that fun plays an important role. If I would have to spend the next four years doing something that wasn’t fun, just because it’s maybe possibly assumingly the wiser choise in regards to the job market, I’d very probably end up as depressed as can be. And we know how easily I get depressed!

The way I see it, university is something that everybody who has the opportunity should do because it’s always good to have some kind of qualification or degree. But to me it is also important that I enjoy this time which is just as big and important a chapter of my life as the following one: moving to the United States and falling in love with a cowboy.