This is my first post, so I am sorry it is slightly on the longer side. However, as a slight incentive and thank you for taking the time to read this, I have added in some shamefully cute photos of my nephew. Well it is my cousins son but just try telling me that I am not Uncle Lee! There is also a shocking picture of me at the end from a time where I thought I looked good blond...... Please enjoy and feel free to let me know your thoughts.
Just take a second, reflect on how many key decisions in your life that you have made based purely on what you think/feel is best for you. It is a tough question to answer due to all the factors we incorporate when we make any decisions. How will this impact the other aspects of our lives? Finances. Relationships, not simply with our friends and partners, but our relationship with the rest of society. In the puzzle that is society, are our decisions allowing us to align with the pieces around us? The norms set by society structured the decision-making process of the first significant choice I had in my life. What university will I go to and what will I study?
Having always taken quicker to numbers rather than language, a spotlight seemed to naturally be fixating on some select choices. Couple this with being the son of a Mechanical Engineer who provided the first private school education for this new generation and expectations of the shape a future career should take, start to be molded. Add a flair for science and you arrive at…. Chemical Engineering.
Chemical Engineering is a fantastic course. By no means should this post put anyone off of it as a potential choice. It will challenge you in ways that cannot be explained purely in words, but it will leave you with a belief that you have a work ethic capable of taking on any future challenge. That is if you complete it. Then again, what next? What happens after you complete it?
I knew very early in my degree that perusing Engineering was not an intrinsic desire, but I was compelled to provide the same lifestyle, for my potential future family, that my parents had provided for me. I was making a decision on my future career based on a lot of hypotheticals. A hypothetical family compromising of a hypothetical wife, hypothetical children and hypothetical success in this field. Oh, and of course a hypothetical dog.
Now the dog aspect of that scenario will always be a welcome addition, but the rest of it highlighted a fatal flaw in my outlook of my life. Of course, my parents were clearly a significant influence in this delusional picture I had constructed, but there is so much more to consider. It is the social norm in society to be married, have a house, kids and a secure career. Decisions become based off attaining the items on a checklist we did not create, without much consideration for whether we even want these things. We see what others have and instantly believe we must attain the same, but do we take the time to ask ourselves if we actually want them?
An easy example is marriage. Ask yourself this, is it more important to you to be married or simply be with the right person? For me, the answer is obvious, the later, and this may naturally result in marriage. However, with a mindset that focuses more on attaining marriage, there is a natural order and timescale applied. Ideally married before 30 so that we can then have kids before we are considered "old parents" or that ticking time bomb that is our body clock starts to tick progressively louder. With any timescale comes pressure. Of course, diamonds are made under pressure but are the best decisions made staring down the barrel of a shotgun? No. There is a potential for desperation to cloud judgment. Anxiety to seep in. Or even just being too god damn logical based off of these imaginary standardizations.
Standardizations provide security and by my second year of university, at 19 years of age, I was well on my way to my degree in Chemical Engineering and I had my girlfriend who although clearly wasn't the right person for me (and vice versa by the way). Not only was I well on my way to obtaining my degree, it felt like my Jigsaw was coming together nicely. Despite this, I was not happy. The security of knowing I had all the pieces and that they were coming together was not proving to be a winning formula I needed. My university life revolved around a strict routine that would mentally sap so much life from me that come Saturday night no alarm would be set, no plans for Sunday would be made, with Sunday itself becoming a bedbound day. See doing anything makes time disappear at a greater rate and the adversity, the tribulations, the pure torment of another week all the sooner.
The jigsaw to all parties looked ahead of schedule, but the ever-clearer picture it was depicting was becoming more catastrophic as each piece fell into place. My mental health was plummeting but the end goal of completing the degree was still in sight. That end goal of obtaining my degree dragged me forward. As it did for a lot of those that I studied with, but my circumstances changed drastically in the summer between my second and third years of university.
At the age of 55, my mum had a stroke. I will explain the situation in greater detail in a future post. The important thing is that she made as close to a full recovery as you could hope and if you were to meet her you wouldn’t know, but the experience completely tore apart the norms that dictated the assumptions I based my life on. The shortcomings of a lot of the advice that I had been given over the years were thrust into the spotlight. It had been instilled in me by my Dad that if I grafted hard enough at engineering, I could put myself in a position where I could retire at 50. Well, here my mum was 5 years on from that fighting for her life. All those years for 5 years of retirement, it might just be me but in the balance of life that doesn't seem like a fair trade.
I would just like to highlight a clear error in my story. Although this moment has been a massive factor in my decision to abandon engineering. This incident happened in the summer between my second and third years of university where I went on to complete the full 4 years required for my bachelor's degree. Clearly, it was not at this point that I had a revelation that I acted on. You’re right it wasn’t, I continued on despite knowing I did not want to pursue engineering as a career. It took another two years for that experience to truly digest that experience and have the courage to act upon what was best for me.
This is why I have decided to share it, because maybe if I had that information earlier, I would not have dedicated 4 years of my life to a degree I will never look to use. At least from an engineering standpoint. I could have pursued an avenue that resonated more with my intrinsic interests and desires. The thing is with a jigsaw, the pieces of another puzzle may well fit, but when you actually take the time to reflect upon the picture you have created, if you are not using the pieces that are right for your particular jigsaw, you will not be happy with the resulting picture that you see.
I told you that final photo would worth getting to the end of the post for! What was I thinking?
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