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Run your Race

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I was going to title this post Slay In Your Lane, after the 2018 book by Elizabeth Uviebinené and Yomi Adegoke, but I don't want anyone to call me out. So, instead, I've named it after one of Craig Groeschel's messages from Hillsong Conference 2017 and am hoping there's enough grace to let me live.

Either way, I have been at university for almost three years now and have had many different and amazing experiences which I have learnt (and am still learning) a lot from. What I'm going to speak about in this post refers to one of said nuggets of wisdom.

University had always seemed the ultimate educational goal growing up, the perfect stepping stone to a career I would love and do for the rest of my life. It would all figure itself out and work out perfectly...Except no one told me what to do in the event that it did NOT, in fact, figure itself out, which is exactly what happened.

In Sixth Form, around the end of year 12/the beginning of year 13, the pressure was mounting for me to figure out what I would want to study at university (and enjoy and do for the rest of my life, etc). In the midst of this panic-filled rush, I decided to regroup and weigh my strengths up against my weaknesses. I found that I was very good at subjects involving a lot of writing and analysis (or so I thought) and, paired with the encouraging fact that my father had also studied the subject and not only survived, but thrived in it, I decided that I would study Law (don't ask why this was my ultimate conclusion).

Anyways, fast-forward to second year. I have started actually studying Law. It is no longer just the pretentious title you hear in movies like Legally Blonde. I am actually a full-fledged law student. And, up until this point, I have convinced myself that the lack of enjoyment comes along with studying rather than the subject itself, until I step back and realise that I have no genuine interest in the modules I'm studying. I am still stringing myself along, selling myself the dream that I just have to pull through and get a 2:1, apply to a few vacation schemes here, and a few training contracts there, and soon enough I'll be a successful lawyer like the ones in Suits (which I didn't start watching until 2018 and I feel would have been great motivation when I still needed it). This is until I realise that I don't have a genuine interest in this competition - I have always been the kind of person that, if I want something bad enough, no amount of 'competition' can stop me because I'm too focused on the end goal to even see it - but this does feel like a competition, a bureaucratic and burdensome one which I don't have the strength or motivation to participate in.

Meanwhile, everyone around me is applying for 7 different vacation schemes (sometimes way more), and now training contracts, and I finally realise that, in this long period of pondering, none have sparked my interest and I have applied to very few, nor do I want to apply to more - not out of laziness - but out of pure and complete disinterest.

Yet, amidst this series of thought, I am seeing people around me figuring everything out; applying to these schemes and getting places. Meanwhile, I still haven't discovered what that lifelong career is. Therefore, I am finding myself somewhat envious of the success of others. Then I have to remind myself that I don't even want what it is they have. Yet I should want it.

Now the lesson I have learnt in all this...

is that I don't have to want it, and that it is okay to not have everything figured out.

Yes. You heard right. Breathe, because it. Is. Okay.

And it will be okay. If you really think about it, the educational system and society we live in expects us to have figured out our lifelong goals by the grand old age of twenty-one which, to me, is completely absurd.

I have learnt that I need to take time to self-observe. To watch myself develop my own opinions on certain issues, discover my likes and dislikes, and most importantly, to find my talents and grow them so that they can flourish into something that I might like to do for the rest of my life (another thing to note is that you probably won't want to do the same thing for the rest of your life. You change and you grow and you might want to take time to exercise specific talents, and then move on to maturing a different set, and THIS IS OK - I don't know how many more times I can say this, but I feel that I need to say it for the amount of times I didn't hear it).

When you detach yourself from this crazy fast competition, this rat race (to be a bit cliche), you realise that you have the time, and I believe time creates the best results.

So don't be intimidated as you see your peers figuring things out around you, or as you see these Instagram influencers have it all, because (first of all, they can't have it ALL, can they?) these discoveries happen at different times for everybody, and chances are they still haven't got it completely figured out. What I'm trying to say is, we're all messy.

But your mess will become 'organised' in due time (key word here).

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