What Graduating at 30 taught me about Life!

"Courage is the most important of all virtues because, without courage, you cannot practice any other virtue consistently" Maya Angelou

It is important to me that I quote Maya Angelou as her words have been a constant source of inspiration. Everyone who knows me, who has worked with me, or has studied with me identifies a core quality which is a virtue of my life- 'the hunger to learn'. I also do not bound myself with the limitations and finite of possibilities and capabilities that the system pronounces as a given. To be able to break out of moulds is what keeps me striving for a newer and a bigger version of my identity and my abilities.

Over more than half a decade of working in professional environments I gathered a fundamental understanding of career trajectories:

1. You either grow in your career by linear role progressions and a core skill gain
2. Or you grow in your career by a steep learning curve via acquiring multiple skillsets in varied roles

As I was completing my Bachelors in Statistics years ago, a classmate and I had a conversation where a simple nonchalant question had struck a chord in my brain and I was tested to answer a very difficult question.

"What do you think this decade will bring to you? Where do you see yourself on the other side of this decade, when you are 30?"

This question stayed with me year after year as I was asking myself where am I heading in my career and what is my chosen path of growth? It is not easy to have these answers at 21 or even at 25. If you are born with that exploratory streak and a flair for finding inspiration in autonomy that I have you will understand that a journey to defining yourself is not easy!

And by defining yourself you do not fit yourself in a box, it is completely otherwise. Each year of my twenties, I have explored and unravelled a version of myself and my capabilities as never experienced before. This journey has been an exploration of many different roles, ideas, travel, adventure, cultures and more importantly expanding the horizon of my vision.

Visionary- to aim or to be, more importantly, to aim and to achieve to be a visionary you have to constantly strive to outdo your truths. You have to challenge your ideas. As soon as you start settling into comfort you have to ask yourself is this place of comfort growing me or is it accustoming me to permanency?

There has to be though, permanency in your personality and your individuality. The permanency that I have discovered in my individuality is the willingness to learn, to "never say no", to be relentless in the mindset of growth, and to be always open to being called out for being incorrect, uninformed, and sometimes even smaller than your self. When you accept these inherent of being human you inadvertently accept the other inherent of being human i.e. courage, wisdom, growth, a force of change and the power of hope and faith.

The beauty of today's working world is that we are all empowered to want to change the world, we are all driven to add a meaningful contribution to this world and the immense resources that are at our disposal gives us an unprecedented arena of learning and growth. It does take courage though to pursue these exploratory learnings.

As I was inching closer to the expiry date of that question I knew that the next natural course of action is to "go back to school". This has been a crucial propellent of change and of immensely deep learning in my journey of self-discovery.

When we are young and we are given opportunities we never truly know the value these opportunities are adding to our growth as a professional and as a human being. Many times, in the early stages of our career, we are driven towards self-growth, towards our trajectory and towards understanding 'business as usual' and how and where we see ourselves positioned in this ecosystem.

But with age and wisdom and experiences, when you move to a new country and you explore yourself in an absolutely different environment, while you are constantly provided with knowledge and resources, the support you get from your peers and your professors and the friendships you make inside and outside of your school, the "part-time jobs" that you do to support yourself, the way you experience a transformation of your mind and your body and your soul as you learn the abilities that you had never imagined you had before you discover a serendipity.

This serendipity was my pursuit when choosing to go back to school. I wanted the mental challenge and the personality growth that the experience of pursuing masters provides. Each day that you learn to adapt and imbibe the culture, the environment and the "ways of living" in a new culture, you will stretch your brain to test your resilience, your empathy and your agility. You learn to evolve and to mould yourself in understanding the redundant ways of your being. As you experience this, you learn the unidentified and the stretched ways of your being.

Through the experience of this journey of pursuing my masters abroad at 30, I learnt the valuable lesson for life, that, growth is never an individual. Growth is collective, growth is a community, a village, a society and an entire nation shaping as each one of us is stretching ourselves outside of our comfort zones. Each one of us, is a carrier of change, the force that is collectively shaping the society we live in today. And hence I have adapted to a new way of learning where I strive not just for the mental challenge but for the challenge of taking along with me in this journey the passionate, the hungry, the learning, the growing, the exploring, the inspiring and the inspired. The transformation of your ideas and thought processes is so beautiful, as you imbibe leadership not as a noun, or a KPI, but as an inherent part of your personality and individuality. You learn to lead by example.

The best outcome of this exploration is that I am yet again at the behest of this privilege to ask myself the question "Where do I see myself in a decade? What is it that I want to do next? What is the growth that I envision for myself?"

Trust me, it is a pleasure, a privilege and an exploration to ask yourself these questions, and to yet again at an age where many have surrendered to fate, choices or circumstances, you have taken the bold and courageous step to sit down with a pen and paper and make a map of your journey ahead. You are charting the course of your future and that empowerment is catalytic to being the "force of change" for the world is truly your oyster and your dreams are never too small. And as I am exploring the answers I now know that my map of growth haloes a larger than myself ideology, a community and a village and the tribe that will grow with me in this next decade.

Thank you University College Dublin for believing in my potential, for giving me this arena of exploration and for transforming me into proud UCD Alumni for life.

#masters #graduation #careerchoices #leadership #learnings #outcomes #future #forceofchange #journeysofexploration #powerofcommunity