I can’t wait to stop obsessing about my thesis. It has become my life, and apparently my only topic of conversation these days. Whenever I manage to talk about something else, people come up to me saying: “Hey Aldona! How’s your thesis?” I’m wondering if I have taken it too far by thinking that I want to use this thesis on female DJs in the Netherlands as a basis for doing further research and working in the music industry as a journalist. Or maybe I should learn how to DJ and try it out. I remember telling my friend: “Hey, so apparently it’s pretty easy to become a DJ, and it seems that it’s even an advantage to do it as a woman. Maybe I should become a DJ,” to which she replied: “so because you interviewed a bunch of DJs now you want to become a DJ? Keep it real man!” Maybe I should keep it real. I don’t have a musical ear and am not the most hands-on with technology. I am way too emotional to be in an industry where people can be harsh to each other, and I hate competition.

Last week, I was sitting in Voltaire, one of the academic buildings of my former university, University College Utrecht (UCU). It was storming intensely outside, and the building was pretty deserted, the lights were off. The magic feeling of returning to the university campus where I lived and studied for three years turned from a happy feeling to a dark nostalgia in a matter of minutes. Returning to a place that was my everything for a certain time, and noticing how much I had left behind and how much things have changed made me think of how I now too, will have to leave my student life behind and make something useful out of my life. I will always be a student of life in everyway. But from graduation on, college days will be over. I am definitely an optimist and I love life, but today I am overwhelmed by thoughts and questions on what to do with my life, feeling slightly mediocre because I didn’t get the best grades and I don’t have an awesome internship. At the same time, I feel rich because I feel grateful for so many things in my life—I feel euphoric when I wake up just because I woke up and am able to see, smell, touch, and smile. I am free to walk to the supermarket and buy some chocolate—why do we take this for granted? It feels as if Western society looks down on people who are easily satisfied, initially assuming they are not ambitious. But I am.

I would love to be a research assistant for some time, and end up doing research and writing articles for a magazine about environmentalism, spirituality, philosophy and discourses of the like. I do want to contribute to the greater good, but I am open to any opportunities that life throws at me, and I am not focusing on a particular goal. Is it socially acceptable not to be working towards a specific goal? Are the values of goals in life determined by the extent to which they contribute to society? What can I do to make this world a better place? Am I supposed to have a plan?