Here it comes, the moment when

You know you’ll never be the same again

Power chord, see the light

You found your place in the world tonight

I started this blog when I was moving to Ireland back in October 2013. I started studying Service, Hospitality and Tourism Management in September 2013 as on online student. The reason for me choosing to be an online student was because I wanted to move to Ireland. And because I was still a Danish student I could take my student grants with me to Ireland – and that is what I did. All this I have already wrote about on the blog so I am not going to go over it again. However what I want to say is I DID IT! I graduated yesterday and can now call myself an AP graduate in Service, Hospitality and Tourism Management. The last few months have been tough and I was so sure that I was going to fail. I even contacted the school about what I was going to do in case that would have been the outcome and I had actually already accepted the fact that I was going to be an uneducated woman for the rest of my life. I say the rest of myself, because I cannot face anymore studying. But it didn’t quite turn out that way and instead I am going to be an educated woman for the rest of my life.

The feeling I can’t quite describe, but it feels nice to know for sure that a new chapter has finally started. I have been waiting for this for so long and maybe that was the reason that I in the end just didn’t believe in myself. I was so close to the finish line when I lost all hope and just wanted to drop out. But as it is right now I am so happy that I didn’t just give up, because the outcome was way better than I could have ever expected. And I think what I should have learnt from this is to keep believing in myself and don’t give up. Giving up is way too exhausting, I think it would only have been a matter of time before I would have broken down.

But a burden has been lifted off my shoulders and I know now that things can only get better from now on, because now I can finally start working on getting a proper life. Being on student grants is not funny and it sets limits where you wouldn’t want to have any. But hopefully now I can expand my limits and I can continue dreaming about going to Australia next year and maybe even go through with it. The only thing that I want badly right now is to look for jobs and send out applications, but I can’t because I already have a contract for a few months, which I am also really excited about. Job hunting will have to wait till the end of the year!!

In May I started as an event volunteer at headspace Denmark in Aalborg, where I will help built up an event team and I am really excited about it. We have had a few meetings so far, but unfortunately I have been working most of June and am busy for the next few months, so I will not be able to participate as much as I want to. But I am really excited to volunteer for a course like headspace, because I think the concept is so great and needed among the younger people.

This Wednesday I participated in my first official run, Alt for Damernes Løb 2015. I signed up for it in March when I was running regularly and thought that it would be good motivation to keep running. And my motivation was on track until the middle of April where I was going to cycle 110 KM with my friend. Unfortunately we had a bit of miscommunication on the trip and ended up crashing. I hurt my shoulder really bad and it has actually taken around three to four weeks to get over it completely. And then I got a tattoo so I had to put running off for a week as well. So when I participated in the 10 KM run I had only been out twice in a month. But everything was great as I even beat my old 10K record. It was a lot of fun and it’s definitely not the last time I am participating in anything like that.

So many things have been going on and on Saturday I am going on a runaway vacation with some friends for two weeks and I am really looking forward to it. I have so many things at the moment to look forward to that it is hard not to smile when you think about it. And especially now that my final exam is no longer blocking my view!

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I'm not scared

Cause I know there's something out there waiting for me

And I swear that I'll find it someday, just wait and see

I don't care that you call me crazy

I can't stay cause I need room to breathe

There's nothing left to say, better sorry than safe

We live in a world where we are constantly told what to do. Our families have some expectations that they expect us to live up to. We need an education and a job and a part from that they might expect us to start thinking about getting a family of our own. And if we choose not to we are told that it’s time that we grow up. I think it’s not about me not being grown up. In fact I think I am more grown up than a lot of people. I’m not scared of doing things on my own and it doesn’t matter if that means moving to the other side of the world. I’ll take the challenge. Tell me when you have grown enough to leave your comfort zone?

The kind of reaction I’ve had lately when I’ve realised how old I am is: Twenty-four is fucking young! And my standard question when people tell me that I am getting too old for this is: I’m not getting any younger. And that is fucking true! So if not now, when? Should we really settle for never? I think there are three kinds of people: The ones who jumps, the ones who just needs a little push and the ones who doesn’t even make it to the edge. And I belong to the one that jumps, because for me life’s too boring and depressed if I don’t. However we are not programmed to reach happiness in the same kind of ways. But everyone should do what they think they will regret if they don’t and no one should just settle with something because it’s easier or because it’s what is expected of you.

I’m sick of listening to people’s thoughts on how I should live my life. We don’t enjoy the same things so it’s pretty obvious that we don’t want the same things out of life. I don’t dream about buying a house and settling down to start a family. In fact what I want out of life at the moment is quite the opposite. I don’t want to be tied down with a mortgage and a house in a city that I don’t even want to live in with kids that I don’t even want and with a car that I can’t afford. So the question is: why should I strive towards that? It’s pretty easy to see why my family might think this is the right reason, they don’t know anything else. They’ve never had a different life and maybe not even the desire to want anything else. And maybe they just don’t understand why I don’t want the same things as they wanted when they were my age, because it was what made them happy.

I see a lot of people my age tied down with a family and a house and I think it’s great they are living their dreams, but a part of me think it’s a shame that they didn’t just take a year out to see something before they got tied down to charter holidays by the pool with screaming kids. But maybe that is me not understanding them.

I’ve said it before and I am going to say it again. I am restless and I can’t help it. But I’m just a person who needs to get out there and discover something new. I love to have a permanent place to stay, but I just don’t like being there for too long. Recently I decided to postpone my move to Australia and booked at three-week surf camp in Bali instead. I am going on December 26^th which means that I will be there for New Year’s Eve and I am already pretty-fucking-over-the-moon-excited about it. And of course I am flying solo! 

Recently I went to an info meeting with EDU about studying in another country. I have had a troubled mind about whether to study abroad or to just study online. The education in itself is the same; however the amount of money is the big difference. Studying abroad is expensive as hell and it will result in taking a loan while studying online will be loan-free. I went to the info meeting to get a clearer picture of what I want to do when I am going to Australia. I had been playing with the thought of studying at an Australian University a bit and the thought of it seemed fun. The fact that you would be able to make friendships easier because you’d be thrown together with people from day one was quite attractive to me. I tried moving to Ireland on my own and I tried to develop friendships there. It was very superficial and it wasn’t until I had to return to Denmark that I felt I was finally moving forward. I am great at being by myself but you see so much more with people around you. However I didn’t really feel foreign in Ireland because even though the friendships where superficial I felt welcome.

The info meeting cleared my mind quite a lot about whether to go for the university life or the online life. At the meeting I learnt the difference between me and other people. When asked why people wanted to study abroad most people said something like:

“I want to experience a new way of being educated”

“I want to study at another university”

“I have heard great things about universities”

“My first priority is a great university”

University, university, university… I could care less about universities and that is the difference and that is what made me realise that spending hell loads of money on a university that I don’t even care about will be downright stupid. It shocked me how few mentioned the fact that they wanted to experience another culture as their first priority. Instead it seemed like something that would just be a bonus side-effect to studying at a foreign university. The person responsible for the meeting also said something about a Buddy-Programme universities offers to foreigners. It’s a program where the foreigner will be assigned to a local who will show the person around. But it shocked me when she mentioned that it was a great idea because you got to see where the locals go. It had me thinking that if you are not assigned that programme if studying abroad then you will not get to see the local places and meet the locals. And that is one of the problems I always have with foreigners. They tend to stick to other foreigners and for me it just seems like a lot of waste to go to another country if you just hang out with foreigners. I would hate to go to Australia and just befriend other Scandinavians. If I want to talk to Danish people I can just stay in Denmark. The foreigners in Denmark are just the same. They live together and do everything together. They don’t even try to integrate. They go to museums and do other tourist-like stuff where I am different. I want to come back from a trip and tell people about a stupid tree I saw in a stupid forest where no one was around.

Studying at universities I realised that you will be put together with other foreigners and based on that and other things I made up my mind; and that is to stay away from universities and hopefully stay away from foreigners. I am going to study online and start from scratch just the way I did when I moved to Mullingar. It’s always easy to take the easy way out, but I just don’t think it will give me the satisfaction I want from another country and culture. So I am going to take the tough and lonely path again and hopefully get something beautiful out of it. It’s so much more challenging and satisfying when you make it work all by yourself.