The journey that I am on is one big happy accident filled with lots of little happy accidents. This is my 22nd article, so I thought it would be fun to write about the absurdity that my life has turned into!
Firstly, in high school, I wanted to be a theoretical neuroscientist so that I could do some research into conditions such as Cerebral Palsy and find a cure! This is obviously 27 thousand miles from what I’m actually doing. This is because I was much less academic than I thought and wasn’t very good at science and maths! I studied science until halfway through 5th year before I admitted defeat and stopped!
In 6th year, I decided to study only foreign languages. Initially, I did this to have a fun and exciting last school year. I also expected French to be my strongest language because I had studied it since P6. However, my motivation for this choice changed the evening after I had first made this decision when I learned that I was going to get a German PA. I still thought that it would be fun and exciting, but I now felt as though I had a practical reason why I was studying at least one of the languages, which made me take German more seriously than I had taken anything before.
Due to this commitment to german, I ended up disproving my own hypothesis about French! To the surprise of everyone, including myself, I turned out to be very good at German! My German teacher was my French teacher in S4 or S5, and even she was shocked at how good I was! This success led to the happiest accident of my German career…
…I was 18 and about to leave school. However, I didn’t really think that I was suitable for formal further education. So, I looked at studying at the Goethe Institut. Unfortunately, it became apparent that I wasn’t the kind of person that the Goethe Institut was looking for! I was running out of time and needed to find something to do with my life! Luckily, the head of pupil support at my school found a higher German course that I could do while I figure out what to do with my life…or at least that was the plan!
When I was studying my Higher German, I did start to look at different dance courses that I could do the following year. However, the more I thought about having dance as my primary career, the more I thought about my friends who were full-time artists and how stressed they constantly were! It occurred to me that I didn’t want that kind of life. I was no further forward with a plan, so I decided to just stay at college and do the Advanced Higher in German because I loved the language and I had gotten to know Isobel, so that was in my comfort zone!
I was halfway through my Advanced Higher when I really started to think about my future. By this time, I had fallen head over heels for the German language and saw myself studying it further. After a while, I kind of forgot that I didn’t have any desirable (AKA. English) qualifications and applied to study German at Edinburgh University! When I was inevitably knocked back from the university, I used the same “college is my comfort zone” logic and planned to stay at EC and finish my Advanced Higher French, which I had started that year but had to drop due to overwhelm. However, there was one night during the easter holidays of that year that changed my mind totally! I couldn’t sleep, and so I was lying in my bed at about two o’clock in the morning, my mind wandering, and that was when I realised three things:
- German is my forte
- I could probably be a German teacher for children with additional support needs if I really put my mind to it
- I could study at The Open University because you don’t need qualifications to get in and also I wouldn’t even have to worry about living somewhere else!
The morning after these epiphanies, I shared the final one with my mum and Auntie. They were pretty keen on the idea, especially my mum because it meant that I would be busy for the next six years! Although I was pleased with the plan, I wanted to run it past my French teacher for two reasons. Firstly, she would probably have been the one I would have been working with the following year if I had stayed to finish my French. Secondly, she was the head of languages at the college, so she felt like a good person to ask. When term had started again, I sent her an email detailing the idea and she was so keen on the idea that she practically told me to get out of the college! Once I had this rather enthusiastic advice, I applied for the OU!
I thought that the happy accidents had stopped when I got to uni. My first 6 months went according to plan…well apart from me managing to do a whole academic year’s worth of German in 4 months! Things were seemingly calm and quiet and I was getting ready to do the French module that I thought I had to do in October. I have realised over the last four years that the French conditional tense has a lot of silent letters which always confuses me. For this reason, I was feeling rather anxious, although Aoife and Isobel had promised to help. I was not only anxious about having to write in French; I was also very worried that I was going to forget all of my beloved German because this was going to be my first German-free year since I started learning it.
This is when yet another happy accident happened…
My mum is lovely but she really likes to talk! I had taken her to the German day school because I didn’t have support that day. I was being my usual unicorn-of-a-german-student self and all the staff were amazed! I had told the staff that I was independent so they should raise anything with me. Similarly, I had instructed my mum not to get involved in my uni affairs…
…but how many mothers can resist butting into their daughter’s life?…
Before I knew what was going on, Mum and the head of German at the university were talking about me! The head of German was complimenting my German mastery and my mum was explaining how I couldn’t do the next level of German even though I really wanted to because I hadn’t done this French module yet and how Aoife had explained that I needed to do all of level 1 before you are allowed to do a level 2 module. The head of German said that she thought that languages might be a little different and you might be able to do the next level of one language before you do the other languages! After a week or so, she sent me an email saying that I could in fact study German! My day was made!
In conclusion, even though I didn’t plan any of this journey, I am pleased with how it unfolded. I’m not necessarily religious but there is a saying “When God closes a door, he opens a window” and I feel like that sums up my journey very well. I think that too much pressure is put on young people to have a career plan by 16. My journey has been organic and amazing and I think that more people should embrace the unknown, embrace failure and embrace new ideas.
Eemmcg04💜
The Non Verbal Linguist 