2020 wasn’t the best year for risk-taking. But while most people clung tightly onto jobs, friends, families – whatever semblance of safety in a chaotic year – I decided to upend my whole life. After four years of undergraduate study in Brisbane, I left for America for a graduate degree.
In the week I arrived, the US recorded more than 1.6 million coronavirus cases . I was terrified. I didn’t leave my Airbnb for a month. When I went outside, it was like preparing for an epic journey from a Greek myth – putting on at least three layers of clothing to keep out the December cold, wearing two masks, stuffing sanitisers, tissues and extras of everything into every available pocket. But even in moments of absolute trepidation, my mother’s words kept me moving forward.
“No one else will give you a master’s degree in eight months. So, take the risk,” she said. It was true, my degree was fast-tracked. And it made sense to give it my best.
Nearly two years later, I realise no amount of planning or provisions could’ve fully prepared me for the ordeal.
At the start, I was elated to attend an Ivy League university. It had an esteemed faculty, the best reputation in the job market for my chosen professional field, and the kind of alumni who left lasting legacy in the world. For my family and I, who valued education tremendously, there wasn’t a better choice.
No amount of planning or provisions could’ve fully prepared me for the ordeal
We had seen how my mother’s life improved with education. It gave her the ability to make quantum leaps in one lifetime – plucking her from a small, southern town in Bangladesh to working for a multi-billion-dollar non-profit in Singapore. Most people consider you to be smarter, more qualified, by the simple virtue of graduating from an institution like this. There’s also a propensity to think , improve your quality of life and social capital.
While some of this is true, this education also comes with immeasurable pressure. There is a certain expectation of how an Ivy League student should be both in and out of class. Strangers and cohorts expect you to speak, behave, dress, a certain way.
For me, there was an expectation to know about centuries-long conflicts in the Middle East in encyclopaedic detail; to know the nuances of the Rohingya crisis simply because I’d been to the refugee camps when I was 19; to match the same level of intelligence and authority as people in the CIA or Human Rights Watch who came to our classes.
This cultivated an environment of extreme competition, where burnout and achievement have an almost symbiotic relationship. It also came with an all-consuming guilt. I constantly worried I was disappointing my parents, my professors, the very profession of journalism. And sometimes, I worried if I didn’t always work, it would create a pernicious impression of my country.
I was afraid of perpetuating stereotypes. I was terrified of being one.
The best kind of education is one that teaches you even when we feel defeated, there are good reasons for trying again
Now that the degree is done, I feel somewhat like South Korean artist Taemin’s character in the song, Idea. In it, he sings about being an escaped prisoner from Plato’s allegory of the cave. His lyrics “you are my messiah, you are killing me” about the dual nature of the idea of himself, swirls around in my head. And I realise my imagined and lived experiences of college life couldn’t have been more different. So, how could I ever go back to thinking that an Ivy League degree is the “pinnacle” of education, could actually make life better, when it’s done the opposite?
After graduating, I have never felt more lost, never questioned myself more truculently. I’m exhausted. I feel defeated. Most days I ask myself, Is the anguish worth it? The job market exacerbates these doubts. I sent out 80 applications between January and March this year. I was interviewed for just 13 positions.
I still have not found a permanent position. Some rejections came from budget cuts and bad interviews, others I inferred from visa status. But when you pin all your self-worth on your academic and professional achievements, every rejection feels personal. Every ‘no’, a kind of failure.
I’ve been told my whole life that education will markedly improve my life, give me a happy ending – by movies, by my family, by society at large. But my own education did not magically make my life better. I still worry about rent, groceries, taxes and visas. I still have all the same problems now with the financial and psychological burden of this new diploma.
Perhaps this is a special kind of existential crisis reserved for twentysomethings – a rite of passage even an Ivy League education cannot circumvent. I’ve turned to others hoping to find answers. After reading everything from Herman Hesse’s to Sayaka Murata’s , each featuring lone, lost protagonists, I’ve come to find that even people at the peaks of their professions with high degrees of education are prone to feel the way I do. That prickling feeling under our skin doesn’t really go away.
But perhaps the same niggling discomfort is what keeps us going. And the best kind of education is one that teaches you even when we feel defeated, there are good reasons for trying again.
Norma Hilton is an investigative journalist. She covers human rights violations, international politics and climate change.
