Suzanne Beynon, from King’s College London, writes for The Student Journals on how travelling made leaving university easier:

It’s that time of year again when all undergraduate finalists, or postgraduate students who clung to the safety net of education, are tossed out into the grown up world and left to fend for themselves. Suddenly, you’re faced with the recurring and dreaded questions: ‘so, what do you plan to do now?’ Or even worse, ‘why are you planning to do that job, or move there etc?’ After two recent family weddings and other social mixers, I have become tired of the small talk replies of ‘oh, you know, I’m not really sure yet, I suppose I’ll look for a job, or maybe do a little bit of travelling’, before escaping, bewildered by the expectations that I would have some sort of five year plan.

The frequency of these encounters have left me contemplating the past three years. I wondered if there was anything I did that could have prepared me for the suffocating pressure I would feel when I finished uni. Like a lot of students, I ticked the travel box a few years ago and lived and worked in America for a summer under the Camp America programme. Recently, with the increasing number of questions regarding my future, I have reflected on this trip many times, and I struggled to understand why this chapter seemed so important to me now. Not one for collecting photos or looking over albums, the most important thing I gained as a student traveller were the stories of the people I met along the way. I realised that it was these that I needed to remember to help me answer these difficult questions…

Full story here.