DOES TRAVEL KILL AMBITION?

It’s a crazy concept really, but it’s kind of true.

We’re all brought up in a society where we go through compulsory school, then sixth from or college and the on to university if you wish. We work so hard through three years of lectures and hours spent in the library. We attend lectures on ‘life after uni’ and hope to cope with post-graduate life. But that’s the thing, how do you even cope after you graduate?

The summer I graduated, I wanted to do something for myself, to celebrate finishing 18 years of being in education. So, I embarked on my adventure across the west coast of America. It was the most mind-blowing, inspiring and jaw-dropping two weeks of my entire life. I can't explain the feeling you get when you experience an amazing new place for the first time or as you leave your footprints behind you as you journey on from place to place. It was the feeling of freedom, that I’d achieved a 2:1 in university and that’s all I ever dreamed of accomplishing in my educational life. The feeling that I had done it, and this was my reward - travel.

Most millennials nowadays are travelling. It’s kind of the norm thing to do in your 20’s, pack a bag and just go. After I had come back from America, the post travel blues hit me hard. It was like, ‘what do I do now?’. I had a job and everything but there was no sign of a career in the field I graduated in on the horizon. A few months later I had booked another trip to Indonesia, and after an ill-fated Busabout trip, almost six months had passed. I suddenly realised that I hadn't found myself applying for journalism grad jobs and my interest in sending cv and cv out with no reply was getting tiring. The thought of travelling really was killing my ambition...

It’s not that I don't love the field in which I graduated in. That would be silly. I love journalism more than anything - that's obvious to anyone who knows me. I’ll work for free just to see my name in the credits of a magazine and spend hundreds to stay in London just to have the opportunity for editorial experience, but when does enough become enough? Travel is so easy, I can just book it and a few months of saving later I’m experiencing a new country and having the time of my life. I can spend so many hours a day sending so many cvs and covering letters out that it just becomes kind of the norm not to expect anything from it - after all probably 5% of the people I email email me back.

It’s SO easy to just get in the cycle of booking holiday after holiday and I could really see how if I don’t watch it, my ‘recent’ graduate status may just become a thing of the past. It’s kind of like I’ve hit a crossroads. I’m prepared to spend £1000+ to do an unpaid internship in London for anyone who’ll have me, but it pains me to know how many amazing travel memories that I could make with that money... After all, it's kind of expected now that media graduates will work for free, isn't that how all millennials get started these days...?