My job as a freelancer has allowed me to support myself financially and I live within my means, but it has also given me freedom with my time. I use this time to unpack and work through a lot of stress that I had accumulated and pushed down during college. I personally feel that it is worthwhile for me to do this now, instead of piling even more stress on top. I try to have a 50/50 split between work and health.
Although I know that I won’t be tutoring IELTS forever, I haven’t thought too much ahead either. I am a firm believer that when I focus and put my heart into the task in front of me, good things will come if I am open to it: in the form of good people, and good opportunities that are a good fit for me.
If you had a single piece of advice for your fellow students, what would it be?
“Treat life as an experiment, and you are the scientist.”
In an ideal world, scientists come up with a hypothesis that will either be proved or disproved, through a series of trial and error. These scientists are ready to welcome any type of outcome.
If the experiment is something the scientists have never done before, then they approach it with a sense of curiosity and intrigue as to what might happen, instead of worrying over potentially ‘negative’ outcomes. If the experiment doesn’t work as expected, instead of bashing themselves with self-guilt or shame, they simply accept the outcome, redo the experiment, or explore a different method.
Although we don’t live in an ideal world, I try to apply this mindset wherever I can. Of course, I still feel guilt, shame or anxious anticipation from time to time, but this approach has helped me to accept and learn from my own mistakes instead of regretting them. If I’m lucky, I might even get a good story out of them.
It has also allowed me to feel excitement and eagerness for things that I don’t know, instead of being scared of them. I still worry about the past and the future sometimes, just not as often. That has both saved me a significant amount of emotional turmoil and freed up a considerable amount of time for me to spend on better things.