The Girl Who Kept Going
I used to think that if I worked hard enough, everything would eventually fall into place.
Study hard. Get good grades. Go to university. Graduate. Find a job. Build a career.
It sounded simple when I was younger.
But as an immigrant girl growing up in Canada, I quickly learned that life does not always follow the plan you create for it.
For years, education became one of the most important parts of my life. I studied because I wanted more for myself. I wanted stability, independence, and a future I could be proud of. More than anything, I wanted to prove that all the sacrifices that came with starting a new life in a different country meant something.
There were days when university felt exhausting. Assignments piled up, deadlines came faster than expected, and sometimes I questioned whether I was capable of doing everything I had set out to do.
But I kept going.
Eventually, after years of lectures, papers, exams, late nights and early mornings, I graduated from university.
I thought graduation would feel like reaching the finish line.
Instead, I realized it was only the beginning.
I entered the job market excited and hopeful. I updated my résumé, searched through job postings, wrote cover letters and submitted application after application.
Then came the silence.
No response.
Another application.
No response.
Another rejection.
Then another.
There is a strange kind of frustration that comes with working your entire life toward something and suddenly feeling as though no one can see how hard you worked to get there.
Sometimes I would look at my degree and wonder, What am I doing wrong?
I had done what I was told to do. I studied. I worked hard. I graduated. I tried to build experience.
Yet somehow, I still found myself searching.
That period taught me something university never could.
Success is not always immediate.
Sometimes success looks like waking up after receiving another rejection and applying again anyway.
It looks like questioning yourself but continuing to believe that there is still something ahead of you.
And somewhere along the way, I started thinking about what I wanted my life to become rather than simply what job I could get next.
That question brought me back to something I had been thinking about for years: law.
I became interested in the way law intersects with justice, politics, inequality and the lives of ordinary people. I started imagining myself in law school, sitting in classrooms discussing cases and eventually using that education to build a career where I could make a meaningful difference.
So while searching for work, I began preparing for the LSAT.
And that introduced an entirely different challenge.
There are days when I sit down to study and feel confident.
There are other days when I answer question after question incorrectly and wonder whether I am capable of doing this at all.
Sometimes one difficult practice section can make me question months of work.
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But I am slowly learning that struggling with something does not mean I am incapable of succeeding at it.
It simply means I am still learning.
At the same time, I have been exploring master’s programs because my curiosity did not disappear when I graduated. If anything, university made me realize how much more there is to understand about politics, international affairs, justice and the world around us.
So now my life looks very different from the picture I once imagined.
I am a university graduate searching for work.
I am an aspiring law student preparing for the LSAT.
I am researching master’s programs and thinking about graduate school.
I am trying to gain experience, build a career and figure out what comes next.
And some days, I still feel completely unsure.
But maybe being unsure does not mean being lost.
Maybe your twenties are not supposed to be a perfectly organized sequence of achievements.
Maybe they are supposed to be messy.
There are applications that will be rejected.
Tests that will feel impossible.
Jobs you will not get.
Plans that will change.
There will be moments when everyone around you seems to be moving faster and you wonder why your own life has not caught up yet.
I am learning not to measure my life that way.
The immigrant girl who once believed she simply had to work hard and everything would happen exactly as planned now understands something different.
Hard work does not guarantee an easy road.
But it gives you the strength to keep walking when the road becomes difficult.
I do not know exactly where my story will lead.
Maybe the next chapter will be law school.
Maybe it will be a master’s degree.
Maybe an opportunity I have not even imagined yet will appear.
What I do know is that graduating was not the end of my story.
The unanswered applications are not the end of my story.
A difficult LSAT question is certainly not the end of my story.
I am still becoming the person I have worked so hard to become.
And for now, that is enough.
I am still studying.
Still applying.
Still dreaming.
Still moving forward.
And most importantly, I am still going.
