My choice of doing a 6 months break from University has been received with some hostility, concern and doubt by a lot of people I mentioned this to. I have to admit, that sometimes I think about the choice myself, whether it is the correct one.

I suppose this is the first time I go “off track” from this “being on-time thing”, whatever it is. I am not even sure how to describe it, but I suppose I have always been on time or even early (because I am a December baby), for my age, regarding the things I have accomplished. Starting a masters degree at age of 20 and having worked for 3 different companies in major industry sectors was a pretty strange thing for most Swiss people. The prospect of finishing my masters when I was 22 was also pretty strange, and starting a PhD at the age of 22 would be a pretty rad thing, I suppose. I would easily pass off as a genius solely because I never deviated from my goal.

But what is it, this goal, even? More and more I doubt the substance of my goal, perhaps it’s just the thing that I am expected to do, in the sense that, it all falls into place neatly. It’s a very linear progression. Bachelors, masters, PhD, good university, good companies, yada, yada, yada. But I often get left with a sense of unfulfillment, as if most of my education were fake. I often feel like I can’t do anything or that I am not learning at all. I am an exam passing machine that does 40 credits a semester. Look at me, I’m so good. Except I’m not, really. I barely passed my last set of exams and I have the feeling it was due to three facts: the realization that I was doing things that I really didn’t like joined with the feeling that after an exam all I have is an empty mind - relieved to dump all the information I absorbed for the sole purpose of passing yet another exam, getting yet another “trophy”, another 8 credits, plus the sudden confirmation that life is too short for wasting time doing things you don’t like.

So, I need to rethink my goal, my direction. What’s the point of running full speed towards something that has yet no shape, no meaning nor purpose? My goals are these fuzzy things that I seem to approximate slowly. What I know is: I am happy I switched from studying Fluid Dynamics to Robotics because this is interesting. I am happy I am doing two courses that I really don’t need because they are interesting. Furthermore, I know I am not happy about the prospect of doing a thesis right away in some topic I feel sorta blasé about, and yet again, wasting 2 years of a masters for the sake of another line on my CV.

This should be intuitive, the idea of being happy and satisfied, but for me, it’s like I am taking baby steps towards something that is worth spending time on and slowly trying to release my mindset from what I have set myself to do, blindly, for the sake of being nice on paper. And this is why it is absolutely clear to me that I need some time off academia and figure things in general.