▸ The Academic Path Is Not the Only Path
Step into Your Life. Your Experiences and Life.
Allow yourself to follow your own script. It is worth it.
Growing up in Sweden in the 90s, I heard it: Get an education.
My mother said it with love and good intentions. Society echoed it. And by “education,” they meant one thing: university. A degree. Something official. Something safe. My mother worked at a bank. My father worked in a factory. That’s what they did — for decades. Stable. Predictable. Respectable. And maybe that’s why they believed so strongly in the academic route. It was the promise of something better. A way up. A way out.
But here’s the thing: no one ever told me what to study. No one pointed me toward a specific calling. Just the general idea that I should climb the ladder — without asking where the ladder actually led.
My path didn’t follow the script.
After high school, I didn’t go straight to university. I flew to the United States to work as a nanny for two wonderful boys. It wasn’t a career move. It wasn’t strategic. It was curiosity. It was life. I wanted to see the world.
When I came home, I worked at a gym reception desk. A day-care was another work places I tried. When Spring arrived I worked at an ice cream kiosk. During that coming I worked at a summer camp for kids. I wasn’t climbing anything. I was trying things. Tasting different versions of what a life could look like.
Eventually, I moved to a university town and started studying North American Studies. I still had the pull toward care — midwifery, physiotherapy, paediatric nursing — but I didn’t know yet how much those instincts would matter when I became a mother myself. How those three years of high school would later help me navigate surgeries, accidents, hospital visits with my own children.
I invested four years to get a Master of Social Science with the focus on tourism studies. I finished the program. I never worked a single day in the industry. During this time I had the opportunity to write thesis in Florida and Beijing. Was a great life experience. Some months I stayed in Norway as an exchange student.
After I graduated from the university I tried headhunting. While pregnant I worked with translation — running my own business. I dug deeper in HR administration, project management, social media, PR. Introduction to Philosophy and Psychology. Most of it wasn’t academic. All of it taught me something.
I worked at a real estate agency. One thing lead to another and I worked for various NGOs too. Administrative work for an organization helping dolphins in Egypt. Social media for a women´s organization. PR and Event Management and also a board member for a Swedish Women Organization.
Now I’m a school assistant. Who would have guesses? Not my family nor my sister. But here I am. And just last week, I had no idea that’s where I’d be today.
Life gives. Life takes. And you learn — if you’re paying attention.
None of this was a straight line. None of it matched what society told me a successful path should look like. But every single turn taught me something. Every job, every role, every unexpected shift added a layer of skill, resilience, and understanding that no diploma could ever summarize.
The problem with the academic path isn’t that it’s wrong. It’s that it’s sold as the only way. And when people believe there’s only one ladder, they stop exploring. They stop asking what actually fits them. They spend years chasing a title that doesn’t match who they are — and wonder why they feel empty when they finally get it.
My daughter chose a different route.
She didn’t go to high school the traditional way. She chose the apprenticeship path — three years working in a day-care while learning on the job.
And now? She’s building something no curriculum could teach.
Right now she’s in Scotland, cleaning rooms at a hostel. Learning how to live on her own terms, in a new country, with nothing but her hands and her willingness to figure things out.
And she’s not done. She’s planning to live in a castle in Portugal — helping renovate it. Then a language trip to France to sharpen her French. Then work as a kids’ camp leader. Then train as a ski instructor.
No one handed her a script. She’s writing her own. And every chapter — whether it happens tomorrow or next year — carries value. Not because someone stamped it with approval, but because she’s choosing it. She’s showing up. She’s learning by doing.
That’s not a backup plan. That’s a life in motion.
There is no one-size-fits-all.
We are not machines. We are not meant to be sorted into tracks at 18 and stay there forever.
Some people thrive in lecture halls. Others thrive in kitchens, on construction sites, in forests, in conversations, in countries they’ve never seen before.
The question isn’t “What’s the right path?” — the question is “What’s the right path for you?”
And the only way to find out is to move. To try. To fail. To adjust. To try again. No one else can tell you what fits. No system knows your soul. No algorithm can calculate what will make you feel alive. You’re allowed to walk a path that doesn’t have a name. You’re allowed to change direction. You’re allowed to learn by doing — not just by sitting.
Life doesn’t care about credentials. Life responds to action.
▸ So stop waiting for permission.
▸ Stop asking if your path looks right from the outside.
▸ Start asking if it feels true from the inside. That’s the only compass that matters.
▸ Life isn’t a ladder — it’s a jungle gym, and the only wrong move is standing still.
▸ You learn more from trying than from waiting for permission.
▸ Life isn’t a ladder it’s a jungle gym, and the only wrong move is standing still.
Stop asking if it looks right — start asking if it feels true.
