We're all kind of born on auto-pilot: school, sports, all that stuff is mostly decided for us. For a long time, our story isn't really ours to tell. But at some point, there's this shift. A moment where you pause, look back, and for the first time try to piece together how you even got here. And "here" means something different depending on the version of auto-pilot you were on. Maybe you played a sport your parents swore you had a future in. Maybe you spent summers coding.

Narrative gives us purpose. But it's our purpose that shapes the story we end up telling.

I graduated high school thinking I'd end up in D.C. for International Relations. Instead, I found myself in Manchester studying math after a last-minute gap semester spent working at an early FinTech startup. I spent a year in Manchester teaching myself to code and getting hit with absence-related visa termination warnings. I withdrew and moved to a state school just to be in the US.

I don't see narrative as being naturally linear—moreso recursive. We imagine our lives unfolding forward, but meaning is always assigned in reverse. The story isn't the path itself, but the pattern we project onto it once enough time has passed to justify the turns. We can only connect the dots looking backwards. And in that sense, our sense of self is always under revision as an evolving thesis shaped by memory, bias, and a fragile need for coherence.

But where does that need for coherence even come from?

For me, it came from being told my story needs to make sense to someone else before it makes sense to me. Whether it's schools, jobs, or applications—there's this quiet pressure to make your path look polished, linear, and intentional. Like it was all part of some master plan. My story was everything but that. When you've switched directions, changed countries, and followed curiosity down strange alleys, it's easy to feel like you're off track.

I used to shy away from mine because it felt too scattered to say out loud. But over time, I've realized that coherence isn't the point. There's something powerful about ownership. The most grounding thing I've done for myself is to own my story, as it is, without trying to retroactively make it seem like I had it planned out all along.

This piece is less of a lesson to others and more of a note to self: stand in your story

04/24/25