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From an early age we are taught to aim high. Educationally, financially and socially, we have to be the best that we can be. But for those of us encountering looming graduation, the worry is no longer failing to aim high but aiming too high. In an economic climate where most university graduates are faced with the same job prospects as those that waved goodbye to education at sixteen, setting goals that are unobtainable and unrealistic feels like an inevitable trap. Setting out to reach unreachable heights before suffering an Icarus-like fall into depths of debts, regrets and failure is all too likely, yet feels emotionally incomprehensible.

Until the summer between second and third year I was an all too typical student. Entering the real world of stepping onto career and property ladders felt like a distant prospect as I was cocooned in a lifestyle of excessiveness, at least however excessive a student in Liverpool can be. Money ran through my fingers on a seldom used car at home, food and drink binges (even Asda Smart Price products add up) and numerous nights out a week. The good nights ended in oblivious barefoot walks down streets decorated with shards of glass to reach my ex’s house. The bad ones ended in walks down identical streets but back to my own house after screaming rows with said ex. That was the Groundhog Day (or rather night, days were spend fighting hangovers in bed to the sounds of interchangeable daytime quizzes and reality shows) cycle that went on for two years. It felt like my social peak but educationally, financially and emotionally, I hadn’t achieved anything at all. But even this life felt better than the cyclical lives of friends that I’d left behind at home. While they already had one step on their career ladders, and some had even reached a rung on the property one, their ladders were significantly lower than the ones I believed a degree would help me climb.

I was nearly sucked into their world of dead-end jobs, long-term, essentially emotionally dead relationships and scraping money together to rent aesthetically dead flats. Who knows, I may still fall prey to this standard lifestyle. After all, I’d been sucked into a world of frivolous spending on socialising and various means of forgetting where and who I was. While in neither world would I be happy long term, I was comfortable and thought I was content in the one I’d chosen. But both worlds need to be escaped, at this age anyway.

Travelling feels like the only way to escape, physically and mentally. Whatever ties there are at home, at this age they should not be too strong for a temporary cut. The boyfriend that’s been there since the beginning of sixth form will probably still be there on return. He won’t have the same appeal after travelling though, he aimed too low. The friends that settled and shied away from leaving their home town aren’t going anywhere, and neither are family. Travelling is about personal growth. However low I wanted to aim before, after spending a few months out the country, I succumbed to the urge to aim high. I want to see new countries, meet new people, learn about new cultures. Home has become a place I dread seeing, that feeling of comfort I had when I used to step foot in the door now feels claustrophobic. No place is too far away. But now I’m faced with four more months of slaving for a degree before entering that same world that all those friends at home never left. The infatuation with travelling, the desire to be anywhere but here, the love for someone met thousands of miles away can’t continue. They still exist but they won’t fit in with what my life must be. Money’s run out (God I’m regretting that car), my parents won’t ever again reach for their credit card at 2am when I need a flight but have run out of funds. After being forced back into my pre-travelling life, the only rational aims I can have are moderate career and financial ones. I spend half my life aching to go back to those few months away from this monotony.

So is aiming high worth it when the outcome is always the same? All I know is that I’m now faced with an added resentment that whether career aims are reached or not, I’ll never be able to get high enough or far enough away.