When I completed my BA, I planned on becoming a human rights lawyer. A few years later I got a full scholarship to study public interest law at American University. When I got the news, I started crying, not because I was happy but because I realised that was not what I wanted.

Rather, that was what my parents wanted for me. Instead I moved to the UK to do an MA in Development Studies & ended up staying to complete a PhD in Sociology. I never planned on becoming a professor & certainly not in Pakistan, but that’s where I ended up, & I have no regrets.

If you’re graduating from university right now, you are doing so at a time of radical uncertainty; try & make peace with not knowing everything about your future because you really can’t, & be open to where life takes you. It may be better than what you’ve planned.