The future is looming. An ominous statement that every university student experiences near the end of their degree. For international students, it carries extra weight because if you’re in Ireland for only a semester or year, that means that what you may be experiencing on your college back home could be suddenly unpaused.

You have to go home and figure out how to fit into a life that may have moved on without you or a life that you have a hard time fitting into because while you have changed, it has not. And if you’re an international student who is doing a full degree in Ireland, the future is even more unknown because you have the choice to stay or go.

You could decide to stay in Ireland either by finding a job or continuing your education. Or you could go back to your original home. And there’s so many pros and cons to both, by staying here you keep the community you built, but by going back you keep the family and old friends. By staying here you can keep proving yourself that you can create a life for yourself no matter where you are. But home, wherever it is, has a comfort to it, a nostalgia that’s hard to beat. But I think what’s part of the allure of home, the nostalgia. And that when you go back to it after so many years or even just a semester it’s no longer what you think it was.

You can never capture the moment of what your home was before you left it. But that’s not to say it’s not worth returning back to. It’s just a difficult decision. But don’t let yourself become weighed down by what you think you have to do. And it’s always okay to take time to figure out what your next step will be. And it’s always okay to realize that what you used to want is no longer what you want.

By going to a new place, you become a new person so of course your wants and needs might change. Whoever is reading this, I hope you figure out what you want when you graduate and that it happens for you. I don’t want anyone to suffer in a job because they feel like they have to or have to move because they can’t stay where they really want to. Nothing is set in stone and the future, while daunting, is yours to decide.