becoming
More than a year ago, I applied for a part‑time student assistant position and found myself in one of those solemn, ceremonial interviews—the kind where every committee member looks as though they’ve swallowed a rulebook whole and are now digesting it slowly, painfully, and with great moral purpose. I didn’t get the job. And honestly, I suspect that beyond my shaky résumé and my even shakier hands, my calm little story of a career shift simply didn’t satisfy their appetite for drama.
The truth was embarrassingly simple: Pharmacy was something I liked; history was something I loved. I wanted a life where my work could claim my whole heart, not just the tidy, résumé‑friendly fraction. That was it. No plot twist, no tragic backstory, no villain. Just a person wanting to feel fully alive at work.
To them, it must have sounded like a suspiciously poetic cover‑up. Who abandons pharmacy for history without a tale of burnout, betrayal, or at least one existential crisis? But my story was disappointingly wholesome. I wasn’t unhappy. I wasn’t running from anything. I liked my job, and I adored my colleagues. Some of my most loyal, dearest friends came from behind that pharmacy counter. Not exactly the scandalous confession the committee seemed to be waiting for.
Yes, my parents wanted me to aspire to a career that comes with a generous paycheck. But one part of me wanted that life too. I wasn’t dragged into pharmacy; I walked in willingly, like someone entering a long‑term relationship with lab coats. I studied hard, improved my grades, and even wrote a diploma thesis on a pancreas‑related computer experiment that I was genuinely excited about. I wasn’t faking enthusiasm. I was simply a young woman who liked her field, liked her routine, and found a quiet comfort in knowing exactly what to do when someone needed help.
I also liked the people. Through that tiny pharmacy window into Vienna, I learned more about the city than any guidebook could ever hope to teach. It was an ongoing crash course in human nature, delivered in five‑minute increments. Those encounters became stories I still carry—stories I retell to anyone patient enough to listen, and occasionally to people who aren’t.
But deep down, I knew I wasn’t going the extra mile. I wasn’t anywhere near my full potential. I did my job well, and I cared deeply. But there was a ceiling I kept bumping into—a quiet, persistent sense that I was operating on one frequency when my mind wanted to play an entire symphony. I could feel the difference between doing something capably and doing something wholeheartedly. Pharmacy let me be competent; history makes me feel alive. And once you’ve tasted that feeling, it becomes impossible to pretend you don’t know the difference.
My so‑called “drastic change” wasn’t drastic at all. It didn’t arrive with lightning bolts or cinematic music. It was slow, almost shy: a series of small curiosities, tentative experiments, and gentle steps long before I was brave enough to leap. I tried on different possibilities the way some people try on coats—slipping into them, checking the fit, imagining a life inside them. By the time I finally chose history, it didn’t feel like a leap into the unknown. It felt like walking into a room I’d been peeking into for years.
And somewhere along the way, I learned that the edges of a comfort zone aren’t cliffs—they’re invitations. Stepping beyond them is a quiet kind of courage: entering a space where the rules aren’t known, where stumbling is likely, and where the only guarantee is the possibility of becoming someone slightly different than before. That has become my life philosophy. When the heart is only half awake, that’s the sign. I don’t linger if there’s freedom to move. I’m choosing the life that lets me stand at the cliff’s edge as my whole self, and the self I’m still becoming.
