It’s the Journey That Matters the Most

When I first set foot in London for my Master’s at LSE, I had one goal in mind, graduate with a degree. That was the destination, the end goal I had worked so hard for. But what I didn’t realize then was that the real experience, the real transformation, wouldn’t come from holding that degree in my hands. It would come from everything I had to navigate to get there.

Figuring out life in a new country wasn’t easy. The first time I went grocery shopping, I stood in the aisle for 20 minutes trying to figure out the difference between double cream and single cream. I got lost on the Tube more times than I can count. Simple things like setting up a bank account or understanding my rental agreement, suddenly felt like monumental tasks.

Then came the challenge of academics. The UK education system was nothing like what I was used to. There were no weekly tests, no structured hand-holding. Instead, I had to figure out research, critical analysis, and referencing, things I had never done before. My first assignment felt like an impossible puzzle, and I questioned whether I was even capable of being here.

But somewhere along the way, things started to shift. I found classmates from different corners of the world, each of us figuring things out together, sharing stories, laughing over our cultural differences, and realizing that at our core, we weren’t so different after all. We bonded over potlucks, where we brought dishes from our home countries, each meal carrying a piece of our childhoods. We celebrated birthdays in tiny student flats, cutting cakes with plastic knives, singing "Happy Birthday" indifferent languages. Those little gatherings became our safe haven, a reminder that even in a foreign country, we weren’t alone.

And yes, there were moments of homesickness, times when I missed the comfort of home, the familiarity of my own people. But I also found comfort in unexpected places like from a friend who’d check in on me, a professor who reassured me that struggling was part of the process, the quiet pride I felt every time I conquered something I once thought was impossible.

Looking back, the degree was just the final milestone. The real reward was in the journey, in the challenges that pushed me, the friendships that shaped me, the resilience I built, and the warmth of shared meals, laughter, and late-night conversations that turned strangers into family.

And isn’t life a lot like that? We spend so much time focusing on where we need to be that we forget to look around at where we are. We chase goals, ticking off checkboxes, thinking happiness exists in some distant "after," when all along, it’s hidden in the everyday moments. In the conversations on a long walk, the quiet pride of overcoming a challenge, the warmth of unexpected kindness.

I used to think life was all about the next big thing like the next grade, the next achievement, the next milestone. I believed happiness was always waiting for me at the finish line, just one step ahead. But then life, as it does, surprised me. It taught me that while the destination matters, the journey? That’s where the magic happen.