Life After University

Like many of you, I am in my last year (hopefully) of my undergraduate degree at Queen’s University. Many of us know exactly what we want to do with our futures and are applying ourselves to the path we have chosen. Others have questions and look to travel within or abroad to find answers. For whatever the reason, we are moving onwards to something new and we are fortunate to do so.

Early this morning, while reading my daily blogroll, by which I mean the new posts from the various blogs I read all collected in one convenient RSS reader, I came across an entry from one of my favourite travel blogs My Marrakech. Maryam, the blog’s author, is an ex-pat American living in Morocco with her husband and two children and works as a travel writer and personal buyer when she is not planning her beautiful bed and breakfast.

On a recent trip to Kashmir for a wedding, she made the acquaintance of a young marketing student. Upon inquiring about the student’s future plans (how often do you hear the trite question, “so what are you going to do after school?”), she learned that the young woman has resigned herself to becoming a wife and mother and to forgetting all that she has learned while at university. She as decided to do “what is expected” of her.

One comment, penned by Lady Ra, speaks of a similar situation she experienced while teaching in Yemen:

I had students in Yemen like that. Studying english, full of talent, and not even allowed to contribute their stories, so beautifully written, shared from the heart, to an English newspaper geared towards expats, not even under a nom de plume.

I think, while people like me – the privileged, educated, white, middle-class women at Queen’s and like Western institutions* – would like to think stories like this are rare, they are more common than we can imagine. Take for instance the case of Hardeep Kaur (via the Toronto Star here and here), the young Canadian woman whose parents brought her to India to find an arranged marriage with the intention of leaving her there against her will. Fortunately for Kaur, she was able to contact the Canadian Consulate General from where she was being kept in Kapurthala, Punjab, and was able to return to Canada because she is 19 years old.

These stories are sad, these stories are disheartening, and, unfortunately, these stories are too easily forgotten as we return to the rhythm of our busy, privileged lives. In the TS article, Thomas Chandy, the chief executive of the charity Save the Children India, says “there are a number of young girls who don’t dream of a better world simply because they don’t know any better.” And while we don’t realize how fortunate we are make our own decisions, the problem is not that not enough women are able to make choices for themselves but that women making their own choices is even a problem.

*Minor edits on 10/30/2009.