For many high school students, the most hated question is usually “What do you want to do after you graduate?”. For many of them, this question might be very difficult or even impossible to answer. After you graduate you have so many great opportunities, but which one should you choose? Do you want to work? Travel the world? Go straight to university? Or maybe even something completely different?

If you are one of these students who has been asked this question multiple times, but never has been able to answer it with anything else than “I don’t know yet, but don’t worry, I still have plenty of time to work something out”, I am here to tell you not to worry – It’s completely normal.

During my first day of high school, a teacher of mine asked me: “Kristoffer, what do you want to do after you graduate?”. I looked at her and said, “I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter because I have plenty of time to work something out”. Two years later, during my third and final year of high school, she asked me the same question again. This time it would have been nice to give her a real answer. To actually know what I was going to do after I graduate. Unfortunately, I was still not sure about what I was going to do.

Some time has passed since then. I am graduating high school this summer and fortunately for me, I have now worked something out – I am going abroad. More specific, I am going to work in London for at least twelve months. I am very excited, and I am really looking forward to moving to London, however, at the same time, I am also a bit anxious due to the fact that I have never lived abroad for more than three weeks in a row. But why did I choose to go abroad? And maybe more important, why do I think that you should do the same?

The first reason why I have chosen to go abroad, was because I wanted to meet a lot of new and interesting people. I wanted to meet people who can inspire me, who I can have fun with, and people who can show me how to look at things from a different perspective. The second reason was that I wanted to experience something new and exciting. I wanted to visit new places, experience new and different cultures and taste new and delicious food, as well as drinks. The third reason why I have chosen to go abroad was that I wanted to improve my Curriculum Vitae by doing something, which not anyone would do. In my opinion, it can be a very valuable to be able to show my future employer that I’m not afraid of going abroad, and it might be something which could help me stand out from the rest of the candidates.

I have now told you the main reasons why I have chosen to go abroad and therefore, I would like to ask you three simple questions: Do you want to meet a lot of new and inspiring people? Do you want to experience something new and exciting? And also, do you want to improve your Curriculum Vitae at the same time? If you said yes to these three questions, I will strongly advise you to go abroad. Lastly, I want to emphasize that I completely understand if you are nervous about moving to a foreign country, but you also have to remember that you only live once, so please make sure that you make the best out of it.

Written by: Kristoffer Skjærbæk