How can we really measure success in life

When we start to worry about the success in life?? When we compared our pass expectations when the things that we have it now???

Today I wake up not feeling very optimistic about my actual life; I remembered that when I had 10 years old I want to get 15 to felt older and mature and when i got 15 I want to get 18 to vote, drink and go out with my friends without my parents’ permission (not true at all). Then I started university and spontaneously I saw the world in a different way. I don’t know if that change happened just to me or to all the world who start a university life. However i noticed that my friends started to have more realistic points of view about life, more problems ormaybe just our eyes saw the world different, more mature, thinking in that all our actions will have a reaction.'

Source: advancedcfo.com

I finished the university at 2007 and I was the most realized person, especially because I got a really high grades. To be sincere I was a geek, this attitude bring me a kind of respect of my colleagues& professors. I thought that because of my performance for sure I will find a really well paid job (now I can write LOL).  I worked in several companies after to find a job that really like me, not well paid let’s called fair enough.  I worked in a pharmaceutical company as a stability chemist ( I’m pretty sure that is really hard to imagine what a stability chemist do…). I was on charge to ensure shelf life of the drugs, daily I performance HPLC analysis to verify the quality of the product and to evaluate if the drugs was stable on certain period of time. Maybe sounds boring but I really love my job, however I’m a really hyper person so I want to improve my professional life.  At that time I met a girl in the job who did a master in Ireland, ( I skip that when I finished the uni I live one a half year in Canada so living abroad and being independent it was something that was hiding inside myself, and that I really like ) opening a door of new life & professional experiences.

I started my MSc in pharmaceutical Science and engineering in 2010, I felt the most success, because the Mexican government gave me a scholarship that will pay cost livings and the expensive tuition feeds. I was like walking in the clouds while my friends and colleagues where working in México I was studying abroad, meeting new people from around the world, learning to think  in English, and living in a first world, what else I can ask for??

I can say that doing the master it was the best choice took in my entire life, I discovered so many things of me that I didn’t have the chance to saw it before. Lines before I said that I was a geek that is not the same as intelligent, but the master give the opportunity to felt me really intelligent, especially because I received two awards best master student and best research project.  At the end of 2012 I was pretty sure that I was a really success woman the most success in all my university classmates, however that perception will start to change.

At the end of the master I received an offer to make an internship in Brazil, no one of my master classmates received and offer like mine, so imagine how I can look myself, we said in México like a peacock.  I arrived to Brazil on November of 2012, it was really shocking and not in the good way. I was get used to live in a first country and now I was in a third country.  I won’t say all the bad things that I lived in Brazil because I met amazing people maybe the best people in the world, sincere, simple, without presumptions.  I have the opportunity to have another family, I always said a “Brazilian family”. In the other hand professionally i felt stagnant, sometimes sad, at that moment I thought that arriving to México everything will be as before (I was so wrong!!!!).

Coming back to my country it was peaceful for a while being with my family, friends, boyfriend. Then few week after I noticed that everyone had a life: work, marriage, kinds, house, cars, and money on the bank.  I start to feel not success at allL, especially because I thought that with a postgraduate formation I will found an ideal work, however I practically start from zero again… looking for jobs..it was a really hard even to remember, I fell chills.

Actually I am doing a PhD I realized that studying is my thing I felt the freedom, however sometimesfet the loneliness to work by myself. I enjoy doing experiments howeveriam not experimenting a wealthy life as I expected so many years ago.  And every day that I have the opportunity to breathe again, I appreciated however this question come to me over an over: How can we measure success in life.

For the things that we lived or for the things that we have. If is the first I am the richest woman in the world, however if is the second I’m not wealthy at all. 

Author - Adriana Munoz, Mexico