To nikhsub1 I would say, it's a matter of being forced to leave one's comfort zone, but eventually benefitting from it. For instance, I was determined to attend a certain university ever since I was a little girl. However, during the application process my dad surprisingly passed away and I completely effed it up. I thought that university was perfect for me, I was dead-set on that path, it was my anti-glare 17" and I felt from now on everything could only go downhill with me having to wait around another year to re-apply and spoiling my CV with that gap. Life offered me a different opportunity that seemed fascinating and awesome in its own right, like a 15" brand-new Retina screen, but simply wasn't what I had planned for and what I wanted at this time: a year living in the Middle East. I begrudgingly took it, a couple months in I found myself in the Arab Spring and gaining experiences and insight, which opened the door to a much much more suitable academic path a couple years later.
