BY BEN HABIB. Every January, school leavers get down to the pointy end of choosing what they want to do with their lives. A lot of people—parents and relatives, friends, school career counsellors, the media—are likely to give you some truly horrible advice. While usually well-meaning, the people around you will have all kinds of self-interested reasons for giving you their two cents worth. Ultimately however, it’s you that has to make the choice and you that has to live with it. With that in mind, I’d like to share some of my life experiences as a student, as a university lecturer and everything that I was in between, in the hope that my journey might make someone else’s choice just a little bit easier.