How to call it?

I was eighteen. I'd just finished school with a 1.2 Abitur — exceptionally good grades, which should have meant something. But grades and confidence are different currencies, and I was broke in the one that mattered.

Confidence is something I've always struggled with. You can tell in my posture. You can tell in the way I talk. Assertiveness, confidence — it doesn't exude from me. It never has. And at eighteen, it was much more apparent. I had this strange mismatch: a near-perfect Abitur, the kind of grades that are quite an accomplishment, paired with absolutely no idea what to do with any of it.

People had been telling me I should become a teacher. Medicine was floating around too — I'd always been interested in medicine. I remember once mentioning that I was thinking about becoming a doctor, and my friends just laughed.

There it was — no confidence, and the people around me confirming every doubt. The thought of a medical career stayed with me for most of my life. But back then, what I had was a theoretic interest in current affairs. I was interested in the world, in poverty. Those were the times when global inequality felt like the defining problem. The question in my head was: how do we make the world a better place?

I had idealistic heroes. Gandhi. Martin Luther King. And one in particular: Nelson Mandela.

I had a fierce interest in Africa, and for years I've been trying to understand where that was coming from. There was something about seeing the poverty, something about how African people manage life, that drew me in. I wanted to become a development aid worker. I wanted to save Africa — if you want to put it in a very easy way. Which sounds really cliché, I know. Like the protagonist in Dirty Dancing — the intellectual save-the-world type. That was me. But without the confidence.

So I started to study this degree — Kulturwirtschaft, cultural studies and economics — at the University of Passau. They did excellent advertising for it: only the best people with good grades study this. I had two colleagues from my class who also enrolled. The programme was essentially a mix of a bunch of subjects put together.

With what I know now, I deeply regret that initial choice. Though I don't really regret my life choices — not in a true sense — because I understand that every choice I've made led me to where I am now, which I'm fairly happy with.

Passau is at the German-Austrian border. A highly conservative Bavarian place. At eighteen, I was totally inept. I wasn't able to thrive on my own in that environment — quite the opposite. I struggled. I didn't have good grades. I struggled with my day-to-day routine. I was lonely. I did have a couple of friends, but there wasn't a real connection.

I think I come from a very protected environment. My mother probably did more for me than she should have, because it left me ill-prepared to start at eighteen. And knowing this, I understand now why people never leave their home village.

The study started in October. Before the turn of the year — it must have been December — I realised it wasn't working. I called my mother. She had gone to great effort to set me up there — found the apartment, helped me move, made sure the kitchen had pots in it. I could hear the disappointment before she even said anything.

So I tried. I lay in my bed in that nine-square-metre student apartment and I tried. The ceiling was close enough to study. The walls were close enough to touch from the mattress. And the trying made everything worse.

I became quite ill — binge eating and vomiting. I was so psychologically torn by the whole situation: where am I, what do I do, what should I do with my life? I was close to desperation. That was the first real crisis I'd ever had. And there I was, having it alone, in nine square metres, in a conservative Bavarian town where I knew almost no one.

And then there was the added weight of going against your family's good wishes. But I cut it short. I told them what I needed, even though I couldn't explain why.

I found an NGO online called Stata South Africa. They offered volunteering programmes across multiple countries. I was torn between Togo and South Africa. I can't even tell you why the needle moved towards South Africa in the end.

I remember my father in his living room — the apartment he loved, the one he always said he'd never leave.

He was right, actually. He died in that apartment.

But on this day he was alive, and he was afraid. He stood in that living room and begged me.

But I did. I went to South Africa.

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I don't really regret my life choices — not in a true sense — because every choice I've made led me to where I am now, which I'm fairly happy with. But the gap between what the grades promised and what I was actually equipped to handle — that gap defined the year.

Threads to revisit

• The strength — the zealous, eager pursuit of excellence in certain areas. Where does it come from?
• Mother's role — the over-protection, how it shaped the leaving, what she gave and what it cost
• Father's apartment — the prophecy about being carried out feet-first. The fuller story of that place and that man
• South Africa — what happened when you got there
• The medicine regret — still present today. Worth exploring why