This is where the story becomes difficult for me to explain.
Looking backwards, the sequence appears almost logical.
Looking forward from the point at which I actually made the decisions, it was anything but logical.
I left an internship in Polokwane where management had told me they recognised leadership potential in me.
The internship was being extended.
I still needed professional registration.
Staying could have given me additional time to achieve it.
Instead, I left.
I travelled across the country to George in the Western Cape and accepted another short-term contract.
There was no PhD scholarship waiting for me there.
There was no future mentor waiting for me either.
The GIS manager who would eventually influence my decision to pursue a PhD had not even been appointed when I made the decision to go to George.
She arrived later.
This matters because it complicates one of the ideas I have repeatedly considered while reflecting on my journey.
Was the Mental Schema at Work Again?
I have wondered whether some of the things people call luck can partly be explained through a mental schema.
When you know what you want, perhaps your mind becomes particularly sensitive to opportunities related to that objective.
You notice things other people might overlook.
You make connections.
You recognise opportunities and act on them.
There is something persuasive about that explanation.
But this particular episode troubles it.
What opportunity did I recognise when I went to George?
There was no PhD opportunity that I knew about.
The person who would later encourage me to pursue one did not work there.
I wasn’t even going to George to position myself for doctoral studies.
When she eventually arrived, I approached her about professional registration, not about pursuing a PhD.
There was nothing for my mental schema to recognise.
Or at least nothing that I can identify retrospectively.
A Decision That Looked Almost Like Career Suicide
This is what fascinates me when I look back.
At the time, leaving the internship could easily have turned out badly.
I abandoned an extension designed partly to help me obtain professional registration. I walked away after management told me they saw leadership potential and wanted to develop me. I moved far from home for another temporary position.
There was no guarantee that any of this would lead somewhere better.
Yet it was precisely through that apparently uncertain decision that I eventually encountered someone who helped me complete my professional registration and subsequently encouraged me towards a PhD.
She forwarded the first scholarship.
I failed.
She forwarded another.
I succeeded.
She quietly strengthened my application through a motivational letter.
And eventually I found myself at Rhodes University’s Institute for Water Research beginning a PhD.
How exactly am I supposed to explain that?
Chance, Providence or Something Else?
There is a temptation when looking backwards to impose order on events.
Because we now know how the story ended, we can construct a clean sequence:
I left Polokwane.
I went to George.
I met a mentor.
She introduced me to an opportunity.
I went to Rhodes.
But that neat sequence exists only retrospectively.
The person making the first decision did not know the second, third or fourth events were coming.
So was it coincidence?
Were these simply independent events that happened to intersect favourably?
Was my mental schema operating at a level I still do not adequately understand?
Were there supernatural forces at play beyond human comprehension?
Or, as some people might put it, was I somehow supposed to be in George?
I do not know.
And perhaps “I do not know” is the most honest conclusion.
I certainly would not advise anyone to abandon a promising opportunity on the assumption that something better will mysteriously appear. That isn’t what this story proves.
What it demonstrates to me is something more modest.
Humans make decisions with incomplete information.
We can plan. We can work. We can recognise opportunities. We can estimate risks.
But we cannot factor into our calculations people we haven’t met, appointments that haven’t happened, opportunities that don’t yet exist, or acts of kindness that somebody will one day perform without our knowledge.
There is a point beyond which retrospective explanations begin giving us credit for knowledge we never possessed.
I know why I left Polokwane.
I know why I accepted the position in George.
What I cannot explain is how that decision ultimately helped take me somewhere I could not have seen from where I was standing.
Was I supposed to be in George?
I still do not know.
Join the conversation
When an important outcome in your life depends on events you neither planned nor could have predicted, where do you draw the line between personal agency, coincidence and something beyond our understanding?
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