There have been two moments in my life when I felt I stood at a crossroads.
The first was when I decided to enroll at GraSPP. Ever since my undergraduate days, I had wanted to go on to graduate school. Even so, I could not decide whether to become a researcher or to find a job. So I applied to two different graduate schools. One was a researcher-training course, and the other was GraSPP. Fortunately I was accepted by both, but in the end my dilemma was back to square one. After agonizing over it at length, I decided to enroll at GraSPP. With that, the path of pursuing a purely academic career was gone. I felt as if the themes I had wanted to research and the future I had vaguely pictured for myself as a researcher vanished in an instant.
The second was when I decided to join the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, my current workplace. I agonized over whether to go to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. Both have jurisdiction over fields I am deeply interested in, so I could not easily make up my mind. In the end, (among various other reasons,) I decided to join the Ministry of Foreign Affairs because I wanted to place myself in the world of diplomacy. I remember the moment I made that decision as if it were yesterday. On my way home from Kasumigaseki, I was half in a daze, thinking, “That was a fork in the road of my life…”
Since the second crossroads lay beyond the first, it could (perhaps) be said that I am who I am today thanks to having entered GraSPP and what I learned there.
What was I doing at GraSPP? The doors to study abroad were wide open, there were classes taught by faculty with rich practical experience, and a rich menu of offerings was provided. Yet I myself never studied abroad while enrolled, nor did I actively take the courses taught by practitioner faculty. In that sense, I was a student who failed to take advantage of GraSPP’s distinctive strengths.
Even so, I have no regrets about my life at GraSPP. I fondly remember the desk by the window in the study room, which I occupied with my personal belongings even though occupying desks was not allowed. There is apparently a new GraSPP building now, but it was in that slightly dusty, cramped room that I spent the longest hours of my time there. I was blessed with the people around me, too. They were two years of studying hard and playing hard. Two years of freedom.
As for what comes next for me, I am to go to Russia for overseas training through my work. As I write this, I have only about two weeks left before departing for Moscow. The next time I return to Japan will probably be five years from now, after the overseas training and a posting at the embassy. Living in an unfamiliar land, amid a language I do not know (though I am studying it), makes me a little nervous. While at GraSPP I never imagined I would end up going to Russia. Since I have been given this precious opportunity, trite as it may sound, I intend to do my best. While I am in Russia, the next crossroads of my life may be waiting.
Whether the choices I made at those two crossroads were truly the right ones — the answer will only become clear much further down the road. So far, I do not think they were mistakes. Put into words, each crossroads seems somehow anticlimactic, but each time I agonized over which way to go. I do not think the answers I reached after all that worrying and thinking are greatly mistaken, but for me to look back someday and feel they were the right choices, my own efforts from here on will matter too.
When I stood at those two crossroads, I felt strongly that I was standing at a fork in the road. To those who are about to study at GraSPP, and those studying there right now: when you feel you are standing at a crossroads in life, I hope you will agonize over it deeply. And so that you can look back someday and feel that the choice you made at the fork was the right one, I hope you will keep striving after you make it. This is a message not only to everyone at GraSPP but also to myself.
(At the degree conferment ceremony, March 2017)
(Vladivostok, Russia, visited on a business trip, September 2018)
