Two Suitcases, Three Years, and No Idea What Comes Next

When I first came to the UK as an international student, almost everything I thought I needed for the next chapter of my life was packed into two suitcases weighing around 30kg in total.

It is quite strange when you think about it.

You spend your entire life accumulating things, building routines, knowing certain streets, certain people, certain places, and then one day an airline tells you that your new life has a baggage allowance.

So you choose.

A few clothes. A pair of shoes. Documents. Chargers. Things you convince yourself you cannot possibly survive without.

Everything unnecessary gets left behind.

There is probably a lesson somewhere in there. When we leave to pursue something bigger, we try not to carry anything that might physically slow us down.

What nobody weighs at the airport, though, are the memories.

Family. Friends. Relationships. Familiarity. The comfort of knowing exactly where you belong.

Those things don't add a single kilogram to your luggage, but somehow they become the heaviest things you carry.

It has been almost three years since I arrived in Britain.

And now, with only a few months remaining on my current visa, I find myself looking backwards almost as much as I look forwards.

I came here to study. That part was difficult enough.

My reason for coming here was fairly straightforward: I wanted to study Advanced Computer Science at the University of Liverpool.

The reality was slightly less straightforward.

The curriculum was harder than I expected. There were plenty of late nights in libraries, assignments that made me question whether I actually understood computers at all, deadlines that somehow always arrived quicker than expected, and a caffeine intake that I would probably prefer not to calculate retrospectively.

But somehow, I got through it.

Not perfectly. Not effortlessly.

But with a result I could be reasonably proud of.

And university wasn't even the only education happening at the time.

I got chickenpox so badly that, in my admittedly dramatic state at the time, I genuinely wondered whether this was how my great international adventure was going to end.

Then there were British winters.

Before moving abroad, I thought "seasonal depression" sounded like one of those fancy phrases people on the internet used.

Then winter arrived.

The sun disappeared at an unreasonable hour. Streets became empty. Buildings became quiet. And on certain nights, when you're alone in a room thousands of miles from home, it genuinely feels as though the only thing you can hear is your own breathing.

Suddenly the phrase made considerably more sense.

Living abroad also changes your relationship with home in ways nobody really explains.

I haven't seen most of my family for around a year and eight months now.

That is long enough for something strange to happen.

You stop recognising all the little patterns.

People change their routines. Things happen without you knowing. Family problems appear and disappear. Relatives get older. Children grow.

And your family starts hiding things from you.

Not maliciously.

Quite the opposite.

"Don't tell Haris. He's already dealing with enough over there."

They think they're protecting you from additional stress.

And maybe they are.

But there is something strangely painful about realising that the people whose lives you once knew almost instinctively have learned how to live portions of those lives without you.

I suppose that's part of the cost.

My first career in Britain involved pouring drinks

One of the things studying abroad teaches you very quickly is that your academic qualifications do not exempt you from needing to pay rent.

My first paid job was as a bartender for a well-known jockey organisation.

There I was, studying Advanced Computer Science while trying to remember which drink went into which glass.

Initially, I think my ego struggled with that more than I would like to admit.

You come abroad with all these ambitions about technology and careers and success, and suddenly somebody wants three pints and is getting impatient because you're taking too long.

Eventually I learned something incredibly useful:

Ego doesn't pay bills. Work does.

So I worked.

I was nervous interacting with people. I made mistakes. I didn't always make the greatest first impression. Hospitality was completely unfamiliar to me.

But at the end of the month I had money that I had earned myself, and that money paid for my expenses.

More importantly, those jobs taught me things a computer science classroom never could.

I became more confident around strangers. I learned how to deal with difficult people. I learned how to communicate when I'm tired, how to work in teams, how to remain polite when somebody else isn't, and how much invisible effort goes into the services we casually use every day.

In a world becoming increasingly automated and increasingly obsessed with AI, hospitality ironically taught me something I value more now than ever: how to be human around other humans.

After bartending came waiting tables.

Then working as a drinks porter at Liverpool Football Club.

Then warehouse work at Amazon.

Then another job.

And another.

Eventually, somehow, I ended up at Wendy's.

Somehow, Wendy's became part of the story

I started working there as a full-time crew member.

Fast food is absolute chaos.

Orders everywhere. Deliveries arriving. Customers waiting. Timers screaming at you. People calling in sick. Something inevitably running out exactly when everybody suddenly wants it.

After doing it long enough, though, I developed this strange confidence that I could probably survive in almost any workplace.

If you can remain organised while everything around you is moving at ridiculous speed, you become surprisingly difficult to overwhelm.

Wendy's has given me some terrible days.

It has also given me some brilliant ones.

More importantly, it gave me people.

Friends. Coworkers I genuinely look forward to seeing. People who annoy me. People who make an eight-hour shift disappear because we're laughing about something stupid.

Many of the people who started around the time I did are now slowly leaving.

Soon I'll probably leave too.

And I know I'm going to miss them.

Strangely, I still work there even though it isn't really financially necessary anymore.

These days I sometimes joke that Wendy's is basically my social club that happens to pay me.

Outside work, I don't really go out.

I don't party much. I don't take holidays. I don't regularly go on trips. I don't have an exciting calendar filled with weekend plans.

People sometimes tell me I need to "live a little."

And I understand what they mean.

Financially, I could.

I've saved enough that I could travel around Britain quite comfortably. I could book flights around Europe, visit friends, buy things I've wanted for years and probably stop working for a while.

But every time I think about spending that money, another voice says: Keep it. You'll need it for whatever comes next.

Maybe that's sensible.

Maybe it's slightly ridiculous.

Probably both.

I came to Britain imagining that independence would mean finally being able to go wherever I wanted and experience everything.

Interestingly, once I actually obtained that freedom, I discovered that freedom itself wasn't really what I wanted.

The people you experience life with matter more.

And during these years, I also lost someone I had loved for almost ten years—my high-school crush and someone I once imagined I would marry.

That wasn't something I expected Britain, distance, adulthood or life in general to take from me.

But life happened.

There are no hard feelings there. Some things deserve to remain private, and some chapters don't need villains.

It hurt enormously, I got through it with time, and I started rebuilding parts of myself that I had neglected.

That's probably enough to say about that.

Eventually, I actually started becoming the person I came here to become

My professional journey in technology wasn't instant either.

I spent close to a year working with Akamedics, a healthcare-focused organisation in the UK, where I worked across digital systems, web technology, analytics, automation and other areas.

That experience gave me something university couldn't: the understanding that technology inside an actual business is very different from technology inside an assignment.

Today, I work as a technical intern at Cenovate, formerly City Rehab, a physiotherapy and rehabilitation organisation in Liverpool.

This one means a lot to me.

Not because it is the biggest company in the world.

Not because it has the fanciest title attached to it.

But because getting that opportunity felt like one of the first times in Britain that I could genuinely say: I did this myself.

I earned the opportunity through my own work.

Since joining, I've had the opportunity to work across software development, databases, internal platforms, automation, AI-related functionality, communications systems, web technology, deployment and the strange collection of technical problems that appear when you're working inside a real organisation.

Some days I write code.

Some days I draw architecture diagrams.

Some days I'm figuring out why two completely unrelated systems refuse to talk to each other.

Some days I discover that the problem isn't technological at all.

That's probably software engineering in the real world.

And I genuinely love working there.

My contract has recently been extended, which I'm incredibly grateful for.

Cenovate may ultimately not be able to sponsor me. It is a healthcare organisation rather than a technology company, and employing somebody full-time purely for technology has to make commercial sense.

I understand that.

But regardless of what happens with my immigration status, I hope that when I eventually stop working there—whether that's months or years from now—I can look back and know that something works better because I was there.

I'd love to help make them the best organisation they can possibly become.

That would mean more to me than another line on my CV.

And now I've reached the strange part

I have a Master's degree in Advanced Computer Science.

That sounds rather impressive when written down.

Unfortunately, the employment market doesn't particularly care how impressive something sounds written down.

Technology hiring has changed enormously. AI is everywhere. Entry-level recruitment is fiercely competitive. Qualifications alone don't buy nearly as much leeway as we sometimes imagine they will.

And somewhere along the way I've developed another problem.

I've learned a lot of things.

Software development. Web development. Cloud. Databases. Automation. AI. Analytics. Infrastructure.

I'm reasonably good at several of them.

But what should I become exceptionally good at?

That's much harder.

Should I keep building software? Cybersecurity? Cloud? AI? Should I study more? Should I stop studying altogether and spend the next two years building things? Could I teach? Should I pursue corporate technology and climb the traditional ladder?

There's absolutely nothing wrong with a 9-to-5 corporate career. For millions of people it provides stability, progression and a good life.

But I also know myself.

Would I thrive inside it? Would I eventually build something myself? Would corporate politics drive me insane first?

No idea.

And perhaps that's one of the uncomfortable realities of your twenties.

You spend your childhood believing adults eventually figure out what they're doing.

Then you become one.

Apparently nobody sends the manual.

The clock

This is where things currently stand.

There are only a few months remaining on my visa.

And that has introduced a very strange pressure into everyday life.

Every career decision suddenly has an immigration question attached to it.

Every job application matters slightly more.

Every month disappears slightly faster.

The possibility of leaving Britain is emotionally difficult for me.

Not because I believe I'm entitled to stay.

And not because leaving would mean I've failed.

Actually, if I had to leave tomorrow, there is one thing I think I could say with complete confidence: I gave this everything I had.

I worked. I studied. I struggled. I embarrassed myself. I failed at things. I learned.

I earned money doing jobs I never imagined doing.

I eventually earned money doing the work I actually wanted to do.

I lived alone. I paid bills. I cooked terrible meals. I learned to cook considerably less terrible meals.

I navigated buses at ridiculous hours. I survived winters I hated.

I met people I'll remember for the rest of my life. I lost people I thought would remain in it.

I became more confident. More independent. Probably more stubborn.

And much less frightened of starting again.

Britain has taken quite a lot from me.

But it has given me an enormous amount too.

So what now?

That's the million-pound question.

Or, more accurately given international tuition fees, approximately the £15,000 question.

One option I'm seriously considering is another Master's degree, this time specialising in Cyber Security.

It would allow me to remain in Britain longer and potentially reposition my existing software-development experience toward areas like application security, cloud security, DevSecOps and security engineering.

It could be a brilliant decision.

It could also be an extremely expensive way of postponing exactly the same problem.

The uncomfortable reality is that another degree could consume almost everything I've spent the last two years saving.

I'd be back at university while simultaneously working, completing coursework, gaining professional experience and applying for jobs.

And there is no guarantee that at the end of all that Britain would let me stay permanently.

I could reach the end better educated, considerably more experienced... and with a very empty bank account.

Wonderful. 😂

So I'm trying not to make that decision emotionally.

I'm exploring every possible avenue first: sponsorship, continued employment, other opportunities, further study, different countries, perhaps eventually going home.

Nothing is off the table.

Because I've realised that staying in Britain at absolutely any cost would be just as irrational as leaving simply because staying has become difficult.

Maybe this was never only about Britain

When I packed those two suitcases almost three years ago, I thought I was travelling somewhere to obtain a degree.

Looking back, that seems almost laughably simplistic.

The real education happened everywhere. In university libraries at 2 a.m. Behind bars pouring drinks. Inside football stadiums carrying stock. In warehouses. Behind a Wendy's counter. Inside offices. On buses at unreasonable hours. In conversations with strangers. During lonely winters. In relationships. In losing relationships. In building software that somebody actually uses. In sending money home. In learning when to ask for help. In discovering how much I can tolerate. And occasionally in discovering that perhaps I shouldn't tolerate quite so much.

Those two suitcases taught me something too.

When you leave home to chase something, you cannot take everything with you.

You choose what you think you'll need.

Then life gradually decides what else you'll have to leave behind.

But the strange thing is that the things we leave behind don't necessarily disappear.

My family is still part of me. The people I've loved are still part of me. The places I've worked are part of me. Liverpool is part of me now. Britain is too.

Even if eventually I have to leave it.

And perhaps that's what I'm slowly learning as this visa clock gets louder.

Belonging somewhere doesn't necessarily mean being allowed to remain there forever.

Sometimes a place belongs to a particular chapter of your life.

You arrive. It changes you. You change something within it, hopefully. And eventually life asks what you're going to do with everything it taught you.

I still don't know what happens in January.

I'm still fighting to stay. I'm still working. Still saving. Still applying. Still considering doing something slightly ridiculous like spending most of my savings on another degree. Still trying to figure out what I want to become exceptionally good at.

So this isn't a goodbye to Britain.

Not yet.

It's simply me looking around after almost three years and realising how much life has happened here.

Maybe I stay another two years. Maybe ten. Maybe I leave in a few months.

I genuinely don't know.

But wherever the next two suitcases eventually go, I know one thing.

They'll probably still weigh around 30kg.

I won't.

I carry considerably more now.