It's eight years since I plucked up the courage to tell my mum I wasn't going to go into law as a career, but be a journalist instead. She was devastated. In the middle of my room in university, she went on her knees and started begging me with tears.
It was sad seeing her like that but I couldn't back down now. It had taken me hours of telephone encouragement from various friends on how to break the news to her. It felt like I was coming out; In this case “career coming out”. Most of all, I've wanted to be a journalist since I was 15. I read English in university because of it. But somehow in the midst of studying for my degree, my Mum convinced me I should qualify as a lawyer first and that I could “do journalism later”.