Monday, July 14, 2008

Careers I ruled out...

I've talked myself out of lots of careers in my life. It's good thing I narrowed all of my options down to...temping?
  1. Interior Decorator: My friend, Erica, and I used to use old design books and random counter top samples to play pretend when we were little. I rearranged my room weekly and watched Designing Women incessantly. I later decided that I did not need to be a decorator professionally and that I could always just redecorate my own house.
  2. Journalist: I was on the newspaper in highschool. I ran for Editor (did not get it) and had a column that I really enjoyed writing. I went to the University of Missouri-Columbia for college. Sure, it's the oldest journalism school in the country and is often ranked as the best--but I decided that I didn't need a journalism degree to be a journalist or at least to be a columnist, which is what I really thought I wanted to do. I decided to go get a degree in something else that would make me more qualified to write about things later. I ended up getting Sociology and International Studies degrees instead--because those are a million times more useful, right?
  3. Teacher: This one I only briefly considered. I think I would enjoy it if I could teach Social Studies or English and only teach children who were nice. I would like the summers off. My mom picked this career because she wanted to have the same schedule as her kids. Makes sense. But. There are all those kids that aren't nice and also those ones that are just annoying? And all of that grading and lesson planning in the evenings?
  4. Lawyer: It might be completely impossible to be a high school debater (shut up) and not contemplate this career path. I looovveeed debate. A lot. I liked building and dissecting arguments. I'm not really sure why I decided initially to get my Master's instead of a law degree. However, while I was working at the law school to pay for tuition I witnessed the mess that is your typical law student. Law school can be grueling and really competitive and people just didn't seem happy. Also, you graduate with big debt and then have to try to get one of those jobs where they pay you lots of money but make you work 80 hours a week. Or maybe I've watched too many movies.

Pretty sure the list could go on. I wonder why I felt like I had to talk myself out of everything--why there was this big need to cross things off the list? These days I just need there to be something on that list. Something that people will hire me to do.

2 comments:

Molly said...

Emo, you left off consulting as an organizational guru. This could be an option...

Lenexicon said...

I definitely think you should pursue writing again. You are good at it.