here's the question of the day folks--when did you become an adult? and, for my purposes here, that means when did you get a "real" job?
this topic was brought up today in an email convo my friend broad and i had.
did you start your "real" job--meaning the one you planned on having when you grew up or what you studied in college--right after high school or college? did you automatically become a mature, responsible adult after high school or college?
in my case the answer is no.
i graduated college june 1990. to be honest i don't think i really knew what i wanted to be when i grew up, even at that point. when i first started college i wanted to be an ob/gyn simply because i love babies and wanted to deliver them. after two weeks i knew that was not going to work. i hated and sucked at science and math in high school. so then i figured, hey, liberal arts? i can take art and writing and all that creative stuff and that counts as a degree? sweet! i'm in. plus i loved writing and at that point i was envisioning my childhood dream of being darren stevens and writing advertising copy. in the school of journalism or j-school as nerdy types are wont to call it, you had to explore all the stupid categories, or at least most of them. i studied pr (blech), advertising/marketing (which in retrospect really are two different things) (loved them), magazines (oooohhh, so glamourous--little did i know), news reporting (zzzz could there be anything more boring?) and that might have been it. ok, so i'm rambling (thank you codeine cough syrup). ok, graduated w/ that liberal arts degree in journalism w/ a minor in marketing.
graduation comes. i have no plan. not a one. i should mention that back then i still liked my family and was not around them much at all while i was in college. they lived in another state. i was naive and young and still thought my parents knew best. (i laugh, sadly, now that i was so stupid). so, i really didn't have a plan other than moving to where they lived (which is how i ended up in nc). i waited tables all summer, still went back to wv to hang out w/ my college friends on the weekends, and basically led my college life of partying and not planning anything until april 1991 when the hubs gave me the ultimatum that took me to live w/ him in oklahoma. the plan was that i'd look for a "real" job when i got there. hmmm, yeah, that didn't happen either. i transfer to a restaurant out there (red lobster if you must know) and waited tables once again. we partied, scraped by, played house but weren't really grown ups yet i don't think.
that fall we moved back to nc (because i forced him too, once again because i wanted, stupidly, to be near my family). we eventually rented a house and got real jobs and later got married. i guess that's when i became an adult with a real job, more than a year after i graduated from college.
how about you?
5 comments:
here'e my two cents. i wanted to be an english major since high school. i flirted with the idea of journalism briefly but decided i couldn't be up in people's faces during tragedy, so i skipped that. in college i decided i wanted to be a professor - what could be better than getting paid to read? - but i wanted to make sure. so i looked for a job after graduation, went home b/c where else was i going to go? waitressed while i was looking and finally 6 months after grad landed a job with the local arts council as the receptionist/development coordinator (i licked fundraising envelopes). it was way boring. so meanwhile i had started looking into grad programs and decided to apply to ones for creative writing. finally got accepted into one, thinking i would go on and get my phd. half way into the program i hated it, thought most of my classmates were pretentious and couldn't fathom doing 5 more years of school.
so, feb before i grad with my mfa, started looking for a job either writing (pr/communications, whatever) or doing non profit work ala my earlier exp. had some odd jobs in the meantime and finally, again in nov, landed a real job at a bridal magazine.
i guess i was never much of a partier, goof off kind of girl. go capricorn!
Ummm I haven't figured it out yet? I put off the real world by going to law school. You know how I feel about that. I too was an English Major, concentration in American Literature. I DIDN'T want to be a teacher, although now I think I do. So off to law school I went. I had to move back to ME to get a job, and I really never liked what I did all that much (real estate). Then I had kids.....and now a blog. So, in another 5,000 years when I can go to work or something maybe I'll figure it out. :)
Although I have a real job and am an "adult" I don't think I have found "what I want to be when I grow up" yet. I would love to be able to quit the current snooze job and look for something that is fun only where pay, vacation, insurance etc. makes no difference.
SIL
broad--i love you, but damn! overachieve much : ) he he he
k--i too have often thought of teaching. interesting though that you hated the lawyer thing so much.
SIL--i'm beginning to wonder if anyone i know or know of is actually doing a job they really enjoy.
what are you trying to say? see i told you i was a freak. what do you expect of the oldest sibling of a loser brother who also happens to be a capricorn with a dad who wasn't into that daddy's little princess schtick and who's mother pinned all of her unrealized dreams about life on??????
but i am not bitter.
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