The Long and Winding Road . . .
I had my first babysitting job when I was 8. Parents trusted an eight-year-old with their wee ones? But maybe it was a different time. I got paid $3 an hour and worked lots of $3-hours to save up money to buy . . . I have no idea what (what DO, or should I say DID, 8-year-olds buy? Now I think they buy make-up and Slut, er, I mean Bratz, Dolls).
When I was fourteen, I got a summer job picking strawberries. We got paid by the flat. The faster you picked, the more money you made. It was pretty brutal work. Strawberries grow on very low plants, hidden underneath the leaves. We had to sit on our knees on straw, bent over, and creep our way down each long, long row. It was hot, so we all wore shorts and ended up with little red pricked marks, like a very bad rash, up and down our shins. We started at 5 a.m. every morning to avoid the heat, but by 10 or 11, the sun was blazing and cooking the overripe strawberries to our skin. The memory smells delicious, but it was enough to put me off strawberries for several years.
When I was 17, I got a job as a camp counselor and swim teacher. I was at a Jewish Community Center camp on Seneca Lake in upstate New York, imaginatively named "Camp Seneca Lake." I had been a camper there and a counselor-in-training, but most of the people had going to camp since they were 7 or knew each other from their surburban schools (read schools that had other Jewish people) so I knew hardly anyone. My rural fashion sense fell woefully short. I felt out of place, not Jewish enough for the first time in my life. The first month, I taught swimming lessons and was a life guard. The kids at camp ranged from 7 to 15 and only some could swim. The second month, I was a counselor for 10 7 year-old girls away from home for the first time. I loved it, but I can't say they did. Most of them were scared and lonely and couldn't figure out how they ended up in a cabin with 9 other little girls vying for two teenage counselors' attention. I spent most of the month dealing with bedwetting and an overwhelming fear of squirrels (which isn't an unreasonable fear, if you ask me).
The summer before I left for college, I got a job working for a farm. I spent the first part of the summer hoe-ing (sp?!) pumpkins. We had to get up at 4 or 5 in the morning to get to the pumpkin patch (sounds very Rockwellian, huh?). We spent 5 or 6 hours hoe-ing the weeds out of the pumpkin patch. It was brutal work. It was boring, and hot, and hard labor. After the ho(e) work dried up (ha!), I sat at a corn stand on the side of the road. It was mindnumbing, although I did manage to get through "War and Peace" and get a lovely (farmer's) tan - on the front half of my body.
After my freshman year of college, I got a job as a lifeguard at a hotel pool and as a bus girl in the town's one fancy restaurant. I "worked" from 9 to 3 at the pool (where no one swam), drove home, showered, and worked from 4-whenever bussing tables. I hated the lifeguarding. There were no lives to guard and the creepy maintenance man used to watch me from the roof of the hotel. I loved the restaurant work, though. I loved the hustle and bustle of it. I loved that time flew by. I loved learning about food and wine. I loved the people that came in for a nice meal after a long, lazy summer day on the lake. I loved the eye-opening post-work debauchery. The servers and bartenders were older then me and took me to bars with them and I felt grown-up and sophisticated ordering Sutter Home white zinfandel. I started waiting tables and worked at that restaurant for five years. The restaurant years deserve a whole post and this road isn't THAT long and winding.
In college, I decided to be a high school English teacher. It seemed to fit. I liked books and I liked kids. Other than the paltry salary, it sounded perfect. In my youthful idealism, I thought I could make a difference. (I sound cynical now, but I actually still believe that a good teacher can change a kid's life.). So I dual majored in English (and Textual Studies, the obnoxiously official name of my major) and secondary education. I was disappointed. I loved my English classes, but the education classes seemed . . . obvious and condescending. The other students were . . . mediocre. Those who can do and those who can't, teach, right? I met very few teachers-to-be who could do (and I'm not sure I am one of them - after all see Great American Novel. Oh wait, there is none). So I headed off to two student teaching placements. The state mandated that high school teachers-to-be had to teach in urban and non-urban settings and middle school and high school. The first was in a suburban middle school. It was a wealthy suburb and the school was beautiful. I "taught" 8th grade, but my host teacher was everything that is wrong with the school system. Not only did she have shoes, brooches, earrings and sweaters for every holiday (Easter shoes? Check. St. Patrick's day sweater? Check. You get the picture), she had a very strict curriculum that she had used since she started teaching 30 years before, and she NEVER deviated. She "let" me do the unit on mythology, but I basically just read her lesson plans. I even had to show a slide show. This was over 10 years ago, but even then, slide shows were about 20 years outdated. Beyond that, I didn't really like 8th graders. I had a hard time admitting that at the time because I was very invested in the idea of myself as someone who loved kids - all of them. But 8th graders care more about what their peers think than anyone else. I know I did. I would have rather died (and I think I mean this almost literally) than embarrass myself in front of my "friends" when I was 13. So it isn't so much fun to teach English or literature to people who won't talk about it. My second placement was in an urban high school. 30% of the kids had special needs, which in non-teachery speak means that they had learning disabilities or had never learned to read or had been exposed to too much lead paint or had fetal alcohol syndrome. The school was flat broke. There weren't enough books in the book room to teach an entire class (let alone two or three classes) the same book at the same time. We had to offer extra credit to kids to go get their own books from the library or the bookstore. They had on-site daycare for the kids with kids. There were 14-year-olds in my classes who were on their second child. One girl told me she wanted to commit suicide. Another told me she had been raped by her father. Another's water broke in the hallway. The smartest of my students aspired to the military because they didn't even know they had other options. At our open house, 4 parents (with a total about 13 teeth) showed up. I had 120 students. I couldn't figure out how to do it. I didn't know how to punish a student for not reading when he worked until midnight the night before to pay his family's heating bills. And some of the kids . . . for good reason or not . . . were scary and mean. I was 21 and they were 18 and 19. I had no handle on how to assert control. Plus, I was too close. I cared too much (which is to say at all) about their social stuff. I found myself starting to get teachers' lounge sydrome. The first time I heard a veteran teacher refer to a kid as a "little shit," I got on my high horse fast enough to win the Derby. But then it all started to sink in. The walls were dingy. The carpets were ripped and stained. There weren't enough desks or books or teachers. The kids felt forgotten and they were right. I couldn't do it. I started to lose my idealism and while I never referred to a student as a "little shit," I saw where the teacher was coming from and knew I had to get out. I had started to apply for post-graduation teaching jobs (even considered one at my own high school, god forbid) but I just couldn't go through with it. For one thing, I thought I'd always wonder whether I could have done more than teach high school. What if that was it for me and the biggest challenge (and yes it is incredibly challenging, but not intellectually) I could handle. For another, I wanted to get out of school. I'd only ever been in school and what if the only reason I wanted to be a teacher was that I had never seen examples of other professions. I saw a vision of myself, twenty years in, teaching "MacBeth" for the 1,000th time and wondering why I ever liked reading (or kids) in the first place. But most importantly, I could see myself becoming someone I hated. So I had to get out.
I floated around for a bit. I considered grad school. I read about (and promptly rejected) the Peace Corp. I thought about teaching English in Korea. I decided for some reason I wanted to read books on tape. All the while, I was back at the restaurant and felt unbearably stuck. It was a great job when it didn't stretch out forever in front of me, when it was an in-between, summer gig, but when I could imagine myself in orthopedic shoes with a smoking habit and bad roots, I thought it might be time to quit. And after casting about for months feeling unmoored and unsure of who I was or where or what I wanted to be, running into people I knew from high school at every turn, I finally decided on law school. It wasn't a well-considered decision. Here was the exact thought process. "Hmmm, what am I good at? I can read and write and speak well. What jobs use those skills? Oh, I'll be a lawyer!" I had no exposure to lawyers other than on TV. I didn't know what lawyers did. I had no deep interest in the workings of justice. I just didn't quite know what else to do. And so, after a job as a receptionist at an internet service provider, another waitressing job, this time at a brew pub, and another stint at the restaurant, off to law school I went.
And now, as I sit here, I don't hate my job. And it was a bit of a journey to get here too (and I am going to cut myself off before I write my (uninteresting) autobiography). And I am not unhappy - mostly - with what I do. I have my complaints. I'd like to work less. I'd like it if the people I worked for had a better sense of perspective - after all, we aren't curing cancer. But there are things I genuinely enjoy about it. But as the people around me make changes and step off the path I'm on (and my path is actually maybe like the side of the road where you pull off to fix a tire rather than the main path), I started thinking about how I got here and whether there is somewhere else I'm supposed to be.
When I was fourteen, I got a summer job picking strawberries. We got paid by the flat. The faster you picked, the more money you made. It was pretty brutal work. Strawberries grow on very low plants, hidden underneath the leaves. We had to sit on our knees on straw, bent over, and creep our way down each long, long row. It was hot, so we all wore shorts and ended up with little red pricked marks, like a very bad rash, up and down our shins. We started at 5 a.m. every morning to avoid the heat, but by 10 or 11, the sun was blazing and cooking the overripe strawberries to our skin. The memory smells delicious, but it was enough to put me off strawberries for several years.
When I was 17, I got a job as a camp counselor and swim teacher. I was at a Jewish Community Center camp on Seneca Lake in upstate New York, imaginatively named "Camp Seneca Lake." I had been a camper there and a counselor-in-training, but most of the people had going to camp since they were 7 or knew each other from their surburban schools (read schools that had other Jewish people) so I knew hardly anyone. My rural fashion sense fell woefully short. I felt out of place, not Jewish enough for the first time in my life. The first month, I taught swimming lessons and was a life guard. The kids at camp ranged from 7 to 15 and only some could swim. The second month, I was a counselor for 10 7 year-old girls away from home for the first time. I loved it, but I can't say they did. Most of them were scared and lonely and couldn't figure out how they ended up in a cabin with 9 other little girls vying for two teenage counselors' attention. I spent most of the month dealing with bedwetting and an overwhelming fear of squirrels (which isn't an unreasonable fear, if you ask me).
The summer before I left for college, I got a job working for a farm. I spent the first part of the summer hoe-ing (sp?!) pumpkins. We had to get up at 4 or 5 in the morning to get to the pumpkin patch (sounds very Rockwellian, huh?). We spent 5 or 6 hours hoe-ing the weeds out of the pumpkin patch. It was brutal work. It was boring, and hot, and hard labor. After the ho(e) work dried up (ha!), I sat at a corn stand on the side of the road. It was mindnumbing, although I did manage to get through "War and Peace" and get a lovely (farmer's) tan - on the front half of my body.
After my freshman year of college, I got a job as a lifeguard at a hotel pool and as a bus girl in the town's one fancy restaurant. I "worked" from 9 to 3 at the pool (where no one swam), drove home, showered, and worked from 4-whenever bussing tables. I hated the lifeguarding. There were no lives to guard and the creepy maintenance man used to watch me from the roof of the hotel. I loved the restaurant work, though. I loved the hustle and bustle of it. I loved that time flew by. I loved learning about food and wine. I loved the people that came in for a nice meal after a long, lazy summer day on the lake. I loved the eye-opening post-work debauchery. The servers and bartenders were older then me and took me to bars with them and I felt grown-up and sophisticated ordering Sutter Home white zinfandel. I started waiting tables and worked at that restaurant for five years. The restaurant years deserve a whole post and this road isn't THAT long and winding.
In college, I decided to be a high school English teacher. It seemed to fit. I liked books and I liked kids. Other than the paltry salary, it sounded perfect. In my youthful idealism, I thought I could make a difference. (I sound cynical now, but I actually still believe that a good teacher can change a kid's life.). So I dual majored in English (and Textual Studies, the obnoxiously official name of my major) and secondary education. I was disappointed. I loved my English classes, but the education classes seemed . . . obvious and condescending. The other students were . . . mediocre. Those who can do and those who can't, teach, right? I met very few teachers-to-be who could do (and I'm not sure I am one of them - after all see Great American Novel. Oh wait, there is none). So I headed off to two student teaching placements. The state mandated that high school teachers-to-be had to teach in urban and non-urban settings and middle school and high school. The first was in a suburban middle school. It was a wealthy suburb and the school was beautiful. I "taught" 8th grade, but my host teacher was everything that is wrong with the school system. Not only did she have shoes, brooches, earrings and sweaters for every holiday (Easter shoes? Check. St. Patrick's day sweater? Check. You get the picture), she had a very strict curriculum that she had used since she started teaching 30 years before, and she NEVER deviated. She "let" me do the unit on mythology, but I basically just read her lesson plans. I even had to show a slide show. This was over 10 years ago, but even then, slide shows were about 20 years outdated. Beyond that, I didn't really like 8th graders. I had a hard time admitting that at the time because I was very invested in the idea of myself as someone who loved kids - all of them. But 8th graders care more about what their peers think than anyone else. I know I did. I would have rather died (and I think I mean this almost literally) than embarrass myself in front of my "friends" when I was 13. So it isn't so much fun to teach English or literature to people who won't talk about it. My second placement was in an urban high school. 30% of the kids had special needs, which in non-teachery speak means that they had learning disabilities or had never learned to read or had been exposed to too much lead paint or had fetal alcohol syndrome. The school was flat broke. There weren't enough books in the book room to teach an entire class (let alone two or three classes) the same book at the same time. We had to offer extra credit to kids to go get their own books from the library or the bookstore. They had on-site daycare for the kids with kids. There were 14-year-olds in my classes who were on their second child. One girl told me she wanted to commit suicide. Another told me she had been raped by her father. Another's water broke in the hallway. The smartest of my students aspired to the military because they didn't even know they had other options. At our open house, 4 parents (with a total about 13 teeth) showed up. I had 120 students. I couldn't figure out how to do it. I didn't know how to punish a student for not reading when he worked until midnight the night before to pay his family's heating bills. And some of the kids . . . for good reason or not . . . were scary and mean. I was 21 and they were 18 and 19. I had no handle on how to assert control. Plus, I was too close. I cared too much (which is to say at all) about their social stuff. I found myself starting to get teachers' lounge sydrome. The first time I heard a veteran teacher refer to a kid as a "little shit," I got on my high horse fast enough to win the Derby. But then it all started to sink in. The walls were dingy. The carpets were ripped and stained. There weren't enough desks or books or teachers. The kids felt forgotten and they were right. I couldn't do it. I started to lose my idealism and while I never referred to a student as a "little shit," I saw where the teacher was coming from and knew I had to get out. I had started to apply for post-graduation teaching jobs (even considered one at my own high school, god forbid) but I just couldn't go through with it. For one thing, I thought I'd always wonder whether I could have done more than teach high school. What if that was it for me and the biggest challenge (and yes it is incredibly challenging, but not intellectually) I could handle. For another, I wanted to get out of school. I'd only ever been in school and what if the only reason I wanted to be a teacher was that I had never seen examples of other professions. I saw a vision of myself, twenty years in, teaching "MacBeth" for the 1,000th time and wondering why I ever liked reading (or kids) in the first place. But most importantly, I could see myself becoming someone I hated. So I had to get out.
I floated around for a bit. I considered grad school. I read about (and promptly rejected) the Peace Corp. I thought about teaching English in Korea. I decided for some reason I wanted to read books on tape. All the while, I was back at the restaurant and felt unbearably stuck. It was a great job when it didn't stretch out forever in front of me, when it was an in-between, summer gig, but when I could imagine myself in orthopedic shoes with a smoking habit and bad roots, I thought it might be time to quit. And after casting about for months feeling unmoored and unsure of who I was or where or what I wanted to be, running into people I knew from high school at every turn, I finally decided on law school. It wasn't a well-considered decision. Here was the exact thought process. "Hmmm, what am I good at? I can read and write and speak well. What jobs use those skills? Oh, I'll be a lawyer!" I had no exposure to lawyers other than on TV. I didn't know what lawyers did. I had no deep interest in the workings of justice. I just didn't quite know what else to do. And so, after a job as a receptionist at an internet service provider, another waitressing job, this time at a brew pub, and another stint at the restaurant, off to law school I went.
And now, as I sit here, I don't hate my job. And it was a bit of a journey to get here too (and I am going to cut myself off before I write my (uninteresting) autobiography). And I am not unhappy - mostly - with what I do. I have my complaints. I'd like to work less. I'd like it if the people I worked for had a better sense of perspective - after all, we aren't curing cancer. But there are things I genuinely enjoy about it. But as the people around me make changes and step off the path I'm on (and my path is actually maybe like the side of the road where you pull off to fix a tire rather than the main path), I started thinking about how I got here and whether there is somewhere else I'm supposed to be.
posted by tjh2 at
8:21 AM
6 Comments:
AWESOME. I would like to write details like this...but i am once again addicted to Guitar Hero...its a work wide "malady". I have never hoe'd...
I love this post.
There's so much to say on the topic of how we ended up where we are that I'm having a hard time constructing a comment without sounding trite.
As one who is "stepping off the path" right now, my reason is really just that I'm trying to make a concerted effort to live my life in a way that makes me happy. I used to love what I do, but lately the amount of work has just become too much for me, such that I had to make a change there. Fortunately, the PTB ("powers that be") are allowing me to do so. So for right now, that's enough and I'm becoming happy again.
I think the trick is either finding something that you love to do, such that doing tons of it won't burn you out because you're motivated by passion. I think this is a tall order. I thought I'd found it for a while, but I personally have too many interests for my work to ever be all-consuming and satisfying as that no matter what I do.
So the other trick then is finding something you don't mind doing that will allow you to live the life you want. Of course there are compromises there all the time and maybe it becomes impossible to lead the life you really want on what that something you don't mind doing pays.
On the subject of what others are doing, it's hard to not pay attention and have some self-doubt about our own choices. I think this is true with anything. I also think it's good to ask the questions "Am I happy," "Am I living the life I want to live," "Do I have the job I want to work in," etc . . .
Sorry this comment is rambling and a bit unfocused, but I warned you!
I have often said, "Life is about the who, not the what." (Okay, those of you that know me are thinking, "When has she ever said this?" and "Isn't that really just a bastardization of the Suze Orman mantra, 'People first, money second'?" Answers: More than likely, I have just said it to myself, and more than likely, it is Suze-derived - try as I might, I cannot escape my mother's favored self-help gurus). Anyway, TJH, I admire the way you are able to live putting people first. The choices you make reflect that correct prioritization. I emulate all of that. In fact, if it weren't for the choices you and LuLu and KHH and the spouses who have no on-line names here, make, I would not have had the courage to make the choices I am making now. Choices which I feel are finally lining up my priorities in the right way.
Judging the past and evaluating the future in a clear-eyed and level-headed way are difficult to do, but I think that it is possible to be very honest in the present because it is certain and all of the feelings it evokes are recent and fresh. I think it is a real gift to be satisfied and happy in the present. I aim for that. I figure, you put together enough days of satsifaction in the present, then they become both the past and the future as well. This of course is all theoretical as I am just starting to work at this, but I am hopeful. And you and yours, all give me hope that this is possible.
The thing is - I think my point got a little lost in the last paragraph, and maybe mostly the last sentence of the post. I really was ruminating on the journey rather than the destination. I started thinking about jobs versus professions and how loaded those words are. I think it is important to be self-reflective, to keep asking whether what you do makes you happy and I think that was the point I was trying, albeit apparently not as effectively as I'd hoped, to make. I started thinking that I am not where I thought I'd be. And that's ok. I really just wanted to remember the journey. You know?
Spouses...who here has a spouse? Sometimes, when you write, you just write...you know? The details are simply the things you can have fun with...for instance if i had been someone who worked in a candy store i might say "i rolled truffles for 3 Christmas breaks and made really good money" or i could have fun with it and say "the sweetest product of my hours of labor wasn't the candy, but the opportunity to buy whatever i wanted"...exactly the same thing, but just a little more fun with the words. Everything doesn't mean something...some things are just words...you know? What does Monet's Charring Cross Bridge mean? Nothing...except that the bridge looked beautiful and different, in a certain kind of light...nothing more, nothing less. It certainly isn't less noble if its about the quality of the light...is it? Hey TJH2...i like the quality of light in this.
I completely agree with what you're saying about remembering and reflecting on the journey. Each one of us has several points in our lives where one path was chosen over another. The choice may have been conscious or not, but it made a difference where we ended up. I wonder most about the small-seeming choices - the ones we didn't give half a thought to. Sometimes I think those are the choices that really determine the path our life takes.
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