OodleNoodleRoodle — jumpingjacktrash: neminine: ...
“And remember: the sky is the limit! You can be anything you want to be!”
“Thank you. I want to be a secretary.”
That stopped them short. “What?”
“A secretary,” she repeated.
“But…” they trailed off, dumbfounded. “Why? You could be a CEO, a scientist, a law–”
“I don’t want to be a CEO,” she said. “I want to be a secretary.”
They scoffed. “You want to answer phones all day?”
She smiled. “Yes.”
“Schedule appointments?”
“I like organizing.”
“Be a second banana?”
An affirmative nod. “I’m skilled at helping.”
“I just don’t understand,” they said. “HOW could you be okay with all of this?!”
“I enjoy the work.”
“BUT YOU CAN BE WHATEVER YOU WANT TO BE!”
“I know.”
“Then WHY?!”
She shrugged.
“Because I want to be a secretary.”
Comments:
"Honestly though, this is very similar to my mom’s experience. She’s always been super bright, but has realized as she’s gotten older that intellectual pursuits just aren’t her jam. She dropped out of her PhD program to have kids, and although she has her master’s and was a pretty good school psychologist, she hated having to make huge decisions. She’s a church secretary now and loves it, and she’s GOOD at it; she’s letting her school psych certification permanently expire this year with zero regrets. If you can be anything you want, that includes the things we don’t tend to value as highly as a society. Not everybody is built for or wants the “respectable” careers."
"My grandma did this to me, saying that i didn’t want to get stuck on the outside, making coffee and filing papers. The thing is, that’s exactly what I’ve always enjoyed the most, making and organizing things. That would be enough for me."
"Nobody seems to realize that if you tell people they can be anything they want to be they will. And not everyone WANTS to be doctors or lawyers or CEOs or scientists. Sometimes, they just want to be a secretary."
"When I was in uni I was tricked into participating in this day-long workshop thing about like your future goals and stuff. And one of the things they did was like, pick a goal and then visualise the steps to that goal. So for the sake of this workshop I said my goal was to be a lecturer in art school. And the person running the thing was like “mm how about dean or department head instead” (like trying to make the goal higher). And like, I’ve talked to the department head and he was always griping about how he doesn’t get to do any actual teaching or interacting with the students anymore (and neither does he have time to do his own art). And I’d obviously never even met the dean, like, deans don’t interact with students at all.
I like teaching and interacting with students and helping people realise their own projects and visions. I would never want to be a department head or dean, jeez.
Not everyone wants money and power, John."