Switch Bored

The 75-yr-old receptionist I relieve for lunch saw me reading The Economist online. "Are you ever going to go back to school?" she asked, spurred no doubt by my actually trying to learn something while at work. I shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe next year, or the year after. Depending." "You're so good at so many things," she said. "And you've just been wasting your education with this job."

Sigh. She's right. Everyone's right. Fact of the matter is, I know I'm good at a large number of things. I can type 93 wpm, I can file and organize with the best of 'em. But am I well-suited for law, for teaching, for libraries? I think not. A perfect stranger told me last week I wouldn't enjoy working at the new law firm I was interviewing at the next day. He was right: I lied my way through the interview. "I really want to be a legal secretary," I enthused. "I see myself in law school in five years," I said sycophantically.

Until Thursday's interview I had entertained thoughts of continuing to work in the legal field. I could work my way up, obtain jobs that provided more money--perhaps even transfer my skills to a job overseas (New Zealand for a year, anyone?). Yet it took but a moment to decide I'd rather not, as Dawn from The Office said so presciently, "be halfway up a ladder I don't want to climb." Also, no amount of money is worth it to be miserable. Unless it were $500,000 a year, in which case I think I could force myself to go to work in the morning.

This weekend I went out with one of my good friends in the city. Bryn Mawr educated, she's at the University of Chicago for her Master's in Public Policy, and we hung out with some of her friends. They had invited an Australian guy out, who told me he knew them from working in Geneva. "Geneva [Illinois] or Lake Geneva [Wisconsin]?" was my immediate thought, but I assumed if he'd meant the latter he would have specified. I discovered several minutes later that he'd meant neither--rather, Geneva [Switzerland]. All three had had internships at the W.T.O. and U.N. for the summer.

So what's the difference between them and me? For starters, they have more 'employable' degrees in Economics and Political Science. But the real reason, I believe, is that they are driven--and I am not. They know they can succeed; I'm not so sure I can. The organizational and typing skills I possess are mirrored in thousands of other 24-year-old women. A liberal arts degree? A dime a dozen. Studied abroad? So what if you lived abroad four years ago in an English-speaking country?

My interest in foreign countries has left me the paltry knowledge of half a dozen capitol cities and the skill to say "cheers" in five languages; my jobs at libraries with the now-forgotten ability to find a book via the Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress systems. In the past year I've learned how to put stickers on books and how to type what's inside a folder. Heady stuff indeed.

In step my parents with an idea: an ultra-pricey career counseling session at the Ball Foundation. I hope that with the knowledge of what I'm well-suited for (and not well-suited for, such as teaching), I'll be able to more fully commit to pursuing my goals. Whatever they may be.

In conclusion, thank you for permitting me this whinge. I know it must be getting tiresome for everyone, and I promise that the instant the wonderful new job of my dreams drops in my lap I'll shut up.