Career Day

Sometime before career day in our senior year, the guidance counselors administered a test to supposedly help us choose a possible career direction. This was a little daunting, because although I knew I was going to college, I had no idea what for. What this test was supposed to show us was what we were interested in and suited for. It had questions like "Do you enjoy working with color?" and "Are you interested in helping people?"  I was hoping to get "psychologist" in my list of potential careers, but instead got "interior designer," "homemaker," and "teacher." To be fair, the guidance counselor, Mr. Fox, did not see these test results as my fate, but it's hard to persuade a 17-year-old girl of this--after all, tests had determined pretty much everything in my life at that point.

I was used to getting the "So, do you want to be a teacher, too?" question. My mother is a teacher, and my father is a college professor, so it was assumed I also wanted to teach. The only problem was that I did not want to teach--at all. Having parents who teach does not necessarily make you want to teach. On the outside, the summers off look great, but I saw first hand the crap that my mother, in particular, had to deal with on a day-to-day basis--annoying parents, meddling and inflexible administrators, long days (yes, the school days end at three, but add to that two hours or more of grading and planning at the end of the day, plus meetings with parents.)

I had imagined myself as a psychiatrist or psychologist--sort of like the ones in the old Alfred Hitchcock episodes, with the leather couch and the office on a tree-lined street. I would get to the bottom of people's problems, like a detective, and they would say "thank you, doctor" and set up another appointment with my smartly dressed secretary.

And yet, here I am, a teacher--a teacher who, for the most part, loves her job.

So was the test right? I am also a mother, and I am in the process of redesigning my office, so maybe it was partly right, or maybe subliminally persuasive. But the immediate result was my sense of a predetermined destiny--the test said I had three options, so why fight it? When career day came, Cathy Quinn, Tammy Buswell and I ducked out of the presentations taking place in most of the classroom and did a mock session--on how to be a prostitute. We drew a picture of a hooker on the markerboard and instructed  our charges (mostly their friends--sophomore and junior girls). But, when you think about it, it makes just as much sense as the sessions on becoming a dental hygenist or a veterinarian. It's a rare high school student who can pick a career and stick with it, no matter what the career aptititude test might indicate.