I sat and thought about this for
awhile and I couldn't pinpoint one particular career path.
Being that there are SEVERAL
things I want to do, I know one thing I do not, and that is work NINE TO
FIVE. I am currently living that life
and it is not for me. I don’t know if I could
take another 10 years of living for the weekend. What kind of life is that? One that I do not want! Below is a picture that I look at that keeps
me focus on the ultimate goals:
Business Entrepreneur.
Ever
since I was little I knew that I would eventually own some sort of
business. My maternal grandmother owned
her own nightclub. She drilled in me two
things: 1) Have my own money and 2) Purchase property. That has stuck in me. Now I have no plans to own a club, but in the
next 3-5 years I do plan to have some sort of business venture as well as
invest in real estate with the plan of using the property as rental income.
Do I know what type of business I want to have?
Umm… Sort of, still toying with several ideas.
Clinical Social Worker/Therapist.
I feel that I resisted going down this path since the end of my freshman
year of college. Nevertheless I felt
that I needed to go through and experience all that I did in order to be a
sufficient counselor. While determining
what my purpose in life is and the positive experiences I am having (in
counseling), in some way I feel the need to pay it forward. While pursuing my previous career path, I now
know that there was no “passion” for it.
Merely that it “looked” good and I like feeling that I wouldn't be
average. Smh….. I look back on that time
and view it as my body having a negative reaction to the path that I was going
on. The side effects of it were
depression and weight gain. Now that I
have an idea of what I want and to know that I have a passion for it, everything
is clearer now.
Professor.
My reason for being a professor is somewhat similar to
wanting to be a counselor/therapist. One
is that I can do both at the same time and they have flexible hours. Next I love the idea of being paid to think,
write and discuss an area that I have a passion in. Being that I love anything reading, writing,
researching and can tie all that in to social issues is wonderful. However most importantly, just like with
being a therapist, I like the idea of nurturing clients/students and watching
them take hold of their confidence and grow with it. I see myself as MelissaHarris Perry without the TV show (have no desire to be on television).
Writer.
When I was little I
use to create my own books and magazines.
I would sit there and “create” articles that interest me and make my mom
and grandmother read them. As I got
older I put the dream aside because like everything else, there were no writers
around me so I believed that it was something that “other” people do; not some
girl from “some town” Louisiana. Being that
I never told anyone of my love of writing and never pursued or worked on it, I told myself that I should give up on it because, “you
are no good at it anyway” (see how the mind works and play tricks on you??). Now
that I am actively working on it, I would love to one day be an author of
fiction as well as nonfiction.
What about you? Do you have a dream job?
TOMORROW: How important you think education is....
My dream job is what I did before a nasty little backache turned my life around on its head. The backache turned into 19 surgeries and a lot of doctors saying (your case interesting). Now my wife is married to a crippled scientific neard, who just hopes the next surgery will take the pain away. Enough about me, please finish your challenge of writing. You're pretty good at it. And by pretty good I mean interesting funny and not hung up on grammar. You write what your inspired by. That's really cool. Please forgive thisqquestion, but why do so many black college educated people struggle with self worth? I've never understood this. Even in grad school. We all suffer from the same feelings of self worth. But they are almost taboo with my professional black friends, but my white ones won't shut up about it. I apologize if I've offended you.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the compliment. I am not offended by the question. I cannot speak on "us" in general, but in my experience (and some friends), we are usually first generation college graduates carving an unknown path and it can be pretty scary. Personally, while I did not have anyone being negative, I also didn't have anyone to say "you can be whatever you want to be". I just knew I wasn't interested in playing a sport, being a school teacher or being a nurse and thats all I saw women around me aiming to be. Therefore I let my insecurities place me on a path of becoming what I thought was an "exceptional" career path because anything else would not have been good enough.
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