Who could I have been?

[feuervogel]

Sometimes I wonder what I'd be like if I'd been born to parents who believed in the value of education.

Sometimes I wonder what I'd be like if I'd been born to parents who knew what to do with a gifted child.

Sometimes I wonder what I'd be like if I'd been born into the middle class, not the working class.

If I hadn't had the main notion of "I need to study something that will help me get a job that pays well," maybe I'd have gone into German 20 years ago.

But I also wouldn't have had the experiences that led me to have a passion for identity, belonging, liminality, and all that.

Sometimes I wonder what I'd be like if I'd gotten good advice as a kid, if I hadn't learned at an early age that mom wasn't useful for advice, if I hadn't labored under the idea that I had to figure everything out for myself because I didn't know there were people who *could* help you out.

Sometimes I wonder what I'd be like if I'd been raised by someone who understood geeky kids, who understood that her kid's social needs are different than her own, who didn't think I was lying when I told her that smoking in the car made me cough really badly.

Sometimes I wonder what I'd be like if I'd actually gone into something I had a passion for 20 years ago, rather than doing the working-poor kid's thing and following the money.

Comments

[ranyart]

I made a similar comment on the tweetybox, but it still stands: I spend enough time thinking about my own alternate timelines that I feel like a Star Trek character. I really wish I could explore those possibilities and know what could have happened.

[feuervogel]

I saw that & read your post. I'm happy with who I am now, but I can't help wondering if the sparks had been nurtured rather than diminished, what the outcome would have been.

Like years of being told I'm the smart one, my sister's the creative one. (Which didn't help her, either, since she got the implicit not-smart label, and being behind me in school, she got all the same teachers, who I don't think compared us, at least not to her face. So I suppressed all my creativity until I was introduced to fanfic at 23. Yay?

[stormsdotter.livejournal.com]

I come from a family of teachers and writers.

I still graduated from the wrong college, picked the wrong major, and have been temping for seven years.

[feuervogel]

But you studied architecture because you liked it (at the time) right? I liked chemistry well enough, and I was good at it (got a 5 on the AP exam), but I didn't really have a passion for it, I guess. I thought it was interesting and would be something I could get a good-paying job doing.

I don't know if there's data to back this up, but I have the feeling that first-generation college students (or, in my case second but skipped a generation) choose practical majors, ie medicine, science, engineering, sometimes teaching, more often than things like English or philosophy, because they know there's a mountain of debt in their future, and they want a job that'll give them a salary that will let them pay it off. (And, in some communities, help out the rest of their family to pull them out of poverty.)

My sister majored in musical theater, and she's an inventory clerk at a jewelry store in DC. She also does theater in her off hours. I didn't want to be a high school teacher, and I didn't want to be a secretary. So lab science it was.

[angelamori.livejournal.com]

I get episodes of these "what ifs" as well. I don't know... you would have become a completely different person, and you wouldn't be you. And I'm grateful that you're you. So.

[feuervogel]

I probably wouldn't know any of y'all if I'd made different decisions in high school or college. (It's possible I'd know some of my current friends; they went to Carnegie Mellon, which was on my longer list. It's a pretty big school, though.)

*^_^* Thanks :D