When I used to work in the big high school, one of the recurring conversations that would come up over lunch in the English teachers’ work room was, “If you were going to have a career other than teaching, what would you do?” Answers varied: “novelist,” “art dealer,” “comedian,” “chef;” basically, a list that was as realistic as the career ambitions of our delusional students on the other side of the self-locking door. It always struck me as sort of amusing that all these women had such a ready answer; I guess sometimes daydreams of another life were the only thing that could give them the strength to go on.
Well, I found myself thinking through the same question, though, as the year wore on and the hellish start to my long-planned-for career never improved. By mid-spring, I had decided that I hated teaching and would not, for any amount of money, set foot in the classroom again after my contract was up. It was a very disconcerting thought, because since I was in first grade teaching had been my career ambition. I had never seriously considered doing anything else, and I certainly was minimally qualified for any other job, despite what my academic advisor in the English department promised.
When I moved to Waco, I pursued a job as a secretary. They were all at Baylor, and most of them included some amount of writing and/or editing, which I thought sounded do-able, and not too demeaning. Plus, I was attracted to the idea of a “professional” job- the smart business attire, a cubicle desk to call my own, phone calls from one brilliant scholar to another.
Due to some unexpected turns in my job search, my quest for a job as an administrative assistant ended when I accepted a position as a fourth grade teacher at Live Oak. So, for all my exploring, I ended up in the same career that I had started with, although in an extremely different context.
Recently in my home, the question of “What would you do if you had to pursue another career?” has been a topic of discussion yet again. This time, it’s Stephen on the hot seat. Due to a variety of reasons, we’ve been tossing around lots of options about what sort of path we might take next. And, while this is fun conversation around a lunch table among people who are firmly entrenched in their actual careers, this topic can be very unnerving when you really mean it. And it brings up a lot of scary questions: What would he do? How do we know when to pursue this? How do we know our motivations are right? Could we really do this?
Stephen asked me two weeks ago, on our two year anniversary, where I saw us in another two years. I had to answer honestly, “I have no idea.” We’re at a significant crossroads with no clear answer. God only knows where we’re going. We’re going one day at a time, not always because of great faith, but because that’s all we can do!
