So, here's a fun little story that I don't share with many people:
When I was in the 8th grade, shop class was canceled because of building renovations and they made everyone take typing classes instead. That was fine by me, since I was already a fast and accurate typist, and knew I was way better off than If I'd been stuck around sharp tools all day. (More on that later.) It also provided ample time to zone out, and possibly fall asleep, seeing how our 7 ft GIANT of a teacher preferred to keep the lights off in the windowless computer lab.
Now, I have to explain that we did absolutely nothing in this class. We either talked about "life lessons" or we sat on the computers and typed gibberish for an hour, so it came as quite a surprise the day we were told that we'd be taking a career test. Everyone was excited, and even though we were reminded that the results were simply "suggestions," none of us actually believed that. No, we were dead fucking sure that whatever answer came out on that piece of paper was a quantifiable measure of your worth. If you got something like pediatrician or defense lawyer, you were in the clear, but kiss any popularity you had goodbye if the results "suggested" you be a sanitation worker or supply clerk.
A career test, (if you've somehow never taken or seen one) is essentially a long personality test, except it matches your personality, likes, and dislikes with a list of possible careers. Now, I thought I was picking pretty average answers to the questions it was asking me. "Do you like sunshine and happiness?" (Sometimes.) "Do you like to feel respected by others?" (Yes?) So I didn't really think I would get anything strange on my printout of the list. When I was done with the test I hit "print" and went to stand in line by the printer.
I could see that everyone else in the class was getting long lists. Some people even had multiple pages of careers. When I finally saw a piece of paper coming out that had my name written on the top, I was really excited. Finally, I would know my true destiny! Shortly after printing my name, the printer spit the piece of paper out. There had to be something wrong. There were only two results. I folded it up quickly so no one would see how small my list was and took it over my chair to read it. When I opened it up, I quickly read the first result. It said, "Runway Model." I read the second result, "Forestry." That was it. I was going to be a model or a lumberjack. Model was out by default because I was not pretty. (I'm not self-hating here--I really wasn't pretty.) Forestry was out because I simply wasn't built for lumberjacking, not that I would ever want to do it in any context anyway. That left me with no results. I was going to be nothing. Why did everyone else have such long lists? Did I fail the career test? Can you fail a career test? It didn't strike me at the time, but what combination of answers could I possibly have given that would somehow place "model" and "lumberjack" in the same category?
When I told my parents about the test, they told me it was all bullcrap and that none of it meant anything, except I was 14 and I knew that they didn't understand me at all, which every 14 year-old knows for a fact, and that's how we get stuck with sad emo kids who have unspoken cutting contests with each other and pride themselves on the fact that they can't see in two dimensions because they're only looking through one eye, but I digress... So I basically told my parents that they were crazy, and that it was obvious that I should just go kill myself because I was going to grow up to be a parasitic leech on society.
The rest of that whole year sucked just like that.
Oh, and I work at a library. It's a great job, and sometimes I still get to zone out.
No comments:
Post a Comment