A Stab at Vulnerability

Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, 1818

I've been thinking about this post for a long time, and I've written drafts of it several times.  But each time, I chicken out and delete it.  So here it goes . . .

Do you ever have that moment when you realize that maybe you're not going to make it?

I love my major.  Every day, every reading assignment, every research paper I'm reminded that I definitely made the right decision.  I love knowing what happened, and I like the kind of person I am now that I know.  Studying history has completely changed my life.

But then, almost on a daily basis now, somebody asks me, "Oh, you're a history major?  Well what are you gonna do with that?" My insides clench and every ounce of gumption disappears.  My lungs suddenly seem restricted, and my heart sinks and pounds at the same time.  Then I tell them I want to do museum work, archiving, teaching.  They smile and walk away and I breathe a sigh of relief that it's over.  But a few hours later, when I'm working on an assignment, or in the quiet of my walk home from school, that fear creeps up again.  And a voice, a really awful voice in the back of my head says

 "Allyson, you can't do any of that.  You can't afford it, you're not smart enough, you're too scared.  Why not get a job doing something else?"

Invariably tears follow (usually in public because that's how lucky I am) and a phone call to my mother ensues shortly thereafter.  And it hurts. A lot.  More than I should let it.  I get this vision of me ten or fifteen years down the road working in retail, or as a secretary. Dissatisfied. Not because they're bad jobs, they're just not what I want.

So I intend to work until I get what I want.