Career Considerations

I'm going to be a professor of something one day and it bugs the hell out of me. When it comes to jobs out in the world, the only other things that interest me are tech, law, and film and media. And when I think about it, it's not surprising I'm interested in them. Each of these things are interesting only because they involve the active engagement of the theories that surround them. Under any one, I would always be conscious of the history and future of my craft. It would be far more likely for me to have stimulating conversations and, in some ways, I'd possibly be able to make an imprint on someone somewhere. And when I think of jobs, those are really my only requirements. I don't actually care about money any more than having what I need to support myself. Academia satisfies all of those things as well, but you actually have to get up in front of a crowd and teach, which scares the flying crap out of me.

Like any career, it has its own setbacks. The publish or perish thing is a big one. So is dealing with administration, tenured profs, stupid hierarchy, the utility of your field or research, egos, teaching... the list goes on. I can see myself getting way stressed out about doing research and constantly doing academic writing. And as much as I love theory, I need theory to be grounded in the real world. I need to know that what I'm writing or researching will actually have an impact on someone somewhere. That's my driving force, to leave my imprint on life. Another problem with academia, as with most anything I'd imagine, is that there's so much pressure on you that doing "noble" work seems too optimistic. When I say noble, I mean doing those things that make you an authority on something and then using that authority to create positive change. I guess I'm friends with a group of new professors and watching what they deal with daily makes me wonder how they get anything done.

In all honesty, I started the depression medication because of my anxiety about working and not because of any emotional problems I have. Dealing with my dad's death or my mom's mental whatever-the-fuck-it-is or my sibling's absence in my life or whatever really doesn't effect me in the same way as the career thing. Probably because I can actually control which career I go in to. I believe that the right career would make me happy because it would put me around the right kinds of people, which, I guess, would be my real source of happiness. Well, the right kinds of people along with stimulating conversation. When I think there has to be more to life, the "more" that I think about is the discussion of life itself. Hell, even my romantic interest in people is heavily influenced by whether they can provide that "more".

This blog has really been nothing but the expression of that obsession because I fear monotony more than anything else. The problems I have with my friends and family, the feelings of being disconnected with the rest of the world - it all seems to arise from the fact that I'm afraid of being bored, of being stuck in a life that has no inspiration in it. I look around and see so many people live such uninspired lives and I wonder how they do it, if it bothers them, but it always seems like they don't mind. Like it's just me. And, in a way, it is. What I enjoy the most, they don't get. But what they enjoy the most, I don't get. It doesn't mean that I'm unusual as a universal fact, it just means that in this context, I'm very out of place.

~R,