Things That Grind My Gears, Part 1

Tonight's gripe:

People making assumptions about my career options.

So...in July, I am due to graduate. My award will be a BA (Hons) in English with Journalism and Creative Writing. Note the order in which I said those three subjects. They are ordered in such a way because that is the order in which they will appear on the parchment that will make up my physical degree. However, my order of preference and priority in the interest of these subjects is roughly the reverse of the three. I've made that clear enough since I started this blog.

So anyway...of course, when folk ask me what I study, I again state the three in the order in which they will appear on the degree parchment. This has a tendency to spark one of the following questions from people:

1: "Are you going to be a teacher?"
2: "Are you going to write for [Shetland's local paper]?"

My response is to usually politely answer both of these with a 'no'. In fact, these are my real verdicts on these questions and how tedious I find them:

1: No, I have no intention of being a teacher. Believe it or not, teaching is not something that should be taken lightly or written off as a 'last resort' when no other fucker in any other industry will employ you. I have been taught at school by teachers who frankly should not have been teaching - they either couldn't have cared less about or struggled to engage / control the class in their chosen subject. (I'd like to point out that not all my teachers were like this - a lot of them were actually pretty good. But it's the crap ones that I remember sheerly for their crapness.) I am pretty sure that I couldn't deal with trying to engage or control pupils who didn't want to be there. If I taught English, and ended up teaching kids like those I was unfortunate enough to end up in an English class with, I'd find myself at the end of every school day wishing it was legal to shoot disruptive pupils with a bow and arrow. I could do lecturing. At least with lecturing you're working with folk who want to be there, who are interested in your subject, and who will not try to wreck the experience for others. Teaching, though - not for me.

What I'm trying to say is, you have to WANT to be a teacher, just like you would WANT to be a doctor, lawyer, engineer, journalist or any other occupation. I'd like to point out that with the above post, I'm not trying to slag off my friends, family and acquaintances who either are teachers or want to be. I know these people are actually the right sort of people to be teachers and they will do well when they join the profession. It's just irritating for me, who DOESN'T want to teach, that people assume that's what I'll do, and it also makes out that teaching is a Mickey Mouse career that people do as a last resort, or that English is a Mickey Mouse degree that renders you useless for anything else. That said, it doesn't stop people giving me a look that says 'You're destined for the Dole, you wasteful child' when I tell them I don't want to teach. Grr at prejudices.

Fee-yoof, glad I got that off my chest. Moving on...

2: Oh please, are you taking the piss?! Even if I still wanted to be a journalist (I think I've more or less given up on that idea now) I'd rather be on the Dole.

I like when folk ask me instead what I want to do with my life. People who are not presumptious tend to be at a social advantage. For some reason, though, I'm loath to tell folk I want to write. I don't know why that is; they're so much more accepting of it in Glasgow than back home. I feel like I'm denying who I am by doing that, but folk still either laugh in your face or ask about your work. So I instead say I'd like a job in the arts, or in publishing. That way I'm not entirely lying.

In other news...2am sushi cravings are a pain.