My Confidence Emerges From A Momentary Hiatus: It's Called Quarter Life Crisis for a Reason
Chrismukkah and a slew of reunions with long lost college friends have been leading the list of distractions in my life of late - not to mention this "job-thing" that takes up about eight hours-a-day. Post-football season, however, my social engagements have actually been on the backburner - having recently submitted a paper for a historical conference, my brain has shifted back into the academic world it left behind last May. By July, during my trip to Sweden, I was ready to swear the "academe" off forever, finding the liberty of reading/studying whatever I wanted to be of greater satisfaction. As I find myself using my free time at work to read Intellectual History syllabi and sneakily print articles on pragmatism from the American Historical Review off of JSTOR, I know I cannot just leave academia behind.
I have spent a lot of time lately thinking about the working world and my place in it, and moreover, why I felt restless even as I hold the entry-level job of any aspiring political-historical writer's dream. My transition from school to work was abrupt, unexpected, and more or less, quite traumatizing. To those around me, I think it seemed natural enough - especially since I was handed an amazing job. However, as the fall semester comes to a close, and I continue to sit at my desk across from a now deserted library, I realize I finally have actually transitioned into the working world enough to recognize why I still feel anxious here. There are three forces at work concurrently in my work life: idol worship, external perception and internal self-perception.
I am meeting/talking on the phone with all of my idols. I used to really want to be a film director - and Hollywood-types fascinated me. At the end of my junior year of college my political leanings were radicalized, I fell in love with Noam Chomsky, rekindled a love for Howard Zinn and began to subscribe to The Nation. Since then, my poltical world has broadened, and while I still am on the far left of a normal spectrum, I take great interest in leftists who subscribe to a pragmatic world-view. So while I meet writers and editors of The Nation and Mother Jones at this job, they are not coming through the office to meet me, but rather my boss. I have a case of "so close to my goal, yet SO far away."
This brings me to my second issue - external perception. I sit behind a desk, dressed in twenty-something business casual, blonde hair often pulled back to promote some sense of authority. As people walk by I smile and giggle - the Leah--esk mannerisms you know and love ;-) It is easy to stereotype, and if ever I am reminded to suspend judgement on others, it is when I experience the ramifications of fitting an easily stereotyped mold myself. But I have recently remembered that I do not need to feel such a huge need to immediately defy people's assumptions, but rather remind myself that in time, my own interests and ambitions will come across to others and allow people to see beyond my external perky persona. It is my own injured self-perception in the wake of PhD rejections that has made me so anxious, rather than the actual perception of others. This realization has allowed for a new calm to re-enter my life...a feeling I haven't experienced since before last March when my "historian" identity was somewhat squashed by small envelopes from elite schools.
I have spent a lot of time lately thinking about the working world and my place in it, and moreover, why I felt restless even as I hold the entry-level job of any aspiring political-historical writer's dream. My transition from school to work was abrupt, unexpected, and more or less, quite traumatizing. To those around me, I think it seemed natural enough - especially since I was handed an amazing job. However, as the fall semester comes to a close, and I continue to sit at my desk across from a now deserted library, I realize I finally have actually transitioned into the working world enough to recognize why I still feel anxious here. There are three forces at work concurrently in my work life: idol worship, external perception and internal self-perception.
I am meeting/talking on the phone with all of my idols. I used to really want to be a film director - and Hollywood-types fascinated me. At the end of my junior year of college my political leanings were radicalized, I fell in love with Noam Chomsky, rekindled a love for Howard Zinn and began to subscribe to The Nation. Since then, my poltical world has broadened, and while I still am on the far left of a normal spectrum, I take great interest in leftists who subscribe to a pragmatic world-view. So while I meet writers and editors of The Nation and Mother Jones at this job, they are not coming through the office to meet me, but rather my boss. I have a case of "so close to my goal, yet SO far away."
This brings me to my second issue - external perception. I sit behind a desk, dressed in twenty-something business casual, blonde hair often pulled back to promote some sense of authority. As people walk by I smile and giggle - the Leah--esk mannerisms you know and love ;-) It is easy to stereotype, and if ever I am reminded to suspend judgement on others, it is when I experience the ramifications of fitting an easily stereotyped mold myself. But I have recently remembered that I do not need to feel such a huge need to immediately defy people's assumptions, but rather remind myself that in time, my own interests and ambitions will come across to others and allow people to see beyond my external perky persona. It is my own injured self-perception in the wake of PhD rejections that has made me so anxious, rather than the actual perception of others. This realization has allowed for a new calm to re-enter my life...a feeling I haven't experienced since before last March when my "historian" identity was somewhat squashed by small envelopes from elite schools.
posted by LeahT at 3:05 PM
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