Wednesday 6 July 2011

What I want to do with my life

YouGov is an organisation which performs polls and surveys on public thought and opinions about a variety of things: everything form how you use Facebook, to how much you trust the Pope, to what kind of fridge you buy.

Today I was filling out the latest of these surveys, and this question came up:

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I was surprised at my reaction. Sometimes questions from YouGov really make me think*, and this is certainly one of them. I was chatting to some friends about how I have no real idea of what I want to do with my life so I guess I’ll just go into teaching at  University. I’m good at teaching and I like the holidays, but it’s not (as yet, anyway) my passion. That would be  Education.

I have also considered working in Hospitality (running a Youth Hostel or working as an events manager), Travel and Tourism (working as a Tour and Adventure guide),  or even Social Work… but looking at this list, and given the option to work in any of these sectors I would choose without a breath of doubt Conservation/Environmental (or possibly Charity/Voluntary).

You can go right ahead and skip the ”since I was a child I was afraid for the whales and the trees” speech here – it’s true, but we’ve all heard or made a similar speech ourselves – and instead focus on why it’s never occurred  to me before. It’s because I somehow got it into my head that the only way to help the environment is to be one of two things: a scientist; or an intimidating, high-powered, independent business women with networking skills and a sharp business acumen who can smoothly navigate the male-dominated world to beg, bully and seduce large corporations into giving money to her cause.

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I am neither of those things. I mean, look at me:

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Ok, I look a little like a goofy scientist but since there is no way that’s happening, I was stuck with the business powerhouse option and I’m really not that. I’m as smooth as a Russian backroad.

So I mentally discarded that option as soon as it occurred to me and decided (with the help of friends who nicknamed me Professor Potter) that I would become an eccentric academic who can speak Old Norse but whose total of helping the environment consisted of recycling and not owning a car.

 

To cut a very very long story very very short, I’ve decided I wail try to not let this stop me. I want to travel and save the planet, though I’m not sure how my skills (languages and organisation) can do that. I could organise fundraisers, but that’s just a bit too WASPY for me. Maybe I could take a more roundabout way of saving the planet and try to stop overpopulation by increasing women’s rights in male-libido-run countries.

 

But I’m taking it too far. The point is I now have a goal. It feels good.

1 comment:

  1. I'm inclined to say I agree with you: at the moment I couldn't really picture commuting into an office five days a week. I could, though, picture learning Old Norse: it certainly sounds a lot more interesting than spreadsheets ...

    Oh, and that is one alarming Google image search you've got there!

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