Over the past week, I’ve had a few quite interesting discussions with Marianne and other folks here about education and career stuff. It started on Tuesday or Wednesday with my comments on the elementary education (one of the possible majors to choose from after this year) info from Monday - I don’t like elementary school teaching and this opinion was only strenthened by the info - and the psychodiagnostic work info from a few weeks ago - I do find that interesting. For some reason, I decided on going to Saxion’s open day on November 25. Marianne read about this open day in the report, and asked me about it, cause she might want to enroll in the applied psychology programme I’m now in next year. I, of course, was very eager to promote it. Then, we got to discuss the differences between two social work programmes: social pedagogical care (SPH, the college-level equivalent of social pedagogical work) and social work and services (what is just called “social work” in most countries). I have a fair amount of knowledge about these programmes, so I shared it - though I still know less than Marianne, cause obviously she oriented to them.
I also had a few discussions with my sister and my mother on respectively Friday and today. In both, I noticed that I had to think of balancing genuinely liking my current education with what I know my parents and Sigrid want me to study next year. Sigrid, for example, was suggesting I go the social sciences route, cause “you like your current education, don’t you?” and my mother was commenting on psychodiagnostic work in the form of our current problem-centred education case (which is about a student needing testing for learning disabilities), that I find really cool, by saying: “That’s remedial education, isn’t it?” (I think she was somewhat ironic besides being incorrect, cause she would never want me to study that), and at the same time commenting on my needing to study communication studies (which I’m going to go to at Radboud’s open day) or linguistics, mostly to contrast my statement that I wasn’t going to study English anyway with. By the way, she made some rather illogical statements about how I should be deciding now, while she herself is facing possible career changes and says she isn’t going to decide what she’s going to do till the definitve plans are within seveal months from being introduced. I don’t need to decide yet - though I do need to explore and think seriously about what I want, cause of course I don’t want to decide on the fly again (though it did seem to work out with my current eudcation, huh?) -, cause the most important thing that has to be arranged in time, is housing (though I know I’ll get housing quicker when I, my doctor and the student counsellor file a request at the SSHN), but that has nothing to do with what exactly I’m going to major in, only with where I’m going to study. Besides, if I’m correct, I’m still in the SSHN system from last year’s application. The other thing that has to be arranged by May 1 (ideally), which does require knowing what I am going to major in, is getting my books scanned by the library for the blind. Well, we’ll have to write a paper outlining our decision for Orientation to Saxion’s Programmes by late January anyway. That thing, of course, is about Saxion’s programmes only, but it makes no sense to say: “I’m not going to enroll in either of Saxion’s programmes, but I don’t have a clue yet as to what I am going to study.”
Another question which I’m dealing with when talking with my family about my education, is: how much can I say about what I do and don’t like about my classes? My mother has some tendency of connecting everything I say about my classes to its corresponding college/university programme or profession. Even when I said something about language acquisition being a part of my psych book’s chapter on language that I did like, she made some comment about it being something for speech/language therapists. Well, Mum, speech/language therapists treat disorders of speech and language and, while they do need to learn about normal development, language acqusition is a part of applied linguistics and is being discussed to some degree in psychology and remedial education. She also has some tendency of making statements that are more or less true regarding how much one can like one’s studies whenever I make either a positive or a negative comment about some part of my education. She keeps repeating that there are good and bad parts to each programme, and I fully agree - I for one thing, like my current education for the most part, but don’t think each case in job field orientation is equally interesting (the new one about a guy in long-term unemployment going for vocational rehab, doesn’t interest me one bit, for example) and I don’t like each chapter of my psych book -, but I can’t keep from noticing that she uses this argument only to talk me into going into English or linguistics. I’m 99% sure I’m not going into English, but linguistics is still on my list of interesting programmes (though I’m not going to visit its info round in Nijmegen cause I’ve already been in it). I had very specific plans with my English thingy - too specific and very screwed. I, namely, was sure at the time that I wanted to work in healthcare, social services or education, and, because none of these programmes are acceptable with my parents, I decided to study American studies to either go to the States and never leave (cause, you know, the U.S. being the country of unliminted possibilities, haha, I’m a die-hard socialist) or to become an English teacher. I never tell anyone about this, cause I cannot be a teacher and besides, the whole idea is screwed, cause, in university, you don’t study for some career you want - with a few exceptions of course, like dentistry. My mother is the first to highlight this whenever I make some statement about career perspectives with certain studies, so she should agree with me that this was incorrect logic. She did, as I explained the situation to her.
Another hurtful comment my mother made, was that I really had to do something next year. Sure I do, but she said it in a tone of voice as if to say I wasn’t doing anything now. “Yes, but that’s one year, so you’ll have to do something else next year.” Of course, but I’m not sitting on my ass doing nothing. I wonder if I leave that impression with my mother. The ideal impression I leave, which is the most correct one, is someone who is exploring and starting to plan but doesn’t yet know what she wants specifically.
I know, of course, that whatever I say has its implications. When I said I liked the psychodiagnostic work thingy, Renee was eager to point at this as an option and my sister asked whether I was thinking about going into some social sciences programme, and when I was reading the linguistics flyer with her a few months ago and was making nice comments, it was not at all surprising that she concluded I may be majoring in this. This is an important thing to notice: in early September, I said that I had no idea where I wanted to be in three years or even where I might be. Then, on September 22 I realized that I had several ideas, but that they were so polarized that I couldn’t deal with “realism” being something in between. I must’ve known that this was screwed thinking, cause a while later I was very eager to admit my black-and-white thinking in this situation, yet I said I didn’t have in-between images. Now, I realize this isn’t true: I have a lot of images that are between the third-year university student, approaching a honours Bachelor with a great GPA in some very esteemed subject and living completely on her own without any assistance, and the girl in an assisted living place and working, she might hope, as a receptionist or some other stereotypical blind person’s job. (The reaosn I pick these examples is cause I mentioned them as my *only* two images a few weeks ago.) Yet the problem with each of these images, is that they’re black-and-white images. Of course, this is logical, as all it means is that there are good and bad aspects to each of these, but I cannot agree on any of these with myself at all. And the same goes for the high-achieving university student and the receptionist: the high-achieving student has the “black” part that I feel it’s a duty, not something I want, and the receptionist has the “white” part that I’m at least pretty sure I can do that. Like I said it on September 22 regarding living arrangements: being a responsible user of housekeeping assistance seems like something between no assistance and a lot of guidance, but it really isn’t cause there’s no greater agreement within my mind about this than there is about any of the other two. Now I must say that there is some greater agreement about the in-between images - all of them, ranging from a third-year student in an esteemed field with not such a great GPA to a receptionist who’s not in some sheltered living place - than there is about the two extremes, but that may be cause in-betweens are more likely to come true than extremes.
Are there things I want or don’t want, amongst all of these images, or is it all about one thing being my duty yet my not being able to do it and another thing being within my range of abilities but being completely unacceptable? I do think there are things I want, and I think they’re in the in-between spectrum, but I’m not sure where. Heck, there’s even some part in my mind that wants to be a receptionist cause at least she’s working then and contributing to society, but this is something I rarely really think, and, in one way, I can say it’s a duty thingy, not a wanting thingy. And, of course, what other people say or think, influences my perspective, because, heck, I’m not a person in my own little cage without any contact with outsiders, and you can’t say whether you make decisions truly objectively. You’re free to decide for yourself how you’re going to live your life, the existentialists say, but I disagree, cause whatever you decide is influenced by your character and your circumstances - even though that doesn’t make it any less of your decision. That’s what the British Idealists say, if I remember correctly, and it’s far more practically true than the existentialist view.
