To not want a career? (Serious)

[MustWakeUp]

Hi all,

I know it's not a very pc thing to say these days and my parents who are oxbridge educated high achievers are baffled by my 'low ambitions' (anything that isn't law/med/finance = low ambitions and future of mediocrity to them). I understand that this isn't the opinion of most women, but this is just how I feel.

I've never had this burning ambition to be a career woman - I finished my A levels last summer and got 4 A*'s in maths, further maths, physics & art so it's not that I'm not academic. I loved school and I love learning but I just don't want a career. When we had careers advisors come into our school from about yr 9-yr 13 they would tell me about all the different things I could work as for e.g. accountant, actuary, physicist, economist and so on, but the problem was they all just sounded dead boring. I have shadowed plenty of my parents friends in all sorts of science-y and numerate jobs and I honestly don't know how they do it. It is just not suited to me at all.

My parents are only concerned with £££ and prestige. I'm a good painter & I write poetry and I've sold a few of my paintings and had some of my poems published and now my parents (mum especially) are pushing me to do more & more & more, they are turning something I enjoy and find relaxing into a money generating passionless thing.

What I would love to do with my life more than anything is travel the world doing odd jobs the way I'm doing now and then settle down at 25ish & have my own family & be a SAHM but still continue with my painting and poetry.

Since finishing my A-levels I've been doing that (sort of) - I temp for a 2-3 months and sell a few paintings, then I travel for as long as my money will last, when I run out of cash I come back for another 2-3 months and temp and paint again...I have seen the most beautiful sights and met the most fascinating and oddest people during this last year and I love my life the way it is now....I am free to go where I please and do what I want, I have no one to answer to at all! I wake up everyday feeling so happy and chill. But the trouble is my parents see me as squandering my 'potential' and have now recruited my aunts, uncles, ex-form tutors even my preacher!!!! to talk some 'sense' into me and to tell me that I need to apply for university and stop living 'like a dirty hippie' and I'm beginning to have doubts myself.....(not about uni, would love to be in higher education someday - but university will always be there!)

so tell me MN, is it BU for some people to just not be interested in the rat race and the corporate world and careers in general? I mean surely, some people just want different things?

mustwakeup I suspect you'll not be back to read this now, but if you do: my DM was just like you. Good academic career, fantastically artistic and talented and from a v. wealthy family. She met her first fiance at 19 who had an excellent job and prospects and was set on the idea of being a SAHM whilst doing her art. However, her fiance had a nervous breakdown and they split up; she married instead my wonderful DF who had a crap job. He worked 60 hours a work doing shifts at the airport whilst she was a SAHM until I was 8 (youngest of four) in a naice but not that naice village.

What I have learned from her experience:

• we had a lovely childhood but
• she wasn't able to do any real work on her art until her youngest was at least 5
• we were incredibly skint and I am still ashamed of wearing sandals to school in the snow because we didn't have enough money to go around (still shudder at the thought of the sacks of potatoes from the farm down the road when we were on yet another economy drive, still can't eat spuds now)
• she needlessly isolated herself from other Mums locally as she thought she was better than they were and to this day is not a particularly socially well-adjusted person... your comment about hairdressing just makes you sound quite snobby and very, very young and inexperienced

Just because your DP is nice now, you might a) meet someone you like more whilst travelling who isn't wealthy b) he might bugger off with another woman or c) it might not work out for another reason.

So I think your ideas are idealistic - my DM has had work hung in the Tate and published design books and novels but never made any money out of it. If she and DF had split up she would have well and truly been in the sh*t, especially as she didn't do any of the household management side of things (she'd been brought up to believe naice ladies didn't bother with that sort of thing - quite a lot of learned helplessness).

I think the idea of travelling and dossing about for a couple of years before Uni/art college sounds great, but don't miss out on your training - don't you want to be the best artist you can be? And to think that your DP will still be waiting for you whilst pursuing your own version of happiness (often abroad) for long periods of time, whilst you know less and less about his day to day life, might need a reality check.

Good luck. I rather think you'll need it.

morethan the OP is 19 and has no intentions of furthering either her education or her artistic craft.

She intends to simply marry a rich man (who has very dubious attributes) and have babies.

And this is 'poetry' to you ears!

Have you no internal compass?

*That Jarvis Cocker song boils my piss, lyrically. As a tune I love it of course.

Seems to me that if oh so clever and poor Jarvy Boy finds the trustafarian heiress type to be so deeply tedious he can feel free to not shag her.

But let me guess, she was hot as fuck. So get yer leg over my son, then slag her off to your mates and indeed every corduroy wearer and Radio 2 listener who'll have you.*

Where does he say he shagged her? I've never noticed that in the lyrics.

how pretentious and earnest to dissect a pulp song as if deeply significant
maybe write a socialsciencetastic essay about it?
the juxtaposition of radio2 and your boiled piss

Scottishmummy you seem to think there is some sort of superiority in struggle. Tbh I don't think there is much angst and they are not all midde class. Most return home because rents are extortionate. I am quite happy for my ds to live at home post uni if he wants to work and save. My parents were of the throw you out and get on with it school and my siblings and I did but it was miserable.

I think it's the bit where he says

"I want to sleep with the common people
Common people like you
I said "I'll see what I can do'"

Implied rather than stated.

(ICQ was the first instant messaging thing on the net. I used it to talk to people i knew for free in the library on their computers because I didn't have a mobile or house phone!)

I'm quite simply rebuking that not all grads fanny about on year out / Thailand jolly
I also think some rattling on that grads are lazy not like in their day,well only grads they know
Many other grads work hard and don't live off bank mum&dad or go overseas trips

International you are joking right?! My nan was a foster cater, specialised in new borns addicted to drugs, eg up every hour screaming and crying because they needed a fix and were detoxing. She had a long term older child with severe sen as will. She got less than £200 for the older one to pay for all if her care , clothes, travel to speech therapy, travel to other appointments, specialist development, etc and less than £125 for the baby to pay for all of their care, formula, clothes, nappies, etc. I would not say that by any bloody means than £325 a week was making a fucking killing, especially as that money went to the kids! And the work that went into it!

And FYI, most foster carers aren't allowed to take their foster kids out of the country without explicit permission. They can't even take them on holiday to butlins sometimes as the biological parents turn around at the last minute and change their mind about their child going on holiday.

They are not lazy they have firsts. They are not fannying about they work they are just not seeking careers immediately. Thy are not on jollies. You insult at every tun but you sound bitter ad judge and a bit my way or the highway. They seem happy enough. I travelled for years I learned loads and would never swap it for hard grind I have done both and prefer the former. There is no one size fits all.

a grad saving up for next oversea trip to Thailand is markedly different
to someone trying to get established in career. some can afford elongated break after uni,and some can't.some return home after uni some don't.i didn't have the inclination to go on year out or oversea travel

Thats fine it's choice. But it's not inferior to work. Hard graft is overrated.

Oh dont start dissing the God that is Cocker!

Jarvis may not have written a song about her if she hadnt insulted him with her 'common people like you' line.

I was more than happy to undertake hard grind (as you call it) after uni
I didn't have years travel post- uni ,I had career to build and bills to pay
and yes ime the years out crew were prosperous and had avoidance of what you call hard grind

Oh, and lets not forget the fact that ss have the parents her phone number, so she would have calls at all hours from them too, some quite threatening, trolling her they'd hunt her down and kill her for ' taking' their child.

Anybody who thinks a foster carers job is easy should step in and bloody do it for a week and see how ready it is.

Love Jarvis

hard graft is over rated,that sounds so pwincessy
yes I expect it is,if one feel done can doss about
and be avoidant of anything perceived as hard graft.still suppose woman can marry well and not graft hard?

mustwakeup I'm a good painter & I write poetry and I've sold a few of my paintings and had some of my poems published

where have your poems been published?

Well then you should be happy with your choice and enjoy that rather than criticising those you know nothing about. I fanny around most days now wouldn't work in a ft 9-5 it would be soul destroying to me. I do something artistic and am fine financially independent mortgage free pretty solvent and more important happy.

Oh I did lots of travelling in every uni holiday. And then again in gap year (s). I often worked abroad which I think made me very independent and savvy. I didn't have any cushion from home though (no ones fault. My parents were just skint). I would definitely encorage my DC to do the same.

yes do make sure you don't sully yourself with that over rated hard graft stuff
do you pass this onto kids.hey don't over graft kids, it's over rated

I am not married never would. Was brought up by strict hard working parent who thought work was the be all. Never appealed. It is not princessy. You sound bitter and joyless. You cannot see the other side of anything sad

Scottishmummy it would be really handy of you wrote a "Life's Rules According To SottishMummy" book.

We could all then follow the same path and you wouldn't have to get upset about anyone making their way through life in a different way to you.

It would be rather like China in the 1970s.

I tell my son that he has to be self sufficient but that health and happiness are the most important things. I work I have a business. My parents never gave me a penny. But I am so glad I travelled ad will encourage ds to seek happiness. I chose something I loved ad I did ok