I’ve been having conversations with my sister; she’s going to start at Concordia in a week, or whenever classes start. Wednesday? Let’s say it’s Wednesday.
Because her marks at Cegep have been abysmal, she couldn’t get in as a mature student; it’s hard to prove something’s changed when you haven’t done anything different in ever. And I think she’s one of those people who probably shouldn’t go to university (except, perhaps, for a BSW); she has some incredible skills, there are things she could do that I never could. But she should not be trying to study psychology.
I often wonder why the craziest-in-a-bad-way people I know are always the people who study psychology. (Sorry, psychologists.)
I try, sometimes, to explain to her why I didn’t continue on for my PhD. The job situation — lack of jobs, number of 1-year jobs, moving. I said I wasn’t interested in playing a lottery with my life. She told me I was being dramatic.
Of course I wasn’t. In many ways, that was EXACTLY what I would have done. And had I been happier in my program, had I not been so terrified, always, of not having money, had I not despised with every fiber of my being the place where I was living . . . but there weren’t enough upsides for the risk I felt I was taking. And, in being so unhappy, I started to hate linguistics. I don’t, now.
I do regret it, a bit. But not really. I regret that I will not be able to do what I think (still) I would have loved to. But I would regret having given so much up even more. I have a job that’s about to become significantly more interesting. My boss really actually thinks well of me. I’m planning to buy a house within the year. I feel like I’m myself here.
These aren’t the things I told her, though they’re true. She doesn’t understand. She doesn’t understand how the world works. She doesn’t get balancing wants, where choosing some dreams requires you to let go of others.
She wants a new, expensive car. She has nowhere to go in it, and we’re in a city with great public transportation. But she refuses to take it.
She wants to be sure the field she goes into gets her money. She was so angry I told her I didn’t think she should be going back to school. She was so angry I told her I didn’t think she’d ever make it as a clinical psychologist. She wouldn’t; she could never get into the programs. She didn’t want to go into social work: it doesn’t pay enough. She expects a job starting at maybe 60,000, maybe more.
The classes she’d like to take are closed to her, but she refuses to speak to the professors to see about getting a space (there is room, but only for BA/BSc students). That would be too much like sucking up.
Right now she likes the idea of a BSW. Okay. And she’s not really listening when I try to tell her it would take at least two years to get to the point where she could transfer. She’s not listening when I tell her that volunteering at lots of different places isn’t the goal, showing follow-through & consistency is.
There are no words for how dysfunctional she is, and I can’t explain it. I can’t describe how incredibly frustrating she gets to be. Which is why no one believes me. She’s crazy. I should be more sympathetic, and now she really does seem to be trying — but it’s a new school year, we’re all so good-intentioned now, let’s see how she does in October, how much she tries when it’s cold and miserable and November. I don’t believe in her, really; I think her trying is misguided. Though this is so much more sensible than her thing about working in Hollywood, which she only just let go of.
Still. She figures she’ll walk up and get a job, when she asks people to order for her in restaurants. She figures she’ll just walk into everything working out, no real effort, no changes, no extra time because she has so many years of fucking up under her belt.
How do you explain how unrealistic that is? How can you explain to someone what the world is, when their opinion of the world is what they see on tv?
