Family dinners: always fun
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?
August 30th, 2004 at 9:00 am
I tell you three times: There’s nothing you can do. There’s nothing you can do. There’s nothing you can do.
My sister got herself a “master’s in public history” because she wanted to work in an archive. She should, of course, have gotten an MLS instead — but even so, she could have gotten where she was going, except she didn’t want to put in the grunt time. Now she’s back in school for that MLS.
Have I mentioned that she’s 27? And still living with my parents? And has never held a full-time job of any kind?
Because, see, she thought the way your sister does, that a high-paying job was just going to land in her lap because of her supposed academic qualifications. She wouldn’t apply at the Smithsonian, because “that didn’t pay enough.” The *Smithsonian*! (And I checked. The Smithsonian pays market, or close enough to.)
And what really frosts my britches is that my mother aids and abets her in this thinking. I don’t think she’s going to do anything much with the MLS once she has it, because — again — she has zero experience and isn’t willing to (or doesn’t understand that she needs to) do her time on the low end of the totem pole. And Mom will just go on telling her that she’s wonderful and that the work she could get isn’t good enough for her.
(And I’m still the black sheep because I dropped out of my Ph.D program. But I digress.)
She’ll graduate this December. “Looking for jobs yet?” I asked. “Oh, yeah, I might want to start doing that soon.” SOON? How about NOW?
Sigh. There’s nothing you and I can do. They just have to keep falling on their faces until they learn, n’est-ce pas?
August 30th, 2004 at 10:34 am
Thank you, Bell(wo)man.
I know there’s nothing I can do. I just — she asks for *advice*. I tell her to get a job — any job, parttime is fine, if she could just keep it for more than a few weeks. (My parents encourage a job, too, but, in the end, it’s not much possible to *force* it.)
Ah, and the reason your sister wouldn’t apply at the Smithsonian is because if she did, she might get rejected. Much safer to reject first. (I’m guessing, but I think I’m right.)
I know I can’t do a thing. It’s so *annoying* to have to listen to. She hits my two least favourite traits (probably my least favourite because she has them): hypocrisy and absolutely no grounding in reality. It’s fine to have flights of fantasy — I have wonderful plans about what I’m going to do just as soon as I win the lottery — but my life isn’t built on waiting until it happens. (Which will be never, because that’s just about how often I play the lottery.) I don’t imagine I’ll get a car and it will be a 2001 BMW. I don’t think I will start buying all sorts of designer clothes and the most labelly of everything. Augh. Must stop thinking about this.
(You know I’m 26 and just moved back in with my parents, right? I’m sort of sensitive about it, sometimes. But it’s worth the 10-12k I’m saving.)
August 30th, 2004 at 11:34 am
Sure. My husband did the same thing after he left his Ph.D program, and the money he saved now represents a heck of a lot of our home equity. Living with parents is only an indicator in my book when combined with other signs of failed reality checks, such as not being able or willing to hold down a job.
August 30th, 2004 at 12:30 pm
… And weird consumer fixations, for that matter. My sister doesn’t do designer cars or clothes, but what she’s spent on fannish crud doesn’t bear thinking about.
And again, I wouldn’t give a damn if she was otherwise supporting herself and meeting her basic life obligations. But she isn’t.
August 30th, 2004 at 6:20 pm
I was going to say “well, she’ll get hers some day” but then I read about Dorothea’s sister and remembered all those people that never do get theirs because of some enabler in their life.
Sometimes I think there were definite advantages to growing up with nothing and expecting very little.
August 30th, 2004 at 6:57 pm
I find being obsessed with how much things cost (and having the most expensive one, of course) is sad. Sadder if you’re also not supporting yourself, but sad anyhow. There are better ways to live than to compare your pile of goodies (and cash) with everyone else’s.
I don’t think people get theirs, mostly I rather think they don’t. But I don’t want anything really bad to happen to her, I just want her to live in the real world. Oh well. I don’t think it will happen, because she seems quite determined that it should never happen.
August 31st, 2004 at 1:25 am
I’m coming around to the idea that most people don’t get theirs. But I don’t like it. (And by that, I meant learning that their absurd notions of reality are skewed and learning to live in the real world, not necessarily hoping any ill fortune on anyone.)
August 31st, 2004 at 9:51 am
Ah, different use of getting theirs. I think you’re right that most people don’t end up having to live in the real world (and that they don’t get the bad things happening), but I do not like it either.
(I do get certain pleasure when things go not so well for people I dislike, I will admit: one person I know sent in an abstract for a big conference, and I very carefully read the program to see, happily, that their abstract wasn’t accepted.)
August 31st, 2004 at 11:26 am
A little schadenfreude never hurt anyone, as long as you don’t waste your life obsessively watching for the event that justifies the schadenfreude.
‘Cuz, see, my dad used to do that, and it wasn’t pretty at all.
August 31st, 2004 at 7:18 pm
No, I don’t feel any need to justify it. If I don’t like someone, I feel perfectly fine being pleased when things go wrong (in a minor way — I’m not a total sociopath) for them.