I download the .99 cent movie on iTunes whenever I can. This week it's Uptown Girls. Eat it. Speaking of, iTunes keeps trying to figure me out and apparently I love: classical music, nasal emo pop, and country songs about hard drinking. So maybe they have figured me out, I've just been unable to admit it.
People think that dating a professional is like some crazy goldmine where life is all first class and golden retrievers. As a so-called professional dating another professional, I can assure you this is not true. Golddiggers: MARRY A NURSE. First, it takes years to make actual money in most real professions, and everyone who graduates is generally in debt. Those who do make money quickly do so by working very hard for very moderate compensation. Those who are lowest on the professional success totem pole gravitate towards non-professionals who make them feel smart; like the Dentist who was all over me when he thought I was a receptionist a couple of weeks ago but then figured out that I have administrative assistants (when I told him where my office was, he asked if I "did a lot of typing"). When you Google "average salary," picture a bell curve. Those of us who are financially solvent tend to be a little thrifty after about ten years of living in poverty to get into the black. Or heirs to European dynasties, like a couple of my classmates.
Secondly, we're obsessively nerdy and go through periods of being jerks. Not like the sarcastic jerk-wit of over-educated under-utilized arts students, but jerks as in people you wouldn't want to be friends with. I've had to consider this a lot, when I feel my special inner jerk wanting to come out, and I think part of it results from understanding how things work in a way that makes you really cynical. "Hey, you're gushing blood, pain is a symptom but is fairly irrelevant to a solution here, let me suture you and give you an aspirin... Done. Why are you still here?" And nerdy not in an endearing Star-Trek way, more in a way that will make you not want to talk about our day. Ever. If you marry a professional, who is inevitably mostly friends with other professionals of various kinds, you will attend dinner parties where any conversation is eventually hijacked and dominated by the nuances of our respective fields. We feel bad about it, but not that bad (jerks).
It's really funny when people bandy-about the term "professional." Read the above and think about if you would want it to apply to you. Social esteem is overrated! You are in an actual profession if: (1) you are bound by an official ethical code, preferably one that you can't tell anyone about or in an expired language, (2) you graduated from a program that makes people who complete it hate life and/or go crazy, like DSM IV crazy, during or after the process, and (3) you have at least four letters following your name.
About my professional. He's at a peak of insanity. When I was at that point, I was saved by my best friend who graduated from my program the year before I started. She would show up with food and generally rescue me. Tonight I had this moment where I was like: really? Why are you being such a jerk? And then I remembered everything I just wrote right now.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment