A History of My Plans for the Future
Every mother wants their child to do something great. Become a doctor, found a company, save the world: you name it, and a mother (maybe even yours) has pictured her young one doing it. My loving mother was no different. She had a picture book called When I Grow Up, which included a number of toddlers declaring emphatically their intent to grow up and and work as lawyers, firemen, and nurses. She read that book to me, without fail, every single day, hoping I'd take a liking to one of the prestigious professions it described. This constant rereading may sound strange and obsessive, but my mother had good reason to worry about my professional future, because between the ages of 4 and 7, my dream occupation was slightly less than spectacular.
This was the book my mother read to me every day.
http://www.goantiques.com/scripts/images,id,597376.html
I wanted to be a maid.
Well... not a maid, exactly. I was significantly more ambitious than that. I aspired, more specifically, to be Walt Disney's Cinderella. She was beautiful, helpful, had animal friends, and ended up marrying a prince. Let's be honest: when you're 3 years old, Cinderella's life sounds rather fabulous. This was especially true for me, since the best alternative my mother could come up with was becoming a dancer. Though this auxiliary profession included beautiful dresses, it failed to satisfy my desire for the other attractive attributes of Cinderella's life, including her mouse friends and eventual ascendence to the position of princess.
My childhood idol.
http://www.kellyskindergarten.com/Games/GamestoMake/images/Cinderella.jpg
After some time, though, reality got the better of my childhood fancies, and I moved on to a more practical aspiration, deciding in 2nd grade that my true calling was that of a veterinarian. The idea came to me this time after I discovered a book series called Animal Ark, about a girl, Meg, whose parents were veterinarians somewhere in the UK. Her life sounded almost as much fun as Cinderella's. Obviously there was no prince involved, but Mandy had just as many animal friends as the classic Disney princess, and she was constantly saving the day by rescuing kittens stuck in trees, binding wounded puppy legs, and locating lost ferrets. I mean, who wouldn't want to be a vet with all the exciting things that seemed to constantly happen to them?
Reality, however, set in once more. In fifth grade, I went to have my allergies tested for the 50 bazillionth time in my life, and found out that, miraculously, I was now not only allergic to every nut, fruit, tree, and grass they tested for: I had also developed an allergy to animal fur, which, unfortunately, is a vital component of the veterinary field.
Can you picture me? I'm 10 years old, my arm is covered with hives because they have spent the last 2 hours purposely injecting me with things I am allergic to, and my dreams have just been crushed by the prick of an allergen filled needle. It was, to put it simply, a bad day. But it was also the crucial turning point in my search for what the HECK I was going to do with the rest of my life. At this point, I was almost as bad as Alice. When she asks the Cheshire Cat where she ought to go, and he answers her that it “depends a good deal on where [she wants] to go” (Carroll, 65), Alice responds that she doesn't care at all... as “long as [she gets] somewhere” (Carroll, 65). Now, I cared a great deal where I ended up. “Somewhere” was not going to cut it. However, like Alice, I had no idea where exactly I wanted to go.
After that fateful allergy appointment, I started seriously assessing the history of my previous career choices. Why was it that I had been so excited, so passionate, about the prospect of being a maid, and yet had been equally enthused by the idea of the veterinary practice? What did these two seemingly unrelated professions have in common?
After stepping back and trying to answer these questions "[unattached] to a particular outcome"(Anthology, 268), I realized that the link between my two previous dream-jobs was a commitment to the happiness of people. When Cinderella was cleaning her stepfamily's house? She was helping them. She was trying to keep them happy by keeping their living quarters spotless, by selflessly cooking delicious food for them, and by allowing them to abuse her without complaint. Obviously she could have helped people in a less... degrading way, and perhaps she could have chosen a more deserving set of people to aid. However, the principle of the matter is that Cinderella was assisting people with the intent to keep content. And when Mandy, from Animal Ark, was saving animals? Sure, I was glad she was saving the animals. But what I loved almost as much as that, and maybe even more, was the joy of the animals owners when they were told that Meg had saved their pet's life.
I want to help people be as happy as the kid in this picture. Note that he can't even keep his eyes open he's smiling so hard.
http://www.popular-pics.com/PPImages/Happy_Kid.jpg
I'd figured it out: whatever I specifically did with my future, I wanted to help people be happier.
It looks simplistic and childish, when I write it out like that. Maybe it's a naïve passion. Maybe I should have laughed it off in fifth grade and moved on to something deeper, more mature, something I could put on a college application and not inwardly cringe at. I mean, can you imagine my college interviews?
Interviewer: So, Lauren, what are you passionate about?
Me: Well... I like to make people happy.
It;s laughable, really. I didn't laugh it off though. I moved through middle school and half of high school, looking for a career that would let me build on my passion. In a way, I wish the final push hadn't come. It was good, of course... I guess. I mean, I figured out what I wanted to do with my life. But it was a series of harrowing experiences that led me to the conclusion of my career search, and I hope that nothing of the sort ever happens to anyone again.
Path to A Decision
In school, they don't ever really tell you what anorexia is. At least, I don't remember them ever explaining it to me. But it didn't take an APA approved definition of anorexia nervoisa to recognize that something was wrong with one of my childhood friends. At lunch, she would just sit, you know? Everyone else at the table would talk enthusiastically over the hum of the other students in the cafeteria. She, instead would spend lunch slowly, almost painfully, lifting her sandwich to her lips, taking the most miniscule of bites, and then dropping her hands, almost as if in exhaustion, letting them thump pitifully against the table before starting the process again. Lift, bite, drop, repeat. Lift, bite, drop, repeat. This process continued all through our half hour lunch, until finally the bell rang and she would jump up as if relieved and throw away the remainder of her sandwich, usually more then half.
I sat there and watched it happen. Day after day, for weeks, and then months, until finally, close to Christmas of our 7th grade year, her parents sent her to a rehab facility in Utah.
What could I have done? How could I have fixed this? It tortured me, that she was unhappy and there was nothing I could do. I loathed that disease. I thought anorexia was REPULSIVE, the way it around and making other people feel like the were fat, or ugly, or inferior, when really what was ugly was the disease itself. Anorexia forced me to watch someone absolutely amazing wilt slowly. But what was more disturbing then anything else about the experience was that the disease caused my friend to inflict this phenomenon on her own body. She was the one depriving herself of food. I just... it was difficult for me, then, and is still a struggle for me now, to comprehend how someone so incredible could have been dissatisfied with herself. There were times, in those months of idle watching, that I wanted to shake her. How could she be so blind to the sensational human being that everyone else recognized when they looked at her?
A Decision
I wish that 7th grade had been the end of my experience with eating disorders, but one year later, in 8th grade, another close friend developed bulimia. In ninth two girls I had been friends with from preschool struggled with anorexia. Finally, my sophomore year of high school, my best friend was sent to a rehab center in Dallas in the hopes that she could subdue the bulimia beast.
And that was it. The final straw, the “tiny golden key” (Carroll, 15) to my future. In Alice in Wonderland, Alice doesn't get through the door to her future until she's shrunk and grown numerous times. I myself went through a variety of other possible futures, and a multitude of painful experiences, before I was finally able to open the little door and squeeze through the rat-hole into my garden of destiny. I'd been considering psychology as a possible career for a long time, just because the profession seemed to fit in with my passion of making people happy. However, like Alice, I'd only been peeping through the keyhole at a possible future. Now, though, I knew what I wanted to specialize in: eating disorders. I was sick of watching everyone I loved not love themselves, and I was ready, finally to do something about it.
So, yes. I do recognize that my passion for helping people be happier is sadly simplistic. I realize that many of you are cringing at the artless way in which I have expressed it. Sometimes, though, it is the simplest way of explaining something that is the most profound. Hemingway told the Paris Review in an interview that he rewrote the end of A Farewell to Arms 39 times. In the end, this is what it said:
“But after I got them to leave and shut the door and turned off the light it wasn't any good. It was like saying goodbye to a statue. After awhile I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.” (Anthology, 527)
Simple, I know. But also memorable. Besides, my passion isn't about impressing anyone. What is important about my passion is how I understand it, live it out, and make it my own. My life, however short it has been, has convinced me that the best way to do these three things is to become a psychologist, specializing in eating disorders.
I'm here at UT to become a psychologist. This university is “training good members of society” (Anthology, 170). I'm taking this training and channeling it towards a more complete fulfillment of my passion.
Here at UT I want to further work on my passion by studying psychology.
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Word Count with Quotes: 1804
Word Count Without Quotes:1723
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