For my job this summer, I’m going to have to commute in to New York City with my dad at five am every morning. I’m dreading it, but anticipating this daily journey had made me think about the ways in which my parents have helped me to be who I am today. I’ve always felt like I was a fairly self-sufficient, self-motivated person, but growing up, my parents placed an emphasis on me getting great grades and trying everything. They have always supported me in whatever I’ve done, whether it be Girl Scouts or Soccer or Volunteer Work, so long as I was happy. For me, being happy means working hard, and being the best possible version of myself that I can possibly be. That’s kind of just who I am as a person. So while they would have supported me had I just gone to a mid-rate college, or not taken challenging classes in high school, it was myself who worked constantly to get into a school as good as Scripps.

Talking with my friends, it’s interesting to see how different our parental experiences are, especially in terms of entering the professional world. Some have the benefit of being able to work at their family’s companies to gain experience, or have family friends that have offered them jobs. With both my parents being finance majors, I probably could get some professional experience through their connections, although not doing anything that I would particularly enjoy. One of my other friends even has her parents questioning her about grad school in her freshman year, as they believe a law degree will increase her chances of getting a job with her undergraduate degree being in Philosophy. I can’t even imagine my parents doing this– if anything, it was me that was panicking about the usefulness of my degree in English in the modern-day workforce. Sometimes I worry about my parent’s optimism. Though they both came from humble beginnings, the status of the job market was very different in 1993 (when they graduated college) than it is today. When applying to colleges, they told me to put Stanford as my reach school; in reality, it was Scripps that was my reach.

When I told my dad that my job was going to be teaching this summer, he asked if I wanted to be a teacher. I would love to be an English teacher, or even better, an English professor, but I’ve had several people tell me not to be- one of them being my favorite English teacher in high school. Knowing that only 4% of people who get a Master’s Degree in the humanities end up getting a job in their field, I think I would be a lot better off pursuing one of the many other things that I’m interested in as a career. Still, there’s something to be said for people who will support you no matter what. Even if I feel like that support can be a little blind at times, it’s when I doubt myself that I need it the most.