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I think there was a lot of that uninvolved parent - thing going on in our generation. (sm)

Posted: Oct 8th, 2015 - 4:23 pm In Reply to: Low Expectations - Meh

(I'm assuming we're probably close in age.)

My parents took care of us the best they could, we didn't lack for anything material, but education wasn't high on their list of priorities. As long as we "did our time" and didn't get suspended or fail or anything, they were happy with that.

It was "assumed" I'd go to college, but my average grades meant I had to do 2 years at a junior college first. I was always automatically pigeonholed into an art major because I could draw. I didn't think drawing was any big deal, because everyone in my family could draw, and I grew up assuming everyone in the world could do it.

My dad was a very successful businessman, and any one of us could have gone to work for him (I actually did for 2 years as a "Girl Friday" office clerk.) But he never instilled in any of us the need to learn about business, or management, or bookkeeping, or anything that would've helped us along those lines. When I started to fail in math classes at school, I was told by my teacher, "That's okay - girls don't have to be good at math, they just have to learn how to cook." (Never mind that I got a D in homemaking class...)

The other things I was never taught at home or at school were the basic survival skills, such as making and sticking to a budget, balancing a checkbook, managing credit, or saving money. I learned all those things through the school-of-hard-knocks later in life. I rarely went to my dad to ask for help with things like that, or with filing my income taxes, because he had a very confrontational way of explaining things that only served to piss me off. We'd soon be fighting about it, and I'd go storming out of there. My mother didn't know about any of those things because she never worked when she was married, and dad took care of all the money-making, bookkeeping and bill-paying.

I also didn't like my art classes because I didn't like teachers telling me to draw like them, instead of helping me develop my own style. I started skipping class and going body-surfing at Malibu, instead.

The one good thing my dad did was give me 2 years at his business so at least I'd have some experience on my resume. But of course there was that stigma of being "the boss's daughter", so I was never really accepted by the other workers.

I lived at home for probably too long, and bounced from job to job to job, never finding a fit and never lasting more than a couple months at any one job, at best. I then worked as an office temp for a couple years, which I enjoyed because of the variety. Back then, simply having typing and 10-key skills were enough to keep you sought-after and working steadily.

I finally fell into MT when someone I knew who was one at a local hospital invited me to join her for lunch in the hospital cafeteria. Later she showed me her office (MTs had their own offices back in those days). I asked her what she did, and she let me listen to and try to transcribe a report. Even though I had to guess at some of the words, she said I'd probably be good at being an MT, and it seemed like it might be a good fit for me, since I liked to type, was good with English, and didn't like that much contact with other workers.

I took a 20-week transcription course at our local adult-school, and by the 18th week the teacher, who was the transcription manager at UCLA for her day job, offered me a job. I turned it down because it was too far from where I lived, but soon took a job as an MT at a nearby mom-and-pop transcription company.

The rest is history. However, I think I might have had a different outcome in life if I had had a little more positive guidance as a teen and as a twenty-something, rather than having a more or less feral upbringing.

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