Friday 25 January 2008

Tip Our Glasses To No Direction

When I was a kid, I didn't dream of being a doctor or a ballerina. I had no aspirations to be a fire fighter or a lawyer or an astronaut. No, I wanted to be an accountant when I grew up. Exciting, right? No, I'm not going to cure cancer or fight the injustices of the world - I'm going to crunch me some numbers. My dad is an accountant, so clearly this was all his fault. I'd like to think that my desire to be an accountant was just me being a daddy's girl, but that would be a lie. I really was that much of a nerd.

Not that accountants are nerdy. I'm just saying that when you're six years old you should dream big.

Last year I took some accounting courses for work. Accounting courses are evil. This may not apply to everyone, but for someone who is a little bit more Type A than she'd like to admit, accounting courses make you crazy. The thing is, there's no reason why you can't get 100% - either you're right or you're wrong. So I tried to get 100%. I succeeded on a few assignments but mostly I just succeeded in making myself crazy. At one point, S threatened to leave me if I didn't stop obsessing about debits and credits.

I'm doing a degree (in what, I don't know) through correspondence, which means that it will probably take me about, oh 15 years to finish. After the accounting debacle of last year, I decided to take some English courses. I figured that the reason I didn't enjoy accounting is that I'm too creative. Accounting was stifling my creative drive. Unfortunately, it turns out that I am not creative. I'm doing a poetry course right now (not by choice, I'd like to point out) and it is making me crazier than the accounting. Poetry makes me frustrated. Symbolism and imagery are the bane of my existence.

If I manage to get through this course, I don't know what to do next. Go back to the courses where there is a right answer and there is a wrong answer and you are 1 or the other? Or stay with the courses that require an inordinate amount of bs to do well?

1 comment:

  1. I really wish I liked math. I myself am a Type A-Creative. This is a frustrating place to live.

    I had to take "INTRO TO ALGEBRA" 3 times. THREE TIMES before I could muster a C. Don't even get me started on Accounting 101. And irony of ironies? I ranked #1 in my Statistics class.

    Will you balance my checkbook for me? Thanks eversomuch.

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