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Work EthicThe most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed mountains, and the most unsuccessful is not that of the man who is taken unprepared, but of him who has prepared and is never taken. On a tragedy of that kind our national morality is duly silent. -- E. M. Forster |
   
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Sunday, September 21, 1997
I was watching Sister Wendy on the local PBS station tonight. What an appealing, unusual television personality! An interview with her on the Fresh Air radio show played a few weeks ago. She apparently knew she was going to be a nun from an early age, but didn't investigate what order she should be in. She just applied to the order of teaching nuns that had taught her at school, even though she didn't want to be a teacher at all! Eventually she left the classroom and was seconded to a contemplative order. She lives in a little trailer on their grounds, but isn't formally part of their order. As part of the program of study that all the nuns do, she started studying art, then writing about it.
When I was in high school, I really had no fixed ideas about what I wanted to do for a living. I chose a music major for college and applied to a college with a good music department because that's what I enjoyed the most among high school classes. I could have picked other fields, since I did well in English, history, science, etc.
But I wasn't looking ahead to what my job would be after college! I was in a music education program, since I knew my proficiency wasn't good enough on my major instrument to get a performing gig. But it wasn't till just before my senior year that I realized that I didn't want to teach, either! Luckily, they had developed a music major with a minor in business by then, for those going into the music business. I did an internship with an orchestra in Northern Virginia, working in their office, stage managing, doing whatever needed doing.
But since this job didn't pay anything, I got a job at a restaurant cum singles bar that had just opened up in the area. I kept this job even after I stopped working with the orchestra.
Tomorrow: frittering away the years.
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Trish asked me where I get my quotes. I look them up in Bookshelf Basics, which came with my Office 97. The full version includes more reference materials.
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