Prestigious v. Competitive and Apprenti

This morning I picked up tiny beautiful things: Advice on love and life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed. It is overdue at the library, but I am willing to pay the $.15 a day for a few days instead of buying it. I flipped it open, and miraculously I found exactly what I needed to find, even though I wasn't looking for anything specific.

In the novel I am attempting to write, I am pondering the idea of privilege and what do people do with theirs. Strayed gave me a nice definition of privilege when she responds to a thirty-one-year-old woman novelist who is jealous anytime one of her friends gets a book deal. The letter writer can't understand why she isn't published after she went to a prestigious college. Strayed responds on page 262: "Privilege has a way of fucking with our heads the same way a lack of it does...possibly...you've been given a tremendous amount of things that you did not earn or deserve, but rather received for the sole reason that you happen to be born into a family who had the money and wherewithal to fund your education at two colleges to which you feel compelled to attach the word 'prestigious.'" Sugar/Strayed then asks the letter writer to consider what it means to attend a "prestigious" college.

It got me thinking because it hit a little close to home. I went to a college some might call "prestigious," but I call "competitive." I had to work my butt off to qualify to get in, I had to work my butt off to get through it, and I learned a lot in the process. As I wrote in my last blog post, I became the master of getting things done whether or not I wanted to do them. That isn't a bad thing. In fairness, in college I got to choose my major and classes, so I did enjoy most of what I was doing, but that isn't the point. I am a plugger. I can plug, I have plugged. I am now deciding what to do next with my life. Will I continue to plug? What does plugging look like in the future?

I recently applied for two jobs, one of which I am probably overqualified for but it is with a group that I firmly believe in its mission. The second job I might be not perfectly qualified for or have enough experience. It is with a different group, and I firmly believe in its mission, as well. Even though I went to a prestigious or competitive college twenty-five years ago, that doesn't mean job offers are falling at my feet now. I have to reconcile what all of this means, especially taking into consideration what I might want to do relative to who wants me to do it for them. I'd love to be president of a bank, let's say, but not many banks want me to be their president given my current range of experience.

So what next? I should take something interesting that could add to my current range of experience. If I want to be a bank president, I should try to get a job in a bank that will lead to being bank president someday. While I might be overqualified for the one job, it might give me interesting experience just working for the organization.

In the meantime, I need to keep plugging along in my job search in case neither of these materializes, which is very possible, even likely. I went to a panel discussion a few weeks back about women's work/life balance and returning to the workforce after raising a family. One of the groups who passed out information sheets was the Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA). They sponsor a group called Apprenti, which is a technology apprenticeship program for Database Administrators, Project Managers, Network Security Administrators, Software Developers, and Web Developers. I put the card on my desk underneath my clear desk protector. Last week while the boy was trying to write a story, he was trying to distract himself with anything, including random pieces of paper on my desk. He found the card, read it and went to the website.

When he saw there was a math test, he said, "I could probably do this!" and he is probably right. He is two years ahead in math, so he is basically doing 10th-grade math now, and doing it fairly well. I found that most math in non-science or engineering jobs doesn't really extend beyond 10th-grade math. I never used trig or calc in my days in market research or when I was working at the accounting firm. I had to be good at math, be precise and enjoy it, but I didn't have to solve long or complex equations. I am not saying it was easy, but it wasn't super complex.

The Boy wanted to take the math test to see how he would do. At the time I said, "Sure, give it a shot!" not having read one word about it. I would have promised him rainbows and unicorns to finish the story, but he wanted to take a math test. I figured why not. I was desperate to have him finish the story.

Today after the kids went back to school, I decided to poke around this website a bit. There is an assessment test that takes about three hours, and then they call people with high enough scores for an interview. The organization takes only women, veterans, and people of color, and people over the age of 18. The Boy struck out on all four.

"I am one-fourth Asian!" he declared. "Why can't white guys be in the program?"

"Because tech is almost all white men," I said. "They are looking to diversify."

"Seems fair," he said. "Maybe it is because more men choose to be in that than women."

"That would be true, which is why that is the way it is now, and why they created this program," I said.

My son was fine with all of this, but it made me unsettled. The reality is my son might do better on the test than I would, and I majored in math at a "prestigious" and "competitive" college. I did all kinds of math and analysis in my before-kids life, but I skills aren't as sharp as they used to be.

But then I think about it: do I really want to be a database administrator? I don't even know what one is, but I suppose that is the point of this program--to help people who don't know. Maybe I could get a job as a project manager, and work my way into different positions. This could be a starting point. I am starting to look at this job search differently than I used to. Before I would try to figure out what I wanted to do and see what the world had to offer. Now I am seeing what is out in the world, and trying to find a place to fit.