There is a lie we tell ourselves, particularly around Leaving Certificate time. That the people who worked hard will get good marks, get into university and secure a “good job” – the kind of job that elicits that little nod from people when you answer the question “so what do you do for work?” at parties.
Jobs that are referenced by mothers lecturing their unmarried daughters about which boy in primary school they should have snagged, even though we were only eight years old at the time and saw that same boy eat a whole woodlouse once, for a laugh. “And to think he’s a solicitor/surgeon/accountant now…”
We prioritise jobs that people do in offices or hospitals or courts. Jobs that might require a suit and a tie at some stage. These are the important jobs that demand respect.
Which is what I thought once, too. When I was younger, if you had asked me what I wanted to do when I grow up, the answer would have been simply “work in an office”. That’s it. No one in my family had worked in one before. I wanted a lanyard. I might have been the only 10-year-old with a collage of corporate business wear instead of dream wedding dresses. I fantasised that just like the magazines promised, I too, one day, would have to transition my outfit from “desk to dance floor” via a spangly pair of earrings.
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Working in an office was for smart people because going to university was for smart people and everyone who didn’t go just hadn’t tried hard enough. I reasoned to myself with the logic of someone who had just learned the previous year that brown cows do not in fact make chocolate milk.
We all like to lie to ourselves. To say we got where we are through hard graft and determination alone
Then I grew up and went to university and eventually started working in an office. These places were full of not-very-smart people who didn’t work hard. Some of them spent more time trying to make it look like they were doing things than actually doing them at all. These people usually got promoted.
When people find out you are the first in your family to finish school and go to university, they say weird things like “your family must be so proud”.
The truth is, my family are concerned. I am a journalist still in student debt and renting in my 30s. My industry is unstable and freelance rates haven’t changed for a decade. My brother, a cement truck driver, bought a house at 26, as did everyone else I went to school with who didn’t go to university.
My family is made up of people earning better money than me doing jobs that matter (in a practical, everyday sense) more. Like carers, members of the military, police officers, electricians and letting agents. People rely on them to turn up to work for society to function. On my best day, people might read this column and think “ha that’s funny” to themselves before using it to line the cat’s litter tray.
But yet, I am assumed to be the successful one because I have a job that requires higher education. A university course that needed the equivalent of a lot of points on the Leaving Cert to get into.
We can work as hard as we want but where we end up might still be down to a mix of the help we had and sheer dumb luck
But a person’s job doesn’t indicate their intelligence, just the options that were available to them at the time.
We all like to lie to ourselves. To say we got where we are through hard graft and determination alone. I relied on scholarships to complete university and get my start as a journalist with zero connections to an industry with a fondness for nepotism.
But I also had the privilege of parents who encouraged me to go to university, who gave me a quiet place to study for my exams. Who didn’t expect me to leave school early to work and contribute to the family income. It is more than they ever got. I still had a considerable leg-up.
Kids from disadvantaged backgrounds have to be exceptional to get a foot in the door. They have to get scholarships, be at the top of their year, be exceptionally talented at sport or music or the arts to get to the same place other kids just seem to be able to meander into with the help of parents or grinds or private schools. There are no second chances for these kids.
There is no capacity to re-sit final year exams or extra help if they fail. No one to help them work the system to get into their dream course. No job at the family firm to fall back on. They just get put out into the adult world to fend for themselves.
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We can work as hard as we want but where we end up might still be down to a mix of the help we had and sheer dumb luck. Hopefully my brother tucks his children at night, telling them to make good choices because “you don’t want to end up being a journalist like Aunty Brianna”.