by Shelley Pineo-Jensen, Ph.D.
People sure take offense easily regarding this meme, speaking with bitterness about being treated poorly at work . . . confounding “job” with “career.” Example – a job is teaching fifth grade at Plumas Elementary School. A career is teaching in public school.
The idea seems pretty straight forward - my career choice never stopped loving me. I might have stopped loving it and changed careers (small business owner, warehouse manager, grade school teacher, perpetual graduate student/teaching assistant, union activist, social justice activist, Dr. P-J, lazy dilettante . . . )
. . . but a man stopping loving me? - Well that is a different story. I had a "starter" marriage, once upon a time . . . that ended badly when he started loving the prospect of wealth more than whatever feelings he originally had for me . . . back in the day, by cracky.
The women who attack this post (insensitive post? really?) would seem to be taking the position that "following" your man is a good life choice. Lady Gaga and I would argue otherwise. THAT is what the post is about - follow your OWN dreams, not your man's dreams . . .
I like men. I have a life partner (18 months until the 50th anniversary of our union - we kissed on the dock in Santa Cruz in December of 1974 with Orion's belt blazing and the Ferris Wheel spinning, across the water on the brightly lit colorful Santa Cruz Boardwalk, with the roller coaster screaming in the background . . . the stuff dreams are made of) but I don't FOLLOW my man. He is my life partner. And we support each other in reaching our personal goals EVERY DAY . . . for all these years . . .
So one of the comments included the phrase “the devil doesn't really need an advocate,” which I totally love. I’m smirking about it as I type this . . . so that gives rise to the rest of this article.
When I was in high school, I had many conversations with my father in which he played devil's advocate and gently probed my arguments in support of many different issues - women's rights, the war in Vietnam, racism, the dress code at the high school . . . he never told me what arguments would serve me well - he showed me what arguments I would face and I devised the arguments that best supported my claims.
He was a wily debater too. Way smarter than those dumbass Republicans with their fallacious argumentation. He subscribed to a wide range of magazines and journals and some racist screed provided fodder at the Pineo house . . . he told us he didn't want Big Brother to identify his leftist leanings through his subscriptions, so he brought a variety of texts into the house . . .
My mother might have seemed like she was following his dreams - she was a stay-home mother until I, the eldest of six children, was in college, but having a family WAS her dream. Then when the youngest of my siblings started school, my mother went back to college (Cal State Fullerton, University of California at Irvine), became a teacher, and eventually took a Ph.D. and finished off her second career as a well-respected professor at Fullerton Community College.
She served the large Vietnamese demographic at FCC so well that one man, a former general in the South Vietnamese Army, gave her a wall clock in the shape of Vietnam, made of beautiful burlwood. The Vietnamese students who came into her office and saw that clock and felt safer, and they were.
And this was not a safe time for Vietnamese immigrants in Southern California. I was taking two classes at Santiago Community College (formerly Santa Ana Junior College) where my dad was teaching. I was taking Fortran and Basic at the same time – which is like learning two different foreign languages at the same time – very tricky. Anyhow, the Fortran teacher was a nasty racist who called out and openly criticized the group of Vietnamese men in the back of the room, for whom one was serving as a translator. The teacher basically told that ringleader to STFU in HIS classroom and made some disparaging remarks about their kind not belonging in a United States college class if they couldn’t speak English. What a dick. But I digress? And I’m using vulgar language?
So, in conclusion, the devil doesn't really need an advocate . . . LMAO
The idea seems pretty straight forward - my career choice never stopped loving me. I might have stopped loving it and changed careers (small business owner, warehouse manager, grade school teacher, perpetual graduate student/teaching assistant, union activist, social justice activist, Dr. P-J, lazy dilettante . . . )
. . . but a man stopping loving me? - Well that is a different story. I had a "starter" marriage, once upon a time . . . that ended badly when he started loving the prospect of wealth more than whatever feelings he originally had for me . . . back in the day, by cracky.
The women who attack this post (insensitive post? really?) would seem to be taking the position that "following" your man is a good life choice. Lady Gaga and I would argue otherwise. THAT is what the post is about - follow your OWN dreams, not your man's dreams . . .
I like men. I have a life partner (18 months until the 50th anniversary of our union - we kissed on the dock in Santa Cruz in December of 1974 with Orion's belt blazing and the Ferris Wheel spinning, across the water on the brightly lit colorful Santa Cruz Boardwalk, with the roller coaster screaming in the background . . . the stuff dreams are made of) but I don't FOLLOW my man. He is my life partner. And we support each other in reaching our personal goals EVERY DAY . . . for all these years . . .
So one of the comments included the phrase “the devil doesn't really need an advocate,” which I totally love. I’m smirking about it as I type this . . . so that gives rise to the rest of this article.
When I was in high school, I had many conversations with my father in which he played devil's advocate and gently probed my arguments in support of many different issues - women's rights, the war in Vietnam, racism, the dress code at the high school . . . he never told me what arguments would serve me well - he showed me what arguments I would face and I devised the arguments that best supported my claims.
He was a wily debater too. Way smarter than those dumbass Republicans with their fallacious argumentation. He subscribed to a wide range of magazines and journals and some racist screed provided fodder at the Pineo house . . . he told us he didn't want Big Brother to identify his leftist leanings through his subscriptions, so he brought a variety of texts into the house . . .
My mother might have seemed like she was following his dreams - she was a stay-home mother until I, the eldest of six children, was in college, but having a family WAS her dream. Then when the youngest of my siblings started school, my mother went back to college (Cal State Fullerton, University of California at Irvine), became a teacher, and eventually took a Ph.D. and finished off her second career as a well-respected professor at Fullerton Community College.
She served the large Vietnamese demographic at FCC so well that one man, a former general in the South Vietnamese Army, gave her a wall clock in the shape of Vietnam, made of beautiful burlwood. The Vietnamese students who came into her office and saw that clock and felt safer, and they were.
And this was not a safe time for Vietnamese immigrants in Southern California. I was taking two classes at Santiago Community College (formerly Santa Ana Junior College) where my dad was teaching. I was taking Fortran and Basic at the same time – which is like learning two different foreign languages at the same time – very tricky. Anyhow, the Fortran teacher was a nasty racist who called out and openly criticized the group of Vietnamese men in the back of the room, for whom one was serving as a translator. The teacher basically told that ringleader to STFU in HIS classroom and made some disparaging remarks about their kind not belonging in a United States college class if they couldn’t speak English. What a dick. But I digress? And I’m using vulgar language?
So, in conclusion, the devil doesn't really need an advocate . . . LMAO
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