This is the story of my life so far. In order to make it seem like there is a common thread through it all, I have condensed it into four parts. This Part One is called “Quiet”.
Quiet:
There are exactly two things that you need to know about my parents. One, that they are of the opinion that you are a child till you express a political opinion. I maintain that I did so at age 10, when I expressed my dismay at learning that the “Party” as in the Democratic and the Republican Party was no soiree. Two, they are argumentative to the point that had they ever argued before a court of law, their clients would have been fervent converts to mediation.
Curiously though, one time when they did not argue was when I brought home test scores that were unequivocal about my dexterity with languages. My parents agreed that it was a sign that I was destined for a career in the sciences.
Curiouser even, that the child of two vocal individuals did not make a peep when she was stuffed into the bottomless pit that passes for the high school system in India.
Which brings me to Part Two or “Counter”.
Counter:
I endured what the law calls “minority” and what forgetful adults nostalgically refer to as “childhood”, till I left for college at 18. I wish could tell you that my high school years were merely turbulent but I don’t think I would be able to express the depth of my despair without this illustration. To wit, imagine a can of sardines. Now imagine that those sardines are feelings.
My high school years felt so oppressive that I did the most subversive thing that a painfully shy — you can roast me over a slow fire but I won’t make eye contact — kind of teenager could think of. I decided to study law. The field where the prerequisite is to be able to stand up and argue confidently with the other party. My parents were suitably horrified. In retrospect, it may not have been my best rebellious moment but I have learned to argue with anyone who tells me that it was a bad decision.
You would think that law school helped me learn the law. Instead, it taught me who I was not. I soon realized that I wasn’t going to be the eloquent orator that I distantly admired on TV legal dramas. I was however, good at almost anything that required me to bury my nose in my books and potentially not speak to a soul, which leads me to Part Three or what I like to call, “Parley”.
Parley:
In the first week of my first job, I managed to bury my head in work, not speak a word to a soul and feel self righteously productive. It was (still is) interesting to me as to how technology has made personal dis-communication entirely effortless. That first week, I wrote emails that suggested that I was more confident than I actually was. I spoke so little that I could have very well been a plant pot and no one would have been any wiser — so long as the emails kept coming.
Meetings were my one Achilles heel and I fought tooth and nail to avoid them. It wasn’t very difficult to justify this to myself. I found meetings with more than three people at any given point of time — an entirely tedious exercise in futility. My former mentor, however, was not having any of it. She believed (and with good reason, still does) that meetings were a good way to put a face to the name and assuaging doubts lingering in the mind of the business user about the status of a project. She sent me to so many meetings in her place that newer employees were often left thoroughly confused about our identities.
I didn’t really like it at that time but this approach — sending me to face my fears — worked quite well for me. This conditioning was probably the only reason why, when my then boyfriend and now husband asked me to marry him and move to the US, I took a deep breath and said yes. A few years earlier, I would probably have run for the hills and never looked back. Which brings me to the last and final part or what I like to call “Pitch”.
Pitch:
Having worked full time for most of my adult life, I could not imagine having to sit at home and do nothing in the US. However, the idea of graduate school made me a tad apprehensive. I had been out of school for almost half a decade. I enjoyed the rhythm that I had developed while working. I would have to start from scratch, network with prospective teachers, classmates and employers, build myself up. I wasn’t convinced that this was indeed what I wanted.
There was one voice however, that altered my perspective on the matter — the idea of being in charge of myself. I would teach myself to swim. And if the past chapters of my life had taught me anything, it was that you couldn’t learn to swim if you didn’t jump into the water. And so I took the plunge. I applied to grad school and was incredibly lucky that I convinced the school of my choice to offer me a seat in their class of 2018.
Now if only I could convince all the recruiters to do the same.
