The Dream Job

Today I had my first full two hour lesson with my new batch of intermediate reading and writing students. I had them do some diagnostics and one of them was to write a paragraph about their favorite person, their favorite vacation, or their dream job. Here's one girl's response, which nicely summarizes a common theme that I've noticed here:

"When I was a child, I read a lot of book. My favourite hobbie is read a book and write a something, so my dream job is literature teacher, but my department is tourism management. I want to be literature teacher, but my father didn't want. This department is his dream and I will be boss in hotel. Maybe I won't happy, but my father will be happy and this is very important for me. I like literature a lot of and I will always research writer, I will always read a book, I will always write a something, because this is my dream."

When I was a child, I loved maps and Indiana Jones. My favorite hobby was to find a remote location on a map and read about it and look at pictures of it and dream about going there, so my dream job was to be a geographer, a world traveler, an international teacher, but...my parents wanted me to be happy. Their dream was for me to be successful, and successful to them was defined as being happy, so here I am, in my own dream. All I've ever done is what I've wanted to do, all I've ever pursued is my own dream, keeping in the back of my mind what would make my loved ones proud.

For some of us, our parents raise us with the hopes of making ourselves happy, for others, they raise us with the hopes of making them happy. I don't know which is necessarily better, but it's good to be reminded that I'm so very lucky to be here, to be whatever I want.