Published March 14, 2004 in the Hibbing Daily Tribune
When people ask you a question, they generally want a direct answer. Up or down? Coke or Pepsi? Smoking or non?
Thus I’ve been having a hard time lately when people ask me what I do for a living.
Conversations seldom miss the “What do you do?” question. To a large extent, the answer defines your role in society. So I can’t help feeling like a bit of a loser when people ask the question of me.
The truthful answer is that I am a full time graduate student who works as a manager at a Superior, Wis., radio station, coaches a high school speech team and writes this column. The problem with this particular version of the truth is that it is rife with nuances. People don’t like nuances. They want answers.
“I drive truck.”
“I teach kindergarten.”
“I wrestle professionally.”
My answer contains no such clarity. In fact, it takes about a minute to explain everything, and in standard small talk, that’s WAY too much time. For the looks I get, I may as well be saying the following: “Yeah, I watch TV full time, but I also distill moonshine in my barn and shoot rats at the dump.” In fact, I wish my answer had that kind of consistency.
Telling people you quit your job to go back to graduate school is a risky venture. In some circles, the news is received like the arrival of a baby. In other circles, you may as well tell people you just soiled yourself and need extra napkins. It’s a delicate balance.
I was raised on a junkyard in Zim and now I spend a certain amount of time each day thinking and talking about communication theory models. It doesn’t seem quite right – and by gosh, it’s hard to explain to people.
One the things we talk about at graduate school, in between our tea-sipping and mild-mannered jokes about proxemics, is how we are culturally tuned to focus on a person’s career (and thus social class) in our interactions. By telling people I was raised the dirt-covered son of rural junk merchants, I paint one picture of myself. By telling them I am currently working on my graduate thesis on the development of online speech communication curriculum, I paint another entirely different picture. What’s the truth? Well, the truth is that I’m an Iron Ranger who enjoys writing and reading, preferably while consuming cheese and listening to rock ‘n’ roll of the 1960s and ‘70s. But no one ever asks me about that stuff.
From now on, if anyone asks me what I do for a living, my new answer is that I’m a “communications consultant.” Having the word “consultant” on your business card is a clever way to avoid telling people you can’t hold down a steady job. It also sounds good, so maybe I can up my rates.
For instance, you’re not reading a column right now. You’re reading a “prepared humor message” (Retail list price: $199.99 plus labor and customization fees). I’ll start sending bills for all my human interactions. (“Abstract discussion of weather conditions” – $10 per minute; “Hockey game prediction” – $25; “Buffet sampling and analysis” – $12.50 per plate).
If you get one of these bills, don’t worry about paying it. I’d be happy if you just nodded, commenting to your friends and family that I really am quite good at being a consultant.
We all have to be good at something.