Living the Dream?

There’s not much traffic on the roads at 3 o’clock in the morning. I revel in that fact each day as I make the one-hour commute to work, trying to keep my bleary eyes open. Listening to a funny podcast helps.

And yet, every day my commute to work culminates in the same thought as I brake to turn into the heavily littered parking lot: What if I just kept driving? What if I go past the entrance and drive until I run out of gas? What would they do if I wasn’t there to babysit their flawed robots?

Of course, I don’t have the guts to drive past. So with a sigh, I sit in the left lane and wait for the light signal to turn green. I wait for the light even though no one is watching that early in the morning, a time when I could certainly get away with a left turn on red. But usually the light changes quickly enough. Usually.

My gut always clenches as I trudge into the gigantic building where I work. Quite often, like a manifestation of my consciousness, there’s an old man who greets me with the warning, “Don’t go back there, it’s a trap!” I always smile and nod my head in acknowledgement, but keep going, thinking I know. Looking at his long, frazzled grey hair and leathery skin, I wonder how long he has been trapped there. It is in that giant building I call work that I feel most out of place, in more ways than one. I wonder if he does too.

My place of work is a bright, high-ceilinged space stretching three stories up. Almost as tall as the ceiling is an enclosed structure composed of racks where robots can run around and help humans outside the structure fulfill grocery orders for customers. My job is to make sure the robots do their jobs, which is to say, I’m a glorified babysitter. On good days, I sit at a computer for ten hours watching the robots’ stats. On bad days, I’m running around for ten or more hours trying to stem the tide of endless software and hardware issues, all of which ultimately make customers angry. Sorry ma’am, we can’t get you the waffles you ordered, because the robot that was carrying them slipped on some frost and can’t get up. If only I could say that to a customer. Maybe then they’d be more understanding.

As a quiet, soft spoken, noise sensitive individual, I am very physically out of my comfort zone in that loud, busy place. But even worse than the physical discomfort is the unease that lies below the surface. You see, I’m a robot babysitter with a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in engineering. I don’t fix or design the robots. For the most part, I just watch them. I’d rather not be a babysitter, to be honest. It’s certainly not the best use of my degree. But I don’t want to fix or design robots. I don’t want to fix or design anything mechanical, actually. The kicker is, I don’t want to use my degrees one bit.

Every day, I watch the robots, with other engineers sitting nearby who are doing actual engineering work. And every day, I wonder how on earth they do it. I can’t picture myself doing what they do, because I don’t want to be an engineer. Sure, I have two engineering degrees, but that doesn’t mean much to me if I don’t want to do engineering. What it does mean is loads of student debt, hence the reason I’ve stayed in this job that pays the sky-high loan bill every month while allowing this engineer to do a non-engineering job. If I opted to get a job I would enjoy, there’s no way I would be able to make those monthly loan payments. Thus, I’m very much stuck. I do browse new job listings every now and then. But as I read the descriptions of all the jobs I qualify for and that would also pay the bills, my heart sinks.

I know it’s my fault for putting myself in this position, for getting not one but two expensive degrees I ended up not wanting. But as a human being, I try to shoulder off some of the blame onto others. It makes me feel better.

My initial desire to pursue a career in engineering began at home, but it was encouraged throughout my schooling. It seems parents, teachers, counselors, society in general, all value prestige and a lucrative career. Without exception, everywhere I looked, all the guidelines put in front of me pointed to a white-collar career somewhere high up on the corporate ladder. Any deviance from those guidelines was met with incredulity and an insistence that no money could be made without a good, four-year college degree.

While I was in high school, the constant buzz in the background was that more women were needed in the STEM field. And I was a straight A student, so everyone around me thought I should get a challenging career in STEM. I wanted to help the world somehow, and since getting a high-paying job has been hammered into my head practically since infancy, naturally I went along with it. Every online article about high-paying jobs that change the world all pointed at me and told me I should become an engineer. So that is what I did.

I changed my engineering major a few times in college. I couldn’t seem to find something that fit. But even though the STEM field failed to hold my interest forever, I kept going. Everyone said it would be worth it, that I should be grateful to be attending a good school. A motivational speaker who came to campus told us that we were “living the dream” to be there with such bright futures ahead. I wish I’d had the courage back then to admit to myself that it wasn’t my dream. And the even greater courage it would have taken to let everyone else know too.

After a gruesome five years of trudging through engineering coursework I absolutely did not enjoy, I came out the other side with my two degrees. And with a whole lot of student debt. It wasn’t until after I graduated and started looking for a job that I finally started to realize that I couldn’t be an engineer. It wasn’t what my soul wanted. The biggest clue was when my heart would quicken and the bile would rise in my throat whenever I read the job descriptions of the engineering positions I came across. But at that point it was too late. And unfortunately, only in my dreams can I return my degrees for a refund. I had to pay the loan bills, and my parents kept pushing me into a prestigious career path, so when I got my first job offer after more than six months of diligently looking and applying to jobs, I accepted it. I thought maybe there was a slight chance I would like it, that it would be a foot in the door to somewhere. And my parents really wanted me to have my foot in the door.

But now here I am, more than a year later, having stuck it out in the same position throughout the pandemic. It’s a far cry from where I want to be. Tensions are high, resources are stretched thin. I feel guilty about the idea of leaving; my company really does need me. But every day I dream of quitting. I do not belong here. The old man is right; this place is a trap. I’m afraid if I stay much longer, my head might explode from the stress. I don’t want to climb this corporate ladder, or any corporate ladder. I would like to jump off the ladder all together, the sooner the better for my sanity. But art or dog training won’t exactly pay the bills. Not my bills, anyway.

I wish there were a magic dial I could twist to turn back time and visit myself in the past. I would tell myself that following your heart is way more important than pursuing a “prestigious” career. That you shouldn’t let other people, even your parents, dictate what’s important to you. Don’t believe that your life is only worthwhile if you have fancy degrees and titles after your name. All those degrees and titles will mean nothing if the path you’re on doesn’t bring you some fulfillment.

I was really good at math and science, but I can’t say I loved those subjects, and I wish I hadn’t pursued a career based on them. Just because you’re good at something, doesn’t mean you have to enjoy it or make a career out of it. Do your own research, try out as many things as possible. If you have an inkling of interest in something, look up the career paths related to it, and don’t worry if you see only lower-paying careers in that field. If you truly are interested in it, you can make it work. And yes, even things that don’t require a four-year college degree count as a career choice. Every door is open to you, even the less conventional ones.

I let the people around me guide me a bit too much, let their beliefs permeate into my own for too long, and before I knew it, I was burdened with a mountain of regret and no choice but to suck it up for a while. I could play it safe and stay in my current job, settle in for a while longer and not feel guilty about leaving. My other options would be to leave in a few weeks’ time and rely on my savings to try and start a career I would enjoy, or to find another job before leaving my current one. But the thought of lying through my teeth during a job interview about how much I enjoy engineering doesn’t quite feel right.

No one has a magic dial to turn back time, so the only place to go is forward. My next step is to either send an email to my boss consenting to the staffing schedule he’s planned for the next month, or to send a very different kind of email, one that I know would make him pull his hair out at the thought of losing another employee. Weighing my options with a sigh, I click to create a new email and begin typing.