I was playing with a new site, about.me, writing a short blurb for my personal profile at about.me/tiffanyhsu and one line that came to me struck a chord. I wrote:
After returning from China, I fell back into media mostly because I had travel debts I needed to pay off, but also because it was easier. I didn't know exactly how to cultivate this new awareness of the world that was opened in me, so I took the Foreign Service exam once just to see what it was like, missed passing by .8 points and felt pretty proud of myself considering a year earlier I couldn't even locate Tunisia on a map. But it was always in the back of my mind and the forefront of everything I found myself interested in.
So I left my job, traveled, took a few more jobs that I hated, almost to prove to myself that I really didn't want to be in media anymore, and found myself in my current situation. I feel almost textbook in some ways. The career changer who keeps going back to old familiar ground thinking that this time will be different, but always knowing I'm not the same anymore. But now, it's been part of a long road, with many false starts, many huge bumps, numerous mistakes, but at least I have direction...a long road indeed, but I either take it now or regret it later.
It's a long road, but I either take it now or regret it later.I wasn't always very globally aware. Talk to me when I was in university and I wouldn't even begin to be able to pinpoint countries on a map. To be completely honest, what did it for me was one night when I first arrived in Shanghai, I was really embarrassed while conversing with a British man about American politics and I was too ignorant to defend my country. He said that was typical of Americans to not know what was going on in the world, let alone their own country. In some ways, a switch was flipped and suddenly I didn't want to be that ignorant girl. Since then I've traveled much more and was able to see first hand the effects of policy in various communities. I've also found myself in love with political history and every time I am ignorant on a topic, I rush to the library (I love libraries!) and find what I can to erase another topic off the list of what I don't understand.
After returning from China, I fell back into media mostly because I had travel debts I needed to pay off, but also because it was easier. I didn't know exactly how to cultivate this new awareness of the world that was opened in me, so I took the Foreign Service exam once just to see what it was like, missed passing by .8 points and felt pretty proud of myself considering a year earlier I couldn't even locate Tunisia on a map. But it was always in the back of my mind and the forefront of everything I found myself interested in.
So I left my job, traveled, took a few more jobs that I hated, almost to prove to myself that I really didn't want to be in media anymore, and found myself in my current situation. I feel almost textbook in some ways. The career changer who keeps going back to old familiar ground thinking that this time will be different, but always knowing I'm not the same anymore. But now, it's been part of a long road, with many false starts, many huge bumps, numerous mistakes, but at least I have direction...a long road indeed, but I either take it now or regret it later.
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