Originally posted on TwentySomethingsSomething.com, a blog dedicated to twentysomethings - past and present.
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http://www.twentysomethingsomething.com/2014/05/01/erica-29-the-unmoored-wanderer/
Erica is a twenty-nine-year-old trained sociologist and recent West Coast transplant from Oakland, California.
This is her life. This is her story.
“My mom grew up in Bronxville, New York, which is where Sarah Lawrence [College] is [located]. And when I was – gosh, ten or something – she had a high school reunion that she dragged me along to. I remember driving by Sarah Lawrence and turning to my mom and saying, ‘I’m gonna go to that school.’ My mom’s like, ‘Yeah, okay Erica – you’re ten.’ And to this day, I still don’t know why I said it. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I ended up loving Sarah Lawrence, but I also think one of the reasons why I went to Sarah Lawrence is because I had decided in my head when I was ten that I would go. I don’t know what it was at age ten that I was like, ‘Done. I’m going there,’ but I made the announcement, and I guess I had to stick to my ten-year-old announcement.
I had gone to a really small public high school. And so, though Sarah Lawrence is far from public, it had sort of the same vibe. Now I roll my eyes at this, but when I was eighteen, I really liked the artsy-ness of it [laughs]. I really liked that – at the first party I went to – there was someone just walking around naked. I was like, ‘These are the cool kids. These are my people.’ I do want to note that I never went, in my entire time [there], to a party naked – practically naked, but never fully naked.
What we have at Sarah Lawrence are called conference papers. So instead having final tests, we write these massive research papers. They usually are about fifty pages, and we write them for every class. And there’s always [this] horrible experience called ‘conference week’ where you leave everything up to the last minute, and you’re up every single night, all night writing fifteen pages a night. It’s crazy and stupid, but I’m a procrastinator.
But we got to choose our topics, [and] I found myself always being drawn to gendered topics and women’s studies topics in my papers. I wrote a paper on media representation of drag queens and what it meant. And I’m trying to think of some other ones… I did write a paper on Sex and the City, but [laughs]… This is also during a time when – my very first year at Sarah Lawrence – Sex and the City was still on the air. It was a critique of Sex and the City using feminist literature and talking about waves of feminism and what it brought to… But yeah, I’m a little embarrassed about [that].
I remember I was taking a class on the history of American beauty, and this girl was just going off on high heels. Like, ‘Why would women wear high heels? High heels, high heels…’ And it’s like, ‘Well, you’re never gonna get rid of [high heels].’ The reasoning behind the power structure in a society that produces high heels – women will wear [heels], technically, [for] the visual [and] aesthetic pleasure of men. Like, ‘Yeah, that’s not great.’ But at the same time, if you understand more beyond that, and if you’re making informed decisions – this is what I said to [her], ‘It’s all about choice.’ Often in the gendered world, we put so much emphasis on choice, and then we forget that, by negating experiences that are more mainstream, we’re taking away their choice. It’s stuff like that where I really became a firm believer in being aware of the world around you, as opposed to just critiquing it.
I think that what critiquing does is that it cuts the possibility for a vein of thought other than yours. I mean, if you’re aware of different veins of thought, [that], for me, [is] the goal. To disagree with them is natural; it’s absolutely okay to disagree with them. But to label them as ‘wrong’ or ‘correct’ is, I think, a problem. And if we’re talking gender, both sides of the argument do it. Especially feminists and women who fight that particular fight – they forget that what they’re fighting against is someone who has long since made up their mind that their way is the correct way. And just because you don’t agree with them doesn’t mean that their point of view doesn’t exist.
Feminism has come a long way, but there is still a stigma around [it] of [being] something that you have to hide. So you ask, ‘What’s one thing that Sarah Lawrence has done for me?’ It’s totally taken away any stigma. I mean, my mother was a very smart woman; she always identified as a feminist. I came from a family that made it very clear that to say you’re a feminist means that you are an intelligent person who has made herself aware of ideas other than the ones that are force fed to her. That’s what it’s always meant to me, and so I never had that stigma. But I feel like the one thing that Sarah Lawrence really did was solidify a total confidence in being able to say, ‘I’m a feminist, and if you have a problem with that, then that’s your problem. That’s not my problem.’
SOMETIMES I THINK BACK AND THINK, ‘WAS THAT COWARDLY?’
I moved to New York [City after graduation], and I got a job working in development at an Off-Broadway theater. I really liked that, and I had fun, but it was a ‘right out of school’ first job-job. I was a development assistant, which meant I took some abuse from a boss, and I worked at the opening-night parties pouring champagne [laughs]. It wasn’t a glamorous job, but I also had a friend who worked there who I’d gone to Sarah Lawrence with. And we had these amazing times where our boss would go crazy, and then we would leave work, go drink, and just talk about it.
At the time, it was like, ‘Oh, the working world! Being an adult! What’s happening?!’ But when I look back at it, it was just one of my cornerstone moments of learning what actually being an adult is. Because even though you’re an adult when you graduate [from] college, you’re not an adult. Like, I’m twenty-nine right now, and I think I’m barely an adult. Maybe that’s part of the millennial, ‘Boo-hoo-hoo! I hate growing up!’ thing, but when you’re twenty-two, you’re definitely not adult, and you have to learn how to be an adult. There were moments where I [thought], ‘Oh, do I wanna do this forever?’ I had done theater production in school, and I really enjoyed it. But as time went on, it was, ‘No…no, I’m good.’ And then, at the end of my time there, I was like, ‘You know what? What I do really want to do is continue my education. I want to go to grad school.’
Sometimes I think back and think, ‘Was that cowardly? Was that because I had this job, [and] I had such a great time at Sarah Lawrence? [This job] wasn’t what I wanted to do, and so I just sort of wanted to return to school?’ Maybe. It is very possible that that is the case, but I don’t regret it at the same time. I applied and got into The New School for sociology.
LOOKING BACK ON IT NOW, I WILL ABSOLUTELY ACKNOWLEDGE THAT EVERY WORKPLACE IS EGO-DRIVEN.
Sociology really appealed to me. And so, that was a huge part of [why I returned to school]. I also applied and got into their fellowship program, which meant that it was going to be a Ph.D. So, I also had this idea of, ‘Well, I’m gonna become a professor.’ I’ve always loved teaching. I’ve always loved working with other people to find greater ideas and all that sorta stuff. There was a while when I thought I would do high school teaching, but as my grandfather says, ‘Erica wants patience, and she wants it now.’ I have no patience, and so I know I would be a terrible, terrible high school teacher. But, with college students, the teaching is a little more – theoretically – the kids are able to handle themselves in a classroom. So I was like, ‘Yeah! I’m gonna get my Ph.D., and I’m gonna be a professor. I’m gonna teach sociology of gender, and everyone’s gonna love me’ [laughs].
I did end up finishing the Master’s program, but I became pretty disillusioned with academia. Looking back on it now, I will absolutely acknowledge that every workplace is ego-driven. The fact that I thought that academia wouldn’t be was naive on my part. What I wanted to study – there was not a professor there for whom my subject area really overlapped. For a while, I worked with a professor – he’s an urban sociologist and a very, very well known, talented one. Working with him was amazing, but gender wasn’t his first priority.
And what happens in academia is that the reason why [people get] into academia is not to teach. What they get into academia for is to study what they want to study. That’s what they live for; that’s why they’re there. And so, what you have to take into account is that if you wanna study something, you’re not gonna have a professor who’s gonna go out of their way to make sure that you’re getting the help you need. It’s taking time and attention away from their work. So, if I wanted to become an urban sociologist and work on the stuff that [he] was working on, then the school would have been a fantastic place for me. But, there was no one there who wanted to study what I wanted to study.
STUDYING GENDER – FASHION IS NOT NECESSARILY THE FIRST PLACE THAT YOU WOULD THINK A GENDERED SOCIOLOGIST WOULD WANT TO RUSH INTO.
When I was getting my Master’s, to make extra money on the side, I started working at a restaurant as a maître d’ in New York City. And while I was working there, I met some amazing people. One of them was – this woman was a stylist, and she does a lot of work for magazines and also the occasional celebrity. She would come in almost every single day and have breakfast with her friends. But, she would always say like, ‘I love your style. I love your style.’ And it’s like, ‘Oh, thank you! That means a lot coming from a professional stylist. Thank you.’
One day she was like, ‘Hey, I need an assistant stylist on this shoot that I’m doing. Would you be interested?’ I was like, ‘Yeah!’ Studying gender – fashion is not necessarily the first place that you would think a gendered sociologist would want to rush into. But, I think that it does hark back to that conversation about feminism and choices and just being educated in your choices – the way we choose to dress ourselves, the way we choose to present ourselves. So, I don’t demonize fashion. There are aspects of the fashion world that I think are detrimental to women, especially body image issues. But I don’t think that that shades the entirety of the fashion world.
So, I started doing work for her while working at the restaurant, and I really enjoyed my work for her. Her styling – at the risk of producing an eye roll – her styling was very intelligent. She knew her fashion history very well. She knew when things would reference things; she knew when things would reference films or books or whatever, and she would use that. And so, I think that she was a very educated stylist.
But then she wanted to start this magazine, and she asked me to help her with it. I did that for many months, and it was a great learning experience. I will say that: she’s an amazing stylist, but she was new to being an editrix, and so [she] was not as confident in her skills in that. And that made working with her on that project a little harder. So, I ended up not working there anymore.
I WILL SAY THAT THE ONE THING ABOUT NEW YORKERS IS THAT THEY FORGET THAT YOU CAN LEAVE NEW YORK.
That was up until this past year when New York had started to be not where I wanted to live. I feel like a buzzword, or a buzz thing to talk about is the Joan Didion essay, Goodbye to All That. I was heavily identifying with that, and I was unhappy at work, and I was unhappy at my job. And I mean, I was unhappy at home – my living situation wasn’t great because it never is in New York [laughs]. It was normal New York stuff. And moments that I used to enjoy in New York, I wasn’t really enjoying. I found myself becoming a shell of who I had been a year ago, and I didn’t like that. That’s when I packed up my car and drove cross-country to California, which is where I am now.
I will say that the one thing about New Yorkers is that they forget that you can leave New York. There’s something about like, ‘Well, I’m here. I’m not going anywhere else.’ And then it occurred to me – it was like, ‘Oh, I don’t have a job right now. I don’t have a place to live, and I don’t have – theoretically – anyone tying me down.’ I was sort of seeing someone, but he’s an old friend as well. So, when I told him that I had to leave, he wasn’t, ‘Noo! You must stay!’ He was like, ‘I understand.’ We’re still good friends, but there was nothing holding me there. And I was like, ‘Holy shit. I can leave. I can leave.’
So, I did. And my first thought was to go WWOOF-ing. It stands for World Wide [Opportunities] on Organic [Farms]. What you do is – there’s a ton of farms that are a part of this all over the world. You apply to work on a farm. They don’t pay you, but they give you room and board, and you can work on their farm for a month, or some of these are six-month stays. I was like, ‘You know what? I just need a little bit of a palette cleanser. I just need to go work on a farm.’
My first thought was, ‘Oh, I’ll go work on a farm in New England,’ ‘cause it’s where I’m from. I love New England, and it’s all sort of sheep farming and goat farms. And I was like, ‘I wanna go work on a goat farm’ [laughs]. And so, I was gonna go do that, and then the winter started, and started with a crazy vengeance. I was like, ‘Hmm. I’m not gonna work on a farm in New England for the winter. This is not what I wanna do.’
It was around that time that my grandmother [in California] called and said, ‘Hey, we’d love to have you come out for Christmas.’ The last time I went out to California for Christmas was fifteen years ago. And I was like, ‘You know what? I’m gonna go WWOOF in California. I’m gonna do a cross-country road trip with one of my best friends, and I’m going to WWOOF in California.’
BUT NOW THAT I’M HERE, I’M LIKE, ‘I THINK I MIGHT STAY LONGER.’
So, we did the cross-country road trip. I got here, and I was talking to this woman who owns a flower farm, but she was being really cagey and wasn’t getting back to me. Finally, she called me, and she’s like, ‘Hey. I don’t know if you’re aware, but there’s this crazy drought happening in California, and it’s ruining my farm. So, I can’t have you.’ So I started to look for other farms, and every single farm I talked to said the same thing. It’s like, ‘Hey. We really can’t have anyone right now. The drought is devastating us.’
In the meantime, I was living with my grandparents. I was like, ‘No. No, I don’t like this’ [laughs]. So I found a sublet and started working in a restaurant. I [was] not sure whether I [was] going to stay, [but] I knew once it started getting really bad on the East Coast in the winter, I was like, ‘Okay. So I’m definitelythroughout the winter. It’s like, ‘I don’t care if I have to work at a restaurant again; I’m definitely staying through the winter.’
But now that I’m here, I’m like, ‘I think I might stay longer.’ I started to look for jobs at not-for-profits – specifically LGBTQ or women’s issues-related. My uncle, who’s in tech, keeps trying to convince me to be hired by a tech company as a gender consultant – meaning – how to make their goods and services more marketable towards women. And on some level, I feel like that would be the ultimate selling of my soul. [Yet] on another level, the idea of that large of a paycheck sounds really nice. But, I think I’m gonna stick with applying for jobs at not-for-profits because that’s where my heart lies. It sort of always has been.
AND SO, WATCHING IT FROM THE OUTSIDE IS LIKE BEING IN A ZOO OF VERY, VERY SMART, ENTITLED MEN.
I mean, the sociologist in me wants me to get that [tech job] and just start talking to everyone and interviewing everyone because it’s this bizarre movement. It is really a shifting of power. Power is no longer in the government; it’s tech companies that really rule everything. You can hear it in the entitlement and in the way these people speak. Being out here and seeing this is… I’m also totally separate from it as well. I have no connection to it at all. And so, watching it from the outside is like being in a zoo of very, very smart, entitled men.
When you’re working in such a male-dominated area, basically what you’re doing is you’re hitting your head against the wall so that you can make teeny, tiny cracks. The cracks – theoretically – are worth it, but then you still have to go to work every day and hit your head against the wall. Things change slowly, but it’s the same argument behind people saying that we’re post-racial. We will never be post-racial because it’s also a part of our history. To become post-racial would mean that that doesn’t exist in our history anymore. And so, that’s the same thing with women. It’s like, ‘No. It will never be perfect.’ But that’s because when any one specific group of people is in power over others, nothing will ever be perfect. But at the same time, things will change, and things will become better. And hopefully men won’t have as much power – especially over women’s bodies. But no, I don’t think that white men – until American civilization crumbles, I don’t think that white men will ever not be in power.
I hope I don’t come across as too cheesy and or pedantic, but I will say that [the] past three years have been really up in the air and a little not stable, as my mom would remind me every day. But what I’ve learned from driving cross-country and doing this is that there’s something to be said for wandering. There’s something to be said for being unmoored because while it’s not a challenge that will definitely end up in some sort of tangible reward, it’s definitely a challenge that has made me become someone I really like. I think that that is immeasurably important. And that is something that is not – it was something that was stressed at Sarah Lawrence – but the minute you leave college, you forget that working on yourself is just as important as working on your career and working on relationships. And so, even though my life is a little up in the air, and there are days when that produces things akin to panic attacks, it’s like, ‘I’m so glad I did this.’”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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