Dream Job

I’m working on “conversations” with my third level English class. Yesterday, admittedly I was not very prepared for our class, so instead of the usual powerpoint presentation I give about some random grammar lesson of the English language, I decided that my students and I were just going to sit and have one of those things: a “conversation,” if you will. 

What it turned into was me asking them questions and them one-by-one answering (only three of seven showed up for class… must be the never ending cloudy skies we’ve been having these days). I had no plan for these questions, just what I could think of off the top of my head. Topics and subjects I knew they could answer and feel confident about doing so in English. After a few questions, I asked my three pupils to tell me their ‘dream job.’  

After the initial few seconds when they put the word –dream- and then the word –job- together and realized what I was actually asking them, they still looked at me like I was crazy.

“You know, if you could do or be anything,” I tried to further explain. “What would you do?”

Pause. 

Finally, Yaclerly answered and said that she would (in more or less conversational English) be an accountant for a big company. 

I jumped at the chance to keep her talking about her dream job and asked her to tell me more about what kind of company she would want to work for. That part didn’t go over so well. It’s not that she didn’t understand my words, but that she didn’t understand why the company was so important. She kept looking at me like I was crazy, and I looked back at her like she was even more crazy. Finally I broke and started speaking Spanish again:

“What do you mean the company doesn’t matter?” I said, getting a little too heated. “What if you were an accountant for a big company that killed babies or something? Would you still want to work for that company?!”

She didn’t quite know how to respond, in any language. She just continued to say she would want to be an accountant for a big company, and it didn’t matter which company (preferably one with no dead babies on their record). My other two students agreed. Yocairy said her dream job was to be the CEO of a big, international company, no matter which one; and Alred’s dream job was to own his own business, and of course it didn’t matter what kind of business, just as long as it was his. 

As my service starts to wrap itself up (I’m officially a senior in the Peace Corps world. My swear-in group is the next group to complete our two-year service), my mind is constantly drifting to my future and what I need to be doing now to get a good job when I am home in May. And for me, the company I work for DOES matter, because that’s where I’ll spend most of my time. Eight to nine hours of each day, at least, to be exact.

How can it not matter?

But here, as I am constantly humbled and challenged by the Dominican culture- where you work doesn’t matter, because here, work is the last thing that defines you. Of course people respect others for their jobs, just the way we do in America. A doctor, a lawyer, an accountant, a CEO- all are professions that are admired, but people are not defined and limited by what they do. It’s just one aspect of their lives, and it’s certainly not the most important or time consuming. So really, if you are an accountant, which not every person in the countryside of the DR is, does it really matter what company you work for? 

It’s funny how things still surprise me. How being here and living as much as I can like a Dominican, I am sometimes so aware of my own American culture. And even though I secretly am a bit jealous of my English students for not letting their jobs create their identity (which I think happens too often in the states), I think I’ll go for the balance of both. Because from what I read in the papers, just having a job in America these days is a blessing, and no one, I mean no one wants to work where babies are killed.