Going Places

I had an interesting chat with my roommate on Sunday. She has been trying to figure out what to do after graduation, and her most recent goal has been to go on and get a master’s degree. But when she talked to her professor, he strongly encouraged her to skip the master’s and apply to a doctoral program. That gives us some new common ground, and it’s been kind of fun to discuss reasons for getting a PhD, and implications, and so on.

In the course of the discussion, I had an interesting insight about my chosen path. There’s this tendency in the LDS culture to judge people by their marital status. Or maybe it’s just a tendency to feel judged by one’s marital status. And it occurred to me that a number of decisions I have made have been (to a small extent, at least) my way of dealing with this judgment or feeling of judgment. What it comes down to is that I do not want people to look at me as the single girl who is just hanging around waiting for a man. On the rare occasion that I attend my home ward, I want my former Primary teachers and Young Women leaders and the mothers of the kids I babysat to look at me and say, “Wow, Leibniz is an amazing girl, she’s really going places with her life,” rather than, “Hmm, I wonder when Leibniz will get married?”

For instance, when I graduated the first time around I had lots of good reasons to find a teaching job at a local high school. The vast majority of those reasons had nothing to do with finding a job compatible with marriage and parenthood and sticking around a highly concentrated LDS singles population in order to get married. I wanted to teach because I loved teaching and felt it was about the best thing I could do with my career, and because I felt passionate about the need for good teachers of my particular subject matter. I wanted to stay in Utah because I would be close to friends and (extended) family, and people were important to me. And I wanted to stay in Utah because I loved the mountains, because I liked the size of the community, because I could handle the climate, because it was a great place for a runner. But even though I knew my reasons for staying, I was also aware that you sometimes can’t escape appearances. I didn’t want people to read, “Leibniz graduated from BYU and is now teaching high school in Orem,” in our annual family Christmas letter.

Instead, that year they read, “Leibniz surprised us all by picking up and moving out to northern Virginia to teach high school just outside of Washington D.C.” It sounded like I was doing something.

But even if I was in an exciting, new location, just hanging around and teaching sort of put me in limbo. And I still wasn’t married. Again, I wasn’t obsessing over marriage (other than the fact that, sure, I would love to be married…when the time is right). But I still felt judged by my marital status, still felt the need to set myself apart despite my singlehood. And so what have I done over the last couple years? I have come back for a master’s degree, have begun training for a marathon, have applied to the top PhD programs in my field and have accepted an offer from a very prestigious university. I have done my best to ensure that when those Relief Society sisters back home talk about me, they don’t talk about my lack of marriage prospects, or even think about it. Instead they think, “Wow, I always knew Leibniz was a talented girl, I’m so proud of her!” If I can make other people, as well as myself, focus on what I am doing with my life, then maybe those things that simply aren’t in place won’t hurt as much.

It's sort of disturbing to realize I have these thoughts inside myself.

Deep down I know that it’s not really all about what other people think about me, or about obscuring my insecurities from myself and others. And in reality, I’m doing what I’m doing because it’s what I love, because somehow I’ve managed to find something I’m good at, and because I really, strongly feel that this is the direction the Lord wants me to take with my life. And ultimately I am very happy with the direction my life has taken, with the friends I have made, the opportunities I’ve been able to pursue, the lessons I’ve learned, the understanding of the world and of people that I have been able to develop. Yes, I have my dark moments. Yes, sometimes I feel at the point of despair, more frequently than I’d like to think. But I am sometimes astounded by just how amazingly happy I am with where I am and who I am.

It’s just that it’s interesting, and sometimes a little uncomfortable, to reflect on some of the motivations that have brought me here.