I would have learnt nothing as a professional woman or an academic if I didn’t learn that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with taking myself seriously or thinking beyond immediate circumstances.  After years of listening to fellow academics and working girls, I have realized that too many take humility to mean the death of ambition.  Too many are apologetic for thinking themselves good at what they do or for being unsatisfied with their progress in their field.

I think…for much of my adult life, I’ve been driven by the appropriate mixture of dissatisfaction and ambition.  I can and may fool myself about many things. But, I could never deceive myself about my true potential. I always know when, no matter what others say, I’m not doing the best that I can.  And, I always know when I’m not at that place I need to be at that point in my life.  (The badly slept nights are always the first clue!)

As an academic, I could enter a course thinking: “see this one through the end- get an A/A+”. Or, I could think beyond that course. Like: what new ideas and skills applicable to other courses and my life will I garner during this particular course? As a professional woman, I could see each task to its end and go home at the end of a week/month/fortnight happy with a paycheck.  Or, I could look beyond the fleeting (and pitiful) paycheck and minor accomplishments.

As a features writer for the newspaper, there was always this little nagging voice at the back of my head. Oh how it nagged! It told me that no matter how passionate I became about work or how hard I worked, I’d still be as dispensable as the laziest person in the place.  The little nagging voice nagged loudly whenever I had a chat with an editor or manager and even louder when it saw that uncertain flicker in their eyes. It nagged loudest when it sensed I was becoming too content with a decently written or researched article.  And, as much of a nag as this nag was, I knew the nagging was for my own good.

I needed something besides the well-written article and the fleeting praises of superiors or seemingly forgetful readers to mark my development as a reporter. I kept thinking: what will happen in a few years from now, when I’ve written my last article for this paper and received my last paycheck?  What will I have to show for all my labours?

Copies of printed articles?   Me- now searchable on Google? Memories of interviews I’d conducted or places I visited on assignment?  A network of contacts built in an island where politics is the be-all and end-all and people guard their little cliques so carefully? Sure, I treasured every reader (all two of them!) who was kind enough to read anything I wrote.  “But,” the little nagging voice in my head laughed, “a working girl cannot live on that alone!”

I thought my agreement with the nagging voice would bring some quiet from that region of my head. But, the silence was only temporary. As soon as I accepted what needed to be done, the voice begin nagging anew day in and day out: “and…just… how do you propose we go about taking ourself seriously?”

Coming Next Tuesday: #8 How I Took Myself Seriously.