Career Day Dropout: A Running List of Jobs I Would Absolutely Ruin

*Opinions are mine, conclusions are yours. Take what resonates, leave what doesn't. Respectful disagreement always welcome  unkindness never is.

I want to be clear that I am a capable person. I am resourceful, I am thoughtful, I show up, and I genuinely try. I am also self-aware enough to know that there is an entire sector of the workforce that would not survive my participation in it. Not because I lack effort.because some combinations of person and profession are simply not meant to exist, and pretending otherwise would be a disservice to everyone involved including the general public.

Consider this my voluntary resignation from careers I never applied for. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Mortician: A Love Story That Cannot Work

I love true crime. Deeply, sincerely, and from the very specific safety of my couch with a blanket and a snack. I have watched more cold case documentaries than I can account for. I have opinions about evidence handling. I have followed along with enough forensic detail to feel genuinely informed about the process. What I have not done, and cannot do, is be in the same room as the part that comes before the documentary. The television version and the actual version are two entirely different experiences and I know myself well enough to know which one I am built for. One of them involves me comfortable and emotionally engaged. The other one involves me on the floor of a room I was not prepared to be in, which helps nobody and certainly does not help the deceased. I respect the people who do this work enormously. I am simply not going to be joining them.

Spy: A National Security Risk

On paper I have some relevant skills. I am an excellent researcher, genuinely excellent. The kind of thorough that my friends either deeply appreciate or find slightly alarming depending on the context. I can find information, cross-reference it, and present it in a clear and organized way. That part of the job I could do.

The field work would be a catastrophe.

The issue is animals. Specifically, any animal within a reasonable radius of wherever I am supposed to be focusing. A dog across the street. A cat on a windowsill. A particularly bold pigeon making interesting choices. The mission would be over. I would be gone. Whatever I was supposed to be surveilling would continue completely unaware while I was crouched on a sidewalk somewhere making sounds at a stray cat and asking it about its day.

IfI somehow managed to stay on task long enough to actually encounter the person I was supposed to be gathering intelligence on, and that person turned out to be rude about it, I would tell them. Directly. I would tell the bad guy that he was not being nice and that there was no reason for that kind of energy. Operational security would not survive my personality. I would like to apologize in advance to whatever agency almost considered me…which would be none because I never applied, I know my strengths and this is not one of them.

Zookeeper: See Above, Worse

Everything that disqualified me from espionage applies here, except now the animals are both numerous and accessible and I have direct physical proximity to all of them at all times. This is not a job I would do badly. This is a job I would not do at all. I would show up, immediately abandon every assigned responsibility, and spend the entire shift doing cuddle time with whatever would have me. The enclosures would go uncleaned. The feeding schedules would be approximate at best. The paperwork would not exist. Somewhere on the grounds there would be a woman sitting in a corner with a medium-sized mammal in her lap looking completely at peace with every professional decision she had ever made. The zoo would need to hire someone else. I would need to negotiate visiting rights.

Nurse or Teacher: A Study in Facial Expressions

I have so much respect for both of these professions that I refuse to insult them by pretending I could do them. The reason is patience, specifically the quantity required and the quantity I have available, which are not the same number. It is not that I do not care. I care enormously. It is that when something is taking longer than it needs to, or when an explanation has been given several times without visible results, or when someone is doing the thing they were specifically asked not to do, my face begins communicating independently of my intentions. I do not always know it is happening. The people around me always know it is happening.

A nurse needs a neutral face in high-stakes moments. A teacher needs a patient face during the fourteenth explanation of the same concept. I have neither of those faces available. What I have is a face that is extremely honest about what it is currently experiencing, and that is a wonderful quality in a friend and a liability in a clinical or educational setting.The patients and the students deserve better. My face and I have accepted this.

Some people were built for many things. I was built for specific things, and I have made peace with the rest of the list which is a mile long. 🫣