03 April 2007

words on a page

i updated my cv yesterday. it was a little intimidating. according to that document, i have written a book. and done many other things that i do not think about on an everyday basis.

it was quite a surreal experience; like i was looking at someone else's life, someone who had indeed accomplished a lot. it was hard to relate the person on paper to ME. i suppose i feel that everything i've done has just been work, whether in cairo or at ahrc. i did what i was supposed to do, worked on the projects that i was assigned.

sometime ago i had an informal interview, where i was asked to verbalize my cv. not only was the interviewer impressed, but he also assumed that i had further ambitions. his questions regarding what i would do when i finished my masters, what my goals were, made me quite uncomfortable. they took me back to cairo, where i was repeatedly told that talent and intellect should not be wasted. my present colleagues would say the same, but perhaps with more focus on moral responsibility.

argh, the pressure. what if i just want to sell flowers??

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

"If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven played music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

I don't think I'd be doing MLK a disservice if I suggest it applied just as much to female flower sellers or human rights activists, just as much as it applies to male street sweepers.

Aalemoh said...

hahahah.... every girl wants to sell flowers :-P

me being no exception

c said...

Well, I would say...

sell flowers with moral responsibility :)