Career Options: Nun, CIA Agent, or Stripper: What I want , What My Parents Think About It, and Drawbacks Associated with all Possibilities

As I enter college, it causes me to think of precisely what it is I'd like to do with my life. I've wanted to be an attorney for a very long time. My dad always said that both my argumentative and analytical tendencies made me a natural lawyer, but my dad is a little concerned that I'm possibly wasting strengths in the areas of math and science. I hear what he's saying, but not everyone needs to be a doctor or a scientist.

Regarding my being a nun, there's nothin in my life totally precluding my finding a vocation or calling at this time except that I do sometimes have trouble with following orders form authorities who are giving out orders just to exercise their power to do so. I would think the incidence of that sort of activity could be fairly high in a nunnery. Chances are I wouldn't last long under the average Mother Superior, which is unfortunate, as I probably would've been a very good nun in many ways. The bottom line here is that I have yet to receive the full impact of adolescent hormones. when that happens, it could change my ability or desire to serve as a nun a a very big way. There is still that matter of my entire family having been formally excommunicated. I suspect it could be cleared up easily enough, but it would most definitely atand out a major blight on my appplication.

As far as being a CIA agent goes, I can keep a secret. I've done so on numerous occasions, and even in cases where I probably should not have for the other party's own good but felt honor-bound by my agreement to maintain confidentiality. The main appeal to me in becoming a CIA agent is that I'm bery nosy. I was born nosy. I think I can recall trying to hear conversations between my parents from my shared position in utero. Matthew, my twin, would've at the same time been trying to stretch out in the tight quarters and take up more than his share of the space while sucking his thumb and liberaally drinking up and peeing out as much amniotic fluid as his more-than-six-pound body would allow him, oblivious to actual life happening just a few sacs and layers of tissue away. My dad says this is impossible -- my memory of listening in on private parental conversations from the womb -- but how would he know? He's never even read The Secret Life of the Unborn Child. My mom read it and pronounced it 98% bullshit, so my dad didn't even bother reading it. Still, before he claims to have expertise regarding what I did or didn't hear in utero, wouldn't one think he would at least read a book on the topic before proclaiming himself an expert? My prenatal activities notwithstanding, I've laways liked being privy to information that not everyone has. The more exciting or sensitive the information, the better. Furthermore, I look liike a person to whom highly sensitive information would not be entrusted. That would be an added benefit to my usefulness to the C. I. A. A law degree would likewise be of added benefit to the CIA, so the two possibilities of attorney and C.I.A. agent are not mutually exclusive.

I just threw the bit about being a stripper in for my dad's enjoyment and peace of mind. I would not be a good stripper for obvious reasons. First and foremost, I have serious issues with undressing in front of others. I even hate it when doctors or nurses pull down the front of my gown to listen to my heart with their stethoscopes. I hate it worse when one of them gives me a shot in my bottom. I have frequent conflict with medical personnel - even my dad sometimes -- because of my heightened sense of modesty when it comes to my own body. My dad thinks I'm just being difficult, but I have a strong aversion to anyone seeing me unclothed.

Right now it would be illegal for me to perform as a stripper. Even once it's legal, though, chances are that I'm going to look like it should not be legal for awhile. This would mean that most of the guys who hung around to watch once I started my performance were probably mildly sick in the head, however legal my activity and their observing it and tipping me for it would be. I'm having trouble thinking of a good analogy here. Let's try this one on for size: Say Mr. MacGoogle liked looking at child porn on his computer, but he knew that doing so was illegal. So instead, he looked at virtual child porn, where the subjects were digitally enhanced to appear younger. Mr. MacGoogle wasn't looking at any actual children, so he was not breaking laws, but because he qa looking at the virtual child por, would that make him any less sick than he would be were he viewing the real thing?

Probably not; the legality of what he was doing wouldn't make him any less sick or pedophilic in the minds of many of us. Likewise with me, were I to become a stripper in one-and-a-half years or so, I would in all likelihood not require any sort of digital enhancement to appear to be jailbait, while I would not, any way one cared to configurate the situation, be jailbait. Would that make any guy who ogled my nude body any less perverse than if he were viewing an actual under-age youngster performing? Probably not.

Anyway, it doesn't matter, because if I'm too shy to take my clothing off at the doctor's office, what would make it suddenly easier to do so in front of a live audience. I love money, but before one of my endocrinologist appointments, my dad offered me twenty-five dollars to cooperate and not resist or make any sort of scene when I had to expose various part of my body that are usually kept under at least two layers of clothing. I really wanted the twenty-five dollars, and I knew I was going to have to let the doctor see what he needed to see, but, hard as I tried to force myself, I could not cooperate well enough to earn the twenty-five dollars. Sorry, but I'm not stripper material.

So I'll most likely finish undergraduate studies and complete law school as well. I haven't totally ruled out my dad's suggestion of medical school, though I do not see myself as doctor material. It's not that I'm totally lacking in feeling for my fellow human beings, but I doubt that I would empathize to the degree that a doctor sometimes must, or must at least pretend to empathize. My brother wants to be a physician, but he's a fairly one-dimensional and transparent character. He can't even fake sincerity well enough to break up with a girfriend without her often hating him as well as every member of our entire family. (It's a miracle I was only beaten up in a school restroom only once, and the once had nothing to do with Matthew and his former girlfriends). This has been the case even when the breakup was over a girl going off to explore whether or not being a nun was in the cards for her. That one was a no-brainer, and he screwed it up to the point that her family to this day doesn't speak to my family.

Suffice it to say that if I really wanted to become a doctor, I probably could do it. My dad suggested for me some branch of medicine like radiology, where I would look at Xrays all day and have limited contact with patients. That is something I could probably do, but I'd really rather carry secrets around for the CIA, with or without a law degree. The law dregree would come in habdy, though, in the event that someone outed me as a secret agent, as happened to Agent Valerie Plame in an ugly political maneuver. At least I'd have my law degree on which to fall back in the event that some Karl Rove-type bureaucrat had a grievance with me or my husband and chose to leak my identity to a few journalists in retaliation for God knows what. Keeping multiple options open is a very smart strategy in the process of entering the job maarket.