Naturally I have to start my week of Kick Ass Women with my mom! It’s hard for girls not to be super influenced by their moms, so I’m lucky mine is such a great role model. Feeling like you’re becoming your mother seems to be a pretty common concept for women, at least in movies, books, and newspaper comics, and it is usually met with dread and annoyance. Personally, I am pretty excited about it since it means turning even more awesome! Here are 5 Things about me that I can already recognize are part of this process, and I am totally stoked about all of them:
1. The Drive to Find Something You Love, and Do It No Matter What
If you know my mom, you know she’s a math teacher. It’s impossible to not know this about her, it’s so much a part of who she is. It is kind of ridiculous how much extra time outside of school she spends preparing, grading, and communicating with parents and students. In one of the education classes I had to take in grad school the prof was telling us about how most teachers suck because they don’t communicate with parents. She finally admitted that some teachers will try to contact a parent if the student is doing poorly, but “have you ever heard of a teacher who contacts a parent with positive reinforcement?” I get that she was trying to make a point, but I still raised my hand and said, “Yes, I lived with her for 18 years and the rest of y’all really need to catch up.” Okay, maybe not that last part.
My mom, outside her classroom!
Because I grew up with this, I didn’t really think it was weird that she went in hours early and stayed hours late to help students before and after school, or spent entire evenings calling parents, or made breakfast for her classes before the big AP test. That’s just what you do when you have a job, right?
Well, in the real world, it turns out not really. This study found that only 20% of people are very passionate about their jobs, and that was back in 2005. The same year, coincidentally, that I got my first job and poured about 50-60 hours a week into making the library the best place ever. Sure, it’s not the most glamorous or well-paying job ever, but I love it, and I don’t mind pouring more time and energy into it than anything else in my life because I know it’s worth it. Just like to my mom teaching is worth it. Perhaps the most important lesson she taught me through her own kick ass example is to love what you do, and do whatever it takes to do what you love. Because in the end, happiness is more important than money or fame or any of the other things I might be hoarding if I weren’t so into librarianing.
Not as important as loving your job... but both would be nice
2. A Healthy Attitude About Beauty
This had to be on the list since a preoccupation with beauty standards is something it’s almost impossible to escape as a girl in our society. I’m not saying I was totally immune–I suffered through middle school just like everyone else, thanks–but it definitely could have been a lot worse if I was also feeling subconscious pressure from my mom. It’s not like it would have been her fault, but you internalize so much at that age she couldn’t have helped it. If I’d grown up seeing my mom plaster her face with thick coats of makeup every day before daring to show her face outside or spending hours “fixing” her hair I’m sure I too would have assumed I needed all that, just to be presentable. Instead, she never really worried about it.
"The only thing I'm worried about is why you are still taking pictures when it is summer in Houston and I am dying of heat stroke, DAD"
Pretty much every potential fashion/beauty discussion I ever had with my mom growing up centered around the question “Are you comfortable?”, from which shoes to buy to how to deal with my hair. It’s not that we don’t want to look nice, but that will always be a secondary concern to things like “Can I walk?” and “Am I melting because we live in Florida?” Seeing the money and effort and worry people expend on beauty in the real world, I’m glad I never learned to stress about it too much.
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