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DEAR RETRO HOUSEWIFE
Housewifery
Life Engineered, 2007-11-27
Dear Retro Housewife,
I'm currently a college student. I graduated high school three years ago with amazing grades, and everyone around me, including myself, had very high academic expectations of me. All I dreamed about all through high school was becoming this powerful woman, and I was going to do that using my love of math and science to become an engineer. There are not too many women in that field, and I was walking around acting like I belonged in that men's world. (By all means I am not saying women cannot be engineers)
It took me a year and half at an engineering school to realize I hated the kind of pressure that came with that situation, and I had no desire to spend the rest of my life working like that. No matter how much I loved math and science; my life would never seem fulfilled living like that. Frantically, I started looking at random colleges, and picking random degrees. I switched my major three more times in two semesters. I had no direction for my life, but I knew I would need a degree to make the people in my life happy (parents mostly).
And then it hit me one night while I was talking to the man that will some day be my husband. If I could spend the rest of my life doing things to make him happy and our house a home, my life would be fulfilled. It was then I realized that staying home was something I felt I needed and wanted to do once we start to have kids some day in the future. Then I found this website, and I think it is absolutely wonderful.
Now the question is, since I have all ready spent three years in college, should I finish or not? And I think that even though I will only use my degree (if at all) from the time I graduate until I start having kids, I think I will finish. But thank you Retro Housewife. This is a website I look forward to visiting often.
Rebecca
RE: Life Engineered
- Dear Rebecca,
Finish your degree! I am a big believer in finishing what you start. Plus, you are better for it and you will be a better wife and mother the more education you have, whatever form that education may come in.
You never know how and when your degree will come in handy; one of the big surprises for me fresh out of graduate school was how little I used my degree in the working world (you would be surprised how few people want their demand curves estimated). Not that it hasn't been a great help to me over the years - and still is - because at the very least you will have been taught to think - and thinking can also be very useful, although it is somewhat out of fashion these days!
Finally, these days it is always wise to have a back-up plan - maybe your future husband wants to get an MBA or work on that novel before you have kids, or God forbid becomes disabled or unemployed. Being able to jump in temporarily could come in handy.
In the end, you have to do what is right for you and if you want to be a Retro, you should do just that! The world needs you!
RH
Status: COMPLETE
