In the course of discussing what future occupations lay before my offspring, we had several startling insights. Intuitive Monkey will be busy balancing the demands of football, archaeology and entomology(the study of insects). When I asked how he was going to do all of that, he shook his head and assured me that he wouldn't be doing them all at the same time. What was I thinking?
The Rationalist didn't go into his career choices but posed a question to me.
"What did you study to do for a job when you were in college?"
"I studied English."
"What?! But you're not a Spanish-speaker, you already know English!"
"Well, studying English in college is not about learning how to speak it. It's about how to write it, reading important books that others wrote, and sometimes teaching it."
He gazed at me skeptically as I continued.
"Think about it this way. You speak English, but you don't know every English word there is, do you?"
"Well, yeah I do, " he said defensively. "I read at a fourth grade level!"
"So you know every word there is to know?"
"Uh huh...except for all the bad ones. I don't know all of those yet!"
At this point, all I could do was shake my head and laugh. At least he has something left to aspire to.
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