Mirror: On Not Wasting My Talents

By Mary C. Tillotson

one of my city council clips!

I ran across two articles today, one of them emailed to me from a friend, discussing women and the professional life – one argued that pay inequality is more a result of professional choices that men and women tend tomake, not discrimination; the second about the difficulties moms have getting back into the workforce after they’ve taken time off for kids. The women/family/work issue has been on my mind lately since it’s mid-August and I’m sorting out what I’ll be doing this fall when school starts. These decisions aren’t always easy.

I graduated from college a couple years ago with a solid resume for journalism. About a month later, I began working full-time as a reporter at a small-town weekly newspaper, covering the local city politics, writing features, and previewing events. I spent the first six months hoping Luke would propose and the next six months planning our wedding. I could have put him off – I really should put in another year at the newspaper, then maybe step it up with a job in a bigger city. But he was more important to me than a journalism career, and I knew that together we could make things work.

I left that job after a year, and, failing to find another full-time reporting job in the town we moved to, I spent our first year together running around to several different homes, babysitting and helping families with homeschooling. I enjoyed it – from chuckling at the three-year-old’s silly remarks (“I want to go fishing, too. But how? I don’t have a fish stick!”) to explaining polynomials and exponents to my algebra students. I met some great people, connected with my community, and learned so much from my conversations with other women. It wasn’t the work I would have chosen, but I was happier there than I’ve ever been in an office.

Read the rest at The Mirror! This went live yesterday, Wednesday, August 14.