So my Turkish supervisor at WINEP took us new interns (all four of us) out to the Mayflower hotel last week for high tea, where we talked about how things have been going for us at the institute so far. It was interesting–the first time this Mormon boy has been out to tea, particularly in such an upscale setting.
One of the questions he asked was “what are your long term career goals?” I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I know what I didn’t say–that I wanted to break into publishing and become a novelist.
(Just in cast my supervisor reads this, I want to make it clear I wasn’t uncomfortable talking about my literary aspirations with him; it was just that the conversation at the table seemed to be headed in a very different direction, and I didn’t want to derail it. Everyone else was talking about grad school, study abroad, government, that sort of thing–and I got the sense that that’s really what my supervisor wanted to talk about.)
My experiences in the past three weeks in Washington DC have only confirmed and strengthened my goals to pursue writing as a full-time career. At the same time, though, I’m starting to realize that I don’t have to limit myself to one career track; many people in this “town” (as everyone calls it) bounce around in multiple careers, some of them quite different. It’s not so much about working a “day job” until you get published, so much as doing multiple things and being ambitious.
That said, I don’t see myself pursuing a career in policy-making. Everyone I see doing that is working overtime, all the time. Instead, I want to find something that’s going to facilitate and reinforce my writing career.
There are some things I like very much about where I’m working, though. One of those is the emphasis on the Middle East–such a fascinating and dynamic part of the world, rich in history and culture. Another thing I love is how informed I am about current events–never in my life have I been so up to date in what’s going on in the region. The news really comes to life when you’re keeping up with it on an hour by hour basis. And I also enjoy the more academic-ish feel to the place here–the emphasis on research and scholarly pursuits.
Some things, though, I really don’t like. One of those is being stuck in an office all day. The people I work with are great–I couldn’t ask for better. But the office environment, with its dynamics…I don’t enjoy being in an office all day. The same goes for wearing a suit and a tie–I’m not a big fan.
In short, I really don’t know where I’m headed in my non-writing career; nothing has really “clicked” yet (if anything, just the opposite). But whatever I do, it’s probably going to involve something Middle East, and something that helps to facilitate my literary aspirations. That’s all I know for now.