Day #5 of the 30 Day Film Challenge

[shadowkat]

Day #5 of the 30 Day Film Challenge - A Film where a Character has a job that you want.

Oh dear, this is hard.

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I actually tried to go in this direction in school when I was 18. I took anthropology, I minored in Epic, Myth and Folklore. I traveled to another country and collected ghost stories. But alas - it wasn't meant to be. The Universe had other plans. Probably a good thing - I get claustrophobic (due to exploring one too many tunnels as a kid) and issues with arachnids.

Comments

[shadowkat]

I rather loved Apollo 13. But I would not want to be an astronaut. The claustrophobia alone would kill me. Also I'm too big. I've seen those capsules at various Air and Space museums around the country - and I wouldn't fit. Astronauts are small people.

But yeah - the idea of space travel or being a NASA engineer - really cool!

Easy answer, two words-- high school. (Buffy fan, no further explanation required).

High school or school period has killed many a person's dreams. My father wanted to be a geologist - but ran into a wall on the science front in school. My brother an architect or film director - didn't get high enough grades in high school and like myself, tests horribly. We both don't, for the same reasons more or less. Imagine how many bright students dreams were killed by a poor educational system and standardized testing? I'm kind of hoping COVID-19 forces that to change. It might - it has already exposed the huge discrepancies in education across the board, and the problematic nature of certain educational methods.

And I'm watching my niece now - who was doing well, and had wanted to go into science, but high school (and she's going to a very good private school) - kind of didn't live up to expectations.

Sigh.

Note: IMO, one of the best edits in the history of cinema occurs when they cut from the rocket lifting off to the faces of the wives, shaking and crying in deep relief that the damn thing didn't simply blow up, the possibilities of which were far greater than the general public ever knew-- until the Challenger explosion.

They did that in film version of The Right Stuff as well - which I was impressed by.
And you're right - the General public wasn't aware of how dangerous this was until The Challenger disaster - which shocked everyone and kind of changed the space program. It slowed it down considerably.

OK, this is not good. I don't have the time to re-watch all these cool movies, and this series is only just starting!

Evil, 'tis evil, I tell ye...

Yes, sometime in May, a critic opined that "soon we'd run out television content and movies" - and I thought, eh, somehow I'm not worried. Sorry, don't see that happening. And even if it were to happen? It would take us a very long time to notice.

There's so much content. You know there's too much content when people keep coming up with competing lists of 50 best shows or movies to watch or binge, and they aren't the same ones.

[atpo_onm]

And I'm watching my niece now - who was doing well, and had wanted to go into science, but high school (and she's going to a very good private school) - kind of didn't live up to expectations.

For me, it was less the educational aspects as the social dynamics. I didn't understand it then as clearly as I do now, but I became very uncomfortably aware that it was more a matter of grooming the "winners" among the student body than tending to the needs of the rest of us. I was a good student, did very well on my SATs, and my guidance counselor-- who was a very smart, and very dedicated woman-- was appalled when I told her I was not seriously considering college.

She told me that the college experience was nothing like the high school one, and that I should seriously reconsider my choice to simply go out, get a job and work, which is what I planned.

In retrospect, she was right, but I couldn't get past the hatred I had at the time for the system, and was sure it would simply be perpetuated if I continued in it.

And there was, in all fairness, monetary considerations. My father was nearing retirement, and the Hamilton Watch factory had recently been acquired by a big Swiss company, who were busy dismantling it to maximize their financial investment (they really just wanted the name-- new watches were to be build overseas).

The workers union fought them tooth and nail, but they eventually simply ran out of funds, the company was effectively gutted from a production standpoint. Among other losses, my dad's pension that he had paid into for decades all-but vanished.

I had no intention of burdening my folks with college costs, so that was the final nail in the no-college decision.

You can't change the past, so I try not to lament it. I did okay, all things considering. Now if only there hadn't been the "Reagan Revolution" and the gradual growth of the right-wing plans to get all those damn peasants back in their proper place in the world.

~sigh~

( And yet-- I'd take Reagan or Bush any day over the current human cancer. Misguided, IMO? Yes. Evil sociopaths? No. )

[shadowkat]

Thanks for sharing.

My experience was slightly different. Although the one you expressed above fits with my co-worker (now retired from crazy company) Lando's. Who had to fight to get into law school. His high school guidance counselor was racist and was steering all the black students to get jobs after school and not go on to college. His parents who were educated fought her, and he ignored her and found his own graduate schools to apply to.
He also had a mentor - an esteemed black male role model who talked him into pursuing law school over med school.

But he told me about an African-American woman who was brilliant and would have made a great lawyer - that was steered in the wrong direction by this guidance counselor and her life didn't turn out as well.

There's ways around this, as you can see above - but you have to want to find them.
Lando did, the young woman did not.

Let's face it life is not fair, and most human beings are selfish assholes. How else would we end up with a sociopath in the white house, and still have people supporting him? For a lot of people - their default setting is selfish, unself-aware, asshole.