Bad Advice

Now that I spend more time with young people in college, I find myself occasionally giving them advice about life, work, careers, things to read, experiences to have. Even as I dispense advice, I am skeptical about its utility. I fear that my advice will fall into the realm of bad advice, like some of the advice people gave me as a young woman. To ensure that I maintain my humility, honesty and frankness when talking to young people, I thought I would disclose and catalogue some of the bad advice I received as a young woman.

These pieces of advice, or sometimes ostensible wise counsel, are things that I remember, nuggets that I returned to more than once, things I thought might be true and struggled with how to respond to them, not only to the older people telling me these things but more importantly to myself.

I share them because they turned out to not be true and I wish I had not spent a moment more thinking about them in my life. This may be the bottom line: advice is given, but it need not be taken.

Some advice seems reasonable at the time while it is being given, but it may not work for the person to whom it is given. I wish I had discarded some of this bad advice earlier rather than later.

Now without further ado, bad advice I have received in my life:

1. “Think long and hard about having the word lesbian on your resume FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.” This was in 1991 when I was thinking about taking a job at the gay and lesbian community center. I took the job. My resume has always had the word lesbian on it. It has been fine. This was much scarier to people of a different generation.

2. “Find a stable job and do the things you love as hobbies.” First, the number of people who can occupy the space of stable jobs is dwindling and may even be approaching zero. I received this advice in Michigan, though, where the best job someone could get was working for the car companies. Thirty years, then a full pension for the rest of your life. Except, well, that did not really work out for too well either. I never took that advice. I have always been paid to do the things I love.

3. “Children are the best thing that can happen to a woman, don’t be so obsessed with your work that you forget to have them.” For reals. People said that to me. I still have no words.

4. “Your major doesn’t matter and your grades don’t matter in ‘the real world’.” As you might guess, I am peevish about the entire notion of there being a real world outside of whatever world we are in now. Let’s set that aside though. This particular chestnut is spread every year at graduation. I see people’s point, but this advice did little to assuage my anxiety about either my major or my grades, and I do not think that it helps young people much today. In addition, I think these things do matter! Making the decision about a major forces us to define what is important to us intellectually and practically. Grades force us to examine our own behavior on a variety of registers to think about and understand what work we are willing to do and not do to succeed. Basically, I find this piece of advice useless pap, though it took me too long to arrive at that conclusion.

5. “At some point, dear, you will want to shave your legs and underarms.” Generally this involved finding a man to love me, but some people even told me that I would be so in love with a woman that I would want to shave for her. I love my wife, but it has not happened that I am so in love with her I wish to spend massive amounts of time removing perfectly good and unobtrusive hair.

Those are my top five examples of bad advice. What bad advice have you received?

Finally, I am sure that I am on occasion dispensing bad advice myself. I hope my young counselees know when to simply dismiss the ramblings of a crazed geezer.

Filed under: lesbian, personal writing, teaching Tagged: advice