I Am an Oxford Graduate. And a Waitress.

How the relationship with my father shaped my life choices.

This week I will interview for a job, at a catering company.

Tasks include: helping to chop things up in the kitchen, assembling salad bowls, driving the food around Berlin, delivering it to the destination and arranging it.

I imagine that will entail setting things up in offices and business venues. Taking glimpses of the life of people who work in the real world, offering polite smiles, trying not to make a mess, and getting out of there, to the car, as quickly as possible.

The driving part was a major reason why I managed to push myself to send in an application for this job. Time alone in traffic. Precious moments to recharge, without having to interact with too many people — or alone, if I will be lucky.

Another encouraging plus side was the welcoming note, in the job advert: ‘non-German speakers welcome’. I speak two languages, but not enough German — and anyway, let’s face it, today mastering two languages and a half is not very impressive anymore.

Jobs that do not require German, in Berlin, are hard to come by, especially if your only passion is language — and if you are too socially awkward to utter full, long sentences in a group, even in your native language, unless you convince yourself that everyone in the room is beneath you. Then, you could pile up arguments for hours. But that is not a great attitude to take at a job interview — nor a successful one to make friends, let alone to keep them.

Not that I would know about job interviews. I have never sat at a real job interview. Half-interviews, yes — for positions in cafés or at university which it would have been impossible not to get; never for something that I desired and could turn into a career. Instead, while putting together my CV for the catering job, I was reminded that I have collected quite a bit of experience serving coffee. Studying my way through two degrees and then an almost-completed PhD at Oxford, I have picked up a few temporary office jobs and training opportunities, but always, importantly, without a direction. Thus, now I am thirty years old and my most credible CV is a waitressing one.

Thankfully, I do not feel bitter, yet. Mostly because I still try to nourish some remote, fragile dream of making something of myself, some other way. But I do feel shattered, and deep sorrow at the thought of going back to a job that virtually anyone can do, where I know people will take one look at me and assume that I must be what I fear I deep down really am — not very brilliant, perhaps a little dim, essentially ignorant, devoid of anything meaningful, ultimately ordinary and replaceable. Everything Oxford kids hate to think about themselves.

How did I end up here? Well, the simple answer is: everything in my life led me here.

I never made a proper plan for my life — and how could I? My parents never taught me to develop a plan, and I never practiced the skill independently, perhaps because I was smart enough to get good grades in school without ever really needing to carefully plan how to achieve them. And aside from school, I never really pursued anything else seriously, nor was I encouraged to do so. Most of all, I felt like I could not actively choose a direction for my life, because I knew nothing about the world.

I have always been a chronic procrastinator, leaving things until the last second, but somehow I always managed.

My PhD, with its open-ended structure, inherently devoid of real deadlines, has been the only true challenge of my life. I could not respect a self-imposed deadline to send chapters to my supervisor if my life depended on it. And every time I sent a draft in, I then proceeded to put myself through a couple of months of deep, dark, excruciating procrastination, wasting days and energy hating myself, waiting for the moment when I would feel enough shame to elicit my next research effort. Despite building on much previously written material, I essentially put together the main argument in the last chapter of my thesis the week before the deadline. Having had four years to complete my thesis, I submitted it thirty minutes before the deadline, after pulling an all nighter.

Growing up, I was lucky enough that it was always clear that I would go to university — more than an option, it was a must, and one with which I never had any issue. However, for as long as I can remember, my father told me that I would go on to study engineering, like my grandfather had chosen for him and my aunt. Since the earliest times, I would without fail answer a solid ‘no’. Then, he would sometimes give me the trite choice between ‘engineering, economics, medicine and law, the degrees which allow you to work for yourself.’ Not knowing anything about the world, I never quite questioned that, even though it is clear now that there are so many other ways to be your own boss. I guess many of them require risk and entrepreneurial spirit, two things that are not well-suited to my father’s mentality.

Plus, engineering was the only real “choice” there, the other three were mostly added for decoration, and for my father’s will not to seem too unreasonable. But whenever I tried exploring the option of studying economics, my father told me that I was not made for it. And I believed it, because I knew nothing of the world.

No discussion I had with my parents about my future ever allowed me to really feel like there was something out there for me to pursue. There was one way, and I was being pushed towards it. Only one road, and I knew very well that I did not want to follow it, because I could not imagine myself being an engineer. I simply had no interest in the things that should interest prospective engineers. I took every chance to voice my complaint and disagreement about my parents’ plan for my life.

In the meantime, I was in secondary school, studying philosophy, classics and literature, and I loved it all. ‘I am going to study philosophy’, I would tell my dad. But, at the same time, I never assumed that I knew everything about something I had never experienced. Perhaps engineering was interesting, I just did not know anything about it. Moreover, the idea of becoming an engineer felt safe, because I would make my parents happy and it seemed to come with a guarantee of acquiring a respectable role in society. ‘Perhaps my parents know what is best’, I secretly thought, ‘perhaps that is the path I am supposed to follow, and I will be happy.’ After all, I had no idea how to figure out what I should pursue because I knew nothing about the world.

My parents never encouraged me to choose for myself, which, looking back, essentially means they never trusted me with making decisions about my future. Discussions with my father were always brief and not very argumentative, but limited to the exchange of the classic ‘you are going to study engineering’, ‘no’, ‘oh yes you are’, ‘no’, with relentless stubbornness on both parts but also, for the most part, involving a certain playfulness. My dad was aware that he was being tyrannical, in a way, and chuckled about it, because he was no real tyrant. Indeed, he only pretended to be one: had I developed a deep passion for something else, my parents would have let me pursue it, in the end.

At the same time, however, while he was pushing engineering, my father would destroy the reputation of a whole series of categories of learning, systematically dismissing them as silly and not worth pursuing — psychology, political sciences, philosophy & communication were prime targets. All fields for which I felt some sort of affinity were simply precluded to me — sure, in the end I could have pursued them, but how to bear the knowledge that to my dad that would surely mean that I was inept and stupid?

In the end, I did go to engineering school. I dropped out after a nightmarish year. I tentatively discussed with my dad the idea of pursuing medicine, instead, but he displayed no interest or enthusiasm, and it was clear that there was no way I would ever be able to regain his favour, after all. So, I went back to studying what I knew I could not fail: literature, languages, classics. I made it to a PhD at Oxford, but that counts for nothing, to my dad.

I was glad to quit engineering, but after that, nothing ever felt real — nothing felt like a real effort, nothing felt like I was going to do something meaningful with my life.

I remember my romance philology exam, during my bachelor’s degree. After awarding me the maximum grade, the professor told me ‘I have seen many students throughout the years and you have a real talent for this’. I remember the unshakable impression that she was not being sincere, even though there was no reason for her to be lying. Sure, she was a little biased towards me, because I was the only student who had selected to achieve twelve optional credits with her six credits course in combination with six credits of classical philology, and the only one who had a background in Latin and Greek, which came in handy for the course material. But this was hardly ground for openly praising me the way she did, especially since, as usual, I was completely incapable of being friendly with professors — or even considering myself their equal, for that matter. I felt flattered and grateful, but deep down I did not believe her.

However, I truly, thoroughly enjoyed philology, and I went on to write two dissertations and pursue a PhD in the subject.

Then, Oxford definitively broke my spirit. It made me doubt my knowledge of language. I had always been an excellent student in humanistic subjects, but everyone is exceptional at Oxford. I had always been good at writing, my teachers had been praising me since as long as I can remember. During my PhD, I had to start writing in a foreign language. Readers, including my supervisor, continued to be impressed with my writing. But others, like my examiners, pointed out my limitations — how sometimes Italianisms or Germanisms creep into my writing, how I sometimes use the wrong preposition, or how my language is not always idiomatic. I took this criticism hard, because, although not with the intent to harm, it attacked the last bastion of my fragile identity. Even if I tried to keep a balanced view of myself, I felt impotent in the face of the degree of negative emotions which those comments elicited.

I could not even go back to writing in my native language, because expressing myself in Italian was simply no longer an option. I have done the majority of my growing as a person in the last five years, my perspectives on many things have changed dramatically, my thinking has been shaped so profoundly during my PhD, that there are simply things that I can not explore or express in my native language. In fact, even before I ever moved to the UK, English quite reliably interpolated my speech to better capture certain meanings.

I am quite sure that some negative comments about my use of language came from a place of dislike for me and my research. I know that because the same matter was judged much less harshly by people who enjoyed the particular nature of my research and, as a consequence, felt some sympathy towards me.

This underlines another damning flaw of mine: I am quite awkward in social situations, and not very likable, especially because I tend to be honest about not liking most other people either. I am very introverted and not particularly eager to please others.

Therefore, I am going back to waitressing. There, I will have no choice but to be superficially friendly, smiles and courtesy will be an obligation, and a sign of deference towards those who have been wiser in handling their own lives.

I doubt that my father would feel more ashamed of me than he already does, anyway.

In a way, I still know nothing about the world, and thus everything in my life led me here.