To the man at work yesterday,

“Find you a man that will make you lots of money so you don’t have to work.”

This is a sentence that you said to me at my job as a cashier on Thanksgiving. Maybe you thought you were being helpful or giving me good advice.

The sentence was part of a conversation about how your family doesn’t have a ton of money because neither you nor your wife make a ton of money. And so, you saw a young women who could or could not be in college, getting a degree, and decided to give her some words of wisdom. All it really did though was burn me inside.

Why do I have to find a man to make money for me? Why can’t I just go ahead and make money for myself and my family and not just sit at home while my husband goes to work. Why is it that in adult’s heads, women shouldn’t be the ones to make money and provide for their family?

Why is it that in society’s mind, I should not use the mechanical engineering degree I am pursuing so that I can instead sit at home and let my degree go to waste.

For some people, that’s fine; for me, though, it’s not.

I can’t even sit around my house now for an hour without getting bored at least four times in that hour. How am I supposed to sit around my house waiting for my husband to come back from work for eight hours every day? What am I supposed to do with myself for those eight hours? Twiddle my thumbs? When instead I could be working as well, making money just like my husband so that we don’t have to survive off one paycheck.

YOUNG WOMEN.

DO NOT let yourself be tamed down by the fact that you could always find a man who makes money and then be set for the rest of your life. Do not settle. Strive for whatever you may want but do not settle because some guy at a grocery store thought he was helping you out.

So, thank you for your kind words that you thought would help me. Thank you for the insight into someone else’s life that I didn’t have before. But also, Sir, please don’t make me feel the need to settle for anything less than what I want. Maybe my goals will change in a couple years, maybe they’ll still be the same. But as of right now, my goal is to use my degree to be the best mechanical engineer I can be. And I will work, and I could even be the main provider for my family. But the point is that I will not be giving up just because some random guy told me to find myself a man who’ll make me money.

So, thank you Mr. Grocery Store Customer.

From,

A young woman with a plan and a dream, a future engineer.