Episode 15: On Being an Underling

I spent a lot of years in college to get away from being the “underling” in an organization.  I’d experienced that subtle apartheid as a secretary in a corporate DC law firm, and I did not like it.  Here I am experiencing it again, some twenty-five years later after two master’s degrees, and I still do not like it.  But the question is:  How important is my ego?  Not nearly as important as it was when I was twenty-eight, naïve, and idealistic—important enough then for me to enroll as a freshman at a state university when I was thirty.  Now, I have to be practical.  I can’t tell them to kiss my rosy red ass and quit.  Obviously, the “Little Me” inside me is annoyed and somewhat aghast.  The “Big Me” sees it as an interesting point in my career—and my life--and a time to reflect on my own reactions to this ego hit.