Andi Dorfman & Josh Murray - Bachelorette 10 - General Discussion #2

It is soooooooo important to be happy at what you do. Studies have shown how bad stress is for you physically, mentally and emotionally.
If you are happy with your job, it benefits you and those around you.

Kashathediva wrote:This happened with my younger daughter. She graduated with a major in finance and marketing at a top east coast university and got a great job and salary in finance with a high profile company in NYC.  
Fast forward 2 yrs down the road. She hates it.
The company and her boss love her, though. They allow her to take one personal/vacation day each week for a semester to commute (home) and take grad courses for her masters in Sp. Ed.
During this time Wallstreet is going through all their buyouts and layoffs. Her boss wants to keep her, but if she is laid off she gets severance pay, bennies for a year and other goodies. So she is let go at the last lay off before take over.
She nannies/babysits to help carry her through her education/rent and after 2 yrs total--she is a teacher.
She loves teaching at half the salary she had. Good for her.

This actually sounds kinda like what I went through. I got my degree in Kinesiology over two years ago. But gave up on grad school because I discovered I had a different passion. Now I work a normal 9-6 job so I can pay the bills while also doing what I really love, coaching volleyball.

I am the poster girl for the non-traditional path. I have had two careers and am in graduate school for the second time. All my careers have revolved around science, but I enjoy many aspects and will probably end up in a slightly different path again once I earn my PhD and follow my husband who has the harder to place job.

As for Andi, I have no problem with her not wanting to be a lawyer anymore. I am sorry if that was lost in her lengthy post. I think she should just own it. It is nothing to be ashamed of. You can train for something, think you will love it and then realize it isn't your dream or passion. I support that for everyone, woman or man.

She and TPTB sold her as the lawyer and I have read that she plans to go back. My point is that I don't think she should unless she wants to. I am okay with her not going back. I don't care about how much time or money you spent on your education, if you aren't happy with what you do then find your joy.

I think that for everyone. Trust me, if you told me that I would be hoping to finish my PhD just before my 44th birthday, I would have thought you were nuts. For me other things in life took precedence over the time and energy and lack of money commitment that science graduate school requires.

Mods can delete my post if it was inappropriate, I just wanted to explain why I don't like Andi in what I hoped was not an snippy or offensive way. Since, I think most of what I say may come off as attacking when it isn't meant that way.

stuckinsc wrote:As for Andi, I have no problem with her not wanting to be a lawyer anymore. I am sorry if that was lost in her lengthy post.  I think she should just own it.  It is nothing to be ashamed of.

Maybe she doesn't know yet. Maybe she'll end up doing wills and trusts while she raises a family. She doesn't owe us an explanation.

Scooby wrote:

stuckinsc wrote:As for Andi, I have no problem with her not wanting to be a lawyer anymore. I am sorry if that was lost in her lengthy post.  I think she should just own it.  It is nothing to be ashamed of.

Maybe she doesn't know yet. Maybe she'll end up doing wills and trusts while she raises a family. She doesn't owe us an explanation.

Life is a journey, Andi may not know yet what she really wants to do career wise. She is supporting herself it seems. She probably made more money this past year than in her Assist. DA job and she is going on her journey with Josh and considering her's and their options. I think it would be difficult to own something while you are still in the process of finding it.

We are all entitled to our own opinions. Here's mine. The great thing about living in these times is that women have the right to make any choice about how they live & in my opinion it should be without judgement. Men do it all the time. If she wants or doesn't want to be a lawyer anymore it should be fine because it's her choice. Plus why would Andi be ashamed of her choices...She worked hard to become a lawyer & They are her choices & thankfully women can now be or do anything they like. It didn't use to be that way. Been there done that years ago. I like to celebrate women in all their choices, good or bad because it's their's to make.

stuckinsc wrote:But mostly, it is that Andi presented herself on JPG's season as a lawyer, a smart, intelligent woman with career goals.  That is the person she sold us on that season and even at the beginning of the bachelorette.  But that is not the truth.

IMHO at the time she went on JPG's season that was a pretty fair (though perhaps overly simplified) characterization of her. She was just out of law school and in her first job and like many new attorneys went to work as an ADA. Relatively few ADAs stay in that job for their entire career though, but use it to gain trial experience. Many often go on to become criminal defense attorneys using their knowledge of prosecution that they learned as an ADA. This show and those who appear on it are presented in simple easy to define terms which are very one dimensional and I tend to expect to discover this does them a disservice as I learn more about them; people are generally much more complex than how the show presents them or how they present themselves while appearing on it.

stuckinsc wrote:I don't think Andi will ever practice law again if it is her choice.  I realize she said she has spent a lot of time and effort to become a lawyer so she should use it.  But that is not passion for what you do, it is feeling like it would be a waste to have done all that and not use it.  Truthfully and this is for me and my preference only, I would respect her more if she just came out and was honest and said, I worked hard for it, but being a lawyer isn't what I thought it would be.  I see it all the time in graduate school.  The majority of people who get PhDs don't do research.  They actually go into writing, editing, law and business instead.  Some continue on to medicine.  That is okay, in my mind it is okay to think you want something and then change your mind.  So I won't criticize Andi if she doesn't practice law again, I would just like her to admit it.

That's a fair opinion - ALL opinions are fair. I don't happen to share it and I believe that she will practice law again (she's actually said that she misses it). I don't believe that she will go back to being a Fulton County ADA again however, and I don't think she should go back to that job. Like I said above, an ADA job is usually a stepping stone to other aspects of the practice of law and I think that's how Andi sees it. Her life today is different in countless ways than it was on JPG's season and the opportunities open to her are different also. I think an ADA in the gang crime division would not be my first choice of jobs for a wife and potential mother and as Andi's life evolves I think her career choice should as well. I think she has owned up to those changes in her future by resigning from her job as ADA instead of extending her leave from it. I don't think that means she resigned from the practice of law - she just set the stage for practicing law differently than she has been up to now.

There are a lot of crazies out there that might go out of their way to try to make her work life a little bit miserable. It happens, we know it happens, and, anyway, and even if she is doing nothing, or quietly working part time as a private practice associate, does it really matter at this point?

If by February we're not hearing she is she committed to doing something, I personally think that's a reasonable time to start passing judgment, but now seems premature.

is there ever a reasonable time to pass judgement on another person? Not sure that I feel confident ever setting that time line. Unless it is my kids and they are not supporting themselves.

Eviebloom wrote:is there ever a reasonable time to pass judgement on another person?  Not sure that I feel confident ever setting that time line.  Unless it is my kids and they are not supporting themselves.  

I totally agree!!!!!

But we do all judge, it is part of the human condition. I think Mother Theresa might have been the only human in my life I have seen who truly didn't judge.

Many people who are in this thread saying we shouldn't judge have judged JPG, just go read the CT thread.

We all have our opinions and are entitled to them. I try to explain mine. Maybe I just expected too much of Andi. As my original post said, my favorites from this show are the ones who go back to a normal life. That doesn't have to hold true for everyone else it can just be me.

Thanks for the insight Lucas. Actually 20% of my high school class are lawyers and now one judge. I saw their different career paths. A lawyer can do many, many things. I have been encouraged that science PhDs do very well in patent law. But that is just not my thing.

I just don't think it's realistic to wish that Andi would "admit" anything related to her professional or life aspirations. Why would she? Why would anybody? She doesn't want to burn any bridges. She doesn't want to label herself as someone who really isn't interested in the work. Nobody would stand up and make a pronouncement like that. What would be the purpose of it?

People used to bad mouth Trista all the time and ask how she could say she loved being a pediatric physical therapist yet give up that work when she moved to Colorado to be with Ryan. Somehow, it made people doubt that she had been truthful about liking her work. People thought she must have been lying or that she was insincere. Others thought she was throwing away a good career. Others thought she had gotten swept up in her 15 minutes of fame. People thought a lot of things, for a lot of reasons. And that's okay. That's what people do. But, Trista never owed anybody an explanation and neither does Andi.

Show me a person who stands up and makes a public pronouncement of what they are done with, what they will be doing for the rest of their lives, what piece of themselves no longer exists, the way they are going to live from here on out---and I'll show you a liar.

I like to think of myself as one of those pie graph diagrams. Multi-colored wedges arranged to make a whole circle. From year to year some pieces swell while others recede. At times a color gets squeezed out completely as new colors are introduced. An ever changing sum of all of my parts.

A person cannot speak to what she does not yet know. She owes the world no explanation and herself a lifetime of exploration.