I am a Guidance Counsellor. It's my job to help students decide what they want from life. Where are they going? What sort of work interests them?
I run tests to help determine where there skills lie and try to encourage them onto the right path. A brilliant doctor will never make a lawyer and vice versa. Different skill sets are required.
The smart students are the easiest ones. Generally they know what they want to do and they already have plans in place to help them head in that direction. Next easiest would be the dumb ones who know that they're dumb. You can run some simple tests for them and then point out their options. They're happy to have someone tell them what to do.
The majority of students, of course, are between these two extremes, and they can be difficult. Generally they're open to reason and you can give them some alternatives. They'll find their way home easily enough.
Just like that I've dealt with well over ninety percent of the students who come my way. The other ten percent take up ninety percent of my time. They're the arrogant ones. The idiots who think their geniuses. The no talent clowns who think they're future stars. They can be bloody murder to work with. If they have doting parents who think the sun shines out of their butt, it's even harder.
A typical conference with one of these would generally include comments like this.
"Yes, Joe, I know you're a star on the football field. However, we're a very small school and we did come last in the competition. Maybe if you had learnt to read you could've become a lawyer, but as it is. . .
Have you ever considered a career as a night soil collector? They get to drive a truck, you know."
I get some odd people looking for help and expecting to find success. Let me tell you about Mandi.
Mandi wasn't her real name. She changed it as soon as she entered college and flatly refused to even recognise her official name. Having seen her real name on the enrolment form, I didn't blame her in the slightest.
Mandi was of average intelligence, blonde, and quite pretty. Not knock your socks off beautiful, but reasonably pretty. Practically everything about her was average with the exception of her ego and self-confidence.
Her parents had spent years blowing up her ego for her and I was surprised to find she could still walk, carrying that ego around all the time. Mandi was, she informed me, going to go to Hollywood, where she would be immediately recognised as the next star. It would be move over Madonna, bye-bye Britney and move on Miley; Mandi has arrived.
I tried pointing out a few flaws in her ambition. Namely that according to her drama teacher, she couldn't act. The music teacher says that she can't sing. The PE teacher says he thinks she's got two left feet and will never make a dancer.
All this was as nothing. She had confidence in herself. She would be a star.
I tried to be brutally frank.
"Mandi, for a woman to get ahead in TV and the movies she needs at least two of the three B's. You don't meet those requirements. And if you're wondering what the three B's are they're beauty, brains and boobs."
"I've got boobs," Mandi promptly stated.
I could see that. They were blindingly obvious. They hadn't been the items I considered missing.
"Maybe, but you lack presentation. You also lack skill in the areas required and you don't appear to have any talents that can be polished up to let you shine.
Why don't we run a little test? I'll be a producer looking for new talent. Why don't you knock on my door, I'll invite you in and you explain why I should hire you."
Brimming with confidence, Mandi knocked on my door and I invited her in. She came bouncing in, eager to explain why I should hire her. She barely got started when I butted in.
"What previous experience have you had?"
"Uh, none, actually. I'm just starting out. But you'll find. . ."
I interrupted her again.
"What acting, dancing and elocution courses have you passed?"
Mandi was giving me dirty looks now. We both knew that she'd only barely scraped a pass mark in acting and elocution and as for her dancing; like the PE teacher said. Two left feet.
I deliberately gave her a hard time, trying to get it through her skull that she lacked the required talent. All the practice in the world won't help if you just can't do something. If Mandi would be halfway reasonable I could run some tests with her to find out what she could do.
I finally finished up with what I thought would be the killer.
"Well, this new film does have a few parts for new talent, I suppose. There are a few nude shots. Are you averse to doing onscreen nudity?"
"No problems," said Mandi airily. "Nudity doesn't worry me at all."
"OK. Show me. I can't hire a girl who's going to back out at the last moment."
I sat there waiting, while Mandi blinked and looked at me.
"Are you serious?" she asked.
"Dead serious. If you're not going to strip right now in front of me, how do you think you're going to go when a producer asks you to?"
Mandi got a determined look on her face and started undoing her blouse. I said nothing, just sitting back and watching. The blouse came off and the bra followed. She really did have a magnificent chest, the bra being more for decoration that anything else.
While I was admiring her breasts, Mandi had slipped down her skirt and panties and was standing there defiantly, hands on hips.
I sadly shook my head.
"Mandi, you couldn't present yourself to a producer that way. Your bush is a completely different colour to your hair and it just doesn't look right. You need to think of these little things. If I were you, I'd dye the bush, after trimming it considerably. Or shaving completely. When you go home, strip off in front of a mirror and compare what you see to actresses you've see on TV."
Giving me nasty little looks Mandi dressed and left. Before she left I told her that it probably wouldn't hurt for her to bring her parents along and we could have another interview about career choices with them on hand.
Before I continue with this story, let me describe my office to you. I have a desk under the window where I sit facing the door. I also have some furniture not normally found in a teacher's office. Namely, apart from the standard visitor's chair that students use, I have a couple of arm chairs either side of the door and a couch to one side. Plus a Coffee-Mate.
The reason for this is that I tend to have parents meeting me there with or without their children and I like to set an informal environment. A side effect of this is that when other teachers need to see me they invariably use my office for the meetings. Much more comfortable all round.
That's what led to the following debacle. I was in my office when the door opened and Mandi walked in, kicking it closed behind her. She was dressed in her PE clothes, whether going to or coming from her class I didn't know.
She just stalked to the centre of the room and dropped her shorts and panties.
"This will get me some attention," she snapped.
She was more right than she knew. What she was referring to was a very neatly trimmed little bush, in the shape of an arrow, blonde to match her hair. What I was referring to was something quite different.
Mandi heard an indignant gasp and was silly enough to turn around without pulling up her panties. Sitting in the armchairs were the Principal and the Head-Mistress, both looking shocked. Even more shocked when Mandi turned around and flashed them. We'd been discussing what courses we should drop next year and what to replace them with. Like I said, my office makes a comfortable meeting place.
I don't think Mandi was feeling particularly comfortable right then. She seemed to have just frozen.
The Principal was spluttering. He was getting on and due for retirement soon. I don't think he'd ever come across a situation like this.
After some comments along the lines of "well, I never", "outrage", "how dare you" and "you should be ashamed" the Principal found something useful to say.
