Maya went with her friends to the library to study for exams. It was a beautiful sunny day, everything was so green except the parts which were blue and brown and sometimes yellow and everything was shining bright but if she had to spend the day indoors, and she had to study for exams, the library was her favourite place to do so. It had row upon row of shelves full of books and stairs and platforms reaching to the roof. Maya liked to contemplate all the knowledge gathered here and to read all the books even though that would make her like Faust who made a pact with the Devil to be the most knowledgeable man on Earth. Faust scared her.

She sat with her friends at an old wooden desk and pulled out her textbooks and exercise books to study. They had to study maths and history and English. English was easy enough they had to think about things to say about the texts. Maya thought that Jane Austen’s books were stupid, all about girls and the marriage market but Anne thought they were important and said something about what women had to face. That became a discussion on what profession they would have when they left school and became rather lively till someone came over to remind them it was a library and not to talk so loudly.

“I still want to be a social worker,” Anne whispered.

“They don’t make very much and they work so hard,” Maya said, “and they meet the worst people in society.”

“I don’t care,” Anne said, “I want to help people. The worst people in society need help.”

Maya felt terrible but she knew her mother would never allow her to be something like a social worker. Her mother wanted her to be a physicist but Maya knew it wasn’t for her. The science was interesting, especially stars and planets and small things like atoms. She went to cosmology classes with one of her friend’s sisters. But her maths wasn’t good enough. Noone believed her, especially her mother, because her maths was pretty good, but she knew she would struggle. So she had to come up with something that would make her mother happy. Something professional in which she could do a PhD. Her mother wanted her to be rich and famous, someone her mother could boast about, Maya thought, especially because her mother’s sister’s daughter was studying for a PhD. Though that wasn’t mentioned.

Her mother said she was intelligent and could be anything she wanted to be as long as it was professional and she went to university. But her mother kept insisting on physics, though Maya thought that if she was so intelligent, she should be able to choose. Her mother thought so too and only helped her when she didn’t choose what her mother wanted. Otherwise she was on her own.

Actually, she didn’t mind going to university, she liked learning, but how could she be successful and would she be, so her mother and grandmother could brag. What should she choose? When she was young, they wanted her to be a doctor but she’d told them when she was seven that she didn’t want to be a doctor and apparently that was OK as long as she was someone professional. Preferably someone who studied science. She was fifteen now and still didn’t know what she would be.

If her mother or grandmother wanted a success in the family and bragging rights why didn’t they do something. Why leave it all to her? What about her cousin who was doing the PhD.

Oh, you have to do better than her,” her mother said. She didn’t like her sister.

“She’s in Canada,” said her grandmother.

Maya’s mother wasn’t so smart but you didn’t have to be smart to be a success, Maya thought. And what about her grandmother? She was smarter than most other grandmothers. She studied Italian and was somewhere in her sixties.

“We were migrants in a strange country,” her grandmother said. “We came here to make it possible for you to succeed.”

“It was harder for women in my generation,” her mother said and so did her grandmother. “Especially for women in Europe.” What made them think it was any easier now? What could she be successful at that would make a lot of money that her mother could boast about and women were allowed to do. Her mother didn’t support her when she talked about things like what women could do.

“You’re smarter than most men,” her mother said. “They’ll want you whatever you do.”

Her mother seemed to think Maya would know what that was. Maya didn’t know. What did she want? Did she want to make a lot of money?

She wanted to be a writer but her mother said no. “It’s too hard to succeed as a writer,” she said, “but you are good at language. Maybe you should be a lawyer. You could use your knowledge of language doing that.”

“Ugh, too much detail for me.” Plus she thought being a lawyer would be boring. Her mother said lawyers did lots of things but thought she should choose for herself. She still would rather be a writer but she couldn’t convince her mother she would be one of the successful ones.

She didn’t trust her mother. Actually she didn’t trust her mother’s motives. Not since her mother forced her to study Maths when she really wanted to study Ancient History. She didn’t trust her grandmother either who always did what her mother told her to do. She was alone making her choice.

She still didn’t know what she wanted to be. Some of her schoolfriends did. Anne wanted to be a social worker but her mother said Anne wasn’t smart enough to be Maya’s friend. Laura wanted to be a psychologist, actually most of her friends wanted to be psychologists. Maybe I’ll be a psychologist she thought, but her mother said no, too common. I might be an archaeologist; she told her mother and her mother couldn’t think of any argument against that. You can do anything, her mother said. Maya decided to be an archaeologist and wondered if her mother was disappointed. She looked sad. “I’ll be a famous archaeologist,” Maya said.

At school they sent you to an interview with career counsellors. Maybe they’ll know what I should be. At least they’ll give me things to think about. She was nervous when she went to the interview with the career counsellors. She had to fill in a form first, saying the three things she would like to be. She wrote archaeologist first because that’s what she thought she preferred; and then occupational therapist because that sounded like fun and you did a lot of crafts which she liked. Her mother was looking over her shoulder and pointed out that you didn’t need to go to university for that.

“Doesn’t matter,” she said, “it’s only for the career counsellors, it’s not definite.”

Her mother looked nervous but didn’t say anything. No doubt she was worried about what her intelligent daughter would choose. She wanted Maya to be a physicist so to please her mother, she put that as her third choice. Maybe the career counsellor would tell her to be that. She wished her mother would just tell her what to be, but her mother would probably say no, she wasn’t as smart as Maya.

Next day she went to see the career counsellor, her heart a big lump in her mouth. It was in an office, away from the school and there was a window to one side and a desk in the middle of the room. There was a sideboard with books and papers. The wood was lighter and younger than the desks and shelves in the library. She sat on one side of the desk and the career counsellor sat on the other.

“What interests you?” said the career counsellor. She was a woman and she was dressed in a skirt. She looked like a schoolteacher. What would a schoolteacher tell her about careers? None of her teachers had said anything, none of her schoolfriends either. She wondered if any of them were being pressured by their mothers.

The career counsellor was waiting for her answer so she thought about what interested her. Reading books, she thought, and making things up. Like schedules for things she’d like to learn or houses she’d like to live in. Her mother hit her when she wrote things like that so now she kept them in her head.

Sometimes she wrote about other things. How she’d like her future boyfriend to behave. She went to a girls’ school so she didn’t have a boyfriend now nor could she see one in the near future. Mostly she dreamed about men she saw on TV. She thought about them when she wasn’t reading her book. She didn’t tell the careers counsellor, but she hoped one day she’d meet a boy who respected her brain. They didn’t seem to like her body much and unless she met a boy who liked brains she wouldn’t have much choice. She had schoolfriends who were going to Uni to meet professional men before they became successful. She wanted to be one.

“I like learning,” she told the careers counsellor.

“Your teachers speak well of you.” The careers counsellor nodded. “What would you like to be?” The careers counsellor reached for the form Maya had filled out. “You could do any of these things easily,” the careers counsellor said. “You’re a very smart girl. You can be anything you want.”

So the careers counsellor wasn’t going to choose for her either. That was disappointing. Noone would choose for her. What should she be?