Growing up, my mom instilled in me the belief that I had to find a partner who at least had a bachelor’s degree. Being that she had settled for a man who barely finished high school and subsequently spent a year flittering about before enlisting in the military, she deemed herself expert in the pitfalls of underselling one’s intellectual self. To be honest, I didn’t think anyone else cared as greatly about this aspect until I signed up for my first internet dating profile. The initial questions were predictable and easy to answer. What is your marital status? - Not married, that’s why I’m on this website. How important is your match’s age? – Extremely. The last thing I need is to nurse anyone back to health or through puberty. What’s your annual income – Enough to afford membership for this service. Suddenly I was confronted with What is your level of education? These six words stopped me dead in my tracks.
While I hoped others wouldn’t judge me for having attained only an undergraduate degree, it was naïve of me to think that it hasn’t crossed a few minds. How often had I scoffed at the mechanic with washboard abs who was only trying to make conversation or the waiter whose smile could charm a 20% tip but not a phone number? I excused my behavior by claiming that it simply boiled down to affording similar lifestyles – why fall for someone you constantly have to finance? However, the undercurrent of my argument can be traced back to the feeling that these careers just weren’t good enough; scraping the crumbs off the table was, without a doubt, a pauper’s duty. I forced myself to believe that my attitude was reasonable until I contemplated how others might perceive me. Could they question my ambition for not having pursued a master’s or would they hold their noses in the air at my state university degree? Despite that fact that I prided myself in the strides I had made as an independent professional woman, others might bypass me merely because of limited checkboxes on a profile page. At the end of the day, I pondered whether I was being asked to paint a self-portrait or revise my resume.
In the end, I elected not to answer this question. Fingers crossed that my new moral standing doesn’t deliver a dud.