Growing up, I wasn’t one to lean heavily towards my gender role. Yeah I liked to dress up, but I never had any motherly instincts. When we played with dolls, I didn’t want to be the mother. I liked to be outside, but still liked cropped shirts and whatever an 8 year old would call fashion. This stayed the same for me throughout highschool as well. I was an athlete. I pushed my body to do things it probably shouldn’t. Around 10th grade my friends started talking about their life plans. Where I come from, women tend to marry young and settle down. I always believed they gave up their dreams for families. My friends wanted to do the same. The stay at home mom life was calling them. However, this life didn’t call me. I never liked babysitting. I never imagined having a kid. I never even wanted kids, and this was from a young age. I hate cooking and cleaning, and I hate changing diapers. I was career driven. I didn’t dream about getting married, I dreamed about law school. I could’ve been a lawyer or worked for NASA. But now as I sit here at 18 years old, I feel like there is something wrong with me. Why didn’t I want the full package? I’m kind and compassionate, and probably could be a good mother. I could be a good wife. Why don’t I want to fit my gender role? Maybe it’s because there should be more than one gender role. I despise the women who settled down to be housewives. Honestly, I used them as an example of what I didn’t want to be. “I want a degree and I want to have my own career” I would say, but how do I know that's not what they wanted? I found out a lot of the women in my town did get their degrees. They didn’t choose to teach just because they got married, they chose to teach because they wanted to enrich children. They stay at home so they can raise the children that they fought to have. I learned one of them couldn’t get pregnant until she took hormone shots. This is their gender role. Teacher, mother, warrior, business owner. There is nothing wrong with wanting a career, and I have to tell myself there is nothing wrong with me just because I don’t want what they have. I will fit my own gender role. This gender role is social worker, compassionate helper, and world changer.