In Season 3, Episode 19 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy’s best friend Willow comes to a realization. She’s been accepted to every college; she could go anywhere and do anything. But the things she’s been doing…helping people, saving lives, and standing up for what’s right…that’s at the heart of what she wants to do. And who she wants to be.
Out in the world this week (3 new video series)
This week’s full essay (Figuring out what you want to be when you grow up)
Essay Preview: Are you still figuring it out as a grown-ass person like me?
Whenever I’ve gone through a transitional phase, or am stuck in a liminal phase, in my life, I’ve fallen back on a stock phrase: “I’m figuring out what I want to be when I grow up…again.” I think of that phrase as reflecting several things at once:
· It’s light-hearted, not literal. It tells folks I’m fine, and I’m not taking myself too seriously
· Although light-hearted, it does speak to something else I say a lot, especially about my career, namely that “I learned I could learn.” If one looks at the many moves I’ve made in my life, they all resulted in having to learn entirely new things. Or, I should really say, getting to learn them! [If you’re interested I’ve told this story of how I hopped into new industries and roles and how I learned those new things on several podcasts. Here are two recent examples: #WomenofWisdom with Coco Sellman and Pre-Vetted with Federico Ramallo.]
· Finally, it’s meant to convey that it’s OK if you go through this process multiple times in your life. It’s core to my belief system that learning and trying new things (at least intellectually) is something we ALL can do, any time. (A third thing I say repeatedly is that you’re so much more likely to try something new and figure out you don’t like it than to figure out you’re incapable of doing it.)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer starts out with its core characters as sophomores in high school. We see them grow up in front of our eyes. But that growing up looks different in Season 1 vs. the end of Season 3, where I have reached in my re-watch. And I think that recurs throughout the series…growing up is not a static thing. It looks different in every phase. I’m living proof that that includes the phases of growing up in my 20s, 30s, 40s, and beyond.
I was really struck this week by the new phase of maturity that these characters reach as they approach high school graduation. They start to see themselves more clearly. They start to see what really matters to them, and they start to see their agency to live a life where they do what matters to them. Where they have a shot at building a legacy.
Signposting and sharing
📺 Next week’s recapping will cover the two-part Season finale. Many fans consider Season 3 the most satisfying of them all. It also represents a big change coming to the Scooby Gang. Hard to imagine, but absolutely reflective of this moment in anyone’s coming of age story: Stepping into adulthood.
🛠️ Tool of the week/Learning Spanish: One fo the things creating a Spanish language curriculum tool with Claude did was point me in the direction of other tools…podcasts, YouTube channels, apps…that could help. And checking those out mean that, of course, I started being fed more content and ads for even more tools. One I’ve been using for almost 2 weeks (and did decide to convert from free trial to paying customer) is the app Eppika. I had made myself a storytelling tool with Claude, which feeds me a 1-2 paragraph story and lets me translate it, then grades my translation. Eppika is a little different in that is takes stories and translates them to Spanish and adjusts the level for different levels of Spanish students. Every day I read one short story, some by famous authors like Oscar Wilder or RL Stevenson. I can tap on any word I don’t know to see it’s translation and hear it pronounced. I can also go back and listen to the same story. It’s maybe 15 minutes a day and support helpful. See screenshots below.
Politics: I have decided I need to read the text of the proposed California Billionaire Tax myself. I’m about halfway through, so too soon to give my final judgment. I admit that my bias going in is that emotionally I really want to vote for it, but I fear it’s not the answer and may be poorly structured. I’ll keep you posted. If you want to read it yourself, find it here. Also, some nice accompanying reading might be this study that indicates that “higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior.” It’s a doozy.
🍿 Coyote vs. ACME is good clean silly fun: OK, there’s a whole drama behind this movie. It didn’t get released for a long time, and now that it has been people are rallying around it like an underdog. I was never a big Warner Brothers cartoon fan; there are probably more Easter Eggs and references in there than I got, but it was cute enough without knowing all of that. If you like Who Framed Roger Rabbit, I’m pretty confident you’ll like this too. Have you seen it? What did you think?
BONUS: Screenshots from my own Storytelling tool and from Eppika:
My daily tarot card:
Today I drew another Major Arcana card, the Fool, but reversed. The Fool is at the beginning of a journey, and a bit naive…and at its worst, reckless. While in general The Fool is about making a leap and embracing change, the reversed Fool is a sign that you’re having doubt about your new path and to maybe revisit and re-jigger your plans. It’s interesting because I’ve been totally re-doing my elisacp.com web site, but have been procrastinating adding the one new page I decided I needed. Which I think I can safely say means, I have doubts about what exactly it should say or reflect. This card pull is a sign to maybe stop procrastinating and focus on it for a while. It won’t solve itself.
A card pull or full reading can help make a specific decision. Or can set the tone for your week. Either way, options are here, my Buffy deck and I are at your service! https://calendly.com/elisacp
Out in the world this week:
OK, I’m trying something new. For a time I was really enjoying TikTok, not just the algorithm knowing exactly what to put into my For You feed, but also creating videos. I was doing book reviews and talking politics (it was 2024 after all.) When they got all in bed with the Trump campaign, I felt less good about participating, so I quit cold turkey. I was making video content for Optionality (mostly webinars and interview videos) but no personal videos. This past week I decided to try adding some short video content to what I did. Basically I am introducing three regular video features. They’ll be posted primarily to my Instagram, but I’ll likely share them elsewhere too. The series are:
Tarot Tuesdays: Sharing my card pull for the newsletter each week and saying a bit more about the card and its interpretations. Here’s my first one:
Tinkering Thursdays: Every week I’ll show a tool or feature or process I’ve been building or making, hoping to widen the aperture on what you all think you can do with the technology and tools that are out there. Here’s the first one.
On a totally ad-hoc, when inspired basis I’ll be posting tips and info based on my book, Road Map for Revolutionaries: Resistance, Activism, and Advocacy for All. These will focus on how to integrate everyday activism into your life. The first one is about why the protests at the Kennedy Center are good, and asking why those people aren’t protesting other things is presumptive and wrong-headed:
Full essay: Still figuring out what you want to be when you grow up?
Whenever I’ve gone through a transitional phase, or am stuck in a liminal phase, in my life, I’ve fallen back on a stock phrase: “I’m figuring out what I want to be when I grow up…again.” I think of that phrase as reflecting several things at once:
It’s light-hearted, not literal. It tells folks I’m fine, and I’m not taking myself too seriously
Although light-hearted, it does speak to something else I say a lot, especially about my career, namely that “I learned I could learn.” If one looks at the many moves I’ve made in my life, they all resulted in having to learn entirely new things. Or, I should really say, getting to learn them! [If you’re interested I’ve told this story of how I hopped into new industries and roles and how I learned those new things on several podcasts. Here are two recent examples: #WomenofWisdom with Coco Sellman and Pre-Vetted with Federico Ramallo.]
Finally, it’s meant to convey that it’s OK if you go through this process multiple times in your life. It’s core to my belief system that learning and trying new things (at least intellectually) is something we ALL can do, any time. (A third thing I say repeatedly is that you’re so much more likely to try something new and figure out you don’t like it than to figure out you’re incapable of doing it.)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer starts out with its core characters as sophomores in high school. We see them grow up in front of our eyes. But that growing up looks different in Season 1 vs. the end of Season 3, where I have reached in my re-watch. And I think that recurs throughout the series…growing up is not a static thing. It looks different in every phase. I’m living proof that that includes the phases of growing up in my 20s, 30s, 40s, and beyond.
I was really struck this week by the new phase of maturity that these characters reach as they approach high school graduation. They start to see themselves more clearly. They start to see what really matters to them, and they start to see their agency to live a life where they do what matters to them. Where they have a shot at building a legacy.
Figuring out what’s worth fighting for
One story is Willow’s story. Willow is the ultimate school nerd. She’s really good at it. She gets early acceptance to every high-prestige university you can name…from Oxford to Harvard, from MIT to Yale. But in the end (spoiler alert) she decides that what she has been doing, as an ever more impactful member of the Scooby Gang…saving lives, helping people, preventing harm…is what she wants to do with her life, and the Hellmouth is where she can most effectively keep doing that. (I mean, luckily Sunnydale has its very own UC campus, so it’s not like she’s left with no option locally). It’s not just the words she says when sharing this revelation. It’s her entire demeanor. Willow has to this point been a bit goofy, a bit hesitant, a bit prone to following every strong statement with a qualifying statement. But her speech about the good fight she wants to be a part of is delivered with a new and different calm and certainty.
Willow: "The other night, getting captured and all, facing off with Faith... things just got kind of clear. I mean, you've been fighting evil here for about three years, and I've been helping out some, and now we're supposed to be deciding what we wanna do with our lives and I realized that's what I want to do. Fight evil. Help people. I think it's worth doing, and I don't think you do it 'cause you have to. It's a good fight, Buffy, and I want in."
My college decision was grown up too
I appreciate this moment more because I made a Willow-like decision myself, deciding to stay local to go to college and even live at home while doing so.
I didn’t have such noble reasons, let’s be clear, but I did have what I considered to be mature, clear-eyed reasons.
Yes, I was going to go to college. It was expected, and I understood the big picture value of it. But I’ve said before that traditional school was never a place where I excelled. I did fine. But I was always that student who didn’t “live up to their potential.” Because I honestly didn’t care that much. I knew what I wanted to do (pursue theatre), and I knew traditional schooling was a waystation on the way to that pursuit. By living at home and working throughout college, I was making a mature decision to move to New York with funds. Which I did.
I’ve been told that I missed something essential about the college experience by never living in a dorm, by being a commuter student. I suppose it’s possible that I just don’t know what I missed since I never had it, but honestly, I usually nod my head and think, essential for you.
I mean, I was a theatre major, and theatre people are good at forming chosen family. We spend lots of extra hours together outside of class, rehearsing, building, performing. Every theatre building has its own green room where we hang out. We even do a lot of partying, post-rehearsal and post-performance. And no one knows how to have dramatic or deep conversations like theatre folk. From everything I’ve heard, I got plenty of the “college experience,” even if not in a dorm.
Figuring out when responsibilities are privileges
The second story is centered around Buffy and her burden as Slayer. The entire first season is about her tension between wanting to be a normal teen and having to be the Slayer. She understands her responsibilities, and she doesn’t fail. She sacrifices from day one; that’s not the issue. But Season 3 is where we see the shift from her feeling that the “great responsibility” that comes from “great power” was thrust upon her, to feeling that there is privilege in that great responsibility. She doesn’t just fulfill the sacrifices she is still asked to make. She understands them; she accepts them. She knows they are her life’s work and her legacy. Yes, occasionally she gets wider acknowledgment for her work. And I’ve already talked about how it’s human to want acknowledgment. But it’s doled out very sparingly throughout the series. When it comes (in this week’s case in Episode 20, The Prom) it’s truly poignant. And it feeds her for a long long time. And makes me cry.
Jonathan: "Most of us never found the time to get to know you. But that doesn't mean we haven't noticed you. We don't talk about it much, but it's no secret Sunnydale High isn't really like other schools. A lot of weird stuff happens here. But whenever there was a problem or something creepy happened, you seemed to show up and stop it. Most of the people here have been saved by you, or helped by you, at one time or another. We're proud to say that the class of '99 has the lowest mortality rate of any graduating class in Sunnydale history. And we know at least part of that is because of you. So the senior class offers its thanks, and ... gives you, uh, this...
[Some fumbling about between the kids as they pass Buffy's award to the front. It's a small umbrella, decorated and gold spray-painted. Jonathan takes it, opens it.]
It's from all of us, and it's got written here, "Buffy Summers. Class Protector."
About a decade ago I interviewed Buffy herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar (SMG), at BlogHer*. She was launching a new entrepreneurial venture, so I asked her if achieving such significant success so young as Buffy put pressure on every step she took next.
I’ve never forgotten her answer. Quite the opposite, according to SMG (and I am paraphrasing here). If Buffy is the legacy she leaves behind, it’s an amazing one. Everything else is bonus.
Figuring out that my past was both “privilege” and “legacy”. And that my present is “bonus.”
I think of these three words often. I aspire to also believe these words often! I refer to my peripatetic career on the regular. My Kaleidoscope Career as my friend Helen Jonsen would put it. But smack in the middle of all that zigging and zagging, I did BlogHer for 12 years. 9.5 years pre-acquisition and 2.5 years post. I never did anything for so long before or since.
This week I was reminded that if that’s my legacy, it’s a good one. I went to a How Women Lead networking event, mostly to see an industry leader I’ve known a very long time, Sandy Carter. (So long I don’t remember exactly how and where we first met…but it was about 15 years ago when she was a leader at IBM.) I always love running into Sandy, rare though it may be, and she has always stayed at the leading edge, including now as the CEO of a company focused on private and trusted AI solutions. Sandy took the time to tell me two things.
The first was that BlogHer was what cemented for her the power that lies in community, something she carried forward in her career.
The second story was more personal. She reminded me of how she brought her young daughter to BlogHer one year because she had started and maintained a blog. From the stage I acknowledged her daughter as the youngest blogger in attendance (and I’m sure the supportive BlogHer audience cheered)! It was a highlight for her daughter, which made it a highlight for Sandy.
I certainly don’t get that kind of acknowledgment (that word again) very often anymore, and two things can be true. I can reject the idea of doing things for the acknowledgment, but it still touches me when I get it. That’s human.
When I do happen to get recognized for the legacy accomplishments, it never fails to make me think of SMG’s comments about her legacy as Buffy (and by the way, she deserved multiple Emmy nominations for her work in that role and was utterly robbed!!!).
Figuring out that growing up doesn’t equal more, more, more
I think I’ve grown up enough to not believe that each new phase of deciding what to be when I grow up must include a traditional definition of doing “better” or more or getting more money or fame or even acknowledgment. Growing up currently means evolution, but evolution can be quiet. Growing up isn’t about ambition or external validation. Like Season 3’s Scoobies, it’s more about seeing myself clearly. Seeing what really matters to me and seeing that I have agency to live a life where I do what matters to me.
It’s going to look different in the teenage Scooby Gang than it looks in me. And than it looks in SMG, and than it looks in you. But we all hold that in common…we keep growing. We keep growing up. (And ironically, continuing to grow up probably helps keep us “young.”)
Do you ever use that language about figuring out what you want to do or be when you grow up? What’s your version? And what does it evoke for you?
BONUS: Gotta love the Internet. I found video of the *second time I interviewed SMG, at #BlogHer16 in Los Angeles. Enjoy…she’s truly smart and charming:
Which Buffy essays informed this essay?
I watched Season 3, episodes 19 (Choices recap) and 20 (The Prom recap)…which aired on May 4 and May 11, 1999 respectively. We’ve only the two-part finale left in Season 3 now, and these two episodes build all the momentum to the final battle with this season’s Big Bad.
The core #BuffyLifeLesson in Choices is that only you can decide what’s right for you. When you figure it out (as Willow does) it’s great. But sometimes it’s a harsh truth you hear from someone else, even a villain or untrustworthy source, but it changes the trajectory of what you thought you should do (as the Mayor does to Buffy and Angel).
The core #BuffyLifeLesson in The Prom is that every decision, every move, every act, big or small, is part of your legacy. You may be unsung, but someone somewhere is noticing, is caring, is looking to you, is loving you and is grateful for you.
I’m here every week, using pop culture (and Buffy the Vampire Slayer right now) as a jumping off point for everything I’m thinking about professional leadership, personal development, political philosophy, and pop culture. I would love you to join me by subscribing. And I would love you to share the link with other nerds like us!
FINAL WORDS
Giles: "You did good work tonight, Buffy."
Buffy: "Yeah, and I got a toy surprise.”
Giles: "Yes, I really had no idea that children - en masse - could be gracious."
Buffy: “Every now and then, people surprise you.”
Giles: "Every now and then … "
