Fun fact: pretty much anything humans do or make is “designed” in some sense.

Being a designer of some capacity doesn’t necessarily mean you’re drawing pretty doodles.

And someone, that simple but oft repeated misunderstanding has led to a whole thing in this story.

AITA for my reply to my relative’s advice for a job

I (22F) graduated from uni last year, I postponed looking for a job to spend the last year travelling which was always my plan and I made it clear to everyone that I was taking the year off.

Here’s where the confusion sets in:

My degree involved “creative disciplines” and had “design” in the name but was in the School of Engineering and involved engineering, science and maths.

I spent all my time during my degree patiently explaining to friends and family that I’m not doing art, interior design, or fashion design, which most people still didn’t seem to listen to at all as they would only latch onto the word “design” in the name and say the same thing next time I saw them.

I repeatedly got dismissive and snide toned comments like “Why do you even need to go to a mechanics class for art?”, “Can you design my living room for me?” or “You just do fashion don’t you lol?” even after the 10th time explaining I don’t do any of those.

Note – I have the utmost respect for all those subjects and love anything creative, the derogatory and dismissive angle was only ever coming from them and I was simply correcting false assumptions about myself.

But then this strange conversation occurred:

At the start of summer I was at a family event and when sitting amongst a room full of people my aunt started telling me how she went to a local school gala and there was a lady with a stall who was personalising boxes by writing people’s name on them in a creative style and how nice they were.

Then she suggested I do that too and go around school galas and fun days doing that and how it will be good for me as a job.

I was a little stunned but replied politely that it sounds really nice but I’m going to start looking for a proper job soon using my degree like I always planned.

She shouted back at me “It IS a proper job!” with an insanely angry expression that shocked me as it was such a random and small exchange.

She then spent the rest of the time acting annoyed with me and is now telling people about it and framing the scenario as something I said to actively belittle and look down on people like the lady she was telling me about who runs the stall, and some people who weren’t actually there and were only told the story by her have said I am rude.

Let’s see what the comments have to say:

I’m not sure she CAN avoid these conversations? Seems like they just keep coming at her.

Though some said she was being elitist.

Others quibbled over what “proper” means in this context.

Personally, I’m hung up on the fact that your aunt, a person who is presumably in at least her 40’s, is going around gossiping about a 23 year old over a small spat.

That’s immature as heck.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.