Clarissa's Blog

I felt that I was stagnating intellectually (as well as personally, emotionally, romantically, and on every other level, but that’s not the point of this post) in Ukraine and decided to emigrate. My intellectual goal was to enter into a completely new profession and see if I could rise to the top in it in spite if being an immigrant. I wanted a challenge, and this seemed like a really big one.

At first, I was planning to become a literary translator. I always feel like I need to imagine my perfect existence down to the smallest detail to make it real (and this method works, I highly recommend). In my literary translator dream, I would live in a second-floor condo in a small cobblestone street, and sit on the balcony, surrounded with flowers, working on my translations.

There were two problems with this plan. One was that I had been working as a translator for years and was already quite good, so it didn’t seem like that much of a change.

The second problem was that, as an immigrant, I felt I needed to succeed within a group, a structure, a community, if you will, that would recognize my worth on a daily basis. Being even the most successful translator would not legitimate me as much as I needed. An immigrant needs a lot more in terms of social prestige than a non-immigrant.