The word that I use in my community is Khoor which means whatever job you do in my home language. For example, my father’s job is being a mechanic so his “khoor” is being a mechanic. When my parents would ask me if I have finish work in my language. They would say “Tu varast khoor ishmu?”The first time hearing and experiencing this word was on a Saturday afternoon, and my grandfather was taking me to my aunt’s house. He always gives me life lessons when walking and one of the things he would always say is “you should always find good khoor for yourself” in my home language. This quote from my grandpa has always stuck to me till even now. it’s something I have to do for my future, get paid well to provide for my family. Usually, when parents say these things they would always try to make you go to a specific job like a doctor or a lawyer but my grandpa didn’t tell me those things he told me to find work that pays well but also finds a khoor that would make me happy. I didn’t really listen to his point on getting a job that would make me happy because I was 11 at the time and he would teach me everything so I never wanted to disappoint him. So I would try to google the best jobs to make money and saw that becoming a doctor is the thing I wanted to do. (turns out that is not my dream job anymore so yeah).

One of the reasons why I would try to search which job paid the best is because I realized my family was not particularly rich per se so I would try my best for school (I would still get bad grades though). Both my parents were born in a village in Quba, Azerbaijan during the time of the Soviet Union. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, my parents moved to America and it was vastly different. Both my mom and dad were working long hours plus my parents had 4 kids in 6 years plus my oldest brother who was 4 years older than my second oldest, so my parents were carrying everything on their shoulders. My parents did everything for me. They broke their back for my siblings and me, got no vacation, little days off so they mean everything to me and I want to give back to them. No, I have to give back for what they did for me. If I can’t, I would be disappointed in myself.

During high school, my brothers would try to guide and help me pick out what type of future job I wanted to have. During this one of my brothers had a brilliant idea to see some of the jobs of my family members and try to learn what they do. One of the jobs was my dad’s. he is a mechanic so I saw him doing jobs during that day living like the normal oil change to a somewhat harder work like replacing the bumper. my father showed me how to do an oil change by making me unscrew the drain plug and filter it was a very big mess I even missed the oil drain pan for a second and after that, I had to refill the oil and had to check the oil level to see if it was in the max. It was fun and a pain learning with my father. My father told me when finishing work with him “that is khoor”. This taught me something I wanted to do for my future career which is to be more physical with things. Whether it is making stuff myself, or having to do with it.  Still being a mechanic was something that was cool but wasn’t the job I wanted.

Another one of the jobs I went to was my grandpa’s job. His job was being an owner of a restaurant. His job was paying the worker, making sure the worker were doing their jobs correctly. I had worked with my grandpa during the summer as a waiter for his restaurant for three months. This was the first job I ever worked at, it was difficult at the time. I did a lot of things and learned how to satisfy the customer when to approach them and do other things. One thing that happened at the restaurant was when these two guys enter the restaurant with a two-liter bottle of coke and drink it while eating and we told them to put it away cause they weren’t allowed to have outside drinks and so they put the coke away and tried pouring it under the table and we told them to either stopped or leave so they paid the bill and left. It was a funny experience but it helped me learn things.

Even though I did not go to my mother’s job because she was busy and could not do it at the time. I have seen her work. My mom is a medical assistant and whenever I have to go to a doctor’s appointment I would go to my mom’s work when waiting for my appointments. I would always see my mom helping patients, and asking for required stuff that is needed. The majority of the patients in the office are older people. They are probably 50+ years old so when my mom tells the older patients what they need she is super direct and slow to make sure they don’t make a mistake because it sometimes happens.

Going back to what my grandpa said to me when I was 11 about “you should always find good khoor for yourself”, khoor is something you would enjoy and keep you going in life, that is what my grandpa meant when he said that and I did not understand that. You should find what you love and apply it to your work. When I was finally finished with seeing how some of my family members work I still had some searching to do and find what I wanted to do. I wanted to be physical with my khoor and solve things on my own. The khoor that I want to do is some sort of Engineering or do computer science because it is something I found to be passionate about and it is very interesting to learn.