The job that saves your life

This refers to the great episode of This American Life called The Job That Takes Over Your Life. It's not a particularly brilliant episode, but Ira Glass captures that feeling of a bad workplace. Unless you're incredibly new to your working life, or incredibly lucky, you've had the bad workplace. We can all relate. However, in the years since I first heard this episode, I've gone back to this thought: What about the job that saves your life?

The thing about IT in education is it is a constant string of re-births. Like anyone in IT, you deal with being a customer service bitch. You deal with misplaced anger, passive agression, agression, incredulity, disappointment, and feelings of personal betrayal. It's not your fault. You're not a chip. You're just the guy that has to pamper the chip when it misbehaves. It's not you that lacks empathy. It's the chip. Unfortunately, in a weird reverse synecdoche, you represent the chip and all it's failings in being more human. So where is the re-birth?

The re-birth comes when you're leaving the office, the empty classroom, the dark systems suite to trip over five girls sitting in the hall in a pile of sneakers, rehersing their lines for drama class. It comes around lunchtime when you almost close your office door because of the screaming in the hall. Screaming! No one screams in a not-for-profit, a mutual fund, a law firm. But, like a daily mantra, you pause and tell yourself "That screaming is why I am here." And, like I was taught in Sunday School, I turn, door open, to go back to answering the phone calls, the e-mails, and worrying about lack of funding, administrative battles and behavioural problems. This is my offering. Because those screams, those giggles, those whispers. They say : "This do in rememberance of us."