...I recommend picking up a copy of Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs, the book I am currently reading. I picked it up randomly at a bookstore here because it was a "Staff Pick," and because I have been in about a 3-year period of confusion for what I want my own job to be, so I thought this might help. But this book has done a lot more than that, it is completely absorbing and an awesome read.
The reason I am posting about this book on the SAS blog is that I just finished the section on Lawyers and the Law, and I came across a quote that reminded me of my experience in SAS. This is from a social worker whose job it is to try to get accused criminals treatment instead of jail time, or otherwise improve their situation:
"I know this sounds nutty, but I'm learning to look at things in what I think is a more real way, you know? Just the different way the world is for different people. So I'm not always having these huge triumphs with my cases or anything, but I'm dealing with reality. Which, you know, as painful as that may be, once you start dealing with it, it's very hard to stop."
Reading this really rang true for me and the maturing process that happened to me as a result of SAS: the breaking of the bubble (to be cliche about it), Emory or otherwise that a lot of people (or at least, me) grow up in. Doing my Tier 1 internship (which was being a camp counselor at the Nicholas House, a homeless shelter) and hearing about everyone else's internships helped to shake me out of my own little world, and this quote helped me realize what I have liked about that. You just can't go back to your sheltered world, really, in the same way. I think we do go back somewhat, I go back into the Emory bubble all the time, but something about that reality I faced during SAS pulls me out of it every so often. Sorry for the philosophizing, but I just liked this quote a lot and thought it might be relevant to some of your placement experiences as well.
As far as my current placement, I love it. What I really love about it is that I feel like there is always more to do than we could possibly do, so my presence there always feels very important to Public Citizen's work, which I think is important for Texas, which can be really influential to the U.S., which could be really influential globally. And this kind of Texas-->U.S.-->world thinking is something everyone talks about all the time at the office, because our overall focus right now is abetting global warming, which is (obviously) a global problem, and that kind of attitude makes me feel the weight of everything I do--from making a phone call to drafting educational material or writing reports. And so I stay extra time, and I am going into work this Monday and I don't work Mondays. I just really like my placement.
And to tie this back into the beginning of this post, I first thought of energy efficiency as kind of a problem for the affluent portions of society, like can you really worry about your carbon footprint when you are struggling to feed your family? But actually, thinking about energy is dealing with reality in a way I haven't before as well. All of us use energy all the time. I am using it to write this blog. But before this summer I spent verrrrrry little time thinking about how any of that energy got to me. I only ever really gave it consideration when the power went out or a fuse blew in my house. So studying and working on the energy issue is really a way of me dealing with a part of my own reality, and has opened a Pandora's box of thoughts--so now I know how my electricity gets to me (sort of), but where does my food come from? my clothes? my car? this computer? Once you start dealing with reality, its hard to stop. Its kind of ridiculous in a way, that I haven't given a lot of thought to these sort of obvious questions before, but there you go.
Anyway, I have yammered enough. Go off and enjoy your summertime! And go find the book Gig, and read it.
- Natalie
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