Week Two Discussion: Workplace Assumptions
I’m the son of a stay-at-home mother and a naval father, so I grew up with a strong sense of work ethic and discipline, where I distinctly remember my father telling me that ‘life is not a rehearsal’. It’s a sentiment he felt strongly when his parents, my grandparents, died in a car crash when he was a teenager, but also when he survived his ship being bombed during the Falklands War in 1982. It’s the strong work ethic which shows up in starting early, going the extra mile, always reading the recommended material and not just the required books. It’s the kind of ethic which asks what if more than when can. The kind of ethic which gets you up in the morning and carves out time for what’s important, but it’s also the kind of work ethic which is strongly mission-oriented. In many ways a strong work ethic is life-giving in itself.
It’s the same sentiment I had upon surviving cancer in 2013, where one reframes what’s important, and especially one’s relationship to work. Prior to getting sick I had been working very long hours, and was increasingly just getting more and more burned out. But after becoming a survivor, my relationship to work completely changed. No longer was I prepared to work into the night or on weekends, and it was instrumental in boundary-setting. I became more fulfilled in carving out time for what I wanted to do which was facilitated and empowered by work, rather than making career and work an end unto itself. I’ve been fortunate enough to have enjoyed much professional success, but much of it has been empty calories. Awards and recognition which comes and goes, promotions which climb a ladder which never seems enough. Job security which is more about lack of creativity than genuinely fulfilling projects. For me, fulfillment has come through personal creative work, and the time and space to just spend time with things which interest me. Often that’s non-fiction books, and in a more formal sense my time at Penn. Lately it’s been learning Latin and dusting off my French ahead of a trip to Europe in the Spring. the kind of fulfillment which comes from being able to look back at a body of work and savoring the journey.
But the balance is never easy, especially between work and family. My three-ring circus of being a principal in the NBC Newsroom, a dad and a husband, and my academic pursuits at Penn have often strained life at home. But we make it work. Thankfully my job at NBC has been incredibly supportive of my work at Penn, and I’m thankful to have a boss who is more than willing to let me have days off to write a paper. I’m very grateful for this, and know that it’s rare. Very often I’ve involved my family in my assignments. I’ve cooked Roman dinners for them, watched obscure arthouse Russian movies with them, performed positive interventions with them, and walked Locust with them. I’ve made my journey our journey, and I’m excited for them to be in the audience upon graduation in May. But they know that as wonderful as the Penn experience has been, they know that there’s more journey still to come.
