When I began working for the University of Minnesota in 2008, I was 30 years old and I was a mess. I was working in communications for a now defunct airline, editing an internal company newsletter that nobody cared about, including management. Toward the end, in a cost-cutting measure, the company moved me out to a building in the suburbs that shared space with a subsidiary that, after some layoffs, had some space to fill, and boy could I fill space. In retrospect, they may have been hoping that I’d feel utterly defeated and quit so they wouldn’t have to lay me off, because a recession was right around the corner and airlines were already feeling it. It worked. But not before I’d found another job with the U of M.
The thing was, I wanted to work. I wanted to contribute something of value, and I felt like I had something to give, if given the chance. Not having that was crushing me. And I knew writing was the thing I could give. Since I was 15, writing felt like, for lack of a better word, my calling.
I’d been searching for months when I saw a job posting in the University’s central communications office. The job was to work on the internal communications team, consisting of three of us. My specific job was to write feature stories about faculty and staff and edit a newsletter called Brief, which had since 1970 been sent weekly in some format to the thousands of faculty and staff of the U of M around the state.
In the interview, which always happens by committee at the U of M, I was sweating profusely in front of a group of five people who for some reason seemed genuinely interested in my responses to their questions. Probably they were placing bets on whether I’d dehydrate and pass out before the interview ended. I should note that I have been bald since about age 25, and without a hat or my NBA headband, when I am under pressure there’s nothing to slow the waterfall of perspiration but my eyebrows (which are, thankfully, substantial). I feel like it’s also relevant to note that part of the reason why I write is that me not talk good, so job interviews historically had not gone well for me. Writing is how I best communicate.
Years later, my (now former) boss, who was on the hiring committee, shared with me that one of the main reasons she wanted to hire me among the more than 60 applicants was because of my answer to a question about how the U of M was a diverse institution, and so how did I feel about and work with people from all kinds of different cultural and social backgrounds. I’d responded that I’d grown up in South Dakota, where pretty much everyone is white (According to the 1990 census, the percentage of Black people in South Dakota was approximately 0.5%—around 3,300 Black residents in the entire state). There was, as I recall, not a single Black person in any of my grades from kindergarten through 8th.
Still, I said, I was genuinely interested in people and their stories, and people usually liked me, and so I said I think it will workout, but that I didn’t have much experience with people from diverse backgrounds. My boss said that people often try to bluff their way through questions with answers they know their interviewers want to hear, but that my answer was essentially too stupid to be anything but honest.
When I was hired I began to work on stories about faculty, staff, and research that consistently blew me away. My job was simply to ask people about the amazing things they were doing and then write about it. And while work is often work, and we all have rough days, it still seems at times like I have performed some sleight of hand.
Since then, I’ve put out more than 630 issues of that newsletter, which often included stories I’d written. But to this day I’ve never stopped marveling at where I was, where I am: Who are all these smart, driven people, and how did they end up here in this one place? These people who are working to cure Alzheimer’s and cancer, who are saving children’s lives through the U’s hospitals, who are educating our teachers, who are breeding better apples, but also sending probes deep into Antarctica’s ice, and into the sun, for god’s sake? Who are these people gathered here, many of whom don’t look like me but who seem to want the same thing I wanted—still want: to be able to give something of themselves, to contribute something of value. The U of M provides that opportunity for a lot of people every single day.
Now, 17 years later I can honestly say that the U of M saved me. I was floundering and without purpose, and purpose is what most of us need most in this life as we find our way through its ups and downs. Purpose is an anchor. But tomorrow I’ll step down as editor of Brief, though I’ll still be at the U of M. In the meantime, I’m hoping to work on more stories, more creative projects, and to do what I do best: write and sweat.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous. Change is hard. That newsletter was a reliable task, and I am a reliable person, and so we were good together. But I don’t need saving anymore.
P.S. I’ve been reflecting lately about how writing is often about reflection–whether about what you’ve heard, if you’re telling someone else’s story, or about yourself and your own experiences if you’re telling your own. I often find it extremely uncomfortable to reflect on myself, but as I get older, I’m trying to do more hard things, so when I find myself thinking “Man, I don’t want to think about me and that,” I know I’m going to need to sit down and think about me and that.
Also, I’ve written about my acute nostalgia affliction here and here and some other places before, hence the title of this post. It’s a sickness.
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