PS LOL CSNY
When I was back east in December I sat at a kitchen table with my childhood friend R while she fielded a phonecall about heart attacks. One of her extended family members had been rushed to the emergency room, and her phone number was passed hand to hand until these distant relatives reached out to her for reassurance. R has a PhD and an MD and beyond this, remarkably for someone so skilled at science, she has always been one of the most personable people I know – someone who understands where other people are at and what they need. If I was ever sick with anything, R is who I would want there. She is the person I would trust most to know what was going on and to tell me about it.So R sat at the table across from me, calmly translating the frantic word-of-mouth from the relatives into clear and careful information. She talked about what the different things wrong might be, and why the doctors were doing the tests they were doing, and what the results would mean. She suggested other tests that might wisely be requested, and then suggested the most effective ways to go about requesting them. I felt so lucky to be there. Because how often do you get to witness what your adult friends actually do?
And listening to R, I also felt – and I hate to admit this – a little bit embarrassed. Because somewhere since high school, R got really, really good at this medicine thing. My other friend from high school has an art therapy practice, and my other friend from high school is a lawyer, and my other friend from high school runs her own marketing business. They are all very good at what they do. What exactly have I been doing with myself while they were getting good at things?
I’ve traveled around a bunch. And I guess that’s enough for me, because I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I lived in some interesting places and held bizarre short-term jobs and acquired quite a lot of miscellaneous skills. But the skills aren’t under any particular umbrella. What's the proper profession for someone who can survey sea turtle nests and make a pretty GIS map and order bread in Dutch? The closest thing my skill set might be useful for is journalism, which is something I planned to do for a while. I gave up the idea in college, and I sometimes wonder why.
I was in a room just now with a community of brownfield professionals, talking about brownfield topics. I’m much more fluent in brownfields than I was just a year ago. And if I keep doing this for even five more years, I could really get something going. It’s a small enough realm that I could confidently get my head around it, and then grow it in directions I find familiar and fascinating.
But while there is something undeniably appealing about being a specialist, there’s also something about it that stops me in my tracks. Five years? In one job? In one field? It’s a little hard to imagine.
In the mean time I came back to my office and I wrote an email that contained the following text.
The site is directly adjacent to the creek (map link below) on the southwest corner of Street and 108th. It’s a 7600 square foot gravel lot owned by BES. DEQ issued an NFA letter for the property several years ago; remaining petroleum contamination was left in place because of a sewer line and other barriers to traditional soil removal. The grant we just received from EPA will fund in situ bioremediation of the remaining contamination pockets. Our contractor is working on the ABCA right now.
The moral of the story is apparently this: if it’s late at night and you’re running low on acronyms and you don’t know who to call, I’m your girl. I can also edit and steam milk.
posted by tortaluga @ 5:03 PM
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