“I was very happy making a lot of money,” a teacher in Birmingham, Alabama, told me over lunch at his school.

 

I enjoyed the lifestyle, I enjoyed the feeling that I was good at something that was hard to do, and I felt like I was putting my energy into something very productive. But I also felt that there was a narrowness to my life because of my work. I knew a lot about a particular industry where I was making decisions about new loans and structuring pay-backs from old loans that weren’t performing, weren’t being paid back. So I knew the companies, I knew the dynamics of the marketplace, I knew the movers and shakers. Some of the people were very nice, and some weren’t.
I wouldn’t say that I’d think a lot about them when I went home. I wouldn’t say that I really cared that much about them outside of the business we were doing together. In fact, I think that everyone in a job like mine is encouraged not to care too much, and not to know too much about the personalities you’re working with. If I’m turning you down for a loan, if I’m taking something out of your business to sell to pay back some funds you can’t pay back, I don’t think I’m going to do a better job by knowing and caring for you. It’ll cloud my judgment. I think that took a toll on me.
I wanted to care more about the people I worked with. Not just to make a difference, like so many people say – and that’s true, too – but to look at the people I’m working with and say, yes, I want to know what your struggles are, I want to know your story. And now – wow, did I get what I asked for! Maybe sometimes too much so, but I know that I’m a better teacher to my high school students when I know their stories, and I never have to turn off that human side of myself. I get to be a more complete person, and my personality isn’t sliced into the parts that are OK for work, and OK for home, and I’ve got to keep them apart. I’ve been able to reunite my mind and my heart by becoming a teacher, and I hope I’ll never have to have them so separated again.