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Writer's pictureSarah Ratekin

You're Clearly Very Passionate About...


"... what you do!"


I'm currently enrolled in a Master's program, and the school offers a few different scholarship opportunities. An interview was just one part of the process. The interviewer asked me about a several different topics, and then she asked about my current job and why I chose the specific degree path I'm on.

Whew! After about 20 minutes of me explaining what I do, how I got there, why we do it, and how it impacts pretty much everybody else on the planet, she said, "Wow! You're clearly very passionate about what you do!"

You could say that - and you'd be absolutely right! I love the fact that the teams I support, and the company where I'm assigned, not only have well-crafted corporate social responsibility messaging, but that those "talking points" are part of conversations and decisions on literally a daily basis. I hear my colleagues talking about making the food chain stronger, safer, more sustainable, more robust, and so many other nuances that go into "enriching life", and the conversations don't just happen when The Boss can hear them, or when they think it will help facilitate a decision in their favor because they're "toeing the party line". That vision permeates pretty well everything we do, and, as I said to person on the phone, it's a really fantastic experience to walk into work each morning knowing that in some small way, you're part of something AMAZING.

The same is true for my kids. I have four brilliant, beautiful, passionate progeny, two in college and two still in high school. They're engaged, socially aware, intellectually curious, deeply sarcastic (they get that from me!) and brimming with vigor and enthusiasm for their chosen avenues of exploration, and they have been that way from pretty much the moments they each became verbal. One's a combat medic in the Army Reserves and a nursing student, one's an international studies major, one plans to pursue a career as a public defender, and one's undecided but trying lots of different things on with an internal drive that makes my head spin. I'm delighted (and sometimes simultaneously frustrated) by the depths of their energy and their penchant for Doing Good In The World.

That's not why I'm passionate about what I do, though - it just makes that passion easy to express. I'm passionate about facilitating people. I am not designing therapeutic treatments for food animals, but I'm helping people who are, do so more efficiently, in environments that free up their time/energy/talents so they can focus on the (incredibly cool) science that makes our mission viable. I'm also not doing my kids' homework or deciding what their career paths might look like, but I'm creating spaces where they can do that juicy, complicated thinking in a safe, supportive, and creatively sustainable way.

I'm passionate about other things, too. I'm active in political spaces that are important to me. I'm vocal about social issues that matter for us all. I have every intention of squeezing every bit of every experience out of life that I possibly can, and finding ways to increase the breadth and depth of those experiences every chance I get. And for me, much of that comes through facilitation, both for myself and for others. That passion is where magic happens in my world!

What are you passionate about?


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