Volunteering & Volunteer Students

A little about myself, very little actually and you will forgive the generality of this paragraph but, again, all in the name of trying to stay as anonymous as possible.  I am a mid-20's graduate of a state school.  After graduating college and a brief stint working for my uncle in construction I took a sales job.  This job was not worth while as I saw relatively no money off of it and came home after lengthy commutes all day to feel like shit.  In addition to the lack of fiscal reciprocation and long days, the practices of this company and many other rooted in it's parent company were dubious at best and evil and duplicitous at worst.  My ultimate decision became that if I was going to make no money I might as well do something which made me feel good about myself, so I left that job and joined the social service field.  Funny story, to me at least, when I made up my mind to leave the private sector I used to spend the first day or two in a sales territory lining up sales so that it would look like every day was a profitable day, and then would drive out to turf, knock out a lined up sale in the morning and then in to the city to interview for other jobs.  I guess that's not nearly as funny written down as it was to me at the time.

I have been at the same agency in the same position for two and a half years.  I greatly disapprove of this particular agency and my reasoning for this will become a large portion of what the basis of this blog will be.  I do this job for two main reasons, while I abhor the administration and staff I work with for the most part (like any other job there is a select few who are very nice and I am actual friends outside of work with one or two of them), I feel a deep seeded need to help the clientele as best as possible.  This is, in the most general sense, a mental health program.  I love most of the clients I work with, they want to get better and I fundementally want to help them do so because that's what my life is, helping those who want help.  They are basically good people who have made poor decisions for any number of reasons but they range from people still studying for their GED to people who hold multiple advanced degrees.  An interesting fact is that many of those who are very well educated like to have the most down to earth conversations, and enjoy interacting on a relatively base level, with many conversations centering on music, art and sport.  Those with considerably less education are the ones who will talk to you like you are attending their guest lecture. 

The other reason is that while I work for an agency I can't stand, I volunteer for a non-profit which I love.  The anticipation of going to volunteer is often times what I use as motivation for slogging through a day of actual paid work.  Something about that previous sentence is severely warped and reversed.  The people I volunteer with and for are amazingly gracious.  They are motivated to make themselves better and better their community therefore it works to motivate those helping them attain these goals.  The people I work for and with, for the most part (again there are always exceptions) their highest motivation is extremely selfish and is usually centered around a way to trick people in to giving them what they want.  The contrast is stark and often times very disconcerting. 

Also, it helps that they don't make you pee in a cup.

My love for people is what keeps me in these fields, I love to help people and I feel that most people want to be helped, I just wish there were more agreeable manors to do so and that the hierarchy weren't so similar to what I fled in the world of sales and direct-marketing.