Career Change Challenges: An Ode To Caffeine

It’s been a few months since I’ve been at this blogging thing. I hope y’all are enjoying getting a weekly dose of random musings. This week I felt the need to share with y’all some of the challenges that go into writing full time. Namely, I find myself struggling with the same questions: how cute and perky do I need to look? How much caffeine do I need to get this job done? Should I throw stuff at people? And how many letters do I need to sign after my name?

(Yes, I’m about to explain all those questions. Fasten your seatbelts, it’s time to play “Get To Know Your Beloved Blogger.”)

If you’ve read the “about” section of this website (or if you know me in real life), you know that writing is Career #3. In true millennial fashion, I’ve changed jobs a few times.

The bulk of my work history was spent as an undergraduate admissions counselor. What does that mean, you ask? It means it was my job to convince people to enroll at my particular university. I had a variety of tactics that I would use to make my case, ranging from showing up at various high schools at a ridiculous early time to give a sales pitch to hosting extravagant campus visit programs where I would bombard them with free stuff to calling incessantly until they agreed to talk to me and/or cussed me out. (The latter was a somewhat frequent occurrence.) I had the added responsibility of coordinating the campus tour guide program, meaning that as soon as I convinced people to become students at my university, I then began an aggressive campaign to convince them to become tour guides so they could aid in my quest of convincing people to enroll at my university. Never ending sales pitches, y’all. But at least I had my army of ridiculously perky tour guides to help me do it. I can pull off ridiculously perky when I need to, but it takes a lot of effort. And caffeine. So. Much. Caffeine.

It was not uncommon for people to see the world “counselor” in my title and assume I was a therapist of some sort. (I’m not kidding. People told me some really deep, disturbing stuff about themselves while I was giving them my college sales pitch.) So I figured I might as well become one. I went to graduate school and earned a MSW (Master of Social Work) with an emphasis in Mental Health Counseling and Substance Abuse. I spent a couple years as a trainee in a counseling center. I ran a support group and saw individuals for counseling appointments. And I did paperwork. Lots and lots of paperwork.

I decided I wasn’t in love with counseling, so after graduating and becoming fully licensed, I left the world of admissions behind and went to work in medical case management. I had heard I would have less people to keep track of and that sounded nice. Toward the end of my time in admissions counseling, I had about 900-1000 students with whom I was expected to follow up with regularly. As a case manager, I had about 60 people. And I didn’t have to nag them about paying tuition and/or becoming tour guides.

What that meant, I soon found out, is that I spent about two hours of my day actually interacting with human beings. And those two hours were spent with just one client. The rest of the day was spent doing paperwork because social workers are expected to write about everything. A typical note looked something like this:

Met with client to fill out papers to apply for benefits. Client signed all the papers. I explained what was in all the papers. We discussed how the client felt about all the papers. I validated the client’s feelings about all the papers. I faxed all the papers to all the different agencies working with the client. I made copies of all the papers for all the different files. I uploaded all the papers to the different application databases so the client can receive funding. In my professional opinion, after conducting a thorough assessment of the client’s physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, and cultural needs, the client would prefer to not do as much paperwork. I validated how the client felt about not doing as much paperwork. We did all the paperwork anyways because that’s what Uncle Sam wants. Respectfully submitted, Amy, Medical Case Manager, MSW, LSW.

I used to think it would be fun to have letters after my name. That was before I had to sign all my letters after my name ten million times a day. I had hoped that eventually all the agencies I interacted with would just come to recognize my name, realize I was a goddess of social work, and just accept my awesomeness as proof of my credentials. But alas, it doesn’t work that way. The gods of paperwork — whom all social workers are required to serve — demand never ending repetition.

Anyways, the point of this massive work history recap is to illustrate how different my current job is from my past ones. With those previous jobs, I had clear expectations of what my day was supposed to look like. As an admissions counselor, I was expected to show up at the office and talk at people until they were convinced to enroll. Or I showed up at a high school. Or a college fair. Or the unemployment office. Or the county fair. Come to think of it, I was expected to show up at a lot of places and throw free college swag at people until they agreed to fork over their life savings to pay tuition. But the point is I had a somewhat consistent schedule with clear expectations — look cute, be perky, hand out free stuff (but not too much free stuff, because we don’t want to be accused of bribery), and train a small army of tour guides.

With social work, I once again had a somewhat consistent schedule and clear expectations — talk to people about their feelings. Get them to sign a lot of papers. Write for hours about how they feel and all the papers they signed. Looking cute and being perky were not as important in this role. Free stuff was still handed out on occasion, but instead of convincing people to pay me tuition, I was convincing people to let me help them sign up to get some money through various benefit programs.

Now as a full time writer, it’s tricky sometimes to know how to structure my day. I could dress cute, but jeans and a tee shirt are more comfortable. I do enjoy the lack of paperwork, but I still spend plenty of time in front of a screen. Being perky is still an option, I suppose, but The Cat doesn’t seem to appreciate my energy (unless it’s being channeled into getting her food or playing with the laser pointer). I’ve tried throwing free stuff at The Cat since that’s been a core part of my professional identity for so long. She doesn’t really care for it unless the free stuff happens to be one of her toy mice or a kitty treat.

But perhaps the hardest part of this career is the fact that I can’t just write on cue. The Muse doesn’t work that way. That, however, is a story for another day. For now, I’m going to sign off and get some caffeine. That is one job duty that definitely hasn’t changed.

Respectfully submitted, Amy Lister, MSW (Magnificently Snarky Writer)