My Not-For-Profit Life

***DISCLAIMER:  Some of this post may look familiar to a few of you.  I snagged bits and pieces from a previous post which I created & later deleted.  But there's new stuff, too, so go ahead and read it anyway.***

This is quite reflective of my current salary

I have been a counselor of sorts for a variety of nonprofit organizations since 1997.  When one conjures up a mental image of a counselor, one might envision this:

M'kay?

or this:

This looks exactly nothing like what I do.

However, I assure you that both of those images are nowhere near what is, or has ever been, the reality of my employment.  


When I began social service work at age 22, it was in the domestic violence field.  I worked at a domestic abuse shelter for about a year and then became the coordinator of a batterers' intervention program.  I remember telling my sister about my new job and then having this conversation:


SISTER:  Um...shouldn't someone else be doing that job?
ME:  Like who?
SISTER:  I don't know.  Someone who's not my little sister?


Needless to say, no one in my family was particularly excited about me having that job.  Truth be told, neither was I.  I'd groan whenever the phone rang in my office, because I knew that, when I picked it up, it was highly probable that there'd be a total fucking asshole on the other line.  "Yeah, that bitch judge said I need some anger management or whatever, but it's all bullshit.  I never did anything."  Riiiiiight.


It didn't take me long to realize that the stress and strain of social service work is not at all sustainable if you actively dislike your clients.  It's hard wanting to continually put out the necessary effort to counsel people when you have regular fantasies about ending their  lives.

There were two fun things about that job.  The program was called Batterers' Intervention Program (BIP), so I used to call the clients "bippers," which they hated, so that was cool.  The second fun thing was running into clients while I was out & about with friends.  Whenever we'd pass by some guy with a mullet, six teeth, stonewashed cutoff jeans and a sleeveless, classic rock t-shirt and said character would smile politely at me and say hello, my friends would turn to me and say, "Hmmm...lemme guess."  Then I would explain to them that I was trying to branch out in my friendship circles & that they should try to be more open minded.  Other than that, the job blew horribly, but for $10 an hour, who could complain?  Oh, wait...


After that lovely experience, I decided it was time to work with younger people.  [I also promised my mother that I would never again take a job with the word "violence" in the title.]  Shifting from working with adults to working with youth was way better in many ways, but money-wise it was the same.  I remember having an interview for a position with a foster family agency, and after my future supervisor explained that my job duties would involve intensive crisis intervention and being on-call 24/7, she told me what my salary would be.  When I informed her that the amount she'd offered most likely wouldn't work for me, instead of offering more money, she offered to let me borrow a book on simplicity.  Note that she offered to lend me the book. Even with an MSW and about 25 years of social work experience, she wasn't making enough money to allow for her to give away any possessions.


Given the type of work I've done and the salaries I've made, I laughed very hard when I did a Google Image search for "school counselor" and found this:

Um...what?  Is this meant to be ironic?

But despite the low wages, at least the work is very rewarding, while simultaneously soul-crushingly painful at times.  I've worked with youth now for about 12 years chronologically and ten thousand years spiritually, so while in some ways I am 36 years old, I feel like I am actually 10,024.

Here I am resting.

One might think that it would be extremely difficult to get young people to talk about their lives.  However, what I've found over the years is that the simple act of listening most often leads to people completely spilling their guts, regardless of the fact that they've only just met me.  I think this is indicative of the fact that most people don't listen at all, so on the rare occasion that folks find a good listener, they pour out everything that they've been holding in since the last time someone listened to them. While it sometimes infuriates me that people in general are pathetically terrible listeners, I suppose I should be grateful.  If more people listened, then I wouldn't have a job.

Most people

Me

Currently, I work with high school dropouts between the ages of 17 and 25.  Because my school is also a vocational training program that specializes in construction, for the most part it attracts young men who like taking stuff apart and hitting things really hard.  Therefore, the majority of my students are much like this:

"I want nothing more than to talk about my feelings."

However, even those guys seem shocked into excessive self-disclosure upon encountering my ninja-like listening abilities.

I truly love my work, and I believe I was meant to do it.  On some level, however, I really do feel for my current students for having to work with me.  I imagine them coming to the school's orientation, hearing about the counselor they're going to get, envisioning someone normal and uplifting, and then ending up with this:

Oh, well.  At least I listen.