The Hardest Decision I've Ever Made

To leave or not to leave.  That was my question. Every day for two months I struggled with this question. They say the first day of campus organizer training: "every single day you will have to make the decision to stay here." For me, that could not have been more true.

The most I got to see of Denver at trainings
was my hotel balcony

First, a little background: what does it mean to be employed as a TPIN (The Public Interest Network) campus organizer? Luckily, TPIN is all about messaging. We know that you cannot tell a compelling story that gets someone to act unless you have a prepared and perfected elevator pitch on everything you stand for. So, since one of the things campus organizers stand for is building and recruiting more campus organizers, we have the messaging down about what it was that we did.

Elevator pitch I would give to a senior student intern about what it is I did: "As a campus organizer, I help students at universities fight for the social and environmental issues that they care about by giving them the tools and know-how to make lasting change."

Just another week on the job

Maya's addendum: "The tools and know-how I will give you have been spoon-fed to me through 2 weeks of intensive training. I will also spoon-feed them to you as my student intern, but try and do so in a way such that you think you have come up with these ideas on your own. If I find you cannot come up with and execute good ideas on your own, I won't give you too much responsibility. Since we have plenty of roles for everyone here, we can put you in a role that you can handle with a time commitment you most likely can't handle without getting burnt out. A large chunk of campus organizing is, as the name implies, organizing. Since we do everything with paper and pen, we will need people to spend endless hours doing data entry, transcribing impossible to read phone numbers and email addresses. If you can handle it, we will have you staple so many papers you may sprain your wrist. You might have to miss class, lose sleep and study time to do all that we need you to in order to win our campaigns, but that’s the price it takes to make lasting change. So do all that you can and more and you will be rewarded in the world being a better place."

Sometimes it works. Sometimes by giving all of ourselves and more we win campaigns. But if you can't enjoy the world you fight for, why fight at all? I couldn't answer this question. I noticed some of my coworkers and especially my boss could. That’s why I stayed as long as I did. I saw it could work for some people. I saw interns making true progress and I knew PIRG has done some incredible work on campaigns.

My smiling face at being able to enjoy
nature and conquering balance on the bad leg.

However, I saw more people who were miserable. My favorite co-worker was pushed into quitting and many other friends I had made through training went through the same fate. Worse than that, so did our interns. We would push them so hard we would have to recruit from scratch each semester. If I was allowed to put more effort into retention than into recruitment, than maybe, just maybe I could have stayed.

But alas, I was drowning so fast I could not grasp for air let alone help lower the water levels to keep others from drowning. So I saved myself. Perhaps in the future I'll figure out to lower the water before the pool gets shut down for good.

Now I'm swimming again. Metaphorically, the depression persisted another couple weeks and then I was my normal self again by mid-January. Physically, I actually had time and energy to swim, do my physical therapy each day as recommended, and feel healthy. I know I made the right decision and can pursue my true environmental passions now. I guess I am happy I got the opportunity to see the political scene is not for me, though I wish I had gotten out sooner.