Potential Energy

I worked a lot last week. I’ll work a lot this week. I work a lot next week.

According to Google’s AI, work is physical or mental effort exerted to achieve a purpose or result, often for compensation. Thank you, AI.

I spend more mental effort than physical effort these days, often for compensation.

Winter break has come and gone and my schedule fills up with things that require mental and physical energy. Nothing that I can’t do. Nothing that I don’t like doing. Still, I do most of these things for compensation.

Being a professor at the University of Iowa is the best job I’ve ever had. It is still work.

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I’ve been working for a long time. You have probably been working for a long time, too. We exert lots of physical and mental effort to achieve things, often for compensation.

My compensation now is better than my compensation when I was a 16-year-old swing manager at McDonalds, a 17-year-old manager at Subway, or a 22-year-old barista at Dunn Brothers. The effort that I spend is less physical these days, but that is partially because my body produces less potential energy. I can’t say that is true for sure, because Biology confounds me. And don’t get me wrong, my body has produced plenty of energy over the years. Often too much. Anxiety is related to energy and I’ve experienced my fair share.

It is good to turn potential energy into kinetic energy. It is good to build things. It is also good, sometimes, to store potential energy.

Winter break, in my world, is for storing potential energy. Hibernation is restorative. The spring semester, in my world, is about coming out of the cave and spending potential energy. Spending physical and mental effort uses up potential energy. Transitioning between hibernation and the spring semester is, in my world, work. I don’t know what it is in your world.

I’ve pushed my knowledge of Biology to its furthest limits in the paragraph above. I got D’s in high school Biology. I got B’s in college Biology. As part of my work last week, I spent a few hours in a science and social issues class. I learned about water. I learned about the methods scientists use to solve problems. I spent mental energy to better understand this scientific content in relationship with the teaching and learning that was happening around me. I was tired when I got home.

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I suppose working is a fundamental part of who am I. I have to imagine it is part of who you are. I always thought Studs Terkel was a funny name for an author. I never read Working, but Studs spent some time thinking about how work is part of what we are. Read it and send me the cliff notes? We don’t use cliff notes anymore, I suppose. AI can read books for us. Sadly, it can write books for us too. I stay away from AI as much as I can, unless I’m googling the definition of the word work for a silly little blog.

I am happy with the work I do these days. My project, in some ways, has been about bringing people together to build stuff and, in so building, transforming themselves and their worlds. Sometimes I’ve been compensated for this work. Sometimes I’ve been punished. Sometimes I’ve been ignored. My compensation has been financial, yes, but it has been something else too. Kurt Vonnegut wrote that building something grows our souls, so you know. Ultimately, the things I was after when I first read Chronicles of Narnia continue to move in me as I teach a doctoral research methods course. Potential energy turns into kinetic energy which cultivates more potential energy.

Who knows what potential energy might transform into next? Who knows how our souls might transform?