Daniela Papi's Blog

Yesterday Adam, another PEPY Intern arrived. Right away he said, "You know, this is the closest thing to a real job I've ever had." Got me thinking..... "Real" job, "Real" world. If THIS isn't real, I'm sorry, but stock markets sure aren't.

I worked as a consultant (that ambiguous word meaning "doing things no one else wants to do on their own") right out of school. I looked at numbers all day on a database, checked discrepancies, made plans to make this time shorter or that price lower, and typed up reports about it. Is THAT real? I almost never saw the things I was buying, met the people whose data I was editing, saw the final product go to market, watched the mining tool whose ball bearings we had sourced mine. My whole job took place in an imaginary world of cyberdom.

Here on the other hand we are doing research, buying bikes, delivering them to kids, seeing them smile, raising funds, building schools, taking people on tours and WATCHING their lives change. If that's not real, then I want to live in this la-la-land forever.

I don't think we are really "Delaying the Real World." We are avoiding the imaginary, trading/analyzing-things-online-that-you'll-never-see, working-for-outcomes-you-don't-believe-in-or-really-care-about life.

I think this is about as real a job as Adam or I will ever see. And we know it's real, cause we live it, from start to finish, and see the results. That's not to say we don't make mistakes, we will and do, but we see those mistakes as they are happening and are able to make changes, adjust, be personal with what we do.

Here's hoping PEPY can continue to do just that.