Against pigeon-holing

I’ve found pleasure in thinking about the arc of my career over the last few weeks. I recognize a few big choices that set me down this path and were far more consequential in hindsight than in their moment. One choice that I always resisted was the choice to specialize by topic area (and we know from literature and life that not choosing is also a consequential choice). 

My non-choosing has let me work on topics all over the map–consumer finance, housing, work, education, urban, rural and many smaller niches among them. This is…problematic…at resume time. It can read a bit like a choose-your-own-adventure book. And I you don’t know me it can come off with a bit of dilettante. 

I’ve never had occasion to articulate my eclecticism, but it isn’t an accident. I work across domains because people live across domains. It is all intertwined. And programs, services, and ultimately people are worse off if we ignore elements of peoples' lives outside of whatever we’re working on.

The core problem of modern life–the cause of so much suffering and joy–is struggling to get and maintain a balance across all of our subfields that are constituent parts of one, inseparable life. Understanding the dynamics of housing opportunity lets me better understand the job-seeking choices people make in the labor market. Understanding the everyday stress and distraction from household finances lets me better support the design of job training and education programs that see and meet participant needs. Most of all, my broad and deep exposure to different spheres of life roots my work in the reality that people we meet through the firms, programs, and processes we work with are whole people with valuable, complicated, dignified lives that are vaster than whatever interaction we’re studying. Working on everything makes me better at working on each thing.

Kandinsky | The Blue Rider | Boston Museum of Fine Art