It's all that

Sometimes (last week jumps immediately to mind), life can get overwhelming. For me, the trigger is usually the job. I try to make it a habit to leave work at work, because that thing called "life outside of work" provides a full helping of its own demands. So when the day job overflows its chronological bounds, there just isn't much excess capacity (excess time) available to handle the spillover.

So let this be a warning to anyone high-minded (possible interpretation: foolish) enough to want to get involved in the sustainability biz -- particularly within the context of higher education: it's a full-time job and more. Sometimes, much more.

For those not yet convinced, I refer you to a Sustainability Director position currently open at Case Western Reserve University. The position description can be accessed here. I find the site a tad confusing, but just click on "careers home" and scroll down -- you'll see it.

Before you go looking, however, I'd like to share with you the high points -- the "essential functions" you'll be asked to perform. These include:

• consensus building and strategic planning
• data provision and rigorous analysis
• communication strategy creation and implementation
• university representation and advocacy within the community
• serving as a local information center on all things sustainability-related
• identifying project; assessing cost effectiveness, technical feasibility and acceptability to the campus community
• for approved projects, create detailed implementation plans, monitor and report results
• conduct an annual greenhouse gas audit and publish an annual progress report
• create and implement a process to develop sustainability standards
• build support among students, faculty and staff
• identify and pursue grants and other funding/savings opportunities; maintain donor relations
• other duties as assigned

So to succeed, you need to be part strategist, part quantitative analyst, part communicator, part project manager, part quality maven, part cheerleader and part rainmaker.

I don't mean to pick on my friends at Case, because their job description really provides a fairly accurate picture of what it takes to succeed at this job. It even says, under "supervisory responsibility", that the successful candidate will be expected to enlist "cooperative support of faculty, staff and student interns." I guess that means we should add "part beggar, part borrower, part thief" to the list.

But I find it amusing (in a gallows humor sense) that the stock phrase "occasional travel and overtime as required" is present. Particularly the part about overtime.

At the end of the day (or, in this case, the end of the week), this position description demonstrates why it is that sustainability folks on every campus which takes the topic seriously tend to be intense. Committed (or at least committable). Dedicated. Perhaps a little preachy.

If we didn't have that level of investment, we would have quit a long time ago. And found a saner way to make a living.

(Not that sanity is all it's cracked up to be. Or so I'm told.)