By: Brandon Uhl
Head Men’s Track & Field Coach
Coaching track & field is much better than loading trucks!
I’m often asked by my mother, how’s work going or how was work today? My response to her is typically, “I don’t work”. When I say that, I don’t mean that I don’t work at what I do. I just mean that what I do doesn’t seem like work to me.
Coaching and teaching is a passion for me and the normal day to day responsibilities I have don’t seem like work to me. I have the flexibility to do what I need to do when I want to do it. I have the opportunity to help young people, I can stay in shape, and I can meet great people. Most of all, every day is different and I look forward to it.
For 40 years my father had a job in a factory doing some of the same stuff day after day. I know he worked for a living and he didn’t often look forward to it. He did it because he needed to and wanted to help support our family.
When I was getting my bachelors and masters degrees, I would get jobs in the summer to make some money to have during the school year. I had the opportunity to see what many people do for a living, like my father, and it was work.
Here is what I did for my summers. I had a job changing fire alarm sprinklers, painting, cleaning big steel furnaces, stocking bread into crates, loading and unloading 20 foot stacks of bread crates onto tractor trailers (praying I wouldn’t tip it over and make fool of myself). I pulled weeds and did some landscaping. My personal favorite; I drove cars from dealers around NY back to an auction site for Friday auctions, where I drove cars through a line and the auctioneer spoke so fast that I didn’t know when to pull away.
I remember thinking to myself; I’m going to college so I don’t have to do this work for a living. Believe me, it made me appreciate what they do and what I do for a living now; made me realize that people do work for a living and they don’t always like what they do.
People ask me how I’m doing now and my response is, “Living the dream one day at a time.” It’s a real joy when you can wake up each day knowing you’re doing something you want to do and love to do.
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