By: Brandon Uhl
Head Men’s Track & Field Coach
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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