Work Equals Force Times Distance?

High school me didn’t know everything after all

“Y’all think you know what work is but you’re wrong.” The ninth-grade physical sciences teacher smiles at us smugly while two dozen bored adolescents roll their eyes.

Of course we know what work is. Work is babysitting and flipping burgers, mowing the lawn or doing dishes. Work is staying in our bedrooms doing homework instead of heading to the mall to hang with our friends. Work is writing five-paragraph essays according to the teacher’s rubric in hopes of getting good grades so we can get into a good college so we can land a well-paying job so we can head out the door every morning saying to our own children, “I’m off to work now.”

“Who can tell me what work is?” the teacher asks. None of us are foolish enough to attempt what is obviously a trick question.

“Anyone?” With a heavy sigh indicating he is regretting his life’s work, the teacher turns to the chalkboard.

“WORK = FORCE x DISTANCE,” he writes in big block letters.

“The amount of work is equal to force applied times the distance traveled.”

The distance I traveled from that Kentucky classroom is further than I imagined as a 14-year-old. The forces pushing and pulling me and the non-linear nature of my career path would stun teenage me doodling in her notebook and closely following the tick, tick, tick of the analog clock on the wall waiting for the release of the bell. I have traveled distances and faced forces unforeseen. I have worked.

I graduated from high school in the 1980s. It was the era of shoulder pads, women’s liberation, and Ronald Regan’s diatribes against welfare moms.

I can bring home the bacon Fry it up in the pan And never let you forget you’re a man “Cause I’m a woman, Enjoli

The popular Enjoli perfume ad was the background music of my puberty. My girlfriends and I were promised we could have it all: career, marriage, kids, sex appeal.

College was easy. The path to success was neatly laid out for you. Pick a major. You must take these classes. Choose between options. Show up for class, take good notes, write the papers and take the tests. Jump through whatever hoops the professor sets and you’ll be fine. Don’t forget to take time for fun and friends.

I got my first regular paycheck in college. Every afternoon after classes I headed to a daycare off campus where I played with, supervised, and taught four-year-olds. It seemed like a logical choice for a future teacher. Never mind the niggling concern about how mind-numbingly dull I found large stretches of time at my job.

A real teaching job would be different. I would work with high schoolers. I had a plan, I had put in the hours, checked all coursework off my list and graduated with honors. I was ready to take the work world by storm.

Unfortunately, post-college life doesn’t come with an easy-to-follow syllabus. Plan A, get a job teaching high school English anywhere that will pay me, didn’t pan out. There were no jobs to be had in the area I moved to. I had to cycle through plans b, c, d, e, and f.

My generation of women was the first to hear “you can have it all,” but most of us weren’t warned how hard it is to have it all, all at the same time.

Can you call yourself a feminist when your career usually takes a back seat to your spouse’s? I met the love of my life in college. He was everything I didn’t know I wanted. I wouldn’t change a thing but this was the first force exerted pushing my plans in unforeseen directions.

How do you balance work and family life? Whose career takes precedence when opportunities arise requiring relocation? What about kids? Who is going to run point on managing the vast and varied needs of keeping the kids healthy, fed, safe, and educated? How do you handle the challenge of aging parents?

The forces hit from every angle pushing us first one away and then another, increasing the distance between us and the work we want to accomplish, separately and together.

At first, the choices pivot back and forth regularly. Your work matters. My work matters. Who is best poised to pay the bills and crushing student loan debt? Whose job best accommodates childcare priorities?

I relocate for him. He relocates for me. A baby arrives and the forces in our lives multiply exponentially.

We plan the entire childcare strategy. In the early months, I’ll be able to bring the baby to work with me. On Tuesdays, he will stay home with her so I can attend my weekly meetings. Forces scuttle our plan my first week back from maternity leave.

“I’m so sorry, and every other Tuesday will work for me, but this week Tuesday I simply cannot do,” he informs me. We scramble to find an option allowing us both to please our bosses.

We relocate together again moving a great distance for his work. We will do it again and again and again.

My work becomes unpaid, or underpaid, as I piece together meaningful work outside the home while also managing a household, often in foreign lands, and raising three incredible, brilliant children. I’m good at my job even when forces rise to hurricane strength and the entire structure of family my spouse and I have worked so hard to create together is threatened.

“I need to find a job,” I tell my spouse halfway through a DIY home remodel. “I need to interact with people outside the family. I need regular appreciation for my efforts.”

“Of course, go for it,” he replies. I find a position at a nearby school teaching creative movement to preschoolers. My teenage children laugh hysterically when they realize I am literally being paid to dance and sing, but I am excellent at this work, not the dancing and singing myself but letting myself loose to inspire 2, 3, and 4-year-olds to dance and sing.

I’m underpaid but overappreciated. It works for me. I tack on administrative duties and I kick ass in that area as well. Meanwhile, the forces grow at home as I’m not around as much to pick up all the slack. It’s a constant adjustment and readjustment for everyone in the family.

Is it okay to prioritize work that doesn’t pay well but satisfies the soul? Family and work pressures push and pull me in many different directions and when the opportunity arises to move overseas again the decision is easy. I’m ready for a new adventure.

I have traveled a great distance from teenage me with my ERA Now button. Forces shaped a path I didn’t anticipate but fully chose at every step. It wasn’t what I expected but it worked for me.

Rarely is work what we expect. How many teenagers see their careers unfold the way they imagined it while gazing out the window daydreaming during science class? I haven’t met a person yet who wasn’t surprised in some way by their employment trajectory.

I dreamed of being the teacher in front of the room. There are no bored students staring off into space in my class. Every eye is focused on me. I am delighting and astounding my charges with my brilliant takes on classic literature. Here is how to write an essay everyone will want to read, I tell them as eager young pupils rapidly take notes.

I am beloved by my students in a way I have never been loved by my peers as a student. I win teacher of the year, regularly. Eventually, I head to a major university to teach other teachers how to teach. I’m just that good.

Former students drop by my office regularly. “Mrs. DeVries, I hated reading and school before taking your class but you changed my life. I’m dedicating my first book to you.”

My daydream fades in the harsh light of reality. I never stood in front of a high school classroom as anything but a substitute teacher, a role I hated with a passion.

But I have walked across a campus with preschoolers pulling on their parent’s arms and pointing in my direction. “That’s Miss Mary, Mom. She dances with me.”

I have managed a multicultural religious education program for a military base chapel overseas and run programs with hundreds of children and volunteers. I have had a young adult tell me I changed their life with my work as a youth pastor.

I am still married to the man I meet at freshman registration in college despite forces that threatened to tear us apart more than once. Two out of my three children are graduated from college and are happily employed in their fields. The third is ready to tackle her final two years of college in person now after a Covid stint back at home.

Work = force x distance. Forces will arise. Distances can be vast and move you in directions you never anticipated. For most of us, it will all work out in the end.

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