a summer job I will never forget

Music: Chad Kettering: Into the Infinite (2008)

It probably comes as no surprise I am an NPR junkie, and I often turn on the radio at home (the portable shortwave with the extendable antenna) instead of watch television as I go about housework, cooking, and so forth. Tonight as I was driving to meet friends for a wedding rehearsal dinner, All Things Considered was featuring a segment on summer jobs. This segment is part of a summer-long series in which various folks share with listeners their memories and impressions of their most "memorable" summer jobs. Listening to a woman describe a summer working with her father on a construction team, I was (unexpectedly) confronted with memories of my own most memorable summer job. Stuck in slowly moving, bumper-to-bumper traffic, my memories started to drown out the radio, which in retrospect is strange (how can a mental image muffle an open ear?) and, I reckon, is something of a testament to the intensity of my own experience (or narcissism?). I thought I would share, in this space, memories of my most profound summer job and invite readers to share memories of theirs. Tis the season, after all.

Most of my summer jobs, beginning (well, during) high school were at Little Caesars Pizza in Snellville, Georgia, and I have many fond memories of working there. Many of my best buds worked there---which is how I ended up making pizzas for minimum wage---and I fondly recall that is where I developed my life-long affection for The Fields of Nephilim (blasted from a cassette on a "boom box" covered in flour). But these fond memories are nothing compared to the shock of working for the CDC in Atlanta in the summer of 1996. I don't recall how I landed the gig, but in my senior year of college I snagged a paid internship with the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, which was somehow coordinated with my degree in Communication Studies from the George Washington University.

I took the internship just after college graduation; I knew at the time I went off to the center that I was accepted as a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, but I also knew that the internship was related to CDC recruitment somehow. After working there for some weeks I figured out they were creating a "communications" branch (basically, a PR office) and I was brought in under an existing program yet "trying out" for recruitment for this new PR branch. As an intern, I was assigned to two different divisions who "shared" me for grunt work: "Informational Technology" and "Surveillance." These divisions or departments were sub-units of the Division of HIV/AIDS in the CDC.

When I began my job, I was pretty much under the leadership of "Surveillance." This division was responsible for "morbidity reports"---basically, keeping tabs on the AIDS epidemic. I was also shared by "Information Technology," which is CDC-speak for public relations. Over the course of the summer I was shifted from one division to the other. And this was because I am a sensitive person, and someone was sensitive to that.

"Surveillance" in the division of HIV/AIDS consisted of a number of researchers, and their staff, who were devoted to keeping tabs on how the virus was spreading and, of course, this meant how many people were dying. In the mid-90s, this division was very active. As an intern, I was assigned the task of what I call "dead logging." And this is where my strongest memories are forged. When AIDS started to present itself in the 1980s, it was strongly correlated with blood transfusions and hemophiliacs. It was initially dubbed "hemophiliac related disorder" or variants of this until "gays" became the scapegoat and "AIDS" was adopted as the term. By the time I was working at the CDC, "AIDS" was the term and the virus was better understood. When I arrived at the CDC, it was time to "incinerate" files related to the beginning of the epidemic (the federal government stipulates CDC medical files must be kept for at least seven years). My job as an intern was to go through boxes upon boxes of files related to the early AIDS breakout, log their contents, and thereby, prepare them for incineration.

These boxes contained materials that you wouldn't imagine. I expected medical documents---and that expectation was confirmed. For the most part, the files consisted of medical charts and notes. They featured the medical histories of folks---mostly men---who were dead. My job was to log the contents of each file and medical history on a manifest so that the files could be incinerated. But what I did not expect to find (and I think my supervisors didn't realize would be there) were hand-written letters by loved-ones, press clippings, and all sorts of personal ephemera (get-well cards, photographs, and so on). When I logged the stuff, I couldn't help but read the personal letters and clippings. I vividly recall reading the letters of a woman whose husband was dying from AIDS (apparently as a result of a blood transfusion), and she was so grateful for the doctors who were trying to save her partner's life. I remember many days going through these boxes of files, reading the files, and crying. It's hard to recount these letters and memories (I'm tearing up writing about them now), I can just say that as a young person of 23 years of age, I didn't have the frame to digest what I was reading. I don't think I was supposed to read the contents of the files; I was supposed to log what I found and move on. But I couldn't help myself---I read the stuff, and went home to my folk's house upset and depressed.

After many weeks of "dead logging," my supervisors stopped asking me to do this and moved me on to "Information Technology," which was the division responsible for responding to requests that resulted from the Freedom of Information Act. Basically, I'd mail photocopied articles about AIDS/HIV research to various folks in response to requests (many from politicians) about the transmission of the HIV virus. This was a much easier job---it didn't make me cry, for example. We often joked and laughed, in fact, in the IT office about the stupidity of the requests (a running joke in the office concerned a certain, well known senator who requested information about the transmission of HIV in dried semen; this senator has since died).

To this day, I don't know if I was moved to the PR wing because someone sensed the dead-logging upset me or not. I distinctly remember NOT telling my supervisors that the task upset me, but I suspect it's hard to hide wet eyes. Nevertheless, this summer job had a profound impact on me for all sorts of reasons. One of those impacts was that I was caused to confront my own queerness and its relation to social sanction and the health industry. To openly identify as queer in the 90s risked serious health insurance troubles. At that time, the CDC was advising anonymous AIDS testing; to openly test for AIDS risked having your health insurance company drop you. I remember that the CDC was behind the fight against this (and my respect for Planned Parenthood was forged then; PP does tests, to this day, anonymously because of this). Another of those impacts was that I decided, then and there, that my career must be dedicated to something I believe in---something that I could be compassionate about. I was interning in a office full of people who passionately believed in their work, who believed they were working for a cause. The scientists and doctors in my building were visibly dedicated to ending the pain of AIDS---they had a mission, a passion. They were committed to a cause. The workplace was electric with the feeling of a misson. It's not something that I can describe in words; it's simply that you felt, when you walked in the office door, that you were doing something important, and that this something had nothing to do with money. I loved that feeling.

I've worked in many environments; working in the CDC was different. I was surrounded by people who believed they were working for the common good. This is hard to explain or translate, but I suspect the "feeling" I had working at the CDC that summer is similar to the feeling folks have who go into medicine, or veterinary science, and so on. Ending suffering is the goal. I want to believe that same spirit informs the decision I made to dedicate my life to education and scholarship. I often feel the same sense of mission walking on a university campus. I rue the day that feeling no longer clobbers me. I still feel it walking into a classroom. Once that feeling leaves me, I should do something else.