Prepositions- James

Each of my summers in college, I've ended up with a little "what I'm doing this summer" speech that I repeat almost verbatim when someone asks me that question. It's not something I do consciously, it just happens over time. Once it comes together, however, I start to pay attention to the words I've chosen. In particular, I've noticed that I used a different preposition to talk about my relationship to my job each time.

Two years ago, I worked at Long Branch Environmental Education Center, a blueberry farm near Asheville. Last year, I worked with the Lake Norman Community Development Council, a grassroots group of nonprofit organizations. This summer, I find myself saying that I'm working for Know Your Farms.

While all my jobs have been place-based in some way, my summer Long Branch was the only time when the entity I worked for had a definitive location. My work with the LNCDC and Know Your Farms has mostly been done in particular places, but there's no one place that is those two organizations. Hence, I worked at Long Branch. On the other hand, the grassroots collaborative nature of the LNCDC made me feel like I was working with not for that organization.

This summer, for the first time my employer is a for-profit company (pending the adoption in NC of the L3C business structure). That distinction has shown me some of my own blind spots. To put it rather crudely, I'd associated doing good in the world with working for a nonprofit. Yet here I was, working towards something I would consider "doing good in the world," and when I told people how much I enjoyed the diversity of things I'm doing with, I more than once heard "Well, that's small business for you." Given that I have a mild allergy to the word "business," it was a weird thing to hear. However, I'm getting over that allergy, and I'm trying to poke into those blind spots. Given that I'm gonna be looking for a job in less than a year, it would be better for me if I could reconcile "doing good in the world" with "business."