Frithjof Bergmann

Frithjof Bergmann Interview #3: Finding Your Calling (1-17-14)

This guy still moves me all these years later. I took 3 classes with him at Michigan. He was my favorite teacher. His approach is intellectual yet he seems to speak full throated from the heart. He sounds like he really cares about the world and for that he has my pity for that route is mostly heartbreak. It's interesting that he would take such interest in the subject of work and how awful work can be when he was a college professor, which, with all its flaws, has got to be one of the more interesting jobs in the world. I recall him saying that he worked briefly as a longshoreman at one point. Maybe it was bad enough to wound/inspire him for the rest of his life. Bruce Springsteen, who also barely ever worked in one of the awful jobs that the rest of us are subject to, also seemed to carry the brief experience of bad work with him for decades. Bruce says that watching his parents, other relatives, and neighbors go through it also made a deep impression on him.

Just for the record, I wound up working in the financial industry for 25 years and hated almost every minute of it. If you sneak up on me and whisper the word 'corporation' you risk watching me dive under the couch like a PTSD haunted war veteran.