I am working in Washington, D.C. for the next three months. I’m working in Washington, D.C. at a non- profit organization. I’m working in Washington, D.C. at a nonprofit organization that holds arts education in public schools in the highest regard. I work in Washington, D.C. in a feel-good job.

But what does “feel-good” mean? Does it mean a sense of self-worth? Does it mean that the work you are doing is worthy of notice? Does it mean that you get to feel important because you are doing good work? I have an answer. And some people won’t like it.

I’ll bet many of you took an 8th-grade field trip to the District. And I’ll bet that none of you ever once thought about the students who live and go to school in this city of such historical importance. I did not. It was not until I started at the Collaborative that I realized that students in D.C. deserve the same opportunities as schools in California, New York, Indiana, etc. The organization that I work for is called the D.C. Arts and Humanities Education Collaborative, but we who work here just call it the D.C. Collaborative. We work with teachers, artistic and cultural organizations, transportation companies, and others to provide arts and humanities opportunities for D.C. students. Students from all over the country take field trips to the District. They tour the monuments. They go to Smithsonian museums. They go to plays and concerts.

Students in the D.C. school system live here. These opportunities are literally right in front of them. Why shouldn’t they get to go on a field trip to the American Art Museum? Why shouldn’t they get to visit the Lincoln Memorial? Why shouldn’t they get to see a show or a con- cert at the Kennedy Center? We work with organizations like the D.C. Commission, the Kennedy Center, Arena Stage, Imagination Stage, and countless museums to pro- vide these opportunities to these students. Just recently, we worked with Gilder Lehrman and their EDUHAM program to provide transportation for over 4,000 D.C. students to perform on the Kennedy Center stage and see Hamilton. What an experience that was. Did I feel good when I heard about the amazing experiences these students had? Yes. Did I feel good that I had a part in making this happen? Yes.

Wanting to work in a profession that routinely has those feel-good moments is not a sin. The problems start when you go into that kind of work with the wrong mindset. If you’re in it just to feel good about yourself, you will be disappointed. No job can make you truly happy. That’s just a fact of life. You have to go into a nonprofit profession with the mindset that this job isn’t about you. It never was and it never will be.

Though I do not often see the payoff for the specific work that I do, I see it pay off in the pictures that teachers share with us of kids on their field trips. I see it in the eyes of my coworkers when they talk about the latest projects and the most recent successes. Even when something goes wrong, there is always some- thing that goes right.

The work is tedious, but I’m enjoying it a lot. The jobs and careers in the nonprofit sector are ready. But the question is, are you?

—Emma Roth is an EMU senior reporting from her semester in Washington, D.C. where she is interning at the D.C. Arts and Humanities Education Collaborative through the Washington Community Scholars’ Center.