I can still remember meeting my field inspector, Jim, at a project site after a major fire had disabled a wastewater treatment plant in New York City. Everyone was working around the clock to make repairs because the outage meant 140 million gallons of untreated sewage would go straight into the Hudson River – three weeks before the New York City Triathlon. After five hours into a 12-hour shift, Jim turned to me and said “What are you doing here?  You went to college so you wouldn’t have to be doing this”. 

In that moment, my entire professional philosophy came into view.