"I can see now, a year later, that this job is set up for burnout. It just is. Once I had a handle on the job, instead of saying, 'That's great Carolyn, now just rake your time doing the job', I just kept trying to do more."

"My job description has a wide variety of responsibilities and that's great. But on the other hand, there aren't enough paid hours in which to get the job done. It really is a massive job. The area this program is supposed to serve is huge. We have a $12,000 budget to 12,000 people. I am paid for 70 hours a handle a population of over month and right now I have over 30 hours of unpaid overtime, just for August and September, because of the Read-In, the Agricultural Fair and World Literacy Week."

Still, thinking about the conversations I had earlier in the day, I asked Carolyn how she finally recognized that she was in trouble. "We were driving home from the AAAL Conference in Grande Prairie. There was a bunch of us in a van that Jan Thiessen was driving. The roads were awful and it was snowing and really cold and all of a sudden we went into the ditch, and I said, 'This is it; I can't take any more.'"

"I became physically ill, very anxious and unable to sleep and was very down. I decided that no job is worth this. I really didn't know if I would be able to bounce back."

Carolyn looked up at me and said, "It took me a long time to come back, to feel OK. It didn't help me. It didn't help the program. It didn't help anyone to get burned out. "

I was grateful to Carolyn for being so forth coming and told her how much I admired her strength and tenacity. She admitted that her job has taught her a lot, "I have changed so much since I took on this job. For one thing, this job has helped me overcome my terrible anxieties of being at a conference out on my own. I've never been able to do something like that before. One day it just clicked inside of me and I realized I was OK, that it was going to be OK to be with a group of people - even if I didn't know them all."

Carolyn went on. "Many years ago, I was very ill. I had a nervous breakdown and I was ill for about 4 years. When you're coming back from something like that, it's scary. When I came into this position and began to realize that I could manage on my own, that I could be away from my home and my husband at meetings and conferences, I started to feel really good."

"And nothing was ever a disaster! My greatest fear was that I was going to fail. I was afraid about public speaking and tutor training. But I didn't fail. And all the other people I met who were doing the same job as me, really helped to build me up. I'd pick up the phone and call other coordinators (who were basically strangers) and they would jabber away to me and I thought, 'My God, these are wonderful people!'"

"I had something of my own again. I knew when I took this job that I was going to be in touch with some 'down and outers' and I didn't know if I could cope with that - and yet, when I talked to them, I realized that I had been at the bottom too. But I was OK now so I was going to be part of their being OK and that felt really good."

"This job has made circumstances become very good for me," Carolyn said with genuine gratitude. "I am a lot happier now. This job has given me so much. I did burn out but I didn't sink back into depression, which certainly could have happened."