Jennifer Tosti-Kharas

It doesn't mean like, what do you do in general, right?

In the US and in the Northeast, which is where I've mostly lived,

What you do is who you are.

I wanted to understand always more about that.

So being able to study that and to talk to real people and find out more about how this resonates with them, I mean, that is the best.

I think that's absolutely right.

I would go so far as to say it probably wouldn't be a surprise to people working in an organization to hear from each person how they feel about their work.

I think there would be something intangible that you could sense about their engagement with the work, maybe their obsession with the work, how they feel about the work that would come through.

Yeah, so I agree, first of all, that this is startling to people.

because we have so encoded this cultural message of do what you love, the money will follow.

Find your calling, love your life.

These are literally book titles that seem so obvious.

I find my calling and the rest is gravy.

But the reality looks very different, and musicians are fascinating to study because this is both a quintessential arts field.

We would imagine to see a lot of callings, a lot of passion toward music.

It's something a lot of us do pursue in some way or another.

It's a very fraught profession because we know that not everyone will make it as a professional musician who might want to.

And the same way with sports, arts, lots of different fields operate like this.

So I've done a series of studies, and there's a series of interesting studies that have been done by my co-author Shasa DeBrow.

She is not only a professor at the London School of Economics, but she is a professional bassoonist.