This is NPR's Life Kit. I'm Ruth Tam. When your job searching or generally just

trying to figure out what you want to do in your life, someone inevitably tells

you do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life. You might hear

this from a school counselor or an uncle at a family reunion or maybe on TV

because this advice is everywhere and the thinking is work is so tough that you

might as well pick something you're passionate about in order to get through

it. A lot of jobs are framed this way. Nursing, childcare, nonprofit work,

teaching, here's a scene from the first episode of Abbott Elementary on ABC.

Teachers at a school like Abbott, we have to be able to do it all. We are admin,

we are social workers, we are therapists, we are second parents, hell sometimes

we're even first. Why? It's showing the money. We do this because we're

supposed to. It's a calling. You answered. Lots of workers think about jobs this

way, from young people and recent grads to more experienced folks switching

careers. There's a notion that we can't live a good life if we don't love what we

do. That's Erin Sec. She's a sociology professor and the author of the new book

The Trouble with Passion, how searching for fulfillment at work fosters inequality.

When Erin first set out into the world, she was studying to become an engineer.

But then she discovered sociology and she fell in love with the field. She had

found her passion and she wound up pursuing it all the way to the PhD level.

Oh, I was a fashion evangelist before doing this research. My goodness. As Erin

advanced in her career, she began to notice, especially in higher ed, just how

prevalent the idea of passion seeking was. So she started interviewing students and

...