Jay / 22 / On my college campus

“Practicing for the senior reading where I’ll read work from my first chapbook Bitter Baguettes, a collection of pieces about queerness, gender, surviving abuse, and mental illness. Also working on the mock up of my next chapbook, which is all about food! Specifically food love poetry! I have lots of hopeful intentions for my writing, but lately with my food love poetry, I hope readers feel loved and can connect to food and people in their life in a loving way.”

Elena Novak / 25 / Pontevedra, Spain

“Myself (in the middle) and two friends preparing to record activists’ favorite hit “I Can’t Keep Quiet” by MILCK. We wanted to show solidarity with the Resistance in the U.S. by recording the song from Spain, where we worked. It’s on YouTube now!”

Alice / 24 / Italy

“In the past few years I’ve done many random jobs while finishing up college and working in a summer kindergarten with the cutest tiny kids was probably my favourite (and I for sure had more fun than them!). Just one of the few things I hope I taught them: there are no ‘boys’ or ‘girls’ toys. One of the things they taught me: NEVER use sarcasm with children. (Note: I’m aware that the bubble I made has a somewhat phallic shape. It was totally on purpose. If they call me back to work there in July I’ll try to make some boobs.)

I didn’t manage to take a picture but right now I’m doing what I like to think as ‘bringing happiness to people’ aka I work in a take-away pizzeria (I’m Italian after all). Sometimes I do the deliveries myself and I had the pleasure to see some great (and also some weird) stuff like: cute girls, lovely dogs, teeny tiny babies. My favourite things so far: a dog eating the money I was going to be paid with, a guy giving me a joint as a tip, a twelve year old birthday party with like 15 kids all wearing animal onesies, FREE PIZZA ALMOST EVERYDAY.”

Bee / 27 / Sacramento, CA

“I really struggled to figure out how to capture my work in picture form and I ended up feeling like I needed two images (or 50, but I think these two cover it decently). I am the project manager for three autism research projects. My job is incredibly broad and I do something different every single day. So here are two pictures of me at work, across the range of what I do. One is a picture of the INSIDE of my head, as my team members and I did training to be MRI operators and practiced on each other.  The other is me and the 12ft cardboard pirate ship I designed for the huge party we hold for all our kids and their families as a thank you for being a part of our research.  My work is hectic, wild, exhausting, and something I love doing every single day!”

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Ashley / 27 /Burnaby, Canada

“I am waiting for my coworkers to finish up for the day so we can head to the local pub; of course, this is after a long day spent updating the refrigeration design for a new grocery store I am working on.”

Susie / 32 / Leeds, UK

“I am a printmaking instructor at an art college in Leeds, in the north of England. I teach such things as screenprint, lino cut, etching, bookbinding, monoprint, fabric dyeing, letterpress and bookbinding. This picture was taken on a rare moment, first thing in the morning, when the print workshop was not swarming with students. Printmaking is a social artform to begin with, and helping the students work through their creations is good for my introvert tendencies. Plus sometimes I fix the printing presses and things, which is good for my soft butch aspirations.”

Kass / 35 / Ethel’s in Columbus, OH

“Because my day job making vegan bacon involves an oh-so-sexy hairnet, I’ve opted to submit photos from my other “job” performing stand-up.”

Clark / 21 / Reno, NV

“I work as a research assistant in a lab at my university. We do research on how to make plants grow better in arid lands, so we work with a lot of succulents, which are my favorite! Being involved in climate change related research, there’s been a lot of anxiety in our lab lately. These pics are of me in the greenhouse, which is my favorite place to work. The plants in the second pic I grew from tiny shoots when I first started working here 2 years ago!”

Kelsey / 31 / Boulder, CO

“I’m a physicist at a government research laboratory, and these are photos of me with my favorite pieces of lab equipment. My lab’s job is to make very high precision photon detectors (photo #1 shows the insides of the instrument that keep the detectors cold, photo #2 is me assembling the bit that detects the light). Then we help other scientists use them to study anything you can learn about by bouncing x-rays off of it. In the last couple of years, for example, we’ve helped a group in Sweden look at a weird iron compound that might make solar cells cheaper someday, and a group in California study the chemical reactions that happen during photosynthesis. My job is awesome and I love it and am fortunate to have it. But like most STEM it is very straight white guy dominated, so I hope to both be the gay I want to see in the world, and support the success of more queer/women/POC scientists.”

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Hannah / 18 / Southern CA

“I’m currently finishing off a study on park proximity and race (the map shows my study locations) for my environmental science class.  This is my first long-term research project, and I’m super excited to do more when I start college in the fall!  The picture on the left is me being awkward at my school’s awards ceremony.”