Why do I do what I do?

So, I ran into Sanjay M. in the subway stop after work yesterday.  We chit-chatted about stuff, he confessed his undying love for his Blackberry (which he recently had to divorce for an AT&T Tilt, a Windows Mobile 6 phone that I also have), talked a little bit about the SysAdmin Hangout that I proposed on Brainstorm (you all did remember to sign yourselves up to the Aspect group, right?).

Anyway, the conversation starting wandering into talks about what we were excited about and what was coming down the line in terms of what he's doing at Knowledge @ Wharton and what's going on with me in Core Systems and he brought up a great, though-provoking question!

In essence, why do we do what we do?  It's a very interesting question, and not as easy to answer as I thought.

So, I'm in Core-Systems, and our group is responsible for the core infrastructure IT services for the school, specifically, Exchange, the Active Directory, VMWare, our Blade and SAN Storage infrastructure, Firewalls, VPNs, pretty much you name it, we are responsible for it.

But given that service scope, why do I bother?  What makes me want to get up in the morning and come to work?

First, we are surrounded by really smart, really driven people.

Second, diversity is welcome and encouraged, be it the classic idea of diversity (race, gender, ethnicity), or just diversity of ideas and experiences.  I mean, check out the interests in Aspect!  I feel like I can be myself and still fit right in.

Finally, and to be more techno-specific, I like the way we work to integrate so many disparate and separately managed systems (be they databases, Linux and Windows, SANs and networking, or anything), and aren't married to doing things "just one way", but determined to do things "the right way".

Those are the biggies!  I can go on and on about other things (like access to resources, flexible work schedules, the classic list of benefits of working at a University).

So, why do *you* do what you do?  Hit me up in the comments or draft your own post!