"Most people who come to prison start their first jobs in housekeeping. They scrub toilets or showers or fling a mop. I spent my first couple years learning the fine art (and it is an art) of floor maintenance. I can now run a buffer, which pleases me to no end, because when I started, I didn't know how to put a mop together and I had never seen a dust mop before. I also discovered the job I loathe and despise most in the whole universe: stripping and waxing floors. There are several techniques but all of them break your back and ruin your shoes. Then after housekeeping comes the exhausting and horrendous hours in the kitchen.

I worked in the bakery. That makes it sound like I worked with dainty pastries but my job in the prison bakery was more akin to running heavy machinery. We mixed the bread dough in vats so large they could double for professional cement mixers. After making 1,200 cupcakes (and icing them), I use one of the dough bowls as a hot bath. (Don't panic. I disinfected it afterwards.) After a 12-hour shift, I would leave the bakery and my feet would throb and ache so much, I would put a chair in the shower because. I could not stand on them another second. I slept like a log every night.

When I came to prison I had never really worked before and I had some anxiety if I had what it took to hold a job. I felt pathetically inadequate. So scrubbing showers and toilets was the perfect tempo for me. Nor will I ever forget my first paycheck. It was about $35 for the month and I could not have been more ecstatic than if it had been the $10 million clearing house check (well almost!).

Amid the toilets and my paycheck, I discovered I loved working. I took huge pleasure in it. It didn't matter what I did. I relished beginning a job, beavering away at it until it was done to perfection. The satisfaction and sense of accomplishment was completely unexpected. No one had ever told me how fabulous it was to work! I felt useful. I felt a part of something bigger than myself. It was great! It was exciting! Most astonishingly, I did a good job. I was good at something.

When I moved on to more complex jobs where the results were less concrete and therefore more difficult to gauge, my satisfaction quotient wavered. When you clean a dirty shower, it is easy to discern the workmanship and effort because the results are obvious. Tutoring GED students can be awesome and also very discouraging. Bringing the institutional law library into the modern age was a great victory: running the library depressed me. Then finally I arrived at my dream job. A job I would pay them to let me do. The job I would like to do even out of prison.

Sometimes I feel guilty for enjoying my job so much--like I've cheated the system of its pound of flesh. But after 13 years, this job is evolving and changing. I'm not sure what the future holds for me career-wise, whether it will be toilets or tutoring, but I am sure as Maya Angelou writes, that it will be something made greater by me and in turn, will make me greater." (Elizabeth Haysom, Fluvanna Review, December 2, 2004).

Elizabeth Haysom is presently incarcerated at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women in Troy, Virginia. This column is one of a series, published under the general heading 'Glimpses from Inside.'