How to Dig What You do.(contentment in one's professional life)(Brief Article)

When you're personally invested in your profession, says prosecutor and novelist Linda Fairstein, you'll always be psyched about going to work.

As a prosecutor specializing in sex crimes, I have spent years dedicating myself to putting rapists behind bars. Every day, I come face-to-face with women who have been violated and traumatized. The question that I'm always asked is, how could I possibly stay in a job that seems to outsiders to be such grim work? The answer? I get tremendous satisfaction from helping victims regain their dignity and sense of well-being. You always hear people say that it's a bad idea to take your job too personally, but I believe just the opposite--that you can reap enormous rewards from being emotionally involved in what you do.

But I didn't know that when I first started at the Manhattan district attorney's office. As a 25-year-old law-school graduate, I signed on for only a four-year stint. I figured after that, I'd get a job in the private sector and start to make more money, like most of my law-school classmates.

Early on, I was struck by the fact that most women were reluctant to press charges because so few expected justice in the courtroom. I was determined to change that, so I threw myself into each and every case that landed on my desk. It was impossible not to--I was dealing with matters that profoundly affected the lives of both the accuser and the accused. Even though the incidents were horrible, I came to realize that being a personal part of the healing process made me feel gratified. I can remember the first time I won a guilty verdict on a rape case. A young working woman, about my age at the time, had been followed home from her job on Wall Street and raped. "You gave me back my life," she told me. "I feel stronger for having looked my assailant in the eye and brought him to ...