Like most people who have a blog tucked away somewhere upon the vast cyberscape of internet, I aspire to be a better writer. Lately, as the two people who check my blog have noticed, my aspirations far outweigh my effort. As a result of this lack of effort my blog grows old, dusty and covered in cobwebs. I of course use the excuse that I am either too busy or that I have nothing to write about. In an attempt to eliminate the latter excise and to instill some discipline to this craft, I am returning to an old college writing book. I remember the book for its useful writing exercises. Now, I return to it, like an overweight ex-athlete, to exercise once more.
Exercise one: Recall a memorable learning experience that you have had, either in school or outside. Describe that experience and explain why it has had a lasting impact on you. Discuss how the experince has contributed to your development as a thinker and writer.
In May of 2011, I was thrust into the working world. It was not an unfamiliar place to me. I’ve had many jobs landscaping, grading, photographing of ancient manuscripts, putting up drywall, managing a shop, directing a camp, leading international trips, but all these were temporal dips into the working force. It would be full time for a summer or part time during the school year. But this was different, after decades of academia with many degrees in my pocket I was setting out to become a permanent member of the workforce.
However, things didn’t go exactly as I planned. Despite all the degrees, and the various jobs I’d worked, I couldn’t seem to land a job in my field. Any job that I made any headway into, eventually went with someone older, someone more experienced. I felt a little bit cheated by the promises of the education system.
Being unable to obtain a job with my degrees, or resume. I entered the workforce through my connections and my willingness to do manual labor. I got a job in an unconditioned warehouse doing manual labor mostly with people making minimum wage. I can’t say that the job was glamorous, but it was steady work. I was labeling boxes. Taping boxes. Stacking boxes. Filling boxes. I was doing a lot of box work.
Working in the warehouse, I learned quite a bit, mostly about people. I learned that you never really know how people end up where they are. I grew up with the subtly implanted cultural idea that people who have to work hard manual labor jobs are losers or that they have failed at life. It was the idea of, “You’d better study hard you don’t want to grow up and work in a warehouse.” As someone who studied hard, got two degrees, etc, then graduated in a depressed economy, then got a job in a warehouse. I feel that I had been lied to. I also felt like it is a lie that getting a job doing hard work is a bad thing. The world relies on hard work, without manual labor our world would fall apart. Secondly I learned that the idea that people are poor because they don’t work hard is a a lie. Whatever job I take on I try to push myself in. While I was at the warehouse, I tried to be the most productive and useful worker I could be. But even working at my hardest and my fastest, I wasn’t nearly as good as Freddie. While working here I learned to use a tape gun faster than I thought humanly possible, but if I was working next to Freddie, it would look like I was going slow. Freddie was hired through a staffing service which means not only was he making less than me hourly he was also having parts of paycheck go back to the staffing service. He was as hard a worker as I had ever seen and by most people’s standards he would be considered poor.
Lastly I learned that most white collar workers aren’t necessarily hard workers. I found this out on my last week of work. My boss and my supervisor told me that they were disappointed I was leaving. During my last few weeks they had been giving me more and more responsibility. I found out that when I first started they gave me more menial jobs, because the other white-collar/college student type workers that were sent to that department had poor work ethics. Because I got the job through a connection and because of my degrees they thought I would just coast through the job and be a menial and lethargic worker.
Through my job at the warehouse I gained an appreciation for hard work, hard times, and hard workers.
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