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In “Some Lessons from the Assembly Line” published in 2005 in Newsweek, college student Andrew Braaksma discussed his experience of working in a car manufacturing plant as well as other blue-collar jobs during his summer breaks from school. This allowed him to discover the importance of obtaining an education as a means of avoiding this type of work in the future. He discussed his difficulties with working long hours for a meager salary and the stress of knowing he could lose his job at any moment. Braaksma uses these experiences as motivation to do well in school so he does not end up in the same situation once he graduates from college. I applaud Braaksma for his strong work ethic and high aspirations, however, I do not share his view on the importance of a college education. I do not discount the value of an education, moreover, I disagree with so much emphasis being placed on earning a college degree as a means of avoiding blue-collar work. Through the author’s experiences of working more challenging summer jobs, he is able to convey to other students what life in the real world could be like if they do not go …show more content…
It was surprising to Andrew how little money he earned after work for so long. This showed him the amount of hard work required to do these jobs and how little he would receive in return if he did not get an education and ended up working in a factory.
This type of work showed Andrew how stressful life could be. At one factory he was working in, his coworkers told him that in a few months the factory would close and move overseas where people would do the same work for less money.
Working these summer jobs gave the author an idea of what his future would look like if he did not go to college. He never considered any else until he found himself working long hours at difficult, manual labor jobs. Only until then did it become quite obvious what his option only would
In the article “America’s Most Overrated Product: The Bachelor’s Degree” by Marty Nemko, the author argues several different views on why higher education may be very overestimated. For starters, the author shares his opinion more than anything else due to him being a career counselor. The purpose of this essay is to explain to the readers that most people start off with the idea of living the American Dream. Which is practically going to college to have a better life and career. But over the time the idea of working very hard for a Bachelor’s degree has become very dimmed. Furthermore, for some people, when they think of the American Dream they think of hope for bettering themselves and also helping their families. Unlike the author, Nemko feels that even the thought of trying to pursue to get a bachelor’s degree is overrated. The audience of this passage would most likely be teenagers going into college and parents. Nemko states that “Colleges are quick to argue that a college education is more
Richard Rodriguez’s “The Workers” follows Rodriguez experience he encounters while working a summer job. Rodriguez, the narrator, receives a construction job during the summer of his senior year in college through a friend. At first the narrator is excited to be provided a menial job and have a chance to show his parents he can handle “real work.” However, throughout the story, the narrator is seen coming of age as he realizes that there’s more to the job.
Summary of the essay: Marty Nemko’s essay is a critique of the education system, mainly focusing on the pitfalls of attending college. He believes that the cost and time of attending college do nothing more than leave a student in debt with no job opportunities. Nemko cites information provided by
The poem describes workers to be “Killing the overtime ‘cause the dream is your life, / Refusing to take holidays or go home to your spouse, / But for many the overtime comes, ‘cause the work is not done. / Deadlines to be met. So you continue to dream like a war vet, / Having flashbacks to make you shiver and scream” (Jones, stanza 7, lines 2-6). Jones reinforces that overworking for an incentive of money does not give one a sense of gratification, and it also distracts them from the values that should matter more to them than anything else. Both Kohn and Jones have a similar approach to showing the reader the effect that overworking can have on a person, and how it will change their values in life, causing unhappiness. Many students go through school dispirited and do not join various clubs and activities for their own enjoyment. A friend of Kohn’s who was also a high school guidance counsellor had a student with ‘…amazing grade and board scores. It remained only to knock out a dazzling essay on his college applications that would clinch the sale. “Why don’t we start with some books that
As the economy evolves and the job market continues to get more competitive, it’s becoming harder to have a successful career without some kind of college degree. This creates a belief in many young students that college actually is a commodity, something they must have in order to have a good life. There’s many different factors that influence this mindset, high schools must push the importance of the student’s willingness and drive to further their education. College isn’t just a gateway to jobs, but it is an opportunity to increase knowledge and stretch and challenge the student which in return makes them a more rounded adult and provides them with skills they might lack prior to
Imagine being employee number 101 out of 1001. Now imagine working on an assembly line in a hot room filled with 1000 other women frantically assembling products for first world countries to use for ten seconds before discarding for a newer version. This job pays enough for you to get by but living in a third world country with low pay isn’t easy. What many people don’t understand is that the cost of production in a third world country is more inexpensive than it is in America. Hiring women to work in horrid conditions decreases employee loss because they are not rambunctious like men. “Life on the Global Assembly Line” by Barbara Ehrenreich and Annette Fuentes clearly illustrates the hardships women go through for U.S. corporation production. Corporate powers have resorted to building production plants in third world countries to save money. U.S. corporate powers take advantage of third world
It should not be a surprise that many people believe that a college degree is a necessity in today’s world. We are taught to believe this at a young age. The average citizen will not question this statement due to how competitive the job market has become, yet does graduating college guarantee more success down the road? Peter Brooks is a scholar at Princeton University and publisher of an essay that questions the value of college. He obviously agrees that college can help securing a job for the future, but questions the humanities about the education. He uses other published works, the pursuit of freedom, and draws on universal arguments that pull in the reader to assume the rest of his essay has valid reasons.
In Andrew Braaksma 's essay Some Lessons From The Assembly Line he provides the perspective of a college student learning life lessons from his summer job in a factory and how it showed him not to take his ability to have a higher education for granted. While most students never give it a second thought about not going to college, Braaksma learned from the hard work and low pay to appreciate the opportunities he has. Most college age students have never experienced the struggles of what real life can throw at them. Long hours with low wages, the physically taxing nature of some of these jobs and lack of job security. Having myself worked construction jobs for many years before going back to college his essay could prove invaluable to many students.
Many people that did not come from rich families lived a life of extreme poverty. They sent kids to work in factories to help pay for things needed to survive, such as food, clothing, and other necessary materials. There were many poor families living in poverty during the Victorian Era: ‘I reflected. Poverty looks grim to grown people; still more so to children: they have not much idea industrious,...
In Caroline Bird’s “College is A Waste of Time and Money”, it’s argued that there are many college students who would be better off if they were to begin working after high school graduation. Colleges and universities can no longer ensure that one will go on to get a better job, getting paid more than they would have without a higher education. However, high school seniors still stress about where they will be attending college, how they’re going to pay for it and what they’re going to study for the next four years. Bird points out how college has changed over the past few decades and how, in turn, it has set many young adults up for disappointment, if nothing else.
After Mark’s father John died in 1847 the family greatly struggled financially. To help aid his family in this economic upheaval he became an apprentice of a printer’s shop and wor...
Students’ wouldn’t be able to hold down a job is the second reason they shouldn’t dropout of high school. Many employers would like to have someone who has been too high school and that have been educated so they can handle money and add things p...
If more people went to college, and less went the vocational route, jobs will take a momentous hit. Today, companies will not even touch an application that does not include a Bachelor’s Degree; even if the Bachelor’s Degree has nothing to do with the job being applied for. Attention is not given to whether the hopeful applicant qualifies for the job; all that matters is that the applicant has a Bachelor’s degree. Murray best sums up the American job market when he says, “Employers do not value what the student learned, just that the student has a degree” (Murray). However, if less people obtain a Bachelor’s Degree, employers will be forced to base applicants on their skills, and abilities. Furthermore, important vocational jobs that lie vacant will be filled. Good electricians, carpenters, and construction workers will always be in
The cotton mills in Lowell, Massachusetts were home to many young women that were in need of work. Girls as young as ten years old were off working in the cotton mills trying to earn money for their families. The girls couldn't work out on the farms in the fields so they had to resort to the mills to make a living. Life was not easy for these young girls, but because their families were so poor they had to deal with it so that they were able to send money home. The girls were pushed to their limits by the people running the mills, yet they continued to work and work hard. The working conditions were almost unbearable in the mills because the girls received poor pay, the work was dangerous, and they worked extremely long hours.
Parents would work hard all day, but still could not afford to keep the family taken care of. There was only one way for the family, to survive and that was to force the children to work wherever they could. In Songs of Innocence, the narrator’s mother died (1). Following his mother’s death the narrator was sold by his father, because the he could not afford to take care o and himself. This was the tragic life of the lower class. Adolescents had to work so they could eat. In “Songs of Experience” it is unclear why the parents make their child work. It states that they “clothed him in the clothes of death” (7). The narrator conveys that he was having fun playing and running around, and then his parents forced him to work (Experience 5). Yet, his parents were at the church praying, when they needed to be out working with their