Life is a ceaseless battlefield where people are born to adapt and to strive in their daily work. Even though most people agree that work is an essential element of their lives, they tend to have a variety of motivations for their different careers. Some people work because it is required for food and shelter. For example, in many poor families, their uneducated members do all types of laborious jobs to financially support their families. Another group of people works because they want to make contributions to their society. In Carl T. Rowan’s essay “Unforgettable Miss Bessie,” he describes his memorable high school teacher Miss Bessie, an interesting and dedicated teacher who guides many poor students to find their potential and to achieve in their careers. Miss Bessie’s consistent effort successfully encourages her students to fight for their dreams through education. In Richard Rodriguez’s essay “Workers,” he claims that his skin color does not have any effect on his career path because his long education prepares him to fight for his personal rights. Through an experience of doing menial jobs in the summer, Rodriguez meets some Mexican workers who remain quietly with their unfair treatments. However, he also knows that he is different from them even though they share the same skin color. All in all, many people strive in their careers for different reasons such as a responsibility to support their families, a desire to benefit the society, and an eagerness to follow their dreams.
Sometimes, people work just to earn the money to provide a more comfortable life for their families. Although their current jobs may not be their dream jobs, they still work for the paycheck they earn. In the essay “Workers,” Rodriguez mentions a gr...
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...s. This summer, I went back to China and visited my track and field teammates in my elementary school. I was surprised when some of them told me that they have decided to attend sports colleges. In fact, none of them became real athletes, but they said sport has always been their biggest interest. As a result, they want to work in any fields that have a connection with sports, even without the support from their families.
All in all, work is just like a basic unit of life. A person who has been working at the same job for his entire life may not necessarily like that job. In fact, people work for different reasons such as their families, their societies, or even themselves. The first material thing that a person receives after working is its salary, but money alone cannot define a job. Some people actually enjoy working. Furthermore, work brings a purpose to life.
Studs Terkel published a nonfiction Working which consists many interviews among different people’s descriptions of their jobs. Through this book, Terkel demonstrates the meaning of work to different people and how their work experiences shape their attitudes about their lives. Among these interviewers, Maggie Holmes is a domestic while Dave Bender is a factory owner. Although their wages are different, Maggie Holmes and Dave Bender’s attitudes about their works are contradictory. People who love their works are passionate and happy about their lives and express less complain than those people who do not like their jobs.
In today’s society you either have to work hard to live a good life, or just inherit a lump sum of cash, which is probably never going to happen. So instead a person has to work a usual nine to five just to put food on the table for their families, and in many cases that is not even enough. In the article, “Why We Work” by Andrew Curry, Curry examines the complexities of work and touches on the reasons why many workers feel unsatisfied with their jobs. Barbara Ehrenreich writes an essay called, “Serving in Florida” which is about the overlooked life of being a server and the struggles of working off low minimum wages. Curry’s standpoint on jobs is that workers are not satisfied, the job takes control of their whole life, and workers spend
It is safe to say that work comes in many different forms. Whether it be a fast food or a corporate, the people that surround an individual make a great impact on the way he or she may work. Singapore, by Mary Oliver, is about a young woman working as a custodian in an airport who although works alone, enjoys her work and the people she meets. Dorianne Laux’s What I Wouldn’t Do, introduces another young woman reviewing the jobs she has had throughout time and reflects on those that she liked and disliked. Hard Work, by Stephen Dunn, exemplifies a young boy working in a soda factory during his summer break. Searching for happiness in life and work is just what these individuals are doing.
Although there were numerous efforts to attain full equality between blacks and whites during the Civil Rights Movement, many of them were in vain because of racial distinctions, white oppression, and prejudice. Anne Moody’s Coming of Age in Mississippi recounts her experiences as a child growing up in Centreville, Mississippi. She describes how growing up in Mississippi in a poor black family changed her views of race and equality, and the events that took place that changed her life forever. She begins her story at the tender age of 4, and describes how her home life changed drastically with the divorce of her parents, the loss of her home, and the constant shuffle from shack to shack as her mother tried to keep food on the table with the meager pay she earned from the numerous, mostly domestic, jobs she took. On most days, life was hard for Anne, and as she got older she struggled to understand why they were living in such poverty when the white people her mother worked for had so many nice things, and could eat more than bread and beans for dinner. It was because of this excessive poverty that Anne had to go into the workforce at such an early age, and learn what it meant to have and hold a job in order to provide her family. Anne learned very young that survival was all about working hard, though she didn’t understand the imbalance between the work she was doing and the compensation she received in return.
Instead of loving and caring for her baby, and forgetting about Danny, she became worse than him. Rodriguez presents many aspects of the minority class that live in the United States, specifically the South Bronx. Even though the cases presented in Rodriguez’s short stories are difficult to mellow with, they are a reality that is constant in many lives. Everyday someone goes through life suffering, due to lack of responsibility, lack of knowledge, submission to another entity or just lack of wanting to have a better life. People that go through these situations are people who have not finished studying, so they have fewer opportunities in life.
Work is a word that one hears on a daily basis on multiple different levels; work out, work at school, go to work, work at home, work for change. Society today is made of people that work hard every moment of their day from sunrise to twilight, these workers work for food, housing, family, education, and transportation. Essentially in today’s world if one wants something they must work for it, gone are the days where handouts are common and charity is given freely. The question then arises, who speaks for these voiceless workers that are often working so hard they have no time to voice an opposition? The authors Levine and Baca speak very well for these workers and for society in general, their narrators speak of not only work but of the world
Currently, human beings are thinking more on the line of they need work in order to make a living. For that reason, work has become meaningless, disagreeable, and unnatural. Many view work as a way to obtain money and not a meaningful human activity that one does for themselves. The author states that there are two reactions of the alienated and profoundly unsatisfactory character of the modern industrial work. One being the ideal of complete laziness and the other, hostility towards work. Fromm believes the reason why people have animosity regarding work is due to their unconscious mind. Subconsciously, a person has “a deep-seated, hostility towards work and all that is connected to it” says Fromm. I believe what Fromm is saying to be true, after all I witness it everyday. Millions of people each day goes to a work which they are dissatisfied with and that can negatively impact their attitude
A little girl dreams of a white wedding with white doves flying over the ceremony and the fairy-tale honeymoon. Only then to come home to the yellow house in the country, with the white picket fence included. Everyone has daydreamed about their future and having the “perfect” house, with the “perfect” car and the “perfect” marriage- everyone wants to live the “American Dream”. There are many people that believe that the “American Dream” is a concept that they are entitled to and expected to live. Then, there are those who believe that you should use the opportunities that America offers as a stepping stone to earn and create your own “American dream”. However, as time goes on the mainstream idea of “living the American Dream” has changed. This change is mostly due to the ever-changing economy, professions, and expectations of the American people. Throughout the book Working, by Studs Terkel, we meet many diverse groups of people to discover the people behind the jobs that allows American society to operate and how their choice of a career path has changed their lives.
“I stress the point because I know people would label me “disadvantaged” because of my color. They make the same mistake I made as a boy, when I thought disadvantaged life was circumscribed by particular occupations.” (Rodriguez 107) The narrator begins to notice the judgment done when he was younger and realizes his errors. The narrator also realizes that having a construction job wasn’t going to prove he knew what “real work” was by having to do hard labor. “In the end, my father was right—though perhaps he did not know how right or why—to say that I would never know what real work is.” (Rodriguez 107) From the working the construction job the narrator became more considerate and knowledgeable which can be seen near the end of the
Thomas Carlyle, a preeminent figure of the Victorian era, said, “The real desire to get work done will itself lead one to more and more to truth” (Carlyle). Many teenagers all over the world rely on jobs to earn money to do fun activities with their friends. There are also many adults who have jobs to get by in life. Along with this, there are people who have a career. The difference between the two is that people who have a job work just to earn money, but do not enjoy it. People who have have a career enjoy their jobs and are very passionate.
... The more research that took place during this research paper made it more evident that the realisticity of people with color being able to achieve the American Dream is very scarce. With the numbers and data that certain researchers have collected, it proved that the achievement of the American Dream among people of color was indeed less due to certain obstacles and complications that others do not overcome. From jobs to home locations, the people of African American descendants always got the “left-overs” of the Americans and statistics support this claim. Although education could be an escape from poverty, the people of color rarely have access to good schools or education systems. All of these factors are evidently confirmations that the realisticity of a colored person to achieve the American Dream in today’s society is not impossible, however very difficult.
She appreciates the running water in her shower, “I have paid for it, in fact, I have earned it. I have gotten through a week at The Maids without mishap, injury, or insurrection” (402). The stories from the employees at “The Maids” show strategies on how to get by in our society, but they also show that living as a low wage worker in corporate America means greed, sacrifice, and lack of
When it is discovered that a worker can fulfill the requirements of their job, but are experiencing shortcomings in doing so, many times it is believed that worker motivation may be the root of the problem (Laird 95). What, though, is work motivation? According to Laird (2006), “motivation is a fundamental component of performance “ and “is the reason that someone chooses to do some things and chooses not to do others”. In other words, work motivation is what energizes workers to the level of output required to fulfill a task, directs their energy towards the objectives that they need to accomplish, and sustains that level of effort over a period of time (Steers et al., 2004). In essence, worker motivation is what gets the job done. Employee motivation has always been a central problem in the workplace, and, as an individual in a supervisory position, it becomes ones duty to understand and institute systems that ensure the proper motivation of your subordinates. Proper motivation of employees can ensure high productivity and successful workflow, while low worker motivation can result in absenteeism, decreased productivity rates, and turnover. A large body of research has been produced regarding motivation, and much of this research is applicable to the workplace. Due to the nature of man, motivation varies from individual to individual, and, because of this, there is no one system that is the best for ensuring worker motivation in every organizational situation, and, as a product, many theories have been created to outline what drives people to satisfactorily complete their work tasks. Throughout the course of this document, the three main types of these motivational theories will be outlined and examples of each as well...
The poem, “What Work Is” by Philip Levine is an intricate and thought-provoking selection. Levine uses a slightly confusing method of describing what work actually is. He gives the idea that work is very tedious, however necessary. It is miserable, however, it is a sacrifice that is essentially made by many, if not all able-bodied members of society. Many have to sacrifice going to a concert or a movie, but instead works jobs with hardly a manageable salary. This poem seems to have a focus on members of the lower-class or middle-class who live paycheck to paycheck and are unable to put money away for a future for their children or for a vacation and how difficult life can be made to be while living under this type of circumstance. Levine
Motivation is key in the workplace. It is developed from the collaboration of both conscious and unconscious principles such as the strength of desire or need, motivating force or reward estimation of the objective, and desires of the person and of his or her peers/co-workers. These elements are the reasons one has for carrying on a specific way. An illustration is an understudy that invests additional energy contemplating for a test since he or she needs a superior review in the class. The Inside and outside principles that animate want and vitality in individuals to be constantly intrigued and centered around their work, part or subject, or to try to achieve an objective.