Some Lessons From The Assembly Line.
Authors:
Braaksma, Andrew
Source:
Newsweek. 9/12/2005, Vol. 146 Issue 11, p17-17. 1p. 1 Color
Photograph.
Document Type:
Article
Subjects:
COLLEGE students
INDUSTRIAL workers
APPRENTICES
OCCUPATIONS
COLLEGE environment
Geographic Terms:
UNITED States
Abstract:
Describes the author’s experiences with summer jobs and the
differences with college life. Comparison of the difficulties of working
12-hour days in a factory with leisurely college life; Lessons learned about
the value of education; How the author applies his factory work lessons to his
college studies; Why the author chooses to work in a factory and live at home
during the summer; Discussion of the value of his work experiences.
Full Text Word Count:
890
Accession Number:
18139488
Some
Lessons From The Assembly Line
Section:
My Turn
Sweating away my summers as a
factory worker makes me more than happy to hit the books.
Last June, as I stood behind the
bright orange guard door of the machine, listening to the crackling hiss of the
automatic welders, I thought about how different my life had been just a few
weeks earlier. Then, I was writing an essay about French literature to complete
my last exam of the spring semester at college. Now I stood in an automotive
plant in southwest Michigan, making subassemblies for a car manufacturer.
I have worked as a temp in the
factories surrounding my hometown every summer since I graduated from high
school, but making the transition between school and full-time blue-collar work
during the break never gets any easier. For a student like me who considers any
class before noon to be uncivilized, getting to a factory by 6 o’clock each
morning, where rows of hulking, spark-showering machines have replaced the lush
campus and cavernous lecture halls of college life, is torture. There my time
is spent stamping, cutting, welding, moving or assembling parts, the rigid work
schedules and quotas of the plant making days spent studying and watching
“SportsCenter” seem like a million years ago.
I chose to do this work, rather than
bus tables or fold sweatshirts at the Gap, for the overtime pay and because
living at home is infinitely cheaper than living on campus for the summer. My
friends who take easier, part-time jobs never seem to understand why I’m so
relieved to be back at school in the fall or that my summer vacation has been
anything but a vacation.
There are few things as cocksure as
a college student who has never been out in the real world, and people my age
always seem to overestimate the value of their time and knowledge. After a
particularly exhausting string of 12-hour days at a plastics factory, I
remember being shocked at how small my check seemed. I couldn’t believe how
little I was taking home after all the hours I spent on the sweltering
production floor. And all the classes in the world could not have prepared me
for my battles with the machine I ran in the plant, which would jam whenever I
absent-mindedly put in a part backward or upside down.
As frustrating as the work can be,
the most stressful thing about blue-collar life is knowing your job could
disappear overnight. Issues like downsizing and overseas relocation had always
seemed distant to me until my co-workers at one factory told me that the unit I
was working in would be shut down within six months and moved to Mexico, where
people would work for 60 cents an hour.
Factory life has shown me what my
future might have been like had I never gone to college in the first place. For
me, and probably many of my fellow students, higher education always seemed
like a foregone conclusion: I never questioned if I was going to college, just
where. No other options ever occurred to me.
After working 12-hour shifts in a
factory, the other options have become brutally clear. When I’m back at the
university, skipping classes and turning in lazy re-writes seems like a cop-out
after seeing what I would be doing without school. All the advice and
public-service announcements about the value of an education that used to sound
trite now ring true.
These lessons I am learning, however
valuable, are always tinged with a sense of guilt. Many people pass their lives
in the places I briefly work, spending 30 years where I spend only two months
at a time. When fall comes around, I get to go back to a sunny and beautiful
campus, while work in the factories continues. At times I feel almost
voyeuristic, like a tourist dropping in where other people make their
livelihoods. My lessons about education are learned at the expense of those who
weren’t fortunate enough to receive one. “This job pays well, but it’s
hell on the body,” said one co-worker. “Study hard and keep
reading,” she added, nodding at the copy of Jack Kerouac’s “On the
Road” I had wedged into the space next to my machine so I could read
discreetly when the line went down.
My experiences will stay with me
long after I head back to school and spend my wages on books and beer. The
things that factory work has taught me–how lucky I am to get an education, how
to work hard, how easy it is to lose that work once you have it–are by no
means earth-shattering. Everyone has to come to grips with them at some point.
How and when I learned these lessons, however, has inspired me to make the most
of my college years before I enter the real world for good. Until then, the
summer months I spend in the factories will be long, tiring and every bit as
educational as a French-lit class.
PHOTO (COLOR): Is that all? After an
exhausting string of 12-hour days, I remember being shocked at how small my
check seemed
~~~~~~~~
By Andrew Braaksma
Braaksma, a junior at the University
of Michigan, wrote the winning essay in our “Back To School” contest.
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