Essay #1 / Rough Draft

I don’t necessarily think of going to college as “job training” but more as a “liberal arts” training.  I think the general education courses we students are required to take in college are meant to prepare us for life in general, for being a good and interesting person, and for being a good citizen.  However, the general education courses should also prepare us to learn how to learn, which can benefit us in the future, for any job.  If people know how to learn, they can use that knowledge anywhere.  So now when I am asked to think about how my own history and my family have influenced my career choices, my work philosophy, and my work ethics, it seems a bit unusual for me to do this in college because it goes against my philosophy of college.

This is my first semester of college, and right now I am thinking of two possible but very different majors: music education or chemistry.  In some ways, these two majors do lead to employment; now that I think about it, I guess most college majors are geared toward some specific field of work.  If I were to major in music education, the career I’d be looking at would be as a band director in a high school.  If I were to major in chemistry, there are at least three career options available.  I could teach high school chemistry, I could work as a chemist for some kind of industry, or I could go on to medical school and become a doctor.  I don’t think my family influenced me at all in these decisions.  The only person in my family who is a teacher is my mother, who teaches cosmetology.  My father was a self-employed carpenter and now works for the state of Minnesota as a carpenter (and he has never really taught me anything about carpentry), and my maternal grandfather was a machinist (but he often sees himself as a teacher to me about many different things).  And no one in my family is into chemistry, medicine, or music at all.  So I think my interest in teaching comes from having had good teachers in high school, especially in English, math, chemistry, and music.  Also, I was the drum major for our high school band for four years, so this might explain my interest in music education.

In terms of my work philosophy, I’m not sure yet if I even know what it is or where it comes from.  I know my grandfather really enjoyed his work as a machinist (he is now retired), and what he enjoyed about it was fixing the machines that were down, finding the problem and trying to figure out a solution.  So, for him, the meaning of work was in exercising his brain every day, which made him happy.  In fact, he is still this way today, even though he is retired.  If anything goes wrong around the house or on a car in our family, he is right there to figure out what’s going wrong and how to fix it.  For my parents, they really don’t talk about their “philosophy” of work.  I know sometimes they come home happy, and sometimes their jobs make them irritated, but they must be in it for more than just the money, although I have the feeling my dad really sees his role as needing to support his family, which makes work a lot about the money.  [I should really find out more about this.]  In addition, the jobs I’ve had in the past, at KFC as a cook, at a hotel as a dishwasher, at a gas station as a cashier, and at Servicemaster as a cleaner, have all been about the money: I’ve needed the jobs to save up money for my expenses while I’m in school.  But I don’t see my future career as being all about the money.  If I go into music, it will be about the music and the students, teaching them not only how to play their instruments, but how to play together and enjoy music.  If I go into chemistry, it will be about figuring things out and finding solutions to problems.  The same is true for medicine; if I become a doctor it will be to help people get better by figuring out what their problem is and then how to solve it.

As for my work ethic, I know I have a good one.  I work hard at whatever job I have, because that’s how I was raised and that’s what I see around me every day.  Both my grandfather and my father have instilled in me the idea of hard work paying off, maybe not necessarily in terms of money, but in terms of personal satisfaction in a job well done.  For my grandfather, to figure something out and to find the solution to a troubling problem is a great reward.  For my father, to build or remodel something so that it looks fantastic and pleases the customer is also a good reward, though as I’ve said before, the money is also important.  For my mother, when she’s not teaching cosmetology, to cut someone’s hair so that it looks good and pleases them is important, though I know from her comments that the better she does the better the tip is.

[I need a conclusion but I’m not sure yet what to write.  I don’t want to simply restate my three main ideas.  I need to come up with something better.]

(almost 2.5 pages when using a 12 point font; 898 words so far)