Marquise Nurse-Williams
11.29.10
English
Dawn Blunk
Paragraph #2

                                                          Work and Education
            
               In Andrew Braaksma’s essay “Some Lessons from the Assembly Line,” he gives a view of his life

as a student during his summer months out of school. He shows how grateful he is to be back in school when

the long grueling hours as a temp at the factory are over. He learns the value of education and now knows

how hard life could be for him if he only worked dead end jobs instead of getting educated and earning a

degree. I have had a similar situation as Braaksma working in a Pepsi factory and have been inspired by that

experience to go for a degree myself.
              
           When I was younger, about 22, I had a job working with the machinery in a Pepsi Factory. A job I

didn’t mind at first being a huge Pepsi consumer. Yet those were the longest and most tedious working days

I’ve seen so far . I worked a machine that I placed trey after trey onto a conveyor. Every five minutes it

seemed it would get jammed up and I would have to figure out how to fix it in a different way every time,

slowing down production. I’d try the stop button, then the go button. Then I’d try a combination of the

different buttons hoping it loosened before I kicked the thing. My boss was a slave driver and wouldn’t let up

for a second howling “go faster!” at a bewildering rate. I got sick of this job and realized I need to get a

degree or I’m just not going to make it like this.
               
                 As a result, I moved on to not only working at a college but also going to college with a serious

intention to succeed. I do not want to have to go back to a crummy dead end job like the ones I’ve had in

the past. Like Braaksma, I felt a relief when separating from that job and coming back to school. Pressure

lifted and I see a better way of making money in my future rather than working long hours, doing something I

really don’t enjoy.