November 5, 1999

English 5

Mrs. Hawkins

In the book, How to Tell When You’re Tired, Reg Theriault discussed the various aspects of working and how they impact different kinds of people. In chapter six Theriault specifically focuses on the relationship between younger and older workers. _________Although he states that older workers accept work as their fate, younger workers have their heads stuck in dream clouds and education is viewed as the vaccination against them he implies something different; work is a fate and both the white and blue collar workers always see the “grass greener on the other side of the fence.”

Theriault speaks of how older workers are able to accept that work is their fate but young workers somehow believe that they can break that cycle and start a business for themselves. He then spoke of how parents try to raise their children with the belief that education will set them free. In parents eyes they see education as a door that allows you to pass through to the middle class. He then tells of how education will allow you to also move up to white collar work. Although he states that common thought is that white collar work is better than blue collar, he also mention that when a longshoremen open up six-hundred job openings, out of the the fourteen thousand applicants a majority of them were teachers and white collared workers. Theriault also mentions that he, having an education still ended up with blue collar work. Overall he views work as a fate and with or without education the work is equal on both sides.

My personal opinion is that in todays world an education is all the difference between getting to choose a job or getting stuck with a job. A long time ago education wasn’t an important variable between liking your job or not or the type of job you get. Today and education is like a key that opens doors and without that key you’re stuck at the first door that opens. Younger workers do approach work differently than older workers. Some believe strive to work harder knowing the value of education and others slack and try to make up for it later. One aspect that I agree with Theriault is that younger workers approach work with open minds and dreams while older workers have their feet sunk in the ground and realize the limits to each reality.

My cousin Tom thought that he could get a free ride through life. He has a lid back kind of character that somehow has always had things fall into his lap. Not realizing that one day his luck would run out he decided to skip college, pass GO and collect his two hundred dollars. Well, without an education four years later, he works at Nordstrom part-time and has just recently gone back to a city college. He won’t finish college util he is twenty-seven. Now, after making that horrible mistake he learned the hard way, you can’t go anywhere in today world without education.

Theriault has a really great perspective about work. He sees the ups and downs of having an education but more importantly is the fact that he saw past that into what he believed. Today you can go into any field of work but when he was working options like that weren’t often offered to him. He saw past what others believed (the differences b/t blue and white collar work) and realized that work is fate and we are just the pons in the game. With education we are armed and with the right moves can take the working game into our advantage.

Word Count: 612