Work, Leisure, and Full Engagement

This chapter finally discusses what I've been waiting for: local community involvement. One reason Crawford's job is so appealing to him is the fact that he generally knows his customers. The same bikes come in time and time again because the people coming in live in the area and part of a bigger community of motorcycle riders. Relationship from community even helps improve the quality of work; what you're fixing is no longer something distant that the consumer would never take the time to figure out who actually did it. This can be applied to pretty much everything, but especially important for the current push for local foods. Knowing where your food comes from makes a big difference, and keeps the farmer accountable to actual people instead of some big corporate plant.

Crawford also makes a point about how children who were rewarded for drawing eventually lost interest because the reward turned into the reason for drawing. Reading that sounded exactly like college. There are many things that I was interested in before I had to be graded on it, but once a grade was at stake it became more about getting an A than actually enjoying the material. I am definitely looking forward to good grades no longer being the goal for the first time in almost my whole life. Weird.

There are some things computers just can't replace.

Crawford discusses the difference between "knowing that" and "knowing how" in his chapter "Thinking as Doing." I think this is an essential part of our bigger question of whether or not college has really taught us anything. In my experience, college has taught me a lot of "knowing that," which makes sense considering "knowing how" in many cases would require cutting into a person. But there is also the benefit of having labs, where I have learned a lot of "how" (for instance, by cutting up animals, as cruel as it sounds. I've even performed surgery on a rat before, and yes, it did live).

Knowing that and knowing how are also important in the career world. Multiple times I have talked to people about possible paths to take after graduation and there are always questions on whether or not I have ever tried a certain job. A good example of this is research. In science, it is important to do research while you're an undergrad if you plan on going to graduate school. In fact, a lot of times they don't even care what kind of research you do, as long as it's mostly science (and that's a really broad category). The idea is that by doing any research, you get experience for what it would be like to work for the next six or more years of your life doing research. Now, there is a difference between different labs, but the essential ideas are still the same: formulating hypotheses, testing them, retesting them, explaining it to people, figuring out what when wrong and how to fix it, etc. It requires your mind to work a certain way, and no matter how much you read about what research is like, you can never really know until you do it. Knowing that office jobs can be boring does not do justice to how boring they really can be if you've never worked in an office (I'm a little biased against them, but so is Crawford). In doing something you really get to know it, like growing a garden for the first time and figuring out different nutrient requirements of plants. It goes beyond all the theoreticals you learn by surfing the web and makes it real.

The Contradictions of the Cubicle

Crawford switches his focus from the shop to office politics to show the differences between an office team and a manual labor crew. In the end it basically comes down to the office being a place of subjective standards that are prone to frequent change, while in jobs of manual labor there are concrete standards. Oddly enough, this chapter closely paralleled my feelings toward college. I have always liked the sciences because science is ruled by concrete theories and laws. Granted, this is also why many people hate science, because it seems like a ton of memorization. It is similar to the apprentice who just imitates the teacher and after a lot of practice finally figures out why. The office is more like the Dialogue classes or any English class: it is graded by subjective standards. These subjective standards tend to stress me out, because whether it's right or not, grades have a lot to do with getting into graduate school.

In some sense, I thought that Crawford was a little hard on office workers. As much as I hate working in an office, it is important to recognize that there are many offices where people are allowed to think and contribute to the betterment of the company/consumers. These tend to be the smaller companies, because once a company gets too big the employers become more distant from upper management.

Crawford also touches on the fact that as college students or college graduates, we often feel like we are an elite class of people and therefore unwilling to do more menial work or manual labor. Unfortunately, it just sounds so much more prestigious to say you work for a company like Google than be a plumber. Until our society can consider plumbing as prestigious a job as the manager of some big company it is going to be hard to promote Crawford's idea that we don't all need to go to college to have a better life.

The Further Education of a Gearhead

In this chapter, Crawford takes us through his change from a beginner to a professional. I can relate a lot to Crawford in the way that sitting around being part of a think tank was not something that he enjoyed. I would rather be out doing something than trying to come up with ideas to make "the best arguments money can buy." Crawford also addresses how we all live in a shared world and because of this we must see the whole situation of what we do, as Crawford had to go through the whole problem in order to fix the Honda. This is a quality that makes Crawford good at what he does: his passion as well as his ability to think through the whole problem even if it seems pointless. This also become a reason why when a hobby turns into a profession it can ruin the hobby, because it no longer exists for our own pleasure, but becomes subject to the needs and criticism of others.

The Education of a Gearhead

In this chapter, Crawford discusses how being a good mechanic "offers a counterweight to the culture of narcissism" (102). Ironically, most of the chapter seems like he is sure that his profession and how how much he knows about it causes him to be better than others. While he starts off his chapter telling us that we aren't all meant for the same field, he goes on to rave about why being a mechanic is basically the better profession. That's probably not what he meant to do, but is the impression that I got. However, that could be because he seems to base his thoughts on science on his father's theoretical physicist influence. Not all science deals with theoreticals; some of it deals closely with material reality.

He does make some good points in this chapter as well. The ethical virtue involved to make work great instead of just another "idiot" is something that is definitely true. The more passion you have for what you do, the more likely you are to be careful and thoughtful in your work to do the best job possible. Work is no longer just being someone on an assembly line, but something that is a big part of who you are. This is why it is good to know if you are "careful or commanding" or a number of other personality traits (and why going into something just to please your parents almost always turns out bad).

To Be Master of One's Own Stuff

As I've mentioned a few times already, I am the type of person that loves taking things apart and fixing things. I've always loved creating my own things, too, but creating things takes a lot of time and sometimes a lot of money. While I was home over spring break, I got together with a couple friends from my church back home and we met a refugee who needed curtains. We could have just gone out and bought some at Wal-Mart for less than $20, but instead we went to a fabric store and picked out the fabric to make them ourselves, making the price go to about $50. But there's something to be said about creating something. Picking out fabric, laying it out, pinning it together to make it look just how you want it, and then sewing it to see the final product is just great. It's also time-consuming and requires more money (if it weren't for the fact that I wasn't paying for it, I probably would have ended up at Target or Wal-Mart). So I usually buy things that are cheap and bring them home and fix them to be how I want them to be. Crawford would point out that even customizing is not the same as actually creating, but when I have little money and time it's about as close as I can get right now.

I enjoyed Crawford's example of music, also. Because of my majors, many people are shocked when they find out that I'm still in band (my roommates often forget, even). I think Crawford's explanation of a musicians obedience to the mechanical realities of the instrument has a lot to do with why I can't give it up, even if it often doesn't count as a credit so I don't have to pay for extra hours. I know my instrument. I know what it can do, what it can't do, and the second my fingers touch the keys they feel at home. The real reason, though, is that I just enjoy using my hands and I need that to keep me sane. But I've also never been the type to just sit down and create my own music. I can play whatever you put in front of me but I am terrible at making things up, and that's because while I've mastered my instrument mechanically, I know close to nothing of actual theory. But playing is something that is constant and has "concrete limits" that are "external to the self." It's a structure thing, and one of my biggest worries after I graduate is what to do with no more band.

The final tactic: Give to Caesar what is Caesar's

"Whatever steps we take to live the abundant life that Jesus has made possible, we can't ignore the fact that we live in the midst of political systems that affect us and our neighbors" (pg 188).

In this final chapter, Wilson-Hartgrove reminds us that our money is not really ours, but our government's, and we are really God's. It is often hard to separate ourselves from money, but that becomes necessary if we choose to live a life for God rather than for ourselves. If we begin to look at money as something that doesn't actually belong to us, life would be a lot different. But how can one live a life separated from the ownership of money? The only way really seems to be live in a community. If we separate ourselves from others, money becomes so much more important in our lives as we fight to make enough to survive, and then fight some more to live comfortably, and continue fighting to make more and more. If we live within a community, we have people to back us up when we're behind, and we can focus on things other than making money. When our focus changes, giving money back to whom it belongs seems a little easier. We must live our lives focusing on the fact that we are God's, and money is not ours. It seems that within this final tactic, the rest of them fall into place.