Challenging Stereotypes: Brilliance in Blue-Collar Work

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Through the various types of texts I went through, Mike Rose’s article on “Blue-Collar Brilliance” was the one that I felt I could personally relate to. I grew up in a family where manual labor was the key to a good income. Out of my entire family, I was the only one who graduated high school and went to college, therefore I grew up realizing that people didn’t necessarily need a college education to be considered “smart”. My father has been one of the smartest people in my family, I could explain my calculus homework to him and he would be able to quickly grasp at all the equations and concepts, even though he dropped out of high school as a freshmen in Mexico. In the fall of 2015, I had decided to skip a semester of college to find job opportunities outside of the education field. Starting off with high hopes, I quickly came to realize that job opportunities were hard to find. I came to have a lot His biggest examples are his mother the waitress, known as Rosie and his uncle the mechanic, known as Joe. Rosie and Joe found success and happiness in their jobs that most people look down upon. Rosie claims that “there isn’t a day that goes by in the restaurant that you don’t learn something” as well as Joe that states “it was like schooling… a place where you’re constantly learning”. Mike uses reliable sources to gain detailed proof that blue-collar workers are not “a bunch of dummies”. Joe became an advanced problem solver who ended up initiating the redesign of the paint sprayer nozzle which eliminated “costly and unhealthy overspray”, he also “found a way to reduce energy costs on the baking ovens without affecting the quality of the paint”. These examples are effective to the essay because it proves that blue-collar jobs are more than they seem and if an employee is passionate about their work they could even become innovators in their

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