...whatever the heck that means.
After reading Crawford's chapter on the separation of thinking from doing, I was sort of annoyed by his "advice" for a young person. He presents two options: go to college, or learn a trade. Or, if you go to college, learn a trade during the summer so you have a skill. My question is: what if you read that four years too late, are about to graduate from college, and don't have a trade to go into? I'm a senior, and I don't really think I want to go into some kind of office job. Or at least, not working for a corporation or big business, or any kind of job that I don't feel passionate about. Right now I'm in the middle of the application process for an AmeriCorps program that combines office work and physically rebuilding to provide affordable housing. But most jobs aren't like that. How do you find a job that allows you to use your hands (and your brain) and provide for yourself if you don't know what trade you're suited for? The main examples in my life of people working in a trade are my dad, grampa, and uncle. But they work with machines and construction. I don't know the first thing about machines, and my experience with woodwork is limited. I guess it sort of echoes Ruhi's questions in our last Wednesday class; how do you engage in this kind of work if you aren't skilled at it? In my case, the question is more specific: how do I find a job doing something other than sitting in a cubicle if I don't know what else I can do?
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I don't think Crawford meant to freak us out, but to show us that we don't have to be as academic as we've always been told. While he is directing his last paragraph more toward people looking to go into college, I think he's also telling people in our situations that it's okay to go into a trade - to do something that we didn't necessarily go to college for (or, in my case, that I don't have to go to graduate school if I don't need to right now). No matter what you end up doing, though, the key thing to remember is you're going to have to start at the bottom. You can gain experience in things through volunteering or just doing your own projects at home. Right now it seems frightening because we are about to step out into the post-college world, but I think that now is a perfect time to start looking at whether we want to go into a trade or not (and we may have to take a terrible office job to get some money while we work on a trade if we are passionate about it).
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