Critical Analysis Of Blue-Collar Brilliance By Mike Rose

In past years, when people was talking about higher education, they had no hesitation to mention university immediately. When others were mentioning that college also belonged to higher education, sometimes they reacted with a wry smile, and shook their heads. Yes, even if it is for today, university gets the higher appraisal than college, and even many people think ‘‘college as America used to understand it is coming to an end.’’ As parents, they prefer their children to study in university instead of college, no matter how high of tuition the university it is. They ignore the value of college. Although sometimes college is viewed as critical by other people, we still can find its value, and how it is really beneficial for our lives, even if we don’t pursue a degree.

Rose begins his essay recounting his experiences as a child watching his mother work as a waitress in restaurants. He portrays his mother as a hard worker who possesses a great amount of physical and mental ability so as to satisfy customers. Whether it was memorizing orders, balancing plates along her arms, or arguing with the kitchen staff, her job required her to be dynamic in every aspect of the business. Similarly, Rose details one of his uncle’s jobs on the assembly line of General Motors where he too had to become a consummate multi-tasker who not only resolved issues, but identified issues to solve. After working on the line for an extended period, his uncle received numerous promotions. With every promotion came the need for more creative thinking, problem solving, and machinery and production processes. Furthermore, the necessity of knowing how to work budgets and the ability of managing groups of people became an increasingly crucial aspect of his job.

First, being employed in the blue-collar industry a person must show intuition. Rose studied the habits of the blue-collar workplace, and based on his observations came to better understand how the job requires both physical and mental capabilities of an individual. The author Mike Rose, grew up in the 1940’s, this is an example of ethos in the story. Rose observed his mother, Rosie Rose work in a local restaurant as a waitress. Rose observed his mother’s impressive ability to retain food orders while keeping track of her list of side work was a skill demonstrating her intuitive capabilities that were learned out her

Mike Rose has spent most of his life watching those defined as “blue-collar” workers with much appreciation. He would watch his mother, Rosie, and his uncle, Joe, work to their fullest potential with skills he had never really seen anywhere else except in their “blue-collar” world. Mike believes that the way his family worked, as well as others considered “blue-collar”, are intelligent in their own ways and are underappreciated compared to the way he sees them.

Rose complains that stories about identified with occupations where individuals for the most part utilize their hands and muscle to acquire cash specialists by and large miss the emphasis on the reasoning related interest their employments require. The

Almost every high school student when asked about school will most likely give an unenthusiastic answer. There are many factors that go into why high school students give an answer like that. The source of their disinterest in school does not only come from all the homework, but from dealing with stereotypes. They, like many other groups, face many stereotypes in places like school, home, and work.

Rose obtained broad learning all around as much academic years. His work consisted of studying psyche and human performance which made the groundwork for Investigation whom his family lived in the blue-collar society. Rose willingly exposes his adolescence to illustrate an approach that shows the multifaceted nature of such jobs, furthermore that it is much more than physical work. Rose Additionally endeavors that just because you come from a blur-collar life does not put a limit on success, and a quest for higher learning.

In the article, Rose use many emotional personal examples to help the reader understand the amount of hard work and intelligence a blue collar job requires. Rose creates a personal connection with the reader by describing his first-hand experience of growing up watching his mother put her heart and soul into being a waitress in a restaurant. Rose says, “She described the way she memorized who ordered what, how long each dish is supposed to take to prepare, and how she became a pro at meeting the emotional needs of her customers and colleagues alike.” From the quote in the article the reader understand that Roses mother was required to have a high level of intelligence in order to meet the needs of her customers and colleagues alike in order to do her job proficiently. Rose uses emotion in this quote to make the reader relate to his mother and understand that she was a hard worker and did everything in her power to do whatever it took in order to hopefully receive a tip that would be used to support her family. Rose also says, “I couldn’t have put it in words when I was growing up, but what I observed in my mother’s restaurant defined the world of adults, a place where competence was synonymous with physical work”. Rose uses in this quote to relate that his mother’s job

Rose starts off with a special anecdote about his mother’s job as a waitress and then provides another anecdote of his uncle’s automotive job. By doing this, it appeals to the audience with a heartfelt and personal situation which makes it more relatable for the readers. Rose says “She walked full tilt through the room with plates stretching up her left arm and two cups of coffee somehow cradled in her right hand” (1034). This gives the notion that her job was not only hard physically but she had to mentally arrange the objects in her arms before picking them up to get all of it done at once. Rosie, his mother, was always very observant and “her tip depended on how well she adapted to those needs” which meant that her attitude at work was highly important. Rosie herself said, “there isn't a day that goes by in the restaurant that you don’t learn something.” Rose then goes on to tell what his uncle Joe had learned from being a factory worker

In Chapter 3, Mike Rose attends Loyola University to pursue a career in language arts. At first, he is placed into remedial classes because of his previous grades in high school. His high school teacher, Mr. MacFarland, wants Rose to test his capabilities in Loyola’s basic classes to ensure that he will be able to keep up with everyone else. With barely any success, Rose is able to get by with a C-average in almost all of his classes during his first year at the university. He does not feel engaged or excited when he sits through lectures in biology, psychology, speech, logic, or language.

“My mother Rose Mesaglio (Rosie), shaped her idenity as a waitress in coffee shops and family resteraunts” (Rose, 2009) This is by far one of my favorite statements offered by Rose, from my own experiences in the work field. I like Rose’s mother

Loewen’s main points in the excerpt The Land of Opportunity is to illustrate that even today, many people fail to understand what an important role social status play in our society, and how much it restrict us. Also to argue against the commonly accepted idea that we live in a society with high social mobility. He used a variety of evidence which includes personal experience, numerical data, historical event, outside source, and common knowledge to support his points. Once, he referred back to a time when he asked first year college students questions about social classes and merely getting “half-formed and naive” responses. Due to very few of the high school textbook actually contain much information on labor history, and many students only learn what the schools and textbooks teach them. Out of the dozen books Loewen examined, only six had index listing for phrases similar to “social class”, none mentions the air traffic controller strike nor the Hormel meat-packers’ strike, and only four mentioned social stratification.

coal miners were very much aware of their place in society. While Thompson argues that the

In retrospect, college education, in the old days, has been a privilege that was not granted for everyone. Unfortunately, this was a detriment likely to be caused by the inequality at race, gender or wealth. However, as humans have evolved beyond such inane, discriminatory issues, more people were able to go to college and earn a degree for a living, thus improving their quality of life and acting as a driving force to the wheel of the economy. There was no room for regress in education, only evolving could occur. Colleges became ubiquitous and granted education for more students, despise their gender or race. Nowadays, applications are done online and communication between colleges and applicants is corroborated through the use of e-mails, fax and telephones.

He had extremely effective communication skills that ensured that nothing was misconstrued or unclear. This was very helpful with new policies and procedures because he did not allow for anyone to be able to use the excuse that they did not know about them. A big portion of communicating is listening, and no matter how busy he might have been at the time, an employee knew that he was listening to what they had to say to him when they were speaking with him. I think that this not only helped him to successfully motivate and empower his employees, but was part of what made him an effective leader that was able to build up the organization.