I spent my summer for tuition hike?

Before the passing of this summer, I never realized just how much can happen to
a person in the course of four short months.

Before all was said and done, I put approximately 8,000 miles on my car, worked
three different jobs, and chalked up enough memories and stories to last an average
person a lifetime.

The summer began with the search for employment, just as it might for any college
student. However, this is where many of the similarities end, and my adventure
in busting my butt for the almighty dollar begins.

The job I started out with was in basement underground plumbing. It was my job
to go into unfinished basements and dig trenches for four inch drain pipe, all
of which had to be pitched to bring water from the bleeders in the walls of the
basement to the sump pump basket. I had never done this kind of work before, and
so I was rather unprepared for the amount of mud that escaped the hole with me
on my clothes.

Every day for the next month, I was covered from my chest to my toes in some of
the slimiest, most disgusting slop that exists in this world. Carpenters, plumbers
and tin kickers alike were shocked at my appearance at the end of each job. I
remember one fine day after escaping one of the many holes I dug, a carpenter
looked at me, then turned to his co-worker and made a remark about how he was
afraid to go walking in the mud.

I also had to supply my own transportation to the job sites, which of course were
nowhere near to where I live. I ended up driving about 30 miles a day to and from
work.

Although I got paid $100 a hole under the table, I soon got fed up with the constant
mess and the general irresponsibility of my employer. So, I quit and was unemployed
for about two weeks.

One thing I soon learned is that two weeks can seem like an eternity when you
have no money coming in every week. Another thing that made it rough was the fact
that I was out every day searching for a new source of employment, and that cost
me about 25 miles a day driving all over God’s green earth hoping that someone
would hire me.

My search soon brought me to a temp agency. Although they wanted to help me, all
of the orders for work they had been getting had mysteriously evaporated shortly
before I entered their office. However, I did manage to get a job in the quality
control field.

Once again, I was entering into a realm I knew nothing about. But this time, the
work fit into the cake category. Although the work was extremely easy, it was
also extremely mundane. My first, and coincidentally only day of work consisted
of pounding bolts that were welded into a plate for car doors at DaimlerChrysler.
Supposedly they had found a single bad weld in a plate, and therefore we had to
go through several hundred of these parts to make sure no more were to be found.

Despite the fact that I was prepared to stick with the job until the end of the
summer, changeover hit, and I was once again without income.

I soon walked into the office of a landscaping and irrigation company, and landed
a job working on irrigation installation. This job fell in between the two extremes
of basement underground and quality control.

While the work wasn’t exceptionally difficult, I was usually out working
an average of 12 hours a day. As luck would have it, this was during the amazing
heat wave turned drought that hit us recently. It was an interesting prospect
trying to make sprinklers work in cities that had cut their water pressure in
half as a conservation effort to combat those who refused to comply with the water
bans.

To cap everything off, I was laid off about two weeks before I had planned to
return to Central. So, once again I was forced to live an eternal 14 days without
a paycheck.

I sincerely hope that the administration is happy that they raised almost all
of their fees along with room and board and tuition. I hope that while they’re
stuffing those dollar bills in their pocket, they realize what some people put
themselves through to get an education. Cheers to the finance committee.