å Sunday, September 4th, 2016

I was 11 years old when I first started working. I worked for a party store; I helped with party arrangements, corsages and manned the phone. Now, I work as an Operational manager for nine charities and counting. I oversee all of the internal administrative and marketing aspects for our clients. Currently, I’m in the works of expanding the office and obtaining two new charities.

My grandmother has spent the majority of her life as a battered housewife. She raised 5 children. Once she was able to leave my grandfather successfully she worked as a crossing guard for a Jewish elementary school. No one knows for sure her real age—she has three birth certificates from Ponce. I believe she still works as a crossing guard 30 plus years later and recently graduated with her masters in English Literature.

The oldest of the five was my mother. She was definitely the black sheep of the family, both figuratively and literally. She was frowned upon and brought shame to the family because of her skin color. (This explains why my father is Irish/Italian) For thirty years she worked as a Court Reporter for both family and Criminal court. After her first divorce, she reclaimed her maiden name. Her boss found out that she was Spanish and attempted to make advances towards her. When she refused, he threatened her job. My mother became blacklisted from her profession when I was nine years old. She currently works as a dog groomer after retirement in the hopes of remaining useful and occupied.

From my understanding, Weber states that as long as Capital encourages its workers with a reasonable compensation, the employee will view their time spent working as more valuable than time spent elsewhere. I feel this more or less the mindset of any driven business person including myself. I am only 25 and yet I’ve spent 14 years with constant work. The purpose I’m continuing my education is a farsighted promotion. In a sense, these are values the women of my family lived by, even if that meant never being home for their families.

I work as a Youth Program Manager at a non-profit organization in Washington Heights; Northern Manhattan improvement Corporation. My experience and career has focused in the area of workforce development. I have held positions in the field as a case manager, a facilitator, developing curriculum, program management and director. While each of these areas of experience has provided me with various perspectives of workforce development, I believe my work ethic comes from my father and his work history.

Growing up, I had known my maternal grandmother to be a childcare provider (babysitter) since she took care of me and my cousins. She cared for 8 of us to allow our parents to work; so her “work” was caring for us. I don’t know my grandfather’s work history since I did not get the chance to know him; he passed away when I was 2 years old. From what my mother tells me, he was a tailor in the Dominican Republic and by the time he came to the U.S., he had a brief work history in a factory before he passed. I also did not get to know my paternal grandmother, since she passed away giving birth to my dad. My paternal grandfather worked as a driver for a major radio station in the Dominican Republic and after Trujillo was assassinated in the 60’s, he came to the U.S. and worked in a factory.

My mother worked briefly in a factory where her brother was a foreman; she worked for about 5 years and then became a stay at home mom taking care of my sister and I. My dad worked at a printing press for over 25 years. His work history had been in factory work, but settled in the printing press where he would stay the majority of his work history. My relationship to work does come from his work ethic. Visiting him at his job instilled the ideas and principles of work. I learn that he put in hard manual labor to earn money, which paid the rent, gave us food and provided our basic everyday necessities. My father made sure I understood that this is what needed to be done in order to make money. But he also let me know that “my” job should be my education. His rational was that I should work just as hard in my studies as he did in the factory. He also let me know that my education would be essential in my life in order not to work as hard as he did. Basically, If I treated education as work, and worked hard; I would be able to provide for myself and my future.

I believe Weber’s idea of work ethic is what we know it to be today; The idea of economic growth combined with the morals and values of how we do it. It was pretty interesting to see how he used religion as a way to help the reader understand the idea of work ethic; Catholicism to represent values, ideas and beliefs of prosperity, while the Protestant perspective brought on what we know as capitalism and earning money to provide the material aspects of life. As I use my history and work experience to reflect on this idea, it fascinates me that my perception of work ethic focuses a bit more on the morals and values side than the “material gain” and economic growth. I believe this is derived from how I interpreted work ethic in my own personal work history. As I reflect, I see that my ethic of work may come from the idea of day to day survival, rather than long term economic growth. Interesting.

I am Jamaican I spent my summer there It was amazing. I have associates in human service from Bronx community college in 2015. This class is a requirement for me to graduate but I am a social welfare major so I am interested I giving back and helping those who are not able to advocate for themselves. My dream job is to work for Administration of Children Services.

To answer the question do I work? well, it’s quite complicated I got fired in July but I will be rehired next week where I will be working at City College the uptown campus in the College Now department. My grandparents were farmers. My grandfather worked the land and he planted yam, banana and other types of produce and also raised cows and other cattle, while my grandmother took them to the market and sold them. They worked very hard to provide for his ten children. My mom is the second child out of 10. She worked as a music teacher before I was born she then continued until she had my little sister. With two children she had to acquire another job she then became a live-in home health aide. She has been with the same employer for the las 20 years. Her dedication and drive inspire me to work hard so that she could live comfortable.

I believe that knowing how hard my grandparents and my mom had to work gives me a different outlook on what I think work is today. I think today’s job market is great and now it has variety compare to their time. I believe that education is the key and without it, most people would be lost. If my mom had an education she would have had a different option but because she did not have more than a high school education she ended up being stuck and had to struggle to make ends meet.

My goals and hopes for the future are to go to Hunter college and acquire my masters and work for ACS. File for my mom and sister so that they could come live with me in New York city and have a few children marry my high school sweetheart and live happily ever after.

In understanding Weber’s meaning of “ethic” of work. it is something that you have to do for the rest of your life that determines your place in society, it also determines your economic growth and prosperity. He spoke about the relationship between the catholic and the protestants.  where one work for economic stature and gain and the other more for leisure. People only want to make enough to live comfortable. I believe that is true we work to only to accommodate our type a living so to me work is a means of survival. in this world that we live nothing is free and I was taught that if you want it you would have to work for it as my grandma would say “if you want good yuh nose have to run” meaning everything in life that you want requires work and dedication if you want to keep it.

I stared working since I was 19 years old. My first job was at the Family school of Manhattan as a teacher assistant and staid at the school for thirteen years. After that I moved on the Montessori school of Manhattan. I been there for nine years,now as a co-teacher in a toddler classroom.

How did my grandparents and parents worked back in my native country Dominican Republic. My grandparents worked as farmers they had rise and plantain farms. They where able to make things better for my parents because they where able to send my parents to college and as a result my parents didn’t have to work as difficult as my grandparents did.

I think this history struck my sense of what work is, my relationship to work,and my goals and hopes for the future. It has stirred me a great deal because i didn’t have to work at the farm I only went to wash the horses, play with the pigs and cows and for camping for fun. It made me see how hard and arduous life was for my grandparents. I think growing up and observing this made me want to work hard to better myself ,go to school and have a career and help future generations of my family.

Because I worked at different schools for many years,I consider that a person needs to invest in their future by educating themselves. Working at a school I have to further my education in order to better my career and pay check. In this day a age educating our self is the only way I think we could modify our self for a better paying job.

What Weber means by “ethic” of work .On one hand Weber thinks that having a strong work ethic determines your economic growths and prosperity. Weber had the notion that when you work with intention it raises your morals and value. He also beveled that protestants value work more than people from other religions but there were never any supporting thesis that supported his believes.

My reflection: I was raised to think that if we don’t work for what we want we won’t get anywhere. My grandparents where hardworking, they where farmers and had to do hard labor in order for my parents to go to college and not have to farm like they did. Seeing how hard they all had to work made me feel I have to make something of myself . I need to have a career not just a job. Now that I have kids I want them to have the same work ethics me and my family have.