Hello everyone!

The following is a piece I wrote for my English class, entitled "The Working Class of Academia". I thought I would share because I am quite proud of this piece. It was fun to write, and I took some artistic liberties with the language, which is always entertaining.

Enjoy!

The Working Class of Academia

            My fellow students-of-higher-education and I belong to many diverse groups. We can be divided by such broad categories as race, gender, religion, or age. We could be divided by class standing. We could be divided by academic achievements, social works, or cars we drive. We could be ordered alphabetically by last name, or from tallest to shortest. I find myself in several of, if not several tens of, these groups.

But of all the classifications, divisions, groups, subgroups, delineations, demarcations, accumulations, congregations, and combinations of students to which I belong, I find one held on a more special pedestal in my heart, reserved a more plush velvet bolster, and guarded by emotional trip-lasers, protected, even, by a glass case of mental construction, like my own personal Hope Diamond. I call the members of this classification The Workers.

            The Workers are locked in the academic marathon so often run by pursuers of a brighter future; namely, college. However, as I mentioned above, there are hundreds of groups that those of academic pursuits can be defined by and clustered into, and many more subgroups for further refinition. What sets the Workers apart? First, Workers are defined as students who care enough about school to apply themselves the necessary amount to pass with at least B's. But to further define Workers, you must analyze the amount of work they must put in to maintain said eighty-plus GPA, and the resultant amount of social pursuit they are allowed or choose to take as a result.

            We find, as a result of the natural spread of human talent and charisma, a rather dramatic spectrum demonstrating the internal compartments within the Workers. At the top of this spectrum, like the mighty eagle soaring on warm and easy updrafts, we find the Breezers. These beautiful and enigmatic individuals stroll through the hurdles of study as if floating lazily down a clear-shining stream in a faded-white canoe with a dainty pink parasol of the finest silk twirling merrily on their shoulder, and, as is so often the case in such Victorian scenes, they are accompanied by a finely-dressed suitor serenading them tenderly with the airy and romantic tunes of love, for the Breezers are also the masters of the social scene. They number their friends in the dozens.

They are intelligent and quick-witted, and therefore their studies are, predictably, a breeze. They have a certain knack for scholastic work. The amount they are required to apply themselves to reach the B is minimal, and they can spend hours every day chasing fauns, playing pan flutes, and drinking from clear mountain streams.

            Continuing on in our rainbow spectrum of Workers, we find ourselves now examining the every-man group of the Workers, namely, the Center-Fielders. Like the dedicated baseball players that serve as their namesake, the Center-Fielders are not the All-Stars. They’re not the Home-Run Hitters, the Grand-Slammers, or the $10,000 Baseball Card-ers. But they’re also not the Strikers-Out, or the Bunters. These easy-going and talented individuals work hard and have a consistent batting average.  They often find their early afternoons dedicated to the absorption of intellectual material assigned by their oh-so-sapient professors. Their evenings, however, upon completion of the aforementioned osmosis, are usually open to the pursuits of more minor flights of fancy, such as Mario Kart or Beer Pong.  The Applicators find collegiate speed bumps to be more along the lines of a hike up an awesome and aromatic mountain side; moderately challenging, but enjoyable.

            The third group in which Workers fall is the Home-Schoolers. These quiet Athenas are on intellectual par with none, for none can match their mental tenacity. Often these individuals were schooled under the shielding roof of their family’s abode, and as a natural result, experienced less of the rough-and-tumble sink-or-swim fall-or-fly fit-in-or-fall-out aspects of the public schooling system. They achieve their status of intellectual isolationist superiority by complete and total devotion to the art of study. They choose to sacrifice the lighter affairs of courtship and other such social frivolities to gain entrance into this elite group.

            The Home-Schoolers (important note: the name “Home-Schooler” does not necessarily mean that an individual within this group was home schooled, merely that the group of working and dedicated collegiate students who fall in this group share many aspects with those who were) are closely related academically to the Breezers, in that the amount they must apply themselves to maintain a high grade point average is actually very little. They are, however, the opposite of the Breezers socially. They usually have never been natural social butterflies, and if they have been, they have since completely given up fraternization in the pursuit of academic perfection. While the technical definition for a Worker outlined above states that in order to be a Worker a student must maintain at least a B grade average, to do so is akin to failure in the eyes of a Home-Schooler. They will happily settle for nothing short of the glimmering four-point-oh.

            Finally, at the end of our dissective vivisection we find the stragglers of the Working world. This group serves as the anti-thesis to the Breezers, for whom life comes so easily. This group is known as the Fighters. These poor gentlefolk are running the wrong way down a greased-up ten-mile-per-hour automatic walkway filled with angry and burly pedestrians and their over-stuffed Diane Von Furstenberg matching luggage sets from the day they enroll to the day they turn their tassels. They are not lazy; on the contrary, they are the hardest working of the Workers. Despite their hard work, or perhaps because of it, they barely manage to scrape their B grades from the gutters of self-sacrifice, and only after they have given everything they have, everything they are, everything they ever have been and everything they ever will be to the collegiate machine. They have not the choice to partake in social endeavors, for to lose one hour of potential study would spell disaster. Whatever instinct drives these mighty salmon to swim upstream is more of a motivation than non-Fighters will ever know.

            That is our spectrum of Workers in its entirety. From the Breezers to the Fighters, and all that’s in between, we have effectively encapsulated the academic Working class. However, it should be mentioned that not all the Workers will fall neatly into one of these categories. There will always be unique individuals who are indefinable, who fall somewhere in between. For example, perhaps there is a student who finds academia to be a breeze, and yet suffers socially, despite many hours spent in clubs and on dates. These members of society lack the natural social skills of a Breezer. The academic standing of a Home-Schooler is beyond their reach. They are more fluent in their studies than a Center-Fielder, and far more fluent than a Fighter. This person falls through the cracks into the all-collective basket I call Workers-Other, where he or she is piled onto his or her co-Working-but-not-further-definable-than-that peers.

            It is important to make a point at this point. Workers, by definition, are dedicated to their perspective fields. A Breezer is a Breezer, a Fighter is a Fighter, and cetera. They would not usually change their method of study, for that represents their particular signature on the vast parchment of student methods, and it defines who they are and why they do what they do.

            That being said, should a Worker decide to change his or her methods, he or she could easily move from one group to another. If a Home-Schooler slowed his learning pace and balanced life’s scale with more social activities, he could become a Center-Fielder, or a Breezer. Should a Center-Fielder abandon the social side and dedicate herself to study, she could become a Home-Schooler. And should a Fighter abandon his struggle, he would be carried mercilessly by the relentless tide to another classification, somewhere in the dark and bitter reaches beyond the boundaries of the Workers.

            My own self-diagnostic soul search places me firmly among the Center-Fielders, where I happily form a balance between hearty swings and healthy bench-sits with my teammates. But beyond my own group, I am part of the whole, and I feel at one with the Breezers, the Fighters, and the Home-Schoolers, for we are all united in the dedicated pursuit of our academic futures. In the end, of all the possible student classifications in which I could be placed, this is the classification to which I belong to which I feel I truly belong. I am proud to be a Worker, and together, with my fellow Center-Fielders, the Breezers, the Fighters, and the Home-Schoolers, we shall continue to fight on in the pursuit of the brighter future that hangs glittering for us past the finish line. We will run the good race, and fight the good fight, for that, by definition, is what a Worker does.