"the Demeaning of Work" by Barry Schwartz

Last summer, I had a chance to tutor high school students. However, teaching was not my favorite thing to do. The main reason I started the job was to earn extra money to spend on my clothes. I was not interested in whether or not my students were actually learning the materials. I looked at the clock every five minutes, desperately waiting for the time to pass. In addition, when the parents of the students were not present, I spent my time text messaging to my friends while assigning my students to solve as many problems as they can. I did not realize how foolish I was until I read Schwartz's article. Schwartz categorizes all types of work into three types based on the attitudes that people have toward their work: a job, a career, and a calling. Among these categories, people with jobs, like myself in the past, only work for money without any meanings. In other words, the only reason for them to work is to get paid. And without supervision, these people put the least amount of effort in their jobs, since their pay will not alter. To them, work has no social value. From reading Schwartz's criteria, I found out that teaching students was merely a job for me, rather than a calling, because I did not care about the students' own good and advancement, but only about my pay. Now I realize that I wasted my time during summer working for nothing but money.

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