Late Night

It is currently 9:48 PM on Tuesday July 6th and I have about another hour before my experiment finishes up at work. I came in from 8 am to noon to work on some things that needed to be done, then I left and came back to work from 5-11 PM so that I could set up a process experiment that had to run exactly ten hours. This way I can come in tomorrow morning at 9 am and test the samples from the process experiment. This is a good learning experience for me that I can teach to my students. The idea is that we live in a work world where workers have to be flexible and a lot of times work off the job as well. Companies want employees who are flexible and get the job done. Last summer when I worked at Kemin I was only given one project for the summer. I think that they were unsure what to do with me at first, because typical interns only worked on one project at a time. With my experience from last summer they have given me much more of a work load, still not quite as much as a regular employee, but still a good amount. Here at Kemin, and most likely with other businesses, it is all about getting the job done, and not how many hours you work. The days of the 8-5 job don't always apply anymore. Sometimes, you have to flexible or even take work home with you in order to get the job done, and companies want to see employees take this initiative. Its not that they are overworked, sometimes they may get off earlier, its just sometimes employees are expected to make some sacrifices for their job. This may be a simple and silly connection to the classroom, but I have heard some teachers make the argument that homework is not valuable to students. Some teachers say the reason being is that students don't put the right amount of effort into or even complete the assignment. I agree that homework may not be the most important aspect of education but it still needs to have a strong emphasis for the simple fact that in the real world you will be expected to meet deadlines, even if this means taking work home, just like homework. Students need to polish this 21st century skill because in the business world it is all about deadlines.

Regarding other things in the previous week, my work here at Kemin this summer has been very collaborative, working collabortively is one of the most important 21st century skills. I have been working closely with the plants process engineer on various work that needs to be done with him. We have meetings about once a week, sometime more often, to discuss where we need to go with certain studies, what needs to be tested, how it should be tested, and so forth. We have even held Skype calls with the departments vice president who was traveling to meet with a customer about our results. I think it would be a great idea to have students use Skype in a collaborative fashion on some sort of activity or project that they are working on in class. I have several projects in my class to infuse this idea in order to make the project more collaborative and more real world. For example, students giving presentations for a certain project, I may have them go to another room and then complete their presentation via Skype. This happens more often in the business world then you would think. Well, I need to get back to finishing the process experiment, the wait time is over, and I should be able to get out of here pretty soon!