Yesterday I was asked if my first job motivated me! Yes it did!
My first job set me on fire for learning. I was not a good student through 11th grade, but that summer everything changed. I got a job working construction.
We were b
uilding a high school and I was totally unskilled, naïve, and young. My job was to do whatever no one else wanted to do. Man it was dirty, hot, hard work but, I made 60 cents an hour.
That was almost twice what I made in my other first job 2 years earlier. There we were tearing down a really old building and my job was to pull the nails out of the boards and straighten them. In those days people recycled everything, nails, boards, and even old catalogs. (If you don’t know what we used them for, ask your grandparents, if their still around).
I started senior year with a new vigor for learning. I had freshmen algebra first hour, advanced algebra and trig second hour, physics followed lunch, then history, English literature, and physics lab filled out my day. Nothing would keep me from college and send me back to those “work camps”.
But, by the end of sophomore year I was again tired of studying so God found me a job in an animal rendering plant. Ever 
wonder what farmers did when cows, horses, or other large animals died? Well, the rendering works picked them up, skinned them for the hide and cooked the rest down to become “Hi protein” animal food.
My job, for 75 cents/hour, was to transport the aging hides to the railroad siding some five miles away. I lost 10 # the first day from sweating (there was no air conditioning) and vomiting every few minutes from the wretched smell and all the flies! Somehow I survived and school once again was a delight!
A delight? Yes. Easy? No. That year I found out how much fun learning can be. I finished college, went to medical school, and like they say, the rest is history. I wouldn’t change a thing!
I practiced pediatrics, adolescent medicine, and sports medicine, and found time to write four books. The fourth waas released two days ago by Tate Publishing and Enterprises, LLC!
Tools for Effective Parenting, is the first book in the “Parenting with Doctor Par Series”. It should be in your favorite book store soon, in the meantime you can get it from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and my website.
Did your first job motivate you? Is your present job motivating you to stay and work hard, or find something else? Let us know!
Let me know too, if Tools for Effective Parenting motivates you! That would motivate me to get working on the next one!
Thanks for letting me share my motivation, and my writing!