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Michael Testa

Professor Kellner

ENGL 0099 004 Rough Draft 1

19 October 2019

“How my Past Shapes my Future”

The experiences of my past are what I use to determine my path for the future. After

going straight to the workforce from Highschool, and much like author Peter Rondinone’s “Open

Admissions and the Inward I” I was quickly burning out and started to realize I needed a change,

and earning a college degree would be the only way I could do that.

My path to college was through many years of hard work at low paying jobs just to keep ending

up back where I started. When I was 16 I got a job working for my uncle in a restaurant. I found

the job to very hectic and chaotic but the more time I spent there the more I was able to make

sense of the madness. The crazier things got in the kitchen the calmer I was able to be. After a
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couple years I had gotten pretty good at managing the chaos of the kitchen and was quickly

becoming bored of the work. I was now 18 had my own car some money in my pocket and was

ready to try something new. I moved out of my parents’ house with no job and just my savings

account to pay bills with. I got my first apartment and my first real taste of freedom. With my

own place and no job, I was free to do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted, this lifestyle

quickly caught up to me when after a few months of just hanging out I was flat broke and about

to lose my apartment before my first lease was even up. So, I knew I needed to find a job and

find one fast, I knew I could do kitchen work but that wasn’t what I wanted to do anymore so I

thought where else could I apply. There was a local strip mall with a "Staffing Agency" in it. I

wasn’t really sure what this place was but I knew they got you jobs. Before to long I had my first

assignment, an animal farm. Turns out that’s just what they call it, it’s more of an industrial

factory that made items for animals. I had a job in the saw mill making cedar and pine bedding

for gerbils and hamsters. After that I got a job contracting for Proctor and Gamble helping to

make prototype diapers for Pampers research and development. From there they placed me in a

few other factories making things from armor plating for army Humvees to warehouse jobs,

shipping out windshields and windows for GM.

All of these different jobs and positions let me take a look at a wide variety of job settings

and worker conditions. Every place I would go I would see people older than me trading their

sweat for money, I would see what years and years of this would do to them and their bodies.

Stories of broken bones and crushed spines, first-hand knowledge of what a machine can do to a

person and all the time thinking "not me". I would tell myself that isn’t going to happen to me

because this isn’t my career, I’m just a temp. Well after a few years of just being a temp I had

become a jack of all trades but yet a master of none. So, I thought to myself what am I good at?
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The kitchen, I had always been good at the chaos of the kitchen. So, I decided to return to

restaurant work but this time I was going to take it seriously and try to make a career of it. With

hard work and dedication, I was able to land a job at a fine dining restaurant and quickly worked

my way up the ladder. After a few job moves and position changes I was finally in charge of my

own kitchen and my own staff. I felt like I was on a real path to a really career as a chef. But the

more I looked around the more I noticed how my story was so different from everyone I worked

with. They would tell me stories of gang life, doing time in prison, battling addiction, and often

immigrating to this country just for a chance at a better life. I hadn't known struggle like they had

known, I hadn’t gone through the hardships they had. Most were grateful just to be giving a

chance to work. I started to see that everyone I was working with was there because they didn’t

have a lot of other options in their life, as a convicted felon or non-English speaking person your

job prospects are severely limited. I on the other hand didn’t fit into either of these categories. I

haven’t been to prison, or even jail. I speak English and was born in this county so why was I

always the only one in the kitchen with this background? I wanted to be, the others didn’t have a

choice they had to take whatever jobs they could get. I took these jobs because they were easy to

me and I didn’t have to challenge myself. As I got older I started to ask myself if this is what I

want to be doing at 55 years old, scrubbing out deep fryers and scrubbing off pots and pans. I

knew the answer was no. I had to make a change, I saw myself turning into those old broken

shells of people I used to tell "not me" too in my temp positions, I knew the only way I could go

from working with my back to working with my brain is to get a degree. So, I decided to look

into school and set my mind of pulling myself out of my path of self-destruction. I knew it will

be hard and it will require lots of dedication. But I knew If I just apply myself to school like I did

work I can do nothing but succeed. And knowing my options I felt like I made the right decision.
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Much like in the story “Open admissions and the inward I” where author Peter

Rondinone talk about his enrollment into The City College of New York being a life altering

experience and that it was only afforded to him through a recent change in the school’s

admissions policy. In 1970, the school temporally reduced requirements for admission and the

author was able to actively enroll in the university, despite his negative grades. Through hard

work, perseverance, and sacrifice he became a successful writer. He goes on to write “If it

weren’t for open admissions, the likelihood is I would still be swinging baseball bats on the

street on Friday nights” (Rondinone 47). In this line he sums up the fact that if had never been

given the opportunity to attend school he would still be a no-good running amuck on the town

streets.

He and I were both on a dead-end path and felt like getting an education was going to be

the only we could affect the change we wanted to see in ourselves. We both realized that it was

not too late to work on bettering ourselves in order to change the situations we were in and that

getting an education would be the key to taking control of our own futures.

Works Cited

Rondinone, Peter J. "Open Admissions and the Inward 'I'." Change: The Magazine of

Higher Learning, vol. 9, no. 5, 1977, pp. 43-47.