Bluish-white Collars

An interesting article at O'Reilly led me to consider the difference between white-collar and blue-collar work.

Taking a white-collar job is the default path for a "normal" person, one less concerned with self-improvement and more concerned with enjoying life. When I was growing up, and such were the decisions my peers and I had to make, I considered blue-collar a brutish, manual life devoid of intellectuality, and I wanted nothing to do with it. It was with much disdain that I took my first job, which was in construction... and I was very quick to abandon in for a nice, quiet retail job (a book store clerk). To me, white-collar work was "winning", blue-collar was "losing". I dreaded manual labor.

Today I think quite differently about blue-collar work, considering it admirable, creative, and engaging.

I work a white-collar job, and as I look around me now (and the same has been true at my other jobs), I see a rather typical distribution of intelligence, as I would label it.

I suppose that's one of the reasons I miss college life. Professors, in my experience, are the types of people who engage me, even challenge me. While I work with some very intelligent people right now, it's a different type of intelligence, one that I do not relate to as strongly.

I can 't quite put my finger on it...