Day 13: Professionals have Standards

Professionals have standards. I did not understand the meaning of this phrase until I started my schooling at [repair shop in Wisconsin]. All of my teachers so far have demonstrated a level of pickiness that I would not have thought possible before going in. The amount of play a clarinet mechanism can have, how straight your cork is cut, the shine on the brass dongles I am buffing. Everything is ridiculously stringent. Sometimes, it frustrates me because at the level I'm at I can't even tell whether or not what I have done is good enough until I pass it through the eyes of my instructor several times. This, of course, docks me points when it comes to my review. 

The tiniest amount of play, the smallest rough patch, none of it slides. I have to be perfect! And, I feel like being expected to be extraordinary in order to earn extraordinary marks is something that is foreign to most people who have grown up in the American education system. There is no grade inflation where I'm working. 

It may seem like a simple idea: make someone be extraordinary to get extraordinary marks. However, after simply coasting through school, finally being made to get down and perfect something is creating in me a feeling of frustration. I don't know how I'm supposed to be better at this! What am I supposed to do? Will I even make it past the first five weeks?

I don't deal too well with stringent conditions. I have known this for a while. But being faced with conditions that I must overcome, I have realized that I need to change. 

Besides that. Today was my last day in the buffing room for a while. After this I'm going to the soldering department, where I will solder the pieces that I buffed. 

I hope I will rise to the challenge and overcome this. There is the distinct possibility that I will not; I'm not dealing too well with that idea. There is still the very real possibility that I will have to go home in three weeks and will have to find some other way to learn the profession I want to learn. 

Sigh. It's all up to fate. I'll see you tomorrow.