My Interview With Elizabeth Benson

After class on Thursday, I sat down with one of my good friends in CSCL, Elizabeth Benson. We found that when we took the powerpoint test that she was a 3 and I was an 8, so it worked out perfectly. We made our way into Coffman and went down to The Whole to conduct our interview. What i discovered about Elizabeth was something truly interesting.

Elizabeth is a Sophomore and is from Wisconsin. She lives on a 30 acre plot of land that is surrounded by woods and she goes home just to get away from the stress and to be HOME. She was homeschooled her whole life up until college. Her parents decided to do this because when her older brother came home and said that his teacher told him that 'cow' is spelled K-O-W, the parents decided that their children deserved a better education than the public schools could offer. Elizabeth is a gal who likes to play video games, she is BIG on dancing, she loves to draw, and she listens to music quite often, so clearly, she is pretty artsy!

I asked Elizabeth what her views on unions was. She told me that she sees them as 'useful' in some situations, but she also sees some bad things that go along with them. Her mother works at a coffee shop in the student center at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls. Her job there is unionized, so that means for her that there isn't a raise in pay. One day, her mom took a break for a few minutes and apparently it was the wrong time to take a break and she didn't ask her supervisor. At the time of her break, there was no one around to ask to take a break, so her mom just took it. She was written up by the supervisor and got into trouble.

Elizabeth's father grows sunflower seeds. He works out of his home for 'Mycogen Seeds,' which is a non-union company that produces sunflower oil for large companies such as Frito Lay. Her father has fields of sunflowers and he breeds the plants together to create new seeds (genetics) which refers back to romanticism in everyday life (i.e. selective breeding...breeding to get the best). During the winter, he has his seeds sent to Hungary and Argentina. He travels a lot on business trips and she seems to miss him, so he probably is gone quite often. Her father has a salary pay and works shifts throughout the day. She told me that he works ALL THE TIME and that his pay DOESN'T reflect the work that he does. From this I gathered that Elizabeth and I could agree on the fact that the pay MUST reflect the amount of work put into something.

I then asked Elizabeth what her job experience was like. She told me that she has had several jobs. She started working at age 14 for her dad as a little helper in his sunflower business. Over the summer she worked for the University of Minnesota for the University Food Services and still works there now, except just as a fill-in for people. In her line of work, the students are NOT allowed to have a union, but the non-students who work for the University Food Services ARE unionized. Elizabeth then told me that she really isn't working all that much and that leaves the payment of tuition on her parents. She seems to feel guilty that her mom has to work to help pay for Elizabeth's schooling...Elizabeth used to go to a cheaper college, but came to the U of M this year and as a result, her mom had to go to work because Elizabeth's parents pay for her tuition. With both of her parents working to make sure that Elizabeth has the best education she can get, they are truly sticking to their original ideology that they had when Elizabeth was younger and just starting school. Gosh, is that love or what?!!!

Overall, Elizabeth feels that people NEED to be rewarded for the hard work they do. There also needs to be recognition and definite line between slackers and hard workers. Based on what Elizabeth told me, I agree with her on all the things she said. It's funny and interesting how we were seperated by 5 points on the power point test...it may be because we didn't fully understand what the questions meant...i felt like i was answering randomly. So it appears number-wise that Elizabeth and I are completely opposites, but in reality, we seem to have the same views on unions...they are needed to make sure people get payed based on the work they do. I definitely learned something new about how labor and work ethics affect different families in different ways.