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By Jamison Wilkinson

Guest Columnist

My job has always been an important part of my life. It is how I show I am reliable and have a good work ethic to earn things I am eager for in life. My family instilled these values in my life and showed me that if you start at an early age in the working industry and earn your keep, you may have some of what you need, but you will always have the things that are most important.

Those values have grown with me and made me who I am today, starting out with my own business doing grass-cutting jobs and landscaping over the summers to bigger and new things like the funeral home where I also was a groundskeeper. I’m now onto a mechanical and strip-mining job that earns a hard-earned dollar.

Let’s face it. Most kids my age have all things handed to them — cars, money, essentials — and they never have to work for anything. They’re spoiled to death and it ruins them.

Are they learning anything from their parents doing this for them? No, of course not.

It honestly starts with the parents and the values they instill in their children that shape and form them into fine young examples of hard-working, independent adults for the near future. If they always have everything handed to them, will they ever want to work for anything or get their hands dirty? I was raised differently. My mother came from a low-income family growing up and did not have a lot. She got pregnant in high school, was a dropout and worked hard to become who she is today. She returned to school, earned her GED, and worked a full-time job raising her child and providing. She will soon graduate with her bachelor’s degree in human service counseling. She is a role model to me and many others. Did she ever have help or have things given to her during this time? No, because she fought and fought hard to get to where she is today.

So, for me, it is about working hard every day to make sure I am successful and become the best man I can be in the world of work. I want to earn a good, honest living, knowing that it can help me buy the things in life I want, and I won’t have to worry about others giving them to me.

Jamison Wilkinson is a junior at Harlan County High School.