Messages
Jason Fisher
Jason at Work
What happened to the skinny teenage kid that joined us 4years ago?
The plan was to turn him into an engineer with him having no more than an enthusiastic interest in cars for a starting point.
18 years old was a bit late to be a work shop cleaner and tea boy and he did find it a chore, but eventually he could make a decent cuppa and the workshop was clean and orderly “phase one completed”.
Phase two was education which was always going to be difficult for him as he was no scholar, his first year at college was as frustrating to him as it was to us with not much more than health and safety , year two saw some engineering skills which was a start but nothing which he could put into practise. Year 3 he could use some of his training in the machine shop and actually made a few parts which we could use but most of it ended in the scrap bin. Year 4 was the turning point, with a difficult year 3 he had to improve or it was all over. By this time he had grown to like the job and must have seen the opportunities ahead so he knuckled down and realising for the first time that it was up to him to learn not us to teach which made all the difference, he took command of his own education and used all the facilities at hand with far greater enthusiasm and eventual success. During this time he became my assistant when we drove across Europe usually to Italy as breakdown crew on old car rallies. It was never a simple driving job as his education continued while we drove with a constant bombardment of question from me from books he was asked to study that was assuming he was awake or not plugged into that infernal music he had to have when he was driving. He made the perfect assistant and made many friends (usually female) on our trips. The last year of his training was all in house with the collage tutors making regular visits to examine his progress, most of his paperwork was incomplete as usual but his hands on skills beginning to show he had developed a talent which was not natural but learnt the hard way with determination and effort which was a credit to him, he actually experienced for the first time his own achievements from all those hours of disciplined training. The more work he did the better he got, by now he was a valued assistant restoring a race car project, his collage training was over and he had turned into a man, the tantrums were gone, the sulking had disappeared and he loved his work. We now had a junior engineer who had deserved the responsibility of his own restoration project but tragically he never started it. Within hours of reaching the first stage of his professional goal in life it was snatched away so dramatically such a waste of a good honest young man a qualified engineer, a loyal employee and above all a friend to us all.
posted Wednesday 20th of August 2008 10:01 AM