Concentrated Short Inquiry Proposal

Hayden Reeser, John O’Brien, and Jordan Roten

3/15/2019

UWRT 1104

Overview:

For our concentrated short inquiry project, we decided to focus on weird jobs as well as jobs that

no longer exist. An example of this would be a milk man because we no longer need a milk man

because we just buy milk at the store. We became interested in this topic because John

mentioned that his great grandfather was a piano hammer maker and that is a very odd job that

probably does not exist anymore because the hammers are made by machines and robots. We

want to look into greater detail of the odd jobs of the past and understand why they needed them

during those times and why we no longer need them today.

Project plan:

To complete this project, lots of research will be need to be completed. Most of this research will

come from the internet, but it will be made sure to come from credible sources. The rest of this

research will come from books that will be acquired from the library and, if possible, an

interview from someone who has had a weird job or knows somebody who has had a weird or

odd job. Each member of the team will perform the same amount of research because each

member of the team will be researching two odd jobs that they found. After each team member

has done all of their research, all of the team members will come together to put their research

together with all of their odd jobs. This will leave us with 6 odd jobs and research for all 6 of

these odd jobs.

Justification:
When it comes to the Justification behind the odd jobs idea it was quite easy. When having to

research back five generations it is easy to find jobs that past relatives have had that you possibly

has never heard of. This can be attributed to how much the world has changed in the last 100

years which has led to a change in the job market. This change includes the loss of a lot everyday

jobs due to the continued development of technology. An example of this is a job such as the

milkman which was once commonplace, and is now gone. We now can look back on these jobs,

study how they were done and what ultimately led to their demise.

Roles and responsibilities:

The base responsibility for each member of the group is to complete detailed research on two

unique odd or rare jobs. Each member will then jointly add their research to a presentation and

equally present around five minutes on the jobs that they researched.

Timeline:

Final proposal for plan on concentrated short inquiry project will be jointly contributed and done

by wednesday march 13th, and pitch for the following friday. Each team member will have

decided on two odd jobs by the end of march and proceed to research them in depth over the next

two weeks. Team members will work together and add their individual research to a presentation

by the week of April 22nd for peer review and final edits before presentation.

Conclusion:

The take away from our presentation will be an appreciation for the jobs that used to be

commonplace for generations prior to ours, and for jobs that take a keen level of attention and

detail that very few people can really do, especially as more and more jobs are automated and

replaced by machines today.