Now Is The Time To Give Credit Where Credit Is Due
By Jared Smith (3rd Place Winner)

     Now is the time to give credit where credit is due: The unnoted heroes of the time, the energy workers: Line workers; Engineers; Technicians; These men and women dedicate their lives to developing new technologies and maintaining the established ones. They keep our society running.
     Think of the technology you use every day, or just the ones you use in the morning while you’re getting ready for work. The essential coffee maker, the toaster, the microwave, these simple machines are powered by electricity and electricity isn’t a magical power that just appears when you insert a plug unto a socket. Electricity is its own thing, harnessed by people. People who work on turbines and in substations, they allow you to make your morning joe.

     Where does energy come from? Energy never dies, never disappears. The energy we use now was the energy transferred as the dinosaurs stomped on the ground, and now we use it to power the mechanical dinosaur at the museum. But energy isn’t harnessed like an apple can be picked off a tree; it takes adapters and converters and technology controlled by none other than these energy workers. These people put their whole lives into their work, they train and adapt and mold their whole lives around powering everyday life.

     I myself can prove that these people power our lives; last year in November my classmates and I visited Lakeland Electric, the local power plant. I got to witness firsthand the energy they had to put in to get the energy we use in our everyday lives. For hours every day, some fix turbines, power lines, every type of electrical apparatus you can imagine. Others regulate the energy, and control the mechanics of these machines, so that the energy gets harnessed and supplied properly. Some machines can be run by other machines, or run by programs (all of these things created by certified electrical engineers). But when it comes down to it the electrical workers were the nuts and bolts and brains of the whole power plant.

     Furthermore, many people take all this electricity for granted. They don’t realize what a luxury it is to have a light in the morning and at night, to be able to turn on and off the computer, to do pretty much anything in 21st century life!

     The simplest exemplification how much power affects our life are the Duracell commercials: not only does energy never stop, but how they portray the energy used is incomparable: from a child’s toy’s battery to the grandmother’s heart monitor, energy is used for almost anything and everything. Stop and think of how many times you’ve been to the hospital, or how many times you can name someone else being in the hospital: the care received, the treatments, they all were powered by energy, and that energy didn’t appear out if thin air; that energy was produced by the energy workers, behind the scenes in their factories.

     These unseen providers encompass all that we know as hardworking, caring for these machines at all hours of the day, as energy is needed at all times of the day. They never back down from the challenge, they never give up they work days upon days, down to the bone, so that life doesn’t stop in its tracks. Truly, they deserve the highest of honors, and as such I commend them for the work they do, for the services they provide. My thanks and admiration goes out to all the men and women in this field, for supplying us with what can be called a 21st century necessity.