Every once in awhile, when I'm walking by a construction site, I get the feeling inside that maybe it wouldn't be so bad to be a construction worker. (Well, minus the hard manual labor thing, haha.) But yea, I think there's something to be said about building something with your hands that has a sense of permanence to it. Like the guys who just built the wet lab building on campus? They'll be able to come back 50 years down the line and point to the exact bricks they laid, show their children and grandchildren. They have something tangible, whereas white-collar workers can only point to a number in a ledger or something. (Aside from inventions/discoveries,) The products of intellectual work are so ephemeral. Seriously, when people get old, don't they start reflecting on what they did in life and search for proof that they existed? In that regard, the bricklayers have it pretty easy, huh? Well, not like I'm gonna go run off and join a construction team or anything, but the notion of your work outliving you is something to think about, no?