Me and George worked in the factory for a few hours the last two days in China and that was very interesting as well as fun. The first day we learned to sodder flute pieces together. The next we learned how to put assemble all the pieces onto the the flute. There are about 120 pieces on a flute and to watch and learn how each piece is made, put together and then polished is incredible. Because there are so many pieces and each flute is hand crafted, there are huge amounts of discrepancies between the quality of work you receive. Reading over the minor problems that need to be fixed on the instruments is mind boggling and i now have a whole new understanding and appreciation of an instrument that i have played for years. We pretty much sucked soddering and assembling and that opened up my eyes to how difficult and precise these workers have to be.



Also, sitting in on the business meetings and getting a glimpse of the challenges that affect a manufacturing and sales business was highly educational. The link between amount of production and predicted sales pretty much determines the future of a company. Econ in college is pretty much meaningless when you are trying to deal with real world concepts like how many of each kind of flute to produce and whether or not that goal is capable of being reached. The amount of foresight and experience needed in making even the smallest of decisions is astounding and intimidating. I've decided that the majority of things you learn in class is pretty much useless in the real world. But we knew that already.