Herpel, Joshua (Thanksgiving Interview 11/27/23)

00:01 My name is Joshua Herpel I'm 15 years old. Today is the 26th of November, 2023. I'm speaking with Rusty Herpel who is my dad. We're going to be talking about his full life today. We're recording in my house. How was your early childhood?

00:30 I would describe my normal childhood as being relatively normal with one older brother and two parents.

00:37 What was your favorite thing from your childhood growing up?

00:44 Being involved in several sports such as baseball, basketball and soccer.

00:52 What was your favorite and what would you have liked to continue?

00:56 Soccer was without a doubt my favorite sport to play, and I played it through high school competitively and then played some men's league while in college, but then moved from just being a player into refereeing sports in which I was involved in officiating football, basketball and soccer, as well as baseball and softballs during my high school days and then continued with soccer reference until I was about 40 years old.

01:49 What, what dreams or goals would you say you had when growing up?

02:01 I know when I was really young I was hoping to become a truck driver, but that was only for a few years, sports wise. Of course. I was hoping to become a professional soccer player.

02:21 Okay. What would you say your favorite subject was and who would you say like your favorite teacher was?

02:33 If you remember, in high school, actually, my favorite subject was probably mathematics, but my favorite teacher actually was my science instructor that taught biology and chemistry. Mr. Zeppelin.

02:52 What do you work as?

02:54 I'm a chemist for the Environmental Protection Agency for the last three years. Prior to that, I spent 13 years with Kansas City Power and Light as a process attendant and as a chemist for them.

03:11 What would you describe like your work from here and there?

03:21 My job duties as a chemist for the Environmental Protection Agency is very specific to running samples for inorganic analysis such as ammonia, mercury, phosphorus, caldol, nitrogen, percent solids, total dissolved solids, biochemical oxygen demand, and chemical oxygen demand. So depending on the analysis, it could be fish samples, it could be soil samples, it could be water samples that have been obtained from local lakes, ponds, etc.

04:16 When did you decide to become a chemist?

04:21 I decided to become a chemist when I was starting my second year of college at Missouri Western. As an undergraduate, do you have any.

04:33 Favorite stories from your college days?

04:50 Probably a funny sort of story would be, I don't know, Josh, on that. It's just, where are you going with that?

05:20 Moving on from that question, let's go back to your work life. What would you say your favorite saying about being a chemist is.

05:33 The continuous demands of the job of Based off of who is requesting analysis and not always knowing what the final results are going to look like and having to come up with data that you can stand behind.

06:01 What would you say the least favorite saying is.

06:06 The least favorite is also making it the data that you stand behind because it requires a lot of effort being certain that you have sufficient quality controls to prove that your instrument is functioning properly. Variations are you are being determined whether it's based due to the sample or due to some environmental effect within your laboratory. And so you have to have all these controls in place to make that clear to the customer that you are providing the results to in the unit. And so it can be an exhausting process providing a report that is very clear to your customers.

07:13 Would you say you like your job?

07:18 I would say yes and no to liking my job. It's a good job in terms of being reliable income and having quite a bit of challenge of staying on top of all the various topics that you have to stay on top of. However, it's still at a level for me that it's just being a chemist and the fact that I like to interact with other people. Being a chemist is a struggle at times for me because I don't have that everyday interaction that I would prefer.

08:07 Why?

08:12 I just naturally you like to communicate with others while on the job. And in order to being the best at being a chemist in the analysis part of the process requires being isolated most of the time. Preparing your samples, getting your instruments to the samples, and then analyzing the results that come off of that instrument.

08:48 Do you have any favorite co workers?

08:56 Fortunately, I work with a whole lot of co workers that I really like working with. Like anyone that there's one or two that I prefer to socialize with more because they have more similarities to the way I like to do interactions.

09:22 Okay, where would you see yourself like five years from now?

09:31 In five years from now? I've crossed my fingers to get an opportunity to stay with EPA and find a role that allows me to be in more of a managerial position and less of a laboratory chemist.

09:51 Okay, if you could do anything now, what would you do?

10:04 I honestly would go back to teaching. If I had taught for several years before my work as a chemist in the industry probably would switch over to teaching more math and less of the science side things just because I enjoy the thought process and math manipulations.

10:31 Why did you stop?

10:36 Opportunity to make a lot more money. And I was still trying to get my master's degree completed and Pfizer had said it would be complete and while I was teaching at community college. And they released me from that position because they were under the impression I was supposed to have that degree. And the advisor kept holding off on getting it accomplished.

11:07 Okay, thank you for your time, and thanks for listening to this interview. Bye.