Eccentric Flower talk:201006/Work Ethic
From Eccentric Flower
Comments on Eccentric Flower:201006/Work Ethic
This might surprise you to hear, but I mostly agree with you about the trade schools. (I've been saying for years that Universities (your Colleges) should be completely impractical, dedicated solely to theory, and that if you wanted to learn something that you might use, you should go to a College (your trade school).) But, as you mention, companies are requiring fancier and fancier degrees from fancier and fancier institutions, and I agree that that's Not Right (tm). On the other hand, there's a two-term course at one of the less fancy schools here that involves contributing to Mozilla code, which is very practical, and would help quite a lot in getting a job, so perhaps some of the schools will reverse that trend. And, of course, all of this is for "professional" jobs. I'm fairly sure plumbers/drywallers/carpenters still use the apprenticeship model, and make fairly decent money.
Where we differ is that I look at the (nearly-)half-my-waking-hours that employment will take up, and think that that's far too long to spend doing something I don't enjoy. I suppose you might say that I'm just lucky, but a) I think there's something enjoyable in just about every job, and b) if you're willing to settle for less money, you can probably find a job you're happier to do. (If you have a job you dislike then I think your attitude makes perfect sense. But I think I'ld rather spend my free time trying to find a job I liked.)
Finally, let me close with the suggestion that, if you want to contribute to something that millions of people will use, the Mozilla projects could always use some help. ;)
Later, Blake.
-- 22:48, 29 June 2010 (BST)
Having been a civil servant for lo, these many years (didn't finish college, so didn't qualify for much else. Even if I had, don't know what I would have done with my French major...) I often found the work to be blindingly boring. The only way I could cope was to define my niche in the larger scheme of things and determinedly dedicate myself to being the best at what I did. I took satisfaction from having others say "go ask Bunny, she'll know." I could quote you the US Code on the fly. If I didn't know the answer off the top of my head, I damned sure knew where to find it. One can become an "expert" no matter how seemingly inconsequential the field. Besides, the maritime industry is interesting, dynamic and full of diversity, so I could have done much worse. Consider the drones who sat in the next office doing data input for Journal of Commerce stats, hour after hour, day after weary day, glued to those cheap chairs. That'd drive me insane in a week. However, judging by the questions they would occasionally ask, they had the perfect intelligence level for the job. So there's that.
As for the French, I'm not exactly sure their indolent, careless attitude is something to admire. And they're so proud of it! Sacre bleu! Just about everything seems to be government run, and, although we may think the bureaucracy is bad here, it's just plain awful in France. As you say, though, they appear to be quite satisfied with the status quo, so much so that they're howling like banshees at the prospect of having to work until *gasp* age sixty-two before retirement! Why, next thing, someone's going to want to futz around with their annual six-week vacation. Where does it all end? I must admit, though, the trains do run on schedule.
Finally, I've given up all hope of leaving my mark on society. And that's fine with me. I don't need to know why I'm here, what does it all mean, that sort of thing. Finding what little satisfaction I can from day-to-day living is enough to keep me sane, aware and anticipatory of the next bit of nonsense out there in the big wide world. Today I saw road rage, waiting for a light in downtown Ft. Lauderdale. Screaming woman, swearing man in the car behind her. Finally, she got out of her car and threw a full paper cup of coffee on the dude's windshield, got back in her car and waited for the light to change. I shook my head in awe at her stupiditynerve, thought about reporting it, then said naw, it's somebody else's problem. And drove on. I can't get that violently invested in much of anything, these days. Come to think of it, I guess I'm kind of a lump.
-- 23:50, 29 June 2010 (BST)
I hate work, and if I can avoid it, I do so. It's odd—I have a mostly European look towards work (I am not my job) yet the idea of receiving welfare is repulsive to me (my inner Republican speaking out if you will). So yes, work, necessary evil and all that. It's a good thing I have a low standard of living (as Bunny will tell you) else I'd probably be forced to get a job, or even worse, a job-job or a job-job-job.
I can count on one hand the number of friends who grok the mentality I have; on the other hand, I can count on one hand the number of friends who are solely defined by what they do, and if they didn't work, wouldn't exist (or so I feel they feel). But hey, if you like working, more power to you. Me? Not so much.
The last full-time “job” I had was in late 2000/early 2001 (it didn't even last a full year) and the only reason I took that job was due to the silliness of the position (literally, my job was to take reports of a down site/computer from tech support, verify that the site/computer was down, and inform the system administrators; a job so silly and easy that really, I almost felt guilty taking). The previous full time “job” I had before that one was in 1988 over the summer as a security guard on third shift. That one lasted about four months.
I've been fortunate enough to get jobs where I can make enough to get by without having to work full time (but some crazy hours here and there). Unfortunately, at this point in my life, at 41, I think I'm actually unemployable at any real job (or job-job or job-job-job).
Or maybe that's not unfortunate at all.
On education—when I graduated high school, I was in no way ready for The Real World (then again, it wasn't until 1992 that the first season of The Real World aired) so I figured that college was a safe place to hide out in. I majored in Computer Science because of two reasons; 1) I found programming easy and enjoyed it and 2) I knew I could always get a job programming if my initial career choices, filmmaking and writing, never panned out.
The first semester (or maybe it was year—it's been decades (and I hate writing that) since this happened) I did the whole grant-scholarship thing and hated it. Not because it was welfare per se, but because the paperwork was just insane and I was having none of it. Oh, and there's the bit about being beholden to arbitrary standards just to keep the money flowing. I figured out that if I was going to waste the money getting poor grades, it should be my money and not anyone else's. The rest of my undergrad career (I was almost a tenured undergrad—I was there for about eight years) I paid my own way (it didn't hurt that I went to a local state university).
Good thing too, because for the first two years I was constantly on and off academic probation and towards the end, I was avoiding my advisor as much as possible so I could take classes that sounded more interesting to me (Chinese calligraphy, Native American Literature, photography, drawing) than my actual classes in Computer Science (they were either too easy as I already knew the material from studying on my own, or too hard and theoretical (read: mathematical) for my tastes).
I never did graduate. I quite possibly had over 120 hours (minimum number of hours to graduate) but not enough in Computer Science (or Liberal Arts—the only other major that I could conceivably graduate under).
And what did I learn?
Photography, for one thing.
Another was that it wasn't about the classes (those were incidental really) it was about the connections made. And these connections are still paying off today (a friend from college recommended me for a programming/quality assurance job that is paying me an insane amount of money—“low five figures per month” amount of money; maybe not insane in some jobs, but for what I'm doing? It's insane. And I get to work exclusively from home? Yeah … ).
I pretty much agree with your views on college. Heck, I think I agree with everything you said here.
-- 05:37, 30 June 2010 (BST)
I know I'm one of the lucky ones who found interesting, high-paying work, but not too much of it. My goal is to work about 50-100 hours a month, which will more than pay for my lifestyle. But what I would say is, to have any chance of finding such a gig, you'd have to go to a top college and a top graduate school (law, in my case) and do reasonably well in both (top quarter in the former, top third in the latter). The hardest I ever worked was the six years I was a full-time associate, about 2100-2200 billable hours a year, but it gave me the connections and reputation that result in people referring business to me now.
My basic goal has always been to have as much control over my life as I can and to avoid having to be beholden to imbeciles. I've been very lucky that I've used the opportunities I've been given to achieve that. There's only one job I've ever had where I felt I worked for imbeciles, and of course that one ended badly, but I simply went back to doing other things where I respected the "bosses" and were more lucrative, too.
I have a long-standing suspicion that you would find a great deal of fulfillment if you could find some way of helping people, and specifically by teaching. I've suggested/nagged you about this before, but you really should contact the local 826 organization about tutoring one afternoon a week. I tend to do a lot of math work when I'm there (most of the volunteers come from pure words backgrounds and are uncomfortable even with algebra), and it is simply a great feeling to help a kid turn the lightbulb on to understand a new concept. It's also a creative excercise because you don't want to hand them the answer, but instead figure out questions that will lead them to find the answers themselves. I would wager heavily that you would like it (and the bureaucracy involved is absolutely minimal).
-- 21:58, 30 June 2010 (BST)
I agree with ProfRobert about 826, but also you might like to check out: www.thesprouts.org -- they have programs, from a day to longer, on *anything* -- you could teach "plumbing for non-plumbers who don't believe they can unclog the under-the-sink bit" or anything like that which you know all about (tons of stuff, I swear, I never get tired of all the random *useful* stuff you know) but without the whole "I have to be a trade school instructor". Or you could teach an afternoon of math tricks. They're nice folks. I particularly like Alec Resnick and Jimmie Rodgers. Look at that first page, then at this: http://thesprouts.org/programs, then "how to get involved" -- you might like 'em.
-- 21:24, 9 July 2010 (BST)
Columbina:
And Now, Dramatic Irony
This essay took a long time to write. In that time I not only essentially blew any chance to get work done this afternoon (I wrote this to get it out of my head so I could concentrate on work anyway, so that's acceptable) but also missed any opportunity to eat lunch - it's now three p.m. and any lunch I have will throw off the rest of the day.
In short, I have sacrificed a major chunk of my day in dedicated, intensive work on an essay about how dedicated, intensive, time-eating work is usually pointless.
Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all week.
-- 19:59, 29 June 2010 (BST)