Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 02:18:43 PM

Login with username, password and session length

Do you know what you're doing at work?

Started by bgmnts, August 09, 2018, 09:04:35 AM

Previous topic - Next topic
Quote from: AllisonSays on August 10, 2018, 07:50:49 AM
I started teaching three years ago, without any formal training or even advice, on the frankly bizarre assumption that if you're doing a PhD you must be able to teach seminars. That means teaching things I know nothing about, at times - Nietzsche, International Relations, the history of car bombs. But it's fun, actually, and I think I have some ability for the performative and empathetic aspects of teaching even if I constantly feel ignorant or under-prepared. And colleagues in similar boats were incredibly helpful when I started.

This term I'm teaching much larger groups, of rich Americans rather than mostly working-class English people, about WW1. That will be initially quite troubling, I have never studied WW1 and I'll need to use a slightly different demeanour with the Yankees. But nobody can die, as my paramedic friend reminds me, at least not directly because of my actions.

As I understand it, history should be about how well students use the sources and make an argument, so just evaluate them on that rather than as a knowledge test.

AllisonSays

That's definitely true up to a point, and while I was a little glib in my previous posts, I do think you can create a space for people to learn about something without being any kind of expert in it. Joseph Jacotot and all that.

On the other hand, there's always this creeping anxiety that a student might ask you, like, when was the Battle of the Marne, man who is being paid to teach me about World War One, and you'll just stare at them blankly.

Ferris

Quote from: AllisonSays on August 11, 2018, 11:56:36 AM
That's definitely true up to a point, and while I was a little glib in my previous posts, I do think you can create a space for people to learn about something without being any kind of expert in it. Joseph Jacotot and all that.

On the other hand, there's always this creeping anxiety that a student might ask you, like, when was the Battle of the Marne, man who is being paid to teach me about World War One, and you'll just stare at them blankly.

1916

Edit: shit.

The only time I ever really cared and felt I knew exactly what I was doing and the impact of what I was doing was when I set up a language school in China. Maybe the best working days of my whole damn life. We absolutely killed it, sent loads of students to uni in the UK and I adored living where I did, amazing group of mates, some of whom were there virtually for life, but I got sucked into the creeping fear of the future and having a fallback career back home. I really miss that time from a work point of view. It felt unreal and everything I've done back in the UK has felt considerably more prosaic. It felt kind of like the Wild West crossed with the Gold Rush and we did really well, not just quick buck shit, we were providing a vastly better service than the big franchises and had more students than we could teach, couldn't find too many teachers of the quality we wanted, and so we just worked at capacity instead of overcommitting. Perfect alignment. I just...I knew I wouldn't be there for life so I decided I had to come home before too many doors closed. I often look back and in a way, I wish my wife and I could move over there. I went for a reunion last summer, about fifteen of us flew in and although I hoped it would help me finally close the chapter, it fanned the embers in quite a heartaching way. I miss it most days. My wife said let's go for my 40th in a few years but even that seems too far away...

Ever since I came back, I've done OK, promoted a handful of times pretty quickly in education, not quite sure why in hindsight, maybe because I had no respect for anything but the kids. I didn't like much of teaching apart from the classroom stuff, couldn't bear most of the colleagues, lazy, complain all the time, think they know best, resistant to change and so when I did get promoted to senior management, and realised how much our hands were tied by both the government, the governors, the staff and the parents, I decided that the payday wasn't worth it at all. I ended up doing none of the stuff I liked about teaching. I had hoped it would be like the entrepreneurship experience I'd had in China at that level but it really wasn't, so few opportunities for change, resistance from all quarters. I found a route out via SEN and the obvious overlaps with health care and was offered a post via some Ed Psych contacts I'd made. I think there's some value in what I do now, but without the contact with patients (or as with students previously), it can feel a bit unrewarding. The change and 'good work' is always of an ilk, either a pat on the back, set some targets or apply special measures. The satisfaction is quite abstract, knowing that it's rewarding others' good work and making sure people are getting satisfactory services but it's certainly not down to me, it's all about funding and good recruitment.

I hope to retire as early as possible and if we don't have a kid move to China and enjoy whatever illusion of freedom they allow to exist. Hot dry noodles to the grave. If we have a kid, I've absolutely no idea how life will go.

Blue Jam

I'm a research scientist, and by the nature of that job, we're all just pissing about and none of us really know what we're doing. It's fucking great.

Captain Poodle Basher

I sort of do know what I'm doing and don't know what I'm doing depending on my role.

If I'm doing my admin role then yes, I'm 110% on top of it - by now everyone else in the department sends their admin-y stuff to me as it'll get done straight away and get done correctly.

If I'm doing my client-facing role, fielding phone queries - then it's about 50-50 if I know what I'm doing as every so often it'll be about something either really complex or else something I've never encountered before so there's a lot of placing people on hold and desperately trying to come up with an answer while trying to sound authoritative.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Blue Jam on August 11, 2018, 03:01:29 PM
I'm a research scientist, and by the nature of that job, we're all just pissing about and none of us really know what we're doing. It's fucking great.

Do you just work office hours? I went out with a research scientist who did ecology briefly and she seemed to work daft hours. I think she was on a 2 year fixed term as well.

It sort of petered out when she went away to look at trees in Panama for a month. Oh well.

manticore

Quote from: icehaven on August 10, 2018, 10:34:06 AM
I do care about my job, although yes on the surface of it (and in the wider context of the place itself) it's not always terribly important, but it matters enough to enough people. Technology has already depleted the need for librarians (and arguably libraries) quite a lot, although much less so in jails, so we might be the last ones left.

I love the sound of your job Icehaven, and would like to have done something like that myself, although maybe the prisoners feel more comfortable with a woman doing it?