Skip to main content

Learning to Work

I don't know how school was for the vast majority of you out there. Heck I don't know what it was like for the minority.

For me it was fairly easy. I learned what I needed to pass tests and write reports and did so with ease. Schoolwork was stripped down to mini-games of find the answer.

And now I sit in 'real life' staring at 'work' and wondering why 'just finding the answer' doesn't work as well as it used to.

To advance, to make it to the top, you don't 'just find the answer' faster than others. You spend your time finding out why. You spend your time finding the right questions. You delve into how things work, not just which buttons you need to press. You answer your boss' question and then ask insightful ones of your own. You dig and research and develop tools to make digging and researching easier in the future.

Its incredibly frustrating to me. I feel like a backyard dog that is used to simple games of fetch being transplanted into a world where all the other dogs are Lassie. I don't even know who Timmy bloody is! All the ball-throwing-things are the -same- to me! And what is a "well" anyways? Bleh lets just go find new smells and take a nap.

Obviously this isn't going to cut it....

Comments

Anonymous said…
I am a high school teacher, and I've been trying to get this through the heads of my students for my whole career. I'm actually going to print what you wrote and post it in my classroom, if you don't mind.

In reality, nothing prepares you for "real life." It is something you just have to figure out the hard way.
Anonymous said…
School teaches you rules, most of the time. In Math, you learn that its a rule that when you see a + sign, you add the things on both sides together. In English, you learn the rules of forming a proper sentence and such.

Now in RL, we need to use these rules to do what school doesn't teach enough of... real life problem solving.

My dad and my friends dad told me something so many times that its burned into my head. "If you're going to do something, don't half-a$$ it". This is where your R&D comes in. In RL problem solving it's not enough to find an answer quickly, but to find the BEST answer, which normally isn't the quickest.

There are many ways to build a doghouse, but to build the BEST doghouse that could withstand abuse and such takes a lot more time and know-how. This know-how is through the research, experience, and being patient.

Finding an answer quickly is easy.... it's called Duct Tape. However, if you want to repair that doghouse correctly, we need to learn how this stuff works and what works best.

I could go on, but I'm a lazy typist today :)
Dammerung said…
@Dinaer-paragraph1 feel free to take whatever you like.

@Dinaer-paragraph2 so true

@klaki-paragraph3 Yeah...that sums it up.

Popular posts from this blog

RAMBLY Political Responses.

Sub-Teach, On monday, I had about 80% of this written as a reply to your comment before I figured I should just drop it into a post. Yay for thought spam from simple commentary. To be clear: I'm not anti-our-current-president. I didn't like his solution for the recession(the bailout(which was started by our previous president)) but I'm certainly not blaming the recession on him. I understand that it was my dear party that thought you could spend AND cut taxes at the same time. I'm not really in favor of the way in which the other party wants to extend the tax cuts(cutting some and not others). I would rather we let all of the tax cuts expire and everyone equally paid a little bit more. BUT I'm really not happy with the idea that we can extend all of them when we are in record levels of national debt, which is what my party espouses. No our current president didn't have much time to fix the economy...and any good/harm he did probably won't be evident

A post!

So Beowulfa recieved the Burning Crusade as one of her many christmas presents. As a side note, she also recieved a picture of a chick with a pet lion. Sort of like Angharad. Anyways, we're poking Drenai characters in a "ooo that would be cool" kind of way. Since it was her birthday present and all... and if the characters were not BElf or Spacegoat then it wouldn't be using the present! So we're going to at least get them to 10. And BElf's are too... pretty in an ugly way. I don'ts like them. She doesn't like them(much?). I said Spacegoat. She quickly created a male drenai priest(this morning). We talked about it at lunch and she's going to make a paladin instead, I think. I slightly warned her off of priest because I've heard they solo about as well as a warrior heals. I'm.... undecided. We have warrior, paladin, mage, priest, shaman, hunter. I've been told I need to be something tankish. So mage and priest are gone. I'm definin

New Stuff

For those of you who are still following us I'd like to redirect you over to our new blog project, www.wordsremember.com . Damm and I have embarked on artistic and literary adventures and have even opened our own etsy shop which you can find here . Thanks!