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Topic: The Chit Chat Thread

Posts 701 to 720 of 10,056

RogerRoger

@Octane I was nodding along with the support for variation (disaster response and management covers an incredibly broad spectrum) but by the end of that description... well, less so. The funny thing is, the nature of my previous job has shown me more than my fair share of human suffering, and yet I don't think I could cope with seeing animals like that. Weird.

"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."

PSN: GDS_2421
Making It So Since 1987

Octane

@RogerRoger You get used to it. And I always have to stress that none of the animals we dissect are killed for that purpose. They all died a natural course, were put down in case of disease, found on the road, etc. I also work a lot with plants, and I prefer that times, if only because it's less messy and it smells a lot better too!

What kind of work did you do if you don't mind me asking?

Octane

mookysam

@RogerRoger Spooky I do live in Surrey!

Nah, only kidding. I live in Warwickshire. My family live in East Sussex now. I do sometimes go back to where I grew up. It's all posh and weird and feels like a lifetime ago. I'm not sure I like it!

Definitely agree about how children are only being taught how to pass exams. When the whole school year is gear towards that, there is a big problem. So kids can pass an exam. Then what? It's not equipping them with real skills or a proper education. Just bits of paper with a grade. It must also be incredibly stressful for teachers. I won't go on about the changes to GCSEs as I don't know enough about it, but it seems that it is causing big problems.

I enjoyed my A Levels. We were allowed to wear our own clothes at my Sixth Form too. And I could go home at lunch (I only lived round the corner). History was great I really, really enjoyed the subject, particularly as I had some really good teachers. I also loved Geography. Relating back to the exam culture and being taught how to answer questions, it is interesting that when we did our geography mock exams, it became apparent that I was running out of time because my answers were too detailed. Basically, I was told that I had to make sure I wrote a conclusion for each question - even if it was only a couple of lines - because it was worth a huge number of points. What I knew didn't matter. I just had to structure my answer to get those points.

Edited on by mookysam

Black Lives Matter
Trans rights are human rights

RogerRoger

@Octane I'd never assume any academic institution would kill animals for scientific study; besides, you seem far too nice to be doing anything of the sort!

I don't mind you asking, but... well, this is gonna sound incredibly more exciting and mysterious than the reality of the situation, but "I worked in emergency response" is all I'm at liberty to discuss. What I can say is that the stress of completing my MSc part-time alongside my full-time job was the first of several mounting issues that led to a loss of control over anxiety and depression that I'd kept hidden for many years, so now I'm taking some time for myself and re-evaluating my position. Part of me doubts I'll ever go back to that line of work, despite getting the degree just as I was starting to walk away. I might write a book.

@mookysam

Wait, you say the part of Kent you grew up in is "posh"... Kent has posh parts? Where?!

The funny thing is, our society seems to be constantly fascinated with grading and quantifying. You're taught the skills to pass an exam because, at your first job, you'll have to pass an interview and subsequent performance reviews. I struggle to think of a profession which doesn't have some kind of management structure which passes judgement on you every year or two. Perhaps that's a result of the educational system setting the tone for the subsequent generations, because you don't often hear of job grading and the suchlike being a universal standard until the late 90s / early 00s.

It's shockingly bad management. Stopping everybody every thirty minutes to check their work will never, ever get anything done. There's got to be trust in people's natural problem-solving abilities and constructive guidance rather than arbitrary checkpoints and grading... although the issue is that, thanks to modern education, today's adults lack those natural abilities because they've never been encouraged to develop them (listen to me setting the world to rights; I'm only about to turn 31, for goodness sake!).

Your story about your geography exam is unfortunately familiar. You're also right to note that a good teacher can make all the difference. In the first year of my GCSEs, my art teacher was fantastic; she encouraged strengths, and mine was finely-detailed comic-style artwork, so I had an awesome year coming up with all kinds of panel designs and studying comic book artists, and she gave me an A for it. Then she left, and in the second year, we got a new teacher who was one of those art people who'd happily stare at a big red dot on a wall for an hour, muttering "What does it all mean?" to herself. She immediately dismissed my work as "emotionless commercialism" and lectured me endlessly about how I should be doing "proper" art. I responded as all good teenage boys do; I became a sarcastic jerk in my class, submitting my lunch litter as "important think-pieces" and generally giving up. My final grade was a C.

Apologies for the long post. I do this a lot, it seems!

"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."

PSN: GDS_2421
Making It So Since 1987

Octane

@RogerRoger Hah, it does make it sound as if you were some secret agent doing secret government stuff

Octane

RogerRoger

@Octane Shh.

"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."

PSN: GDS_2421
Making It So Since 1987

mookysam

@RogerRoger Yeah, a small town near Ashford. I went there with my Mum last summer and we visited a café we hadn't been to in years. It was like I was in an episode of Downton Abbey.

It just occurred to me that perhaps our exam culture is a contributing factor to the UK's shockingly poor productivity. Stressing people out over performance targets and career progression is not helpful in my view.

I remember reading a very interesting article a while ago. I can't remember what country it was in, but there's a company owner who gives every employee one day off every month there isn't a public holiday - in addition to other holiday entitlements. Productivity apparently went through the roof. People felt refreshed and valued. Rather than the traditional view that days off lead to economic loss, they were making it up and then some because their whole attitude to work changed. Perhaps more businesses should take that approach. If people are happy and feel valued it would make such a difference to society.

Your year 11 art teacher sounds like a fool. Children should be encouraged to find things they are interested in and passionate about which can be nurtured - and then they are more likely to learn. I like the idea of "projects" and a more practical approach to teaching. Having someone just write out on a chalkboard and read from a textbook is so boring.

Like you I could probably go on about this topic for ages!

Also interesting you mention animal dissections and experiments. Some education institutions do sadly kill animals, which upsets me a great deal My uncle, who is a PhD in something or other, used to do cancer research on live animals for the University of London.

Black Lives Matter
Trans rights are human rights

RogerRoger

@mookysam Ah, yes. That makes sense. The further east you go, the nicer Kent becomes.

Sounds like a decent case study. I'm forever hearing of things other countries do for their workforces and thinking how fantastic it'd be if the UK adopted some of them. One company in Germany, I think, set up everybody's work email accounts with an out-of-hours auto-reply system that said "This person isn't working at the moment. Your email has been deleted. If you need to speak with them, you can do so by calling or re-sending your email at 0900 hrs. on Monday."

For a brief time, I was in charge of a small team at my old job. Between critical response periods, we wrote reports and maintained a diverse interdepartmental, multi-agency training schedule, but it was all pretty straightforward stuff, and most of it ran itself. I said to everybody, "Right, as long as your tasks get done by their deadlines, and as long as you answer your phones in an emergency, I don't care what hours you keep. If you're done by lunch, go home. You're helping nobody by hanging around here." Productivity increased, nobody missed a deadline and everybody seemed genuinely happier, because I'd shown that I trusted them to do their jobs and given them greater freedom to do so the way that worked best for them as individuals.

Other, more senior staff members? Hated me for it, properly hated me for it. I was apparently "eroding workplace standards" and didn't understand the vital importance of having bored people filling up space, using up all the teabags and circumventing our security protocols to check Facebook on their computers. When I showed them the actual benefits, they dismissed them as an anomaly and predicted ultimate doom.

I'll bet they were all people who copied things down from a chalkboard as kids.

"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."

PSN: GDS_2421
Making It So Since 1987

Th3solution

I completely forgot my 1 year anniversary on Push Square. I had been looking forward to making a clever post on the special day, but I’m so scatter-brained that it blew past me and I just now realized that I’m now 3 days too late.
Oh well. Happy PS anniversary to me. 😕

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

RogerRoger

@Th3solution Belated congratulations!

I can barely remember my own birthday sometimes, so I wouldn't worry too much.

"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."

PSN: GDS_2421
Making It So Since 1987

DerMeister

@Th3solution Happy anniversary to you! Glad to see you've stuck with us!

"We don't get to choose how we start in this life. Real 'greatness' is what you do with the hand you're dealt." -Victor Sullivan
"Building the future and keeping the past alive are one and the same thing." -Solid Snake

PSN: HeartBreakJake95

Th3solution

@RogerRoger @DerMeister @Rudy_Manchego @Hego
Many thanks, my friends. In some ways it seems a very short year, and in some ways it seems like an age. I have really loved the Push Square community and look forward to another fantastic year.

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

Gremio108

I've had no internet for the past week after a van crashed into the telegraph pole outside our house and wiped out our internet and phone line. I've literally not been on the internet for nearly ten days. Just catching up on E3 news now. What else did I miss?

@Th3solution Happy anniversary!

Good job, Parappa. You can go on to the next stage now.

PSN: Hallodandy

Rudy_Manchego

@Gremio108 Playstation 5, Ps Vita 2: Electric portable boogaloo, EA making a remake of the original Battlefront for current gen, Xbox leaving the console market and the mcnoisy is the new PushSquare editor. So not much!!!

Now I may be an idiot, but there's one thing I am not sir, and that sir, is an idiot

PSN: Rudy_Manchego | Twitter:

Gremio108

@Rudy_Manchego Standard stuff then. I just had a brief scan through the previous week's articles and wondered why a new Tetris game had nearly 100 comments - that was fun...

Good job, Parappa. You can go on to the next stage now.

PSN: Hallodandy

FullbringIchigo

@Th3solution CONGRATS!, you survived a whole year, stronger men than you have failed this milestone so be proud

"I pity you. You just don't get it at all...there's not a thing I don't cherish!"

"Now! This is it! Now is the time to choose! Die and be free of pain or live and fight your sorrow! Now is the time to shape your stories! Your fate is in your hands!

JohnnyShoulder

@Th3solution I would doth my hat to you sir but I'm scared that you would chop my head after playing so much Bloodborne.

Edited on by JohnnyShoulder

Life is more fun when you help people succeed, instead of wishing them to fail.

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.

PSN: JohnnyShoulder

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