The Uneducated Box

Yeah... So I haven't exactly been a prolific poster... The job I currently possess keeps me out on the road... CONSTANTLY. It's a pretty good job, if you don't have anything resembling a home life, because you are rarely at home. Since I have 2 of the most awesome girls... my job kind of sucks. I love spending time with my girls, can't move past that and I feel like I am missing out or letting them down by being gone ALL the freakin time. I hear it over and over how I should be thankful that I do have a job... yeah... I know, BUT... if it is sucking your soul out through the smallest orifice it can find... You have to contemplate the value of it. I have. So now I find myself scouring the job sites in search of something more conducive to me spending time with my girls. Once again, I find myself constantly irritated by the "necessity" of a college degree. I find myself torn between an overwhelming hatred for the fact that a piece of paper (most are very nice pieces of paper, but paper nonetheless!) can keep me from getting a job that I am more than qualified for and motivating my soon to be 13 year old to work towards a degree. So I play the perfect example of why you should get a degree. All the while boiling inside over my paper thin blockade. I think society puts too much value in "higher education". In my experience, most (note I said MOST!) folks gain very little from a little extra book learnin. It's sort of like the new religions of Sports and Entertainment, looks all shiny and awesome on the surface, but when you strip away the clear coat... it's just lacking in substance. I've stood fast in my reasoning (or excuse, depending on how you look at it)for my poor performance in high school, show me HOW I am going to actually use all this crap you want me to regurgitate! Albeit, things are looking up for my girls, but it seems too late for me. Oh sure, "Just go get a degree"... yeah... hard to take online courses working 65 hours a week with close to a third of that time riding the shitty... I mean... wonderful ribbon of interstate running across this great land. Besides that, all this "Free WiFi" being touted by all the major hotel chains is shit! I've had rooms sitting within 20 feet of the hotel's actual connection/broadcast node and got better access on my mobile phone's data connection. Sure... it sounds like a bunch of excuses... it's reality... I feel like I have been shoved into an uneducated box and put at the curb for pick up. Only it's not in the recycle bin. The biggest problem I have is that I am "undocumented"... as in many of my skills are self taught and cannot be "proven" by a piece of fuckin paper! Hmmm... fuckin paper... now there would be an interesting marketing campaign... anyway... Just balling up my frustrations and tossing them in to the massive bin that is teh internetz. Maybe next time I'll have something more interesting to say... Maybe not... piece

Randomosity pt 2

If it seemed like my last post ended abruptly and mid thought... it did. A little tidbit about me is that I am a male, that has to "service" (in a non perverted way!) a group of 7 familial females. It takes it's toll, not only on my mental state, but also on my time and ability to accomplish what I want to accomplish. Couple that with the fact that my 11 year old daughter is recently, though not permanently, in a wheelchair having suffered the pain and related surgery for Slipped capital femoral epiphysis (I chose the Wikipedia link for the cool pix!). This ties into the fact that I am the only male in that I'm the only one that can lift her effectively and without further damage! So you see, I sometimes am called away to do this and that (rearrange furniture, TVs, cable connections, doors, shower curtains, etc.) at a moments notice, no matter where I am in the thought process on my blog or even if I'm doing a little biological downloading! My last post actually sat for 2 days from it's initial conception, as I was tied up dealing with my "manly duties" and was unable to complete it. So, when the moment arose that afforded me the opportunity (it's early in the morning and they are all still asleep!), I fashioned a weak closing statement on it and published it. Now I'm not complaining... okay, maybe on some level I am complaining. I have been know to do this, but on the surface, the place where I'm wanting you to look, I'm just stating the facts of my situation.

Now that we have all that cleared up, let's move on to some more random thoughts, shall we?

The thing that really has my innards and mind tied in proverbial knots is this governmental retraining program that I'm in. It's great, don't get me wrong, but it's a poorly adhered patch on the tire that is unemployment in this country. First, it requires that you burn through all of your state level benefits, BEFORE, you actually get in to the Federal funds. While on the surface this seems like a good idea to use up your local support before leaning on the entity that caused the manufacturing jobs that you once relied on to provide for your family to be exported to a country who's mass exodus is already putting a burden on the local job market (NAFTA!!), before you get funding from them. Okay I get that... kind of. The problem with this set up is this, when you do finish your retraining and the Federal monies are quickly and abruptly cut off... you then have no means by which to support yourself and /or your family while you go and try and utilize your new career skills. On top of that, you are doing a mass dump of newly trained people into a narrower job market, than when they were first forced into it, with no financial support! Let's simplify this a little... you have, we'll say, 500 people lose their jobs due to treaties that overall only benefit the cosigners of them and not the initiators. So you, as the governing body, create a program to retrain these folks with newer more marketable job skills. You set aside the funding for each person, but require them to use their local benefits, beyond the actual cost of the training, to support themselves through the training process, BEFORE you break loose with the funds to support them yourself. These 500 folks graciously accept these terms and move forward with hopes and dreams of a better life on the other side of their retraining. First, you have overlooked the fact that if there had been sufficient jobs for these re-trainees, they wouldn't be retraining! Another aspect is that you have only approved the re-trainees to retrain for jobs that already exist and are unavailable, then after they jump through all the hoops and come to the abrupt end of support... you have 500 people trained for jobs that don't exist at the levels for which they are trained and no further local support to get them into positions to move forward. You've trained 500 people for the four jobs that were available at the time they started and now you have 500 people, trained and less available jobs, than when they started their training with all that bullshit... I mean those high hopes, that you fed them in the beginning! Wouldn't it make a whole helluva lot more sense, to fund the retraining, solely from the Federal funds (which have been sitting idly in an account earmarked for each person as their burn through their local benefits!!), then allow them their local benefits as a cushion to provide for their families while they try to find a job that actually does exist and they now have 499 competitors for? It does to me, but I'm just a person in need of retraining, because my government thought it was a good idea to let companies have incentives to move my job to a country that it seems everyone is leaving anyway. Am I off on my thinking, here, folks? I don't know, but stay tuned for more specific and random updates as time allows me.

Just sayin

Hmmm... wonder if someone would actually pay me to sit around and bitch about all the things I see wrong... yeah... probably not.

Dog and Pony Show

You want me to write something creative on command... parade something intellectually stimulating before your critical eyes at a moments notice... yeah... I don't work like that. True, most of my best written material was crunk out at a break-neck pace to make it in on time, but I'm not your personal Dog and Pony show, churning out blurbs of thought provoking literary genius, because you want me to. In the Army, we called any formation be it promotion, change of command or whatever situation required us to be outfitted in our class A's, a Dog and Pony show. In actuality, it was more a Mutt and Jackass show, but whatever floated their boats and got us out of random training activities. I write... I tend to like to write... on my terms. This ties into my previous entry about the traditional education that I am currently undertaking. I'm taking a research and writing course that, while it won't transfer to any other school, is required for me to obtain a degree. Can you believe that there are books on how to write letters, memos, EMAILS?! Really... emails... email is IM for grandparents... of course IM is texting for "old" folks... gotta love the technology progression through the generations. Does one really need to be taught how to use these sort of technologies in this day and age?! Anyway... I'm just spewing random thoughts in an effort to gain some inspiration. My train of thought was interrupted by a rambunctious 2 year old... alas... thwarted again!

Learning Inventory

So I'm in college... at just shy of 40... I don't like it! Sure the scenery is great (This is where I like to point out to my 11 year old, that just because I'm married... doesn't mean I'm dead!)! I never really liked school, even way back in the day when I was forced to go by the State. Well... in order for me to maintain some symbolic version of an income... I am once again forced to go. Don't get me wrong, I love to learn new stuff and have a voracious appetite for technological information and know-how. I just don't like the traditional set-up of the collegiate educational system. Here's how I like it... Don't give me a bunch of theory and reading to do then throw some assignments at me based on those theories. Walk me through the task that you want accomplished... inject the basics of the theory in the walk-thru and then let me have it. Monkey see, monkey do. Guess that fits if you want to break it down that simply. It basically boils down to the same thing I kept asking in high school... what practical application for my future life does this have. I don't like books, therefore, the chances of me actually sitting down and reading one are slim, even if you present it in a cool ass new digital format. On the flip side to this don't just give me a bunch of assignments with no support to back it up. Most people that I encounter that are studying the same or similar fields to what I am in school for, are visual learners. The kinda folks that like to go in and play with things until they break, then try and fix them. This is how I learned to fix computers. Present things as the end result, walking through the steps to get there and then be available for questions in the event I get in a bind. What I have noted with a lot of my classmates, is, what boils down to cheating. One person figures it out or actually is able to function in the read it/do it environment and then the work get passed around and to their clique. Seeing as I rarely fall into any clique, I tend to be an outside observer struggling to figure it all out on my own and while learning it better (tests have proved this!!), I tend to not do as well in keeping up with the busy work. Of course that would be a lot easier if it was routinely handed to me. I have learned most of my past jobs by OJT, on the job training. You go and do the job and then someone in charge, informs you of the mistakes you made and generally offers an alternate solution to the way in which you did it. So I learned. I developed my skills in repairing bicycles, cars, electrical circuits, helicopters and many other things in this manner and have been successful at it. Then I end up in college and am asked to "learn" by reading a bunch of theories and applying them. Not that theories aren't important, but it seems to me that getting to the finished product would be immensely more important then how/why the theories are implemented. Yes, the theories are important, but if you know how to get from a to b, then you should figure out the theories behind how/why it works. If you never figure out the reasoning behind it... if you know how to make it work... wasn't that the point? Guess this is just a rant that stems from the fact that I don't like school... learning, yes, but not school. Plus I don't feel like those folks, that usually make higher grades than I, that go around getting their classwork from the others in the class are actually learning the work. Companies need to base their employment decisions less on what a person's grades are and more on the practical application of the job skills that are required for the job... not everyone learns as much as their grades might indicate. My last job, from which I was laid off, required at the time I was hired, that you take a basic skills test that encompassed what was needed to know to properly perform the job. As they phased out the testing, quality suffered, not only with the personnel, but the end product and thus sales. I reckon what I'm trying to say with all this is... a piece of paper (diploma, certification, etc.) DOES NOT quantify a person's skill level, but is merely a measure of whether they learn in a traditional way or not. My opinion... Just sayin