I also want to cross-post from my creativity blog, where a series of yarns about my sailing experiences has progressed to a short yarn about learning. The original is at https://musingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2019/09/a-third-yarn-more-note-really-about.html.
I've also added a couple of posts from my political blog:
- "The harms of discrimination", originally posted at https://politicalmusingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-harms-of-discrimination.html; and
- "Backward step for engineering", originally posted at https://politicalmusingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2019/08/backward-step-for-engineering.html.
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In my last "yarn",
I mentioned moving to Mackay, and my concern about whether or not they
had a sailing club. They did, and I had a stack of experiences - good
and bad (and funny, and a mixed bag of insights into people) - there, but the one matter I want to write about now is learning.I started off crewing for an experienced skipper, and eventually got to the stage where my parents decided to buy me a boat so I could be a skipper myself. One turned up which thought was a great bargain, but they decided to spend a few hundred dollars more and get something that was competitive and less likely to sink :)
Initially, I wasn't very good, until another skipper (from another class) took pity on me and crewed for me for a few weeks, getting me to do things like focus on the telltales on the sails instead of looking round and being distracted. His help worked, and I started improving - and passing on what I was learning and had learned to others, which is another series of posts.
But the value of learning was clear, and it backed up the value what I had started doing as soon as we bought the boat, which was pester - I mean, "respectfully ask" - other skippers for advice: "Mr Turner," I would pester (it was a different era, hence the "mister", but in some ways not so different, hence the "pester") "how do you choose what rake to put on your mast?"
I had a small notebook that I put all these different approaches into - and they were all different. I was going to just try them all out for myself, but was told I should ask them to clarify why they preferred to use their technique when someone else used another.
That challenging went over like a lead zeppelin, and when I heard a comment about everything being taken down as evidence and used against you, I decided to go back to my original approach of gather and then try for myself - which helped emphasise that everyone is unique, and what suits one person will - no matter how good it is - not necessarily suit another, despite NOTHING being wrong with that other person.
Sadly, many people in life (and especially the older - my lot - of engineers) are simplistic or judgemental in their thinking, and assume that, because something worked so well for them it MUST work for others, and accuse others of being defective when that is not the case (often because they WRONGLY feel that they must be defective if something works for them, but not others).
I've also noticed some - not all, by any stretch - younger people are less interested in learning from those who are more experienced, and more interested in pushing their own perceptions of ability and competence. I don't consider that to be an outcome of changed parenting so much as it is an outcome of changed economic and work circumstances. Sadly, we have gone down the US style of living, and are pushing people to be aggressive and self promoting, characteristics I consider utterly detestable, and have been making work so insecure that employees have to be aggressive just to get, let alone keep, a job.
The young people of today reflect the world my generation (pack of idiots we are) made.
Final note: I lost touch with the people in that sailing club a long time ago - partly because of some idiotically insensitive letters I wrote, partly because the club burned down and is no longer there, and partly because of the many changes I have been through. C'est la vie: things change, and, as my partner says, people (and places, and organisations) are in our life for a day, a season or a life. Mackay Sailing Club was in my life for a decade or so (a season of a life), and shaped the whole of it.
Copyright © Kayleen White, 2019 (where this date is different to the year of publication, it is because I did the post some time ago and then used the scheduling feature to delay publication) I take these photographs and undertake these writings – and the sharing of them – for the sake of my self expression. I am under no particular illusions as to their literary or artistic merit, and ask only that any readers do not have any undue expectations. If you consider me wrong, then publish me – with full credit and due financial recompense, of course :)
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I recently wrote that:I also consider that China's future pathway to economic growth and development is inherently tied to freeing her people from the current thought control, allowing dissent and discussion, and taking advantage of the new concepts and currents that are brought to light by that - just as allowing minorities full participation in a nation's life frees those resources to contribute economically, intellectually, politically, culturally, and socially.Here in the West, our biggest problem is discrimination against minorities and anyone who challenges our parentally-propagated biases or other social conditioning or is "different" - discrimination that robs us of so much (particularly economically), in addition to actively causing harm, discrimination that I also ran into yet again yesterday . . .
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Compulsory registration for engineering has been introduced in my state,
and, although well intended, it is ill conceived and a backward step
for engineering and the community.There have been some disasters - e.g., the collapse of one of the buildings in the Christchurch earthquake - that showed the need for qualified engineers, but others - such as the collapse of the Westgate bridge during construction - show that there is more to this than just being an engineer.
The government has been poorly advised, and I have to say the communication I've received from one body makes me think this is about elitism and ego ("maintaining engineering's prestige") than community safety or quality of work.
A few more points:
- getting a degree is a licence to start learning. Having got that licence to start learning, people have different talents and abilities, and some will be good, others not;
- staying up to date can be important - for example, changes in legislation, changes in design tools. I am already registered in one of the voluntary engineering schemes, and under that I have to do 150 hours/year of continuing professional development (when I've been audited, the actual number is around 400 hours/year). The fact is, owing to my specialisation, 70% of that is utter rubbish - it is irrelevant, and some fundamentals DO NOT CHANGE;
- I mentioned specialisation. This is a major aspect of the problem, and one of the engineering organisations I am thinking of in particular thinks that once you have a degree, you must remain up to date and capable in all aspects of that degree. THAT IS NOT HOW ENGINEERING JOBS WORK! If you want to call yourself an engineer of that qualification, fair enough, but I actually don't: what matters to me is the area I have specialised in, and I don't give a rat's arse about the other areas;
- in my four decades of practice, my experience is that there are two main threats to doing good, competent and safe work:
- the focus on money, and drive for profit, which has led to inadequate time for thinking, understaffing (glitzed up as "being agile", but it is just understaffing), and pressure to focus on limits of Contracts rather than good service or what is good for the community (incidentally, the organisation I am registered with has a code of conduct that includes focus on community wellbeing: a lot of engineers think that doesn't apply because they're not members; not so, it is likely to be relied upon by courts in a legal matter as an indication of reasonable expectations of professional standards);
- getting proper checks of work. This is also impaired by understaffing, resulting in not enough people being available (it can take me 4 hours to find someone to do a 2 hour check), the time pressure of the profit motive leading to inadequate time or too much stress to properly take a step back and THINK, and the incompetence of some engineers - not in terms of professional competence, but in terms of thinking that the advantage of engineering is that it can do things more cheaply than others, which is utter BS. (There are, on that aspect, also a lot of engineers who are incompetent at human interactions. That doesn't mean "they're on the [autism] spectrum", it means that they are incompetent at being human beings. Conversely, there are also some who are outstanding as humans.) This where the Westgate bridge went wrong; this is where there is room for improvement in the profession, and in terms of community oversight;
- unlike the AMA, this will be administered by a government bureaucracy who may know nothing about engineering: that is inherently going to be a problem;
- there are also transphobic aspect to this, if the regulations require testamurs, but that is a topic for another post.
