Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Rewind that back
I used to make this clever observation that high school and college were backwards in terms of the order in life. The logic was that high school is more like a job -- you arrive early, stay at the same place all day with mostly the same people, doing slight variations of the same thing. Very scheduled, very routine. Then you go to college, and you have incredible freedom, random schedules (for example, my senior year I had my first class at 3:oo p.m. on several days), very little structure, etc. This is NOT like a job...so wouldn't it make more sense to have the more job-like experience (high school) lead into a job, instead of the college thing in between?
Still some validity to this observation...but last night, I reconsidered this. College prepares you for work exactly because of the freedom you are granted -- to manage this freedom without 1) failing out; 2) getting arrested; 3) drinking yourself silly; or 4) a combination of these things is (by one measure) a successful journey through college. High school is still about obligations and close monitoring, while college is not. And neither is work, in most cases. My boss isn't watching me every second...otherwise she'd know I'm taking a break here to write a few lines in my blog. She trusts me to complete my job and its tasks (which I do) without her having to watch my every move, and this is how I treat people I supervise. So, college does get you ready to be on your own, so to speak, out in the big, bad world. No, this isn't some grand epiphany on the scale of "Einhorn's a man!"...but I thought it was interesting.
And it's interesting to see how people -- even 10 years out of college -- deal with this freedom. The guy one cube over is not exactly setting the world on fire in terms of his career, and today (with his boss out and our department boss leaving early) he was at his desk for all of about two hours, I'd guess, and he left at 3:10 -- the minute he could get away with it. I don't want to be a jerk about it...I'd hate to be that guy who rats out his coworkers -- but it's a bit ridiculous. I think he's getting away with a bit much, and it bugs me, because I'm working pretty hard here to do the right thing. Oh well -- the only person's behavior I can control is my own, right? Wow, I'm full of dull cliched observations today.
I'll likely be taking the next few days off on the old blog. We've got family in town for the holiday weekend. Maybe I'll post some pictures. Anyway, happy turkey day to all.
Still some validity to this observation...but last night, I reconsidered this. College prepares you for work exactly because of the freedom you are granted -- to manage this freedom without 1) failing out; 2) getting arrested; 3) drinking yourself silly; or 4) a combination of these things is (by one measure) a successful journey through college. High school is still about obligations and close monitoring, while college is not. And neither is work, in most cases. My boss isn't watching me every second...otherwise she'd know I'm taking a break here to write a few lines in my blog. She trusts me to complete my job and its tasks (which I do) without her having to watch my every move, and this is how I treat people I supervise. So, college does get you ready to be on your own, so to speak, out in the big, bad world. No, this isn't some grand epiphany on the scale of "Einhorn's a man!"...but I thought it was interesting.
And it's interesting to see how people -- even 10 years out of college -- deal with this freedom. The guy one cube over is not exactly setting the world on fire in terms of his career, and today (with his boss out and our department boss leaving early) he was at his desk for all of about two hours, I'd guess, and he left at 3:10 -- the minute he could get away with it. I don't want to be a jerk about it...I'd hate to be that guy who rats out his coworkers -- but it's a bit ridiculous. I think he's getting away with a bit much, and it bugs me, because I'm working pretty hard here to do the right thing. Oh well -- the only person's behavior I can control is my own, right? Wow, I'm full of dull cliched observations today.
I'll likely be taking the next few days off on the old blog. We've got family in town for the holiday weekend. Maybe I'll post some pictures. Anyway, happy turkey day to all.
// posted by Bill @ 3:17 PM 
