Please Hire Me. Also, waffles.

Given the absence of people capable of giving me more work to do, I have instead decided to devote some time to investigating potential future employment opportunities. Or rather, I have ended up devoting a lot of time and type to lamenting my poor subject choices of my degrees.

With the imminent demise of my current job – a casual contract supporting the implementation of a new timetabling and room-booking software and associated administrative entity (initially for the purposes of data entry, although it has evolved into the glorious and highly ambiguous position of Business Analyst) – I have recently moved to considering methods of supporting my enormous fiscal requirements. Naturally I require a large, sustained and predictable income for the purposes of satisfying my luxurious lifestyle of non-existent cars, beautiful woman, and a cramped 10^th-floor apartment (calling it a penthouse suite would be excessively abusing my creative literary license; the view is of the wall of the building next to us, which is sufficiently close to block out direct sunlight except for a 30 minute period at high noon, and then only if you lean over the railing, while the balcony is sufficient for the toasting of marshmallows over waste-paper fires and for locking myself out of the apartment), although to be fair the apartment wouldn’t be nearly so cramped if I didn’t insist on owning a plethora of surprisingly large and useless crap, or if I stopped myself from buying more. 

I am currently a graduand (which apparently is the term for someone who is eligible to graduate, but has not yet done so) and will remain so until May, having finally completed my BA (mathematics, history)/BSc (biology) conjoint after five years (if I’d scrutinised the degree more clearly, I could have seen if I’d simply done a single Stage Two Science paper at summer school last year, I could have finished a year earlier). I always assumed that having completed a tertiary degree of some kind that I’d be eminently more employable than the previous iteration of myself whose formal qualifications stemmed merely from high school. However, having reason to now consider this assumption more closely, I find that my reasoning (calling it logic would be an insult to that sacred art) has been sadly lacking. 

Consider, if you will, the field of Mathematics. Assuming that the field is Real, and moreover that it is Rational, and thus all Complexities can be ignored, then Naturally there are a finite number of puns this sentence can contain while still being relevant… I digress. Mathematics is an excellent example of a internally consistent logic system (unlike, for example, many organised religions), and some qualification therein - representing some degree of mastery thereof - could arguably be constituted to show that I have some understanding of logic, deductive and inductive thinking. Further, a potential employer could assume that I know a bit about working with numbers, algebra, graphs, matrices and the like. Yet apart from these basic skills there is very little about the Mathematics major that represents tangible value to the employer. While I can prove that the square root of two is irrational, I am unable to write a web applet, or troubleshoot a database query. While I can prove that there are an infinite number of primes or add a couple of ones to the upper-right of a triangular matrix (thus proving I am a genius), I am unable to perform data quality tests or accept responsibility for accounts payable. Without further study, this major is a lot less useful to a job-seeker than something more practical, such as Computer Science or Statistics

(Oddly enough I have had more A+’s and C-‘s in Mathematics than any other subject, in fact both instances number 3; I just thought I'd throw that in there as a really bad way of ending the paragraph).  

The same can be said for History (and by "the same" I mean that it lacks marketable skills, not that bit about ending paragraphs badly). While a lovely and interesting subject, studying past events and people and motives and ideas, semiotics and whatnot, practical skills are still limited to resource interpretation, critical thinking, and waffle writing. Mind you, waffle writing is a very important skill, particularly when submitting job applications and cover letters. Waffle making might also be a very useful skill, I mean, shit, turn up to your next job interview and bring waffles - go on, see how it works. If a prospective employee showed up to an interview and distributed waffles, wouldn't you hire them right then and there (on the proviso that more waffles were forthcoming, preferably on a weekly, if not daily, basis, BYO cream and strawberries - I find honey is good too)? However, returning to my original point (after a brief detour, the wordiness of which may be attributable to my History major), with the addendum that waffle-making is sadly not a skill taught by the History department, I think that most employers would hope for, but not necessarily expect, the kinds of written, analytical and interpretative skills that I learned during my years studying the origins of the French Revolution, male hustlers in 1930s New York and the landscape of history as seen in a metaphorical airplane flown by John Gaddis. Where job listings include history it is generally "applicant must have an interest in history", which is not the same as having a degree in history.

I really enjoyed studying history, I found it more consistently interesting than my other subjects. I enjoyed it enough to want to do a BA(Honours), although the closer I get to starting it, and the more I look at the large stack of books that make up my dissertation reading, the less appealing it seems. I just really wanted to do original research, not just parroting about what other peoples' conclusions, and their arguments with their predeccesors' conclusions. Oh, and there was the vague possibility that if I studied enough History I might one day be in the strange and appaling situation of being paid to do something I enjoyed. That would have been weird.

This is the style of waffles that I grew up with. As such it is the only possible representation of a true waffle. No arguments will be allowed.

I remember my parents once making a huge pile of them, together with masses of strawberries and whipped cream, for my seventh birthday party (I think, give or take fifteen years). These were served in two adjoining tents set up on the back lawn. I remember not how it was instigated, but I do remember same parents being rather annoyed with us children for using the remaining waffles (and strawberries and cream) to undertake a violent and ferocious food-fight, mostly within the tents.

I also remember inviting a friend over, a few years later, who finished the entire stack of waffles while everyone else was still on their first, but that isn't a particularly entertaining anecdote.

Which brings me (via waffles), to Biology. And a BSc in Biology doesn't really seem useful at all. Except to get into a PGDipSci in Biomed, which is what I'm currently thinking of doing next year. After the BA(Hons) in History, which, considering where I'm heading now, seems like a complete waste of time. Ho hum. I should really work out what I want to do with my life.

So my qualifications are fairly useless in terms of employment prospects, except for being able to say that I have a qualification of some sort (with the subject majors being inherently irrelevant) - yay me. This conclusion is not entirely news to me, but I suppose that over the last few years I have always pretended that a) it was a problem that would solve itself, and b) I always intended on continuing studying (presumably under the potential misconception that this would somehow result in me automatically acquiring a high-paying, high-satisfaction AWESOME job). I guess that it was similar to the way I'm intending on doing something that will mostly like prove to be a waste of quite a lot of time and money this year.

In fact out of my verifiable marketable skills, some of the main ones stem from having worked in a public library for the last five years. Five years spent in a structured, yet variable, highly customer-service orientated environment. I now earn 27% more than when I started (now at 38K FTE, about what a fresh university-graduate could expect to receive), which to me seems reasonable for a part-time job I started when I was freshly out of high school with no real work experience. And whatever else I need I can hopefully produce by exaggerating my role in my other job (timetabling software implementation) and getting good references; heck I wouldn't need to do much in the way of embellishment, I did a decent job when I wasn't browsing the internet or blogging. Anyway, work experience 's where it's at, yo.

Yet as far as finding new work is concerned, I really would like to find something that pays a bit better than my current jobs and which I can use my fresh degree to get. If I don't find that then I suppose I could sell some of my useless and space-consuming assets, possibly beginning with my Magic card collection which, at purchase price, exceeds well over a thousand dollars. Yet, taking into account their very rapid rate of depreciation as the cards cycle out of the Standard environment, they are probably now worth around a tenth of that, which almost doesn't make it seem worth the effort, and it's not the kind of thing I can maintain to support my fast and furious lifestyle.

Anyway, I suppose if I'm not going to auction off my life's collection of artefacts, I should go look for work, or at least do some research for the dissertation that will prevent me working full-time. Or write a book. Or go to sleep, ready to tackle the structured, yet variable, highly customer-service orientated environment, where I spend my Saturdays earning money. Kind of like a prostitute, except not (I am not belittling prostitutes, they sell what you want - if they weren't busy selling their bodies they could go into marketing. Maybe).

This post has too many parantheses, commas and - also thanks to the guy who came over to our place after work with bananas and made a cake.

[Historical] Hobos, vehicle mechanics and hubris

This is another non-WoW Udder Madness post that I really liked (slightly abridged). It contains a typical DS rant, deep and meaningful truths about humanity, and a rough idea of how my brain can work at times.

September 27, 2008.
Laptop still broken.
Sort of.
Comes up with random memory failures.
Firefox thinks there's already a copy of Firefox running (which is not responding), and Firefox, being Firefox, thus won't let me start running a new window of Firefox. No Firefox isn't currently running.
The D-Link router at home gives me issues, and I can't 'apt-get' a new internet browser.
I suppose I should try to get ASUS to repair this thing, but there aren't any other verifiable problems with it now, so it probably won't register as broken. Sort of like when your car starts making a funny noise, it makes the noise when you start it, when you drive it, when you wait at red lights, and when you drive through red lights. After a while, it even starts making the noise when the engine isn't running, and, ever so faintly, you can hear the noise disturbing your dreams. Quietly but surely. Like a playground bully from many years ago. But as soon as you take the car to a mechanic it runs completely smoothly. In fact it runs smoother than you've ever heard (or not heard, as the case may be) it run before, since it's a 4th-hand Japanese import you bought from a crazy exchange student during the early 90s. Your mechanic gives you a long look, scratches his head (or her head, as the case may be), charges you $150 for wasting his (her) time and goes back inside after watching you drive off with your teeth tightly clenched. As soon as the door closes behind them, you know what happens? Yep. Your car, ever so gently, starts making that noise again. It gets louder. You know if it persists you will lose sleep, get divorced, and watch your teenaged daughter marry an in-bred hobo from the deep south (i.e. Hamilton) with barely enough intellect to fleece the ACC and WINZ out of sufficient money to finance a coup in Haiti (for reference, a level one troll rogue with Arcane Intellect has sufficient intellect to achieve this). Your grand kids will resemble cane toads going under the lawnmower. You consider going back to that mechanic, since you got a tax return of $263.37 yesterday (true story, the cheque is sitting on my desk, so will only take a day or two to find). But then you notice that even as you think of the mechanic the noise subsides and your petrol indicator has an evil gleam in its bulb. You surrender and drive home. The noise will slowly drive you mad, but if you lay off the coffee your blood pressure won't cause the arteries in your eyes to rupture.

The morale of the story? Buy a German car. They make the same noise, but it comes with a much angrier-sounding accent (people always tell me that when I speak to my parents on the phone it makes me sound angry, although this may just be the fact I'm calling home; I know my mother sounds angry fairly often, but this is because she IS angry). If you can't afford a German car, you now have a hobo-in-law who can teach you how to acquire one, at no additional charge (make sure your immune system can cope with tuberculosis, and be prepared to babysit the grandchildren on Friday nights).

The mechanic in the example above exhibits a fairly common quality (especially where technology is concerned). Think of it as the Midas Touch without the avarice, the anti-kaput, the borked-in-reverse. It's an aura of FIXED! whereby any problem of a particular type (such as car noises) immediately disappears when in close proximity to a particular person (such as a mechanic). Another example of this phenomenon is the photocopier at my work (I work at a library): it will jam, turn off all displays, shred unsaved printed e-tickets, decapitate the customer involved and trigger the fire alarms. Yet if I walk up to it it settles down, if I press a few buttons it starts printing again without fail, and if I croon to it, it plays Greensleeves (needless to say I like that photocopier a lot, I think that over the space of three and a half years it has earned me $4.25 in pay rises, while the computers guarantee my continued employment - although if I lose my job anytime soon just remember: HUBRIS IS A BAD THING).
NB: One year on, and I still have the same job ^_^.

It is facts of life like these that you must get used to, and learn to deal with. Some things you can't change, and some shouldn't be changed anyway.

TLDR: if you don't want a hobo-in-law, become a mechanic.