Tag Archives: university

What I learned from my previous jobs – Part 3

PolyWogg.ca
April 23 2017

In my first post about earlier jobs (What I learned from my previous jobs – Part 1), I talked about my teenage jobs delivering papers, trying dishwashing, and even telemarketing, before talking about my first “real” job as a library assistant through my undergrad years. In the end, I said I would cover my law school years next, but in my second post (What I learned from my previous jobs – Part 2), I realized that I hadn’t covered two other computer-related jobs I did while I was working at the library too, so I covered them.

But I did actually leave Peterborough for the bright lights of the big, err, medium city of Victoria. Bigger than Peterborough, obviously, but not like a giant metropolis of Toronto or Vancouver. It still felt “right-size” for me, as did the university.

Many people disagree about what law school is really like, ranging from a Paper Chase model of the Socratic method to an apprentice-style world of civil procedure and internships to a Law Review / moot court world of John Grisham-like-protagonist-wannabes. For me, Scott Turow’s One-L is the best portrayal I’ve seen at approximating real life at first-year law school.… Read the rest

What I learned from my previous jobs – Part 2

PolyWogg.ca
April 14 2017

In my previous post (What I learned from my previous jobs – Part 1), I covered my first four jobs up until I headed off to law school. In doing so, I did go chronologically, but I skipped over two small jobs in there as they overlapped my job at the library, and I was focused on telling that part of the story. However, others are worth mentioning.

E. Assistant to the Treasurer — My girlfriend at the time had ties to the local Anglican church, and the wife of the Canon was the Treasurer to the Canadian Gerontological Nursing Association. Nice lady, but not particularly computer savvy beyond Word Processing, etc., and I had my own computer plus the know-how and software to run spreadsheets and print mailing labels, etc. I had struggled to get a job out of high school, including the library one, and I was looking for more experience to round out my work history. I didn’t know at the time that I would be working in the library pretty much full-time for four years, so I volunteered to be her assistant.

Generally speaking, that meant maintaining a database showing what type of member each person was (full, associate, etc.),… Read the rest

What I learned from my previous jobs – Part 1

PolyWogg.ca
April 10 2017

I mentioned in my previous post (Starting the Official Job Search of 2017), that I’m looking for a new job this year. And since I want this to be a “good search” that reflects my true interests and desires, I have been reflecting on ALL of my previous jobs to see what they tell me about myself and what I might be looking for in 2017.

A. Paper delivery boy — Yep, I delivered the Shoppers’ Market and the Peterborough Examiner when I was a teenager. I took over the Shoppers’ Market (think Kijiji on paper) route from my brother and it was pretty sweet. It literally covered my immediate neighbourhood — one block south, one block west, one block east and two blocks north. There wasn’t a perfect route that didn’t involve either some crisscrossing or doubling-back, but it was once a week, and they did direct deposit into a bank account. No collecting.

Later I had three different Examiner routes, all late afternoon and it ran Monday to Saturday (no Sunday paper). While many people did paper routes and say later they learned about dependability, or value for money, etc., my lessons were not so positive. It gave me my own money, which was good, but there was a serious limit to what you could make.… Read the rest

Loyalty and duty…

PolyWogg.ca
August 29 2016

I like reading the Higher Education Strategy Associates (HESA) blog even though most of it is about education administration. Their recent post is about “Carleton’s Loyalty Oath” and basically outlines how Carleton University’s Board of Governors is struggling to address the behaviour of one professor on its board. To the blog’s eye, they’re behaving like “goons” and thugs. The issue surrounds Root Gorelick as the university faculty’s representative to the Board of Governors (BoG). He represents the faculty and feels he should blog to the community about the discussions, his positions, and even his objections to Board decisions. 

Yet part of being part of ANY board (co-op, school council, parliament, NGO, business, etc.) is joint responsibility. You individually contribute to joint discussions, you exercise your personal voting powers, but you make collective decisions. And once a group makes a decision, the members of that group collectively made that decision. It’s even part of your legal responsibility in some cases. And the short version is that if you cannot abide by the group’s decisions, you resign as a member of the Board. That’s the job. Since Gorelick hasn’t come to heel at the Board’s insistence, the Board is revising the Code of Conduct to make it a formally recognized duty. … Read the rest