Posts by Finn Higgins

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  • Island Life: Won't Somebody Think Of The…,

    Or they say nothing, using a lot of words to do it.

    Well, yes, that's usually a good way to set off somebody's bullshit alarms :)

    I don't doubt you're right about the latter point though - in all honesty, I'd never anticipated the idea I punted earlier to actually work. I just liked the idea of a portable machine that made loud beeping noises every time somebody started talking crap. I've had jobs in the past where one of those would have saved about 2/3rds of my time in meetings...

    Wellington • Since Apr 2007 • 209 posts Report Reply

  • Island Life: Won't Somebody Think Of The…,

    I think you might have a hard time finding statements from politicians that have factual veracity to train off.

    Touche. I was actually thinking that yesterday, I think much of the disillusionment with politics is a side-effect of the fact that most politicians set off everybody's bullshit detectors every time they say anything whatsoever.

    Wellington • Since Apr 2007 • 209 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Herself's Turn,

    You got a job and didn't get drunk after they paid you? In Yorkshire? Fer shame.

    The place is depressing enough without spending all your dosh on booze, mine all went on CDs, music gear and sneaking into 18-rated movies...

    Wellington • Since Apr 2007 • 209 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Herself's Turn,

    Drunk? You were lucky. All I got was a job. And in Yorkshire, too...

    Wellington • Since Apr 2007 • 209 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Herself's Turn,

    Finn, I suspect your experience is not unique sadly. I'm not sure when you had this experience, however in my experience there are now far more and far better pathways to skilled and meaningful work that include training and the achievement of recognisable skills.

    Hum. I'm very dubious. My experience was in the UK, but I'm pretty happy that there's no way you could structure something robust enough to stand up to legal obligations that wouldn't have bothered me. When I was 16-18 I hated formalised training schemes and assessment of any description. I just wanted to be able to work, ask questions where I needed to and do something I cared about for its own reward in my spare time.

    I don't engage well with topics I find innately dull or which I can't relate to, while I'm very good at learning things I find interesting. Generally it takes a real practical application to make many everyday things interesting enough to be absorbed. Practical work with a good opportunity for initiative and problem-solving is, consequently, just about the best learning environment I've yet encountered.

    That's not something I'd promote as a personal strength, but it's definitely been a reality since I was very young and I've had little success with changing it substantially. In short, I've got to be able to see the point in what I'm being asked to learn and do, and "so you can prove you can" never seemed like much of an answer.

    Ironically all of that actually was my path to skilled and meaningful work. I think if I'd been forced to partake in substantial mandatory training and assessment schemes during those years I would probably have ended up unemployable due to mental illness and would have been scared off working in the same way that I was scared away from education. The absence of structured educational requirements gave me the time to clear my head and find a way to operate in the world that worked for me. At best these plans for continued compulsion would have just delayed that for me by two years; at worst it might have left me severely mentally unwell. I was certainly right on the brink of that at sixteen, and I'd already been out of school for a few years at that point before returning briefly to attempt getting some A-levels.

    I'm coming up on 27 now, and I'm well-paid, have been consistently employed (or profitably self-employed) for nigh on a decade now and have done a variety of interesting things. I've written professionally, built IT systems of various descriptions and worked for myself as a music teacher/freelance music programmer and as a web developer. I've also got a lot of general work experience, because when I can't find something to engage with I just go and temp. I have virtually no qualifications in anything other than music, but I can get work because I have real, tangiable things that I've built that I can point to and I have good references. I'm definitely blocked from working in some jobs and industry sectors because of all of this, but it's considerably less than I would have been blocked from working at if I'd had a complete mental breakdown at 16/17 and been unable to attend work or school.

    I'm all for giving people more choices, but this Labour's proposal would directly cut off the direction in life that worked for me without putting anything resembling a tempting alternative on the table. I'd fear for the sanity of kids going through the same things as my younger self.

    Wellington • Since Apr 2007 • 209 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Herself's Turn,

    Paul, I'm still not buying it. Either you lower the bar for "education" so low that it could be anything (in which case the entire proposal becomes a meaningless compliance cost for employers wanting to hire people under 18) or you're still insisting on structured learning. Structured learning for long periods as a teenager really doesn't suit some people.

    When I left school I went and got one of the dumbest, most repetitive jobs on earth: data entry. Screen here, keyboard there, pile of paper there, go. I spent a year doing it. During that year I learned nothing whatsoever that I didn't teach myself, apart from fairly obvious things like how to handle reconciling batches - which you could work out for yourself anyway. It was a blessed relief, and gave me a good period of time to straighten my head out from years of struggling with the environment of structured education. All of a sudden the whole contract seemed more clear: You go to work for X hours a day, you get X in reward for it and you have your evenings free to do whatever you want with what you've earned. That seemed far superior to school, where you work X hours a day for no tangiable reward at all, just because you have to, and it follows you home in the evening.

    After a year of that I went and got a slightly more interesting job doing accounts at an airline, where I needed to think a bit more. And I enrolled to go study something I was actually interested in.

    At this airline job there was a guy my age (17-18 at the time) who was on one of those hideous place-you-in-work structured industry training courses. He was getting paid about 1/8th of the amount I was, and spent his time having to go off to spurious classroom lessons about how to work in an office (!?) and write essays explaining the structure of his day at work. Assignment 1: Explain the process for applying for leave at your office. Etc. That whole situation would have driven me spare - one of the major reasons I felt better about working than school was that there at least appeared to be some kind of point to the whole thing. If it was pointless busy-work that could be eliminated you could just point that out to the boss.

    Even with your proviso above, the requirement for structured education would seem to re-introduce a requirement for pointless busy-work for anybody under eighteen in the workforce. That would really, really have pissed me off. You might be an optimist and think that magically some amazing new way of advancing education in the workplace will arise, but I'd think it more likely that nationally we'll just start generating a lot more essays explaining the obvious to people who already know the answers.

    Wellington • Since Apr 2007 • 209 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Another nail in the coffin of…,

    I'm only resuming posting on this one because I actually agree with robbery on the recording point. He's right. There's a world of difference between a professional sound, a good sound, a low-fi-but-good sound and just sounding like shit. The latter is achievable by anybody, but all the former ones need some engineering background and skill. That goes double if your band aren't extreme gear geeks to start with. The best-sounding NZ rock band I've ever heard without a front-of-house engineer are New Way Home, and that was with loaner gear in a music store - they all know what they're doing with their instrument sound because they're all total gear-heads. Those kinds of musicians are well-placed to do home recording, but they're a small minority.

    On the other hand, lots of people really don't have that kind of nous when it comes to getting their instruments to sound right in a room without a front-of-house engineer - and if they can't do that, they're certainly not going to get them to sound right on a home recording.

    It's really easy with home digital audio workstations to get a kind of clean, lifeless, sterile recording that doesn't express anything of the performance and it really is amazing how much this takes away from the music. It's hard to get a professional, punchy sound. It's really, really hard to get the kind of expressive interesting-sounding "grit" you hear on most genuinely great albums. There's a reason that great engieers like Rudy Van Gelder were and are so respected by musicians - they're an extension of the instrument in that they have a huge, huge impact on tone and ability to perform expressively.

    Whatever new business model arises for the music industry it's going to need to have enough money in it somewhere to keep paying good engineers unless we want to listen to limp, lifeless records.

    Wellington • Since Apr 2007 • 209 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Herself's Turn,

    I spelt Bjoerk correctly. She has an umlaut in her name - therefore "oe" is correct and "o" is not. Philistine.

    Yes Blair. Of course you did.

    Wellington • Since Apr 2007 • 209 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Herself's Turn,

    The more I think about the idea of compulsory education up to the age of eighteen the more I think it's utterly terrible. I really can't see what the perceived benefit of the idea is. If they're engaged they'll stay anyway. If they're not engaged then it's just two more years practice in switching the brain off.

    Wellington • Since Apr 2007 • 209 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Herself's Turn,

    Juvenile and pathetic the image may have been, but those who have flailed around in such deep offence really need to get over themselves.

    As opposed to, say, those who write blog posts lecturing entertainers on their behavior (despite not being familiar enough with the artist to even, say, spell their name) and post pictures of themselves looking like this on the internet?

    Wellington • Since Apr 2007 • 209 posts Report Reply

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