Seventh Salon: What it is that we do.

[jenett]

Welcome to our seventh salon discussion thread. Wander in, invite a friend to come along, and chat! (Not sure what's going on? Here, have a brief FAQ.) You can find previous ones in my salon tag. Please take a quick look at the reminders at the bottom of this post, too. (Quick note: I'd originally said we'd do these through at least July. I am formally declaring that we'll keep going through at least August.)

Topic of the day:
A couple of conversations this week have gotten me thinking about jobs. One was a conversation with a friend yesterday (hi!) about job hunting, another was a meeting of a committee I'm on for staff awards, where we were asked to introduce ourselves (it's the first time we've met) with something we do that we're really good at (work or not.)

The committee is staff from all over the campus, only one of whom I already knew. And one of the things we were talking about is how recognising people for doing things well can take a lot of forms - but it's also complicated, because talking about what we do well is really hard, and sometimes (often!) other people don't really know what goes into our jobs. (And yes, I talked a little about both Imposter Syndrome and about synecdochic's weekly Pride Thread)

And yet, it's really important to talk about what we're good at, for a dozen reasons and more. (Morale, helping us do more of the really awesome stuff, helping other people do more really awesome stuff, appreciating the work other people do that keeps things running smoothly - we were talking about the school health service, and how you never hear when things are fine there, but it's important that they *are* fine.)

So, my question: What do you do, and why do you like it, and how did you get into doing that thing? I'm curious both about job-that-pays-you stuff but also about ongoing projects that aren't your job.

For bonus amusement, last January, there was a meme about describing things (your job) using the ten-thousand most common words in English. (Inspired by a xkcd cartoon). You can use a web-based tool to write one. If you did that meme and want to share in comments, that'd be awesome. (Or if you want to play with it and share something new!) Mine's in the first comment.

Currently reading: Queen Victoria's Book of Spells: An Anthology of Gaslamp Fantasy - like the title says, this is gaslamp fantasy, not steampunk. Thus far I am generally agreeing with Brit Mandelo's review over on Tor.com, but even the stories that aren't quite my thing are making me think, which is pretty much what I ask for in an anthology.

Quick reminders

- jjhunter did a great guide to following conversations here on Dreamwidth. Also a roundup of regular Dreamwidth events.
- If you want to post anonymously, please pick a name (any name you like) that we can call you - it makes it more conversational and helps if we have more than one anon post.
- Base rule remains "Leave the conversation better than you found it, or at least not worse". If you're nervous about that, I'd rather you say something and we maybe sort out confusion later than have you not say something. (I've heard from a few people who worry they're going to say something that's going to be taken weirdly. If it helps, I am usually around and if there's a thing you'd like to get out in the conversation, but you're not sure how, feel free to PM or email or IM me, and I'll nudge the conversation that direction.)
- The FAQ still has useful stuff, and I added some thoughts about getting conversations going this week.
- Comments tend to trickle in over the course of a day or two, with a few nearly a week later: you might enjoy checking back later if you're not tracking the conversation.

Comments

Venecia Here

[(Anonymous)]

I wrote up a bunch of stuff about my life using Up-goer Five and I have to say that it's a very good tool for clarifying your thinking about things. I may make it a regular exercise to attempt to explain my position on various topics using the tool. Here's my life in Up-goer:

----------
Work: I work at a place with lots of other people. We build stuff for computers to use in order to help people do things they need to do. I don't actually build the stuff. I help the people who build the stuff do a better job by explaining what is needed and when and what should be done next. I learn this by talking with the people who will end up using the stuff. This helps the people building the stuff make better stuff so the final people who use the stuff are happy.

I like my job very much. I think the people who build the stuff are great and I enjoy making their work easier. I like working with the people who use the computers with our stuff on it. Sometimes I get to visit these people, which means that I get to go to places that I would not go to on my own.

My work place is very nice. There are many good people there who know many things. I feel like they like me as well, which makes me happy. I hope to have this job for a very long time.

Not work: Outside of work, I do other things. I make things from sticks and animal hair. I turn animal hair into long bits to use with the sticks. I make pictures of things with paint and drawing. I like to make music with my voice and dance, but only for myself. I don't do these things enough, but I enjoy them when I do them.

Family: I have a family. My family is the person I married and the child we made and the dog we have. The person I married makes music and is great at making food. I love him very much. The child we made is also great and makes us very happy. She knows many things and learns fast. She plays a game with a ball and her feet with other girls on a team. She is the best child in the world. Maybe I think so because she is my girl and all mothers think their children are the best... but I don't think so.

Gods: Another person I love is not a person in life with a body, but a god who is bigger than I am and who I look to for help in being the right kind of person I need to be. This is not a person that I can see or talk to, except in dreams or inside my head. But this person is real and gives me lots of help. My family does the same, only with different gods. Some of the gods are men and some are women. Many people do this with one usual god, but we are different because we love older gods. I think that all gods are real and each person has to figure out that relationship for themselves. No person can tell another person how or who to love. My god likes it when I make art and make music and dance and be free. He wants me to do those things. My daughter has a women god who loves children and animals and writing. The person I married has a woman god who makes people better when they are hurt. He also loves my god, which is good because we all agree on these important things.

Making changes: In my family, we also believe that we can make changes in our lives in many ways. Some ways to make change are usual by acting or thinking and many people change things in this way. But other ways are not usual and work by making a line between acting / thinking and forces outside of the self. These ways are not usual but they do work, though they work more like art and not like planning or driving. Art is a very good word for the way that my family makes changes in our lives. This art is more like going around than going right from one point to the other. I enjoy this art very much and it has helped us in a number of ways. My god also likes this kind of art as do I.

Shit happens: Sometimes bad things happen. They happen even with good art and family love and work. Sometimes they happen because I need to learn something. Other times shit just happens and I have to learn to ride it out and not let it get me down. Life is full of ups and downs but it is the trip you take through life that is the most important.

Death: I don't think that trip ends when you die. I think you continue as someone new so that you can learn more things. This is not a usual way to think, but it makes sense to me. The body stays here, but the inside light moves on. It is sad when someone dies because you miss them. But it is not sad for them because they are moving on and learning new things. We had a dog who died and we miss our dog. But we know our dog is with the dark woman god of the night and art (long story) and so we are happy for him. His light visits us sometimes and I have known of other lights who return from time to time, even after the greater part of them has gone on to become someone new. There is something that forms a line between your light and their light. This line is made of love. The light may also be made of love. And this love and light goes on even when we die.

I am surprised at how much I can tell about my life with just a few simple words. It made me think more about what I wanted to say and make my thoughts more clear about my life.

-----------

[alexseanchai]

That's the point of having vocabulary bigger than ten thousand words. Much added clarity. I don't even know where I'd begin trying to explain 'paralegal' with Upgoer Five. 'Law' is a banned word. So is 'rules'. If I have a somewhat larger pool of words to work with, I can explain that I'm trained to make sure documents I'm given comply with the law, and when the documents are noncompliant, to point out how and where so the submitter in question can fix it.

[jenett]

And you do it so well!

(More than that: I learn so much every time you talk about what goes into it. Which is, y'know, good for me. Besides being fascinating.)

[silveradept]

I kind of fell into the profession when my secondary school librarian suggested that, based on what she knew about me and my habit of being in the library, I might enjoy being a librarian. Turns out, she was right, thankfully. I went with it because I didn't really have much other idea about what I would do professionally. Based on how the rest of my family turned out, I would probably be teaching. Perhaps hilariously, my co-worker, who is currently going through library school, has said that she thinks I would do really well as a lecturer, based on how I explain things. I think it's mostly because I can explain things to zie in a way zie understands when zie needs help with assignments, but it's nice to hear someone say "You are really good at helping people understand things."

Unlike jenett, I work in youth services, so I do story times and help with the programming, visit schools to talk about our resources, and spend an inordinate amount of time helping everyone with computer issues and finding books while in the branch. (We've been short-staffed since before the recession.) Which makes me both That Tech Guy and the person the non-professional staff comes to whenever there are behavioral issues that involve children or teenagers, regardless of whether there is already policy and procedure in place on how to handle those things.

I also like it when people ask questions about what I do.

[jenett]

Yeah. I have a better time with it than I do with poetry (I am not a poet, really honest.) But that sense of restraint within a form is something I find fascinating and useful.

(I'm just better at doing it with music than in other forms of art. I have been capable of building *really excellent* figured bass arrangements that do complicated musical stuff within their limits. Which is a lovely thing except for being a skill that no one's really demanded you use outside of music theory classes in at least 200 years, unless you're an organist. And even then maybe not.)

[elisem]

Back when I worked for a particular large non-profit entity, I was across the hall from Major Donors (which wasn't the donors themselves, but rather the people who worked with them). That's quite an art, when done well. Seeing happy donors is pretty darn cool; it gave us a feeling of being entrusted with something, in our work.

At a different large non-profit entity, years before that, when an exhibit would open there would be a special party for the major donors and the people who had worked on the exhibit. (By the latter, I mean everybody: the people who sawed and hammered as well as the people who designed.) They were fascinating events where people talked with each other who otherwise might never meet.

[alexseanchai]

Uh. Singing for Dummies. They play a note, I sing the note, and it tells me how close I got to the note, is about as far as I've gotten.

Also Piano for Dummies. I'm afraid to acquire actual sheet music because getting the notes on the staff to match to the keys on the keyboard is still arcane sorcery and I've already invested quite a lot of money (compared to my paycheck size, anyway) in the keyboard. On the other hand, if I acquire sheet music to songs I know, I will at least be able to tell when I go wrong without having to rely on the software to tell me that I screwed up this itsy melody that I don't know how it's supposed to sound in the first place...

[elisem]

Oh, how cool!

[synecdochic]

aww. thank you!

i wish i had the time (and energy) to write about it more often. mind you, most of the day-to-day stuff is REALLY DULL...

Re: Venecia Here

[elisem]

There is something that forms a line between your light and their light. This line is made of love.

:loves those two sentences fiercely:

[elisem]

Thank you! And thank you very much for all the help. Which was massive.

[(Anonymous)]

Just as an aside. You might try reaching out to both homeschool and gifted/talents groups and lists in your area. The parents of these kids are often highly invested in their children's educations and they tend to skew toward having more disposable income (which is unfortunate but true). You might find that tutoring younger gifted kids in the hard sciences could be very lucrative as there are often few resources for very bright kids to get advanced science instruction. For homeschoolers, you might offer small group classes and your schedule could be more sane (these kids are available during the day) then evenings and weekends only. If you need a place to tutor a group, a parent may be able to host (which reduces your liability) or you may be able to get a room at the local library. I'm speaking from personal experience here, on both fronts.

[jenett]

Yeah. I did the data work relatively early in my stint at the school and in the Twin Cities, and it was *fascinating* to see how that connected to the history of the region.

Re: Venecia Here

[(Anonymous)]

And I NEVER would have thought to put it that way without the artificial constraint of up-goer. It's like a language crucible for expressing complex ideas.

[elisem]

So it's sort of call-and-response with the software? That's neat.

And how cool that you wanted to learn a thing and went and got a keyboard. Do you like the keyboard? What does it sound like to you? (Is it OK that I'm asking so many questions? I do get all excited about music, so let me know if I'm bubbling over in a not-helpful way, yah?)


(edited because I needed to close parentheses in order to keep the universe balanced)

[jenett]

I miss teenagers. (Well, not all the time. But I do miss working with people younger than college age.)

I fought being a librarian for a remarkably long time, considering.

Here's a question: what's the kind of thing you wish people in your library asked you more? (The places you see gaps you don't know if they're noticing, that'd make their life easier.)

[elisem]

Has any part of your job surprised you with how much you like it?

[jenett]

Welcome! (And, um, I am a sucker for that kind of short story collection, so thank you!)

[elisem]

It's a very cool ship, and a great good thing for many people.

[elisem]

Ooh. Stories. Excellent.

:makes note of:

[alexseanchai]

It...sounds like a keyboard? I don't think I have the knowledge base or the vocabulary to answer what you're asking, sorry. I do like it, I just get mad at myself when I'm not perfect on the first go.

No worries about all the questions.

[alexseanchai]

Woot!

[alexseanchai]

Woot!

[adrian_turtle]

What a great idea! Thanks.

[synecdochic]

and some days, knowing that is the only thing that keeps me from pulling the plug! :)