In considering this year’s New Year’s post, I’ve observed folks on Facebook and Twitter giving the usual “Hoping for a better 2023!”, but also, and notably: “All right 2023, what sort of bullshit do you have for me? Let’s get this over with.” Perhaps it’s always been that way, and I just haven’t noticed. I know lots of my friends and acquaintances have had a tough year, some life-changing, some downright tragic. Others did okay, with lots of travel to wonderful places, or perhaps paid off some debt, or maybe took on a new job.

I’d characterize my year as good, overall, but very, very tough. After a quick agreeable discussion with the wife, we decided that this year, we should have an ‘epic’ Christmas. Everyone got something surprising that we normally couldn’t really afford: computer, iPad, all the Lego & video games, and even kittens. I wanted to do this in part because we’ve all had a really hard few years, and still managed to keep on going. In part, I wanted it to be a day where I didn’t have to say “I got what they had” or “I didn’t have time to…”.

Myself, I got a new VR headset for flight-simming, which is among my favorite things to do in the simulator, when I have time. It’s not a thing I’ll get to spend much time on. After all, I need 1-3 hours uninterrupted to really get anything out of it. That’s not something I feel like I can get these days. I tried a few flights over the holidays but had to give up on more than one attempt because there was just too much going on in the real world. I think last night on new-years eve was the longest uninterrupted relaxation time I’ve had in as long as I can remember.

In 2020, the pandemic hit, and I rolled with it. We redesigned whole workflows, from surveys all the way through the writing. It was 40 years of program development pivoted within a year. This December, the report representing the most complex and comprehensive attempts was finally published. It was a huge accomplishment, but the amount of work the team put into it involved many nights and weekends of intellectually challenging work. We continued at that same pace moving through 2021 and into 2022 as we worked in totally unprecedented conditions and then tried to ‘return to normal.’ The pace 2020 set hasn’t let up. In returning to normal, we’re trying to do it with a ton of new staff, new procedures, new software, and new problems. All that AND we’re trying to catch up with work that was postponed. To say the last few years have been exhausting would be a real understatement.

With that in mind, I think, what I’d really have liked for my ‘Epic Christmas’ this year to close it out is some real time off. A break that doesn’t involve getting up by 8 to deal with email or answering questions. A break that doesn’t require 4 meetings over two days with substantial follow-ups. A break where nobody needs me for a couple of weeks without a massive detrimental impact on my entire section. A break that doesn’t cause a backlog in my own workload that I simply can’t fix. If I’d found that in my stocking, it would’ve made the past few years seem a bit less. As it is, you can’t just go and buy that on Amazon, no matter how big the PFDs were this year. Now I’ve got a very nice headset that I may not see again for six months, but it is a thing just for me where I get to be alone with my thoughts and picture myself flying over some far-away place.

So having said that, what’s my point? Well, my hope for 2023 is this: People start to realize that it’s NEVER that people don’t want to work, it’s that there is too much being demanded of us, and we’ve all hit a brick wall after running with low staff, high expectations, and something new literally every day for almost 3 years. Some to the point where it’s not even worth going in anymore. We’ve given all we can, and there’s nothing left. It’s time to stop complaining and be kind, maybe take a deep breath and tell that barista thank you even if they did screw-up your order.

Wow, it’s been nearly a year since my last blog, and I know I’ve been fairly absent on Twitter and intermittent at best on Facebook. Except for the past few days, I’ve been super active. Largely because I’m reasonably confident this is the last time I’ll have an opportunity to hear or hear from people. As you might imagine with all of that non-posting on various social media sites (including my own blog!), I’ve concluded the best thing to do is get on a NEW social media site – Mastodon (@daveskoster@mast.to). Less because I want or necessarily will abandon Twitter, but as of today, it’s looking like Twitter will be a pay-to-play system. I take this to mean that I’d need a proper platform and to pay $100 a year or so just to have my Tweets heard. That doesn’t even address the real issue with trying to connect with other writers and also the random cool folks I’ve gotten to know over the past few years. I think the quote from Elon Musk was: If you’re not verified, you’re going to have to scroll very far down the page to be found… “cool”

I won’t be deleting my Twitter account, I’ll only just be logging in enough to keep my handle alive and Tweeting some – though, it’s hardly worth it if the platform is now just a venue to listen to people with money and big political agendas. Maybe we could call it a billionaire’s social media?

Anyhow, I don’t have a lot to update with. I have been thinking about writing projects, but between school and work, I can’t devote much time to developing those. Heck, I’ve hardly got three minutes to string together for myself, and when I do, it’s for stuff like checking social media real quick :), or basic stuff, like brushing my teeth.

Anyhow, if you follow me on Twitter and I seem to disappear, I’m not gone, just elsewhere for now.

Cheers!

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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

On Monday, the Syllabus … Syllabi? for my two fall classes for grad school went live. I’ve got a sense of schedule, topics, and platforms. And at the same time, I’ve got absolutely NO idea what to really and truly expect – except that I’m going to be challenged. My kids, however, started on Monday and complaints about classes has started already. I’m usually one to support whatever is going on in the education realm because even if I disagree, they need to know that sometimes you just have to deal with bullshit. This year is a bit different. A new superintendent, who is presumably very experienced and whatever, has completely changed how the high-school curriculum works. Change isn’t the worst thing in the world, but it has to be carefully organized, planned, and executed to be successful and have the correct impact. In spite of all of the best efforts of teachers, administrators, and councilors, the current situation is not good.

Before I continue to complain, I want to make it clear that my experience with everyone at the school has been a case-study in professionals trying very hard to make sure our students are getting what they are supposed to out of school. I am fully confident that my kid’s whole school is full of people focused on student success. I genuinely don’t believe that is the case with the superintendent. In fact, I’d argue that’s he’s set up our educators for an unnecessarily challenging year with a profoundly vague plan to improve MAP scores. Which is to say, he gave them a directive without even bothering to think it through.

My main complaint is one of the changes to graduation requirements. I’ve got concerns about several aspects, but the largest is a new intro class called: Intro to Career Pathways. In the first class my middle child was treated to a full-on repudiation of college in favor of ‘certificate’ programs. ie: Why would you get a college degree when you could get a certificate for less money and make as much as anyone with a bachelor’s degree? That’s a bloody great question. By some accounts, plumbers make up the largest segment of people making more than $1M/year – and I generally believe this is true (have you ever paid a plumber?). But you know what? If it were the typical case where I could jump over to plumbing and make more than ten times what I do now, I’d change my job TOMORROW.

Realistically, that’s not how it works. I think we all know that – a good, skilled plumber has years of experience, training, expertise etc… I mean, if someone told you: Go into plumbing, you’d make a mint. Wouldn’t you do it? You would, right?

You know why people don’t?

I already said it. Look at the paragraph above about all the training. Where the hell do you get that? There is no real ‘path’ for students. The same goes for virtually any trade. I’d even argue that super popular classes like auto-shop don’t offer a path to employment. That’s why there’s an apparent dearth of ‘qualified’ applicants (of course, if companies were a little more keen to hire people at something approximating a living wage, with no experience, this would be a different story). Yes, there are ‘trade’ schools, and programs at universities that support this, but it’s not remotely enough. If there aren’t enough qualified people, clearly, the education system is the place where we have a problem. Nobody doesn’t want to do these jobs.

When I was in high-school, one of the career paths I was interested in was carpentry. Hell, I still love working with wood and building things. I even loved building my house even though it brought me to tears more than once and nearly killed me and my marriage – but why didn’t I? Why did I go into computer science? Because there wasn’t a path to get into carpentry. When I started looking, there simply wasn’t any way to get to a job that didn’t involve having someone already in the field give me an opportunity.

The best advice I could drum up at the time is stupid shit like: Get apprenticed (with whom, exactly?). Oh, an apprenticeship program with the union? The same union that takes 30-40 applicants a year? (Full disclosure – I am 100% a full union supporter. I refuse to cross anyone’s picket line, no matter how distantly connected they are to my work.). The point is that the school district (the superintendent) has decided it’s a great idea to shit all over college prep and tell kids to go into a ‘trade’, without actually doing anything meaningful to develop a tangible path. Had my child been assigned welding, machine shop, auto repair or even sanding wood 101, I’d have been perfectly fine supporting that because they’re learning an actual skill. This class is pretty clearly designed to indoctrinate kids into a false conservative narrative designed to get them to accept lower wages.

When it comes to college, you can’t deny it’s as expensive as hell. The benefit? It opens up a whole suite of opportunities, and (to be perfectly blunt) is open to everyone. This is not the case for ‘trades’. Even if you get an, I dunno, MBA, this opens up a whole classification of jobs. We’re talking about dozens of possible fields. I know computer scientists who do admin work, biologists who are doing social science work, mining engineers who wound up doing petroleum engineering most of their career. The point is that the batchelors degree is the main point of entry.

A huge stink is being made about not enough kids getting into ‘trades’ and people somehow disrespecting trades – literally nobody disrespects the trades. Hell, if it offered benefits most of the time and you could find a way in, it’d be just fine if not GREAT.

Unfortunately it’s exclusive – you have to know someone or get lucky. There’s a certain amount of luck required after completing your college degree. I am NOT going to refute that. My own position I got because of luck and whiteness initially. I hold that job by making sure that I follow through. However, my luck aside, I literally had dozens of opportunities across a huge swath of industries and occupations. So, instead of waiting for an apprentice carpenter job to come up somewhere, maybe very, very remote, I can apply for a dozen jobs in my own town. So there’s trade-offs.

Thinking about my situation: yes, I’m driving my kids to go to college, even though we can’t afford it. Yes, I’m going to grad school myself. Could any of us do better in a trade? … No, actually. In my case, I’m nearly 20 years in. My path is set. Could I have done better in a trade fresh out of high school? … actually, also no, there was no place for me to become skilled an acquire a real job in a trade. My kids? Also no. I can promise they wouldn’t find a job in the trades for the same reasons I couldn’t. College offers the best opportunity, so that’s what we’re doing.

I think my complaint here is that my kids are being subjected to a political class instead of something useful. If my kids were required to take a class to do – I don’t know – small engine repair, or basic automotive skills, welding, basic into to pluming, I don’t even care… any of those things, it would be a FAR better use of their time. What’s more, in my short experience working with students in high school, NOBODY DOESN’T want to do trades stuff, there’s just no opportunities. Jobs, yeah, maybe, but opportunities? No. You can argue, if you like, but you’re a white guy with some kind of personal connection.

For my part, I want my kids to learn skills and have opportunities, not be subjected to political beliefs and false narratives. If you want kids to get into trades, train them, get them experience, and make sure the opportunities are actually present. Don’t present false narratives.

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Before you get shitty about me saying companies needing to offer more opportunities to young people – I do my best to maintain internship programs as often as possible with the specific goal of making sure our young people (or even slightly older folks going back to school) get experience and have a vector for entry into my field. It’s a HIGH priority for me and it should be for literally anyone having more than 1 employee.