Yet More Things I Have Learned

[silveradept]

Things I Have Learned about Washington Life and Library Jobs, Part Four of a potentially infinite series.

1) There’s no such age as too early to start wearing heels. Or makeup. Or to carry tiny purses around.

2) Nor, apparently, is there too young of an age for cheerleaders to have a complete uniform and jacket.

3) Archie Comics deserves a Chick Tract.

4) I have been hired for more than my ridiculously good looks (If you’ve seen Zoolander, then you can imagine the appropriate voice for that phrase). It may turn out that it was my height and my ridiculously good looks, but I can confidently say I’m multi-talented.

5) Fellow librarians are a dentist’s worst enemy - they bring in such yummy sweets.

6) Things so simple as keeping one’s computer software up to date (or, in the case of running Microsoft operating systems, one OS behind) are actually complex and expensive maneuvers. I will not complain too loudly about the replacement cycle, but I do reserve the right to complain that the cycle is taking too long and that by the time replacement software arrives, we will be nearly obsolete again.

7) Even if it doesn’t look like it, I’m making some sort of impact on my storytime attendees. So much so that at least one wondered where I went when I wasn’t able to do my regular storytime one week (d’awwwww...).

8) What is a complex problem for one person is a simple one for another. Apply the right expertise to the problem and it vanishes.

9) Things you see at play can be applied to work. Things you see at work can be applied to play. Social-networking and interactivity are important both for trying to reach out to new customers and to showing new customers that you’re not afraid of their ways of communication.

10) A side effect of learning how to cook is that your coworkers will compliment the presentation of your food. (A corrolary to #2 of volume two of this enterprise)

11) The walls at my apartment resist sticky squares, even in great quantities. This makes me unhappy.

12) While the weather outside is variable-to-rainy, the weather inside the library has but one setting: Cold. I will adjust my wardrobe accordingly and purchase many fine long-sleeved shirts.

13) Having learned how to drive in snow and rain in Michigan is helpful. I now must perfect how to drive in snow and rain going uphill on steep inclines, without spinning tires or falling too far back.

Comments

[starkruzr.livejournal.com]

6) False! Why must they lie to you!

[silveradept]

Because it's easier than to admit that it would take a little time and a chunk of money for them to get site licenses, spin up an appropriate disk image, and then propagate it across the network for all to use. That's the easy part. It's the hardware replacement schedule that can take a little longer without complaint. Our IT and computer department is probably more than a little understaffed.

[2dlife.livejournal.com]

#5: Fight back. Return the favor, make CANDY. That'll show'em.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

1 - K-Mart's flier has a "my first purse" toy. It's designed for tots - probably at least old enough to toddle around, so maybe for as young as a year or so old. Anyway. The thing comes with a plastic set of keys (pretty normal for babies to play with) and a fake compact (again, slightly normal. Little ones like to look at themselves in a mirror). But then, it gets "modern" -- a fake tube of lipstick, a plastic cell phone, and ready for this one? A PRETEND DEBIT CARD!!!! What are we really trying to teach our little ones?

[silveradept]

They're teaching the young toddler that they've already got about, what, $20,000 of debt on them thanks to their government, and that they're only going to get farther in by their own choices if they want anything that's a fairly durable good or an education.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

Even games are becoming less about cash and more credit/debit. There's new versions of both Monopoly and Life that use a "debit card" to keep track of your money instead of handing you the cash to hold. I really think this is going to cause BIG problems down the line in terms of math education.

[silveradept]

Yes, yes it will. Mother's insidious plan to get us all knowledgeable about mathematics, making change, and some of those strange tricks that make some cashiers look at you strange involved making us play the bank whenever we were playing games that had money involved.

I find now that having played Payday all those times, it was much easier in that game to actually come out ahead, as it was with Life. What they really need to do with that game is remove the top-end salaries and make everyone struggle with a job that pays, at most, $50,000 every time they hit pay year. And a lot more "Downsized", "Career Change", and the like. Oh, and bigger college debt, please.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

Me too. As soon as I learned how to count money, I was the banker. And I had all sorts of money games - we also had one called "Piggy bank" and the object was to save plastic coins and fill up your bank slots first.

Even simple counting games like Sorry!, I think are starting to fall along the side in favoir of other games that are less math/thinking. I wanted to buy Memory for one of my cousins and had a hard time finding that!

I love freaking out cashiers. Handing them the odd amount of change so they give you a full dollar or quarter in change is so much fun.

It's surprising to me too, seeing the new younger people that work in banks and they're so bad at counting money and figuring things out.

Even simple stuff like trying to figure out tax and tips in your head - I know you know how to do it, and so do I, but it's amazing the people who have to pull out their cell phone calculators to figure it out. Even simple things like splitting the check when you're out to dinner in a group. NO ONE can do math anymore!

[wanderingbhikkh.livejournal.com]

With all the candor of a man recently emerged from the worst case of math anxiety you've ever seen...

...no one could before. But they could do *arithmetic*.

I'd argue that the same number of folks per capita can understand math as could before, but there are a lot less who can do basic arithmetic after, say, 6th grade, due to advancing technology.

And I'd further argue that technology is not the problem. Our attitude towards math is. If you go to a dinner party and someone says "of course, I've *always* had a problem with reading and writing. I'm practically illiterate!"...how do you think your friends would react?*

How about if they said, "of course, I've always had a problem with math..." Most folks would chime in with how they never really got it either.

And that's the core of it, I think.

The decline in math and dim-thinkum games (Memory, Kim's Game, Monopoly, etc.) is just one side-effect of this. And just as a side note, I always hated Life for its philosophy. At one point I swore to make an entirely *different* game of Life where the object was to acquire Merit (in true Buddhist tradition) instead of dying with the most cash.

But, yes, freaking out the cashiers with perfect change is fun. I've been known to buy a Jamba Juice with a twenty dollar bill, two nickels and a penny ... they pay back fifteen dollars even.

*not Most America. Most America tends to bring up images of monster truck races and extras from Idiocracy. We're not there yet. Assume the people around the table are about as smart as your mother and your friends.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

I wasn't a big fan of Life either, but it was a game I was given by a relative for some occasion, and so we played it because it was in the house.

I can't compare the average american to my friends - I've got pretty smart friends ;). But I see what you mean - there isn't quite the same "oh, you aren't smart" kind of stigma attached to not understanding math that there is to not being able to read. IF you can't read, you get labeled an idiot by most people, but those same people would probably excuse poor math skills.

I'll admit, I'm horrid at what I consider higher math - but to me, higher math is stuff like Calculus. I can do Algebra, Geometry, Stats, Accounting, and even a bit of Trig. Lots of other people think Geometry is higher math. I remember I wasn't quite good enough at the Math placement test at Penn State to skip College Algebra, but I wound up being the smartest person in my class. It absolutely floored me the number of students who had problems with the whole "solve for x" thing.

[aoanla.livejournal.com]

This appears to be, partly, an example of an inherited trait as much as it is a training issue, though.
I've encountered perfectly intelligent people who have issues with, basically, the kind of abstract thought you need to do mathematics beyond simply counting.
Although, that said, the fact that my work peers, and social peers, tend to have degrees (or two, or three!) in mathematically-involved disciplines does mean that I do, despite myself, react with "oh, you're not smart" when faced with people who can't do basic algebra...

(Oh, and, to a mathematician, what you can do isn't "Algebra", it's "Elementary Algebra" - which says something about Mathematicians, I suspect. Algebra is, to a mathematician, a more general study of systems with generalised interrelations, derived from (in some sense) the specific case of the (field) of real numbers under addition and multiplication. Not a criticism, just a further datum concerning the difference between the meanings of things across educational boundaries (and up the educational gradient in any particular direction).)

[redrab.livejournal.com]

So now even play money is going the way of real money. Next thing you know Life will have a subprime mortgage crisis and the cost of plastic houses will drop so drastically that renting will be the only option for the little pink and blue people. I stopped playing Monopoly when I didn't have the heart to bankrupt my 5-year-old. It must be pretty depressing to play those games now.

[elusive-goalie.livejournal.com]

What an entertaining post! :D

I dunno what's worse...dealing with hills while driving out there, or dealing with moron pedestrians in Michigan. I swear, red lights mean nothing to them. Same way here in Chicago, too.

Oh and yeah, tall people are very helpful in libraries! :)

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

Tall people are also helpful in changing lightbulbs ;)