To fish and sip wine
I
have grown to like and enjoy my current occupation as a continuing
education school instructor. I like teaching very much, since it comes
naturally to me and I seem to be somewhat good at it.
It is a pleasure to teach computer science to adults who attend the
classes voluntarily, wanting to learn and paying their own money for
the priviledge. With experience and routine, I have made my courses and
their material work so well that I can see the results improving almost
each semester, as I cut needless slack from the topics that I discuss
and keep discovering better, clearer and more general ways to present
and organize the topics of the course. Now, if they just gave me the
more advanced graduate-level courses to teach...
In fact, I can't think of another job that I could realistically be hired for that I would rather do. Oh heck, I would do this job for free even if I got the same money elsewhere. For me, there just isn't anything better, especially since this job gives me plenty of free time to write my textbooks and enjoy the very best that the libraries and the Internet have to offer. When it comes to media and information in our electronic age, there is never any real scarcity of anything, so in that field me and everyone else get to enjoy anything that the richest king could enjoy. Other material goods, especially food, are so ridiculously inexpensive today unless you go for the status items that even the average blue-collar schlub can live far better than a millionaire fifty years ago or even the richest king hundred years ago. (For example, see Ran Prieur's article "How to Drop Out" that notes that a man could eat beautifully for $200 a month, a paltry sum for most Americans compared to how much they spend on other things such as housing or transportation.)
Teaching here feels somewhat different than it was in Finland. For starters, the average class size is perhaps 20 students, whereas back home pretty much all courses in our department (with the exception of grad student seminars) were mass courses so the lecture hall had at least a hundred, usually several hundred students sitting in it. This makes a huge difference in how most things work.
And of course, Toronto is the most multicultural city in the world in the best sense of this term, whereas Finland probably still is the most whitebread country in the world. (For example, there is a semi-famous headline from a 1970's rural newspaper that said "A Negro Seen Walking In Main Street".) I therefore probably encounter more diversity during one lecture than the international student coordinator of our department did during the whole year. I vividly remember one semester here when I counted a total of five white people in a course that had over 50 students, which is a rather huge difference compared to Finland where I think I that once saw a black guy sitting somewhere in the lecture hall. I teach everybody just the same, of course, regardless of their ethnicity or sex or looks or anything else: I take computer science so very seriously, almost like a religion, that when I am in that mental mode few other things or issues are even relevant at all. Now, if I could just find somewhere the necessary impetus for starting the sixth book, now that I am only waiting for the graphical artist to prepare the fifth one for the printer...
One of the most fascinating things to me was how quickly I became totally jaded to ethnic differences after moving here. For example, when I get on the bus, the ethnicity of other people around me doesn't really even register any more in any real sense. I remember many years ago, when I didn't yet live here but was just visiting for a few weeks in the summer, I ended up in some market that was full of South Asian men (the correct term here is probably "desi"), and how it felt strange and even a bit scary. Boy, does that feel kind of stupid now. It would probably feel pretty surreal if I moved back to Finland where every single person that I ever meet is white.
When we first moved here, I also did a two-semester stint teaching high school kids in a private school. After that educational experience, I swore off teaching non-adults pretty much forever. I might reconsider if it was some special gifted class, but not otherwise. Even at their best, teenagers tend to be pretty dim, although I can recall a few delightful exceptions.
Perhaps I should seriously look for a real daytime job, but it's just that I don't see the quality of my life improving that much for having to wake up at 7AM every single day, then having to do a long commute perhaps one hour each way, and between those working under a pointy-haired boss in some office, getting two weeks off each year for good behaviour. Sure, I'd earn some more money to compensate for this loss of freedom, but not that much more. We get paid more than enough money for anything that we could possibly need, and as long as I earn more than my wife, my fragile ego and the sense of manhood are not threatened. (Of course, I greet the news of her each raise or other career advancement with a Homer Simpson -style "woo hoo!" It's not like I am purposefully stupid or anything.)
And as long as our net worth keeps growing each month something like ten times the national average, it is kind of hard for me to understand why exactly I would be doing something wrong. Could everything really be this simple, living the updated version of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle in the modern world of abundance?
In fact, I can't think of another job that I could realistically be hired for that I would rather do. Oh heck, I would do this job for free even if I got the same money elsewhere. For me, there just isn't anything better, especially since this job gives me plenty of free time to write my textbooks and enjoy the very best that the libraries and the Internet have to offer. When it comes to media and information in our electronic age, there is never any real scarcity of anything, so in that field me and everyone else get to enjoy anything that the richest king could enjoy. Other material goods, especially food, are so ridiculously inexpensive today unless you go for the status items that even the average blue-collar schlub can live far better than a millionaire fifty years ago or even the richest king hundred years ago. (For example, see Ran Prieur's article "How to Drop Out" that notes that a man could eat beautifully for $200 a month, a paltry sum for most Americans compared to how much they spend on other things such as housing or transportation.)
Teaching here feels somewhat different than it was in Finland. For starters, the average class size is perhaps 20 students, whereas back home pretty much all courses in our department (with the exception of grad student seminars) were mass courses so the lecture hall had at least a hundred, usually several hundred students sitting in it. This makes a huge difference in how most things work.
And of course, Toronto is the most multicultural city in the world in the best sense of this term, whereas Finland probably still is the most whitebread country in the world. (For example, there is a semi-famous headline from a 1970's rural newspaper that said "A Negro Seen Walking In Main Street".) I therefore probably encounter more diversity during one lecture than the international student coordinator of our department did during the whole year. I vividly remember one semester here when I counted a total of five white people in a course that had over 50 students, which is a rather huge difference compared to Finland where I think I that once saw a black guy sitting somewhere in the lecture hall. I teach everybody just the same, of course, regardless of their ethnicity or sex or looks or anything else: I take computer science so very seriously, almost like a religion, that when I am in that mental mode few other things or issues are even relevant at all. Now, if I could just find somewhere the necessary impetus for starting the sixth book, now that I am only waiting for the graphical artist to prepare the fifth one for the printer...
One of the most fascinating things to me was how quickly I became totally jaded to ethnic differences after moving here. For example, when I get on the bus, the ethnicity of other people around me doesn't really even register any more in any real sense. I remember many years ago, when I didn't yet live here but was just visiting for a few weeks in the summer, I ended up in some market that was full of South Asian men (the correct term here is probably "desi"), and how it felt strange and even a bit scary. Boy, does that feel kind of stupid now. It would probably feel pretty surreal if I moved back to Finland where every single person that I ever meet is white.
When we first moved here, I also did a two-semester stint teaching high school kids in a private school. After that educational experience, I swore off teaching non-adults pretty much forever. I might reconsider if it was some special gifted class, but not otherwise. Even at their best, teenagers tend to be pretty dim, although I can recall a few delightful exceptions.
Perhaps I should seriously look for a real daytime job, but it's just that I don't see the quality of my life improving that much for having to wake up at 7AM every single day, then having to do a long commute perhaps one hour each way, and between those working under a pointy-haired boss in some office, getting two weeks off each year for good behaviour. Sure, I'd earn some more money to compensate for this loss of freedom, but not that much more. We get paid more than enough money for anything that we could possibly need, and as long as I earn more than my wife, my fragile ego and the sense of manhood are not threatened. (Of course, I greet the news of her each raise or other career advancement with a Homer Simpson -style "woo hoo!" It's not like I am purposefully stupid or anything.)
And as long as our net worth keeps growing each month something like ten times the national average, it is kind of hard for me to understand why exactly I would be doing something wrong. Could everything really be this simple, living the updated version of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle in the modern world of abundance?
the lecture hall had at least a hundred, usually several hundred students sitting in it
Oh come on, I vividly remember taking the AI course you used to lecture, and there couldn't have been much more than twenty participants in most sessions.
Posted by Anonymous | 9:56 AM
Either you are exaggerating, or you don't know the current situation in Finland. At least the bigger towns, and especially the neighborhood where you used to work, have become increasingly multicultural. Here you will see asian/black/hispanic people, and not only one or two but more like a dozen or so, practically everytime you take a bus or go to a supermarket during daytime/early evening.
Posted by Anonymous | 10:26 AM
Anonymous 1: I vividly remember taking the AI course you used to lecture, and there couldn't have been much more than twenty participants in most sessions.
Right, I forgot that particular course.
Anonymous 2: At least the bigger towns, and especially the neighborhood where you used to work, have become increasingly multicultural.
Probably so, since things may have changed a little in the last five years that I have been away.
Posted by Ilkka | 11:01 AM
You don't have kids or cars and that's the main reason, why you're doing better financially than average people. It's a fine achievement, but nothing spectacular.
Posted by Anonymous | 2:31 PM