Wordpress post on Blogspot!

The wordpress “post-a-day” prompt a while ago was “Name one thing you wish you could go back and change about your education.” My wordpress blog is dedicated to my reading life, so I’m blathering about it here.

From a quality perspective, I have no dissatisfaction with my education. I went to excellent schools for high school, undergraduate, and postgraduate studies. What I would change, if I had the chance, would be some of my choices. There’s more than one thing that plays into it. Some of it is the difficulty that English non-education majors have in finding appropriate paid work. (I currently work as a barista.) Some of it is the fascination of the paths not taken.

The main thing I would change would be studying more math and statistics. I am not uneducated in math – I took AP Calculus in high school and a refresher calculus course at Luther that ended up being far too easy to keep me motivated. I wish that I had bothered to continue on with it. I wish I had studied more statistics so that I could have moved more easily from literature to linguistics – a field that is coming to fascinate me more and more.

The other thing that I would change about my educational experience, if I could, would be to pay more (read: any) attention to career possibilities. It’s all well and good to say “You have a liberal arts education; you can do anything” but in a world where specialisation has become the norm, a liberal arts degree – the idea of a Renaissance man (person) – has become archaic and dismissed. I support liberal arts degrees. I think it’s important that people have experience, education, and interests in a wide variety of things, and that liberal arts educations are more likely to provide analytical and communication skills that are necessary in every field. But as I have learned to my cost over the last decade, employers want the relevant piece of paper. If I had documented proof of my math/stats/linguistics/scientific interests, I would find it a bit easier to find gainful employment. If I had work experience in a field, I would be more able to find a career in that field.

There’s also the problem of paralysis of choice. Sure, I *can* do anything with a liberal arts education; by extension, though, I can also do nothing. It might have been easier to start with a specific career that I could then change from, rather than drifting from job to job, trying to find something I enjoy, answering “anything but this” to the question of what I want to do with my life. I am an educated, literate and numerate individual. Unfortunately, some hiring managers look at the English degree and assume that the last part of that description isn’t valid. And my last few jobs in retail haven’t done much to change that perspective on paper.

Of course, just having more of an emphasis on math and stats may not have made much of a difference to my life and career, but I can’t help thinking – looking at all the job descriptions requiring someone with a numerate degree – that it would have helped a little.

Requests for customers, from your friendly neighborhood barista

Requests for customers, from your friendly chain store barista

1. Two things we need to know when you’re ordering: the size of your drink, and whether you’re staying in or taking away. Everything else is stuff you want us to know.

2. Try to at least glance at the pricing board. This has all sorts of useful information on it, like how many sizes we offer, what they’re called, and the price. This way you won’t be surprised by how much your total is.

3. “Normal,” “ordinary,” and “regular” don’t tell us anything about either the size or the type of drink you want. What is normal to you may be unthinkable to someone else. Ordering “coffee” has the same effect.*

4. When there are three options for sizes, you can’t go wrong calling them “small,” “medium,” and “large.”

5. Please don’t come to the till before the cashier at least makes eye contact. We may have things to do to finish off the previous order, other non-till-related responsibilities, or be at the end of our shift. It will save frustration for everyone if you wait.

6. If you have asked for drinks in takeaway cups, please take them away. The same goes for food or drink from somewhere else: if you finish it in our store, please dispose of it yourself.

*True story: A customer once asked for “black Americano, and a coffee with soya” – and then got upset with me when I made her an Americano with soya milk, because she had wanted a soya latte.