Two come back

Our tutor and our astronomer meet with former students.

Some time ago we urged all students to visit, or somehow communicate with, former teachers.  Teachers, we think, are uniquely disadvantaged in that they put enormous time and effort into students and almost never see the long-term results.  Probably not in response to that appeal, but welcome anyway, in the past week we’ve seen two former students return to tell about what they’re doing.

Student B is now in his second year at college.  He is very capable in the technology of this digital world, and our tutor’s main task in former days was to encourage more organization and care in his schoolwork.  He has come back before for advice and instruction on bits of math and science, showing a confidence in our tutor’s abilities that we appreciate.  He was writing code for a research group as a freshman and is now in a co-op program, working for a commercial company.  He has discovered that most of the workaday world is routine and requires no serious thought.  This does not attract him.

Student A is older, having worked with our astronomer in an undergraduate student program at an observatory in Chile some years ago.  It was his first international experience, and he seems to have taken to the idea with enthusiasm.  Since graduation he has lived and worked in China, South Korea, Hungary and elsewhere; temporarily in DC, he is headed to Vienna in the spring.  In contrast with Student B, he appears to be content with performing routine digital work, as long as it supports his travels.  (Not all he’s done is routine.)

We’re not about to draw firm conclusions about the world from two students, but based on our conversations we have a few ideas.  Being able to handle programming at some level beyond, say, writing a weekly blog is almost required for much employment nowadays.  Certainly being able to fix an air-conditioning unit can be at least as valuable in principle, but it probably won’t get you to Korea or Hungary (supposing you want to go).  And, yes, most work is routine.  Deep insight and original thinking aren’t required, most of the time, to make a living; which is a good thing.  Most people aren’t made to deliver daily feats of genius.  We hope Student B lands in a research group that will demand such things of him.

Mostly, we’re glad that neither asked us for career advice.  While both are very bright and capable of hard work, we’re not convinced that such abilities guarantee success.  A great deal appears to depend on luck.  So we wish both of these former students large supplies of it.