So I had a job interview today for my brand new profession of nursing. I got the job. It was some nice interviews. Not like in enginnering; just as the work has been enjoyable while the work in engineering sucked. It comes down to the people and engineers are kind of... eh people. Cold, I suppose would be a nice way to put it. Or then maybe primarily just male. Women can be nicer I guess, at least to men so my younger sister who's also a nurse says. Unless they're women in science/engineering, in which case they sometimes tend to overcompensate and try to be even bigger dicks then the men.

I've had some awful job interviews in the past.

The HR lady who first interviewed me today, my god how can anyone stand to do that for a living. LOL, what an awful job. Pretty much everyone you have to deal with is nervous. I assume they interview a few people everyday as the hospital is very big. My empathy couldn't handle all those poor nervous people. I would morally object to it. Also really couldn't stant rejecting some people who get more nervous I guess in the interview and don't do as well, although right now I suppose they take most people.

Teaching is similar in that my empathy couldn't stand it. Had a big fight with my parents who said I ought to go teach college at least instead of getting a new profession. Along with the fact that I've always hated engineering and that I couldn't ethically teach students for a profession for which there aren't hardly any jobs left; as America doesn't hardly make anything anymore, there is the problem of failing people.

The correct way for it to work is on the job training with whatever hierarchies are necessary based on how well they do the work. This idea of instead slapping people in college for years that can then end up totally wasted if they get a 74.4% in a class is stupid. It's unnecessary to take The Games of life and make them so cutthroat. We could instead just be civilized with each other. It's not necessary for people to have to always feel like they're on the chopping block.

It should in almost all situations be on the job training; starting at the lowest position and working your way up. College disgusts me. And I've spent a decade in it making good grades. The majority of degrees are ultimately just jumping through flaming hoops like a performing dog. Hardly anything is actually learned of use. With nursing even (and it's far better than most degrees) I could have learned everything I'll need to know within a few months.

College mostly just shows the ability to take crap.

The way people handle it, is they tell themselves it's the best possible system. And that they must simply adapt. Perhaps they don't have the imagination? Perhaps they're too weak to stand realizing the truth.

I know it's an awful system. I reject it.

---

While I'm at it, I wish that most restaurants had a serving line/buffet style arrangement instead of waiters/waitresses. Two days ago I went out to eat at a nicer place and my waiter was a guy I went to high school with. He's must be 38, and he's now working as a waiter. Pretty nice guy. Looks like he's about 25 still so I almost didn't recognize him. I didn't know him well. I remember a day playing basketball with him when I was 16; trying to do every dunk he could think up. He was confident enough I guess with himself that he didn't adopt the usual nauseatingly super cool attitude that is so usual amongst teens, which among other things would mean pretending it's nothing at all that this 16 year old white guy could do most of the dunks Jordan was doing at the time.

Anyway it was awkward. I could sense he felt slightly awkward meeting me as a waiter, perhaps a little embarrassed. Then he forgot our drinks and we just didn't say anything.

I don't understand why most restaurants don't just have a serving line. Do people like to be waited on? I hate it. Paradoxically I always liked/like serving/taking care of others.

-----

Polystom
At the end of this book it references a website:
http://polystom.com/
But it's just empty. It's good that it's just empty I suppose. Gives it a sense of mystery I guess and more importantly doesn't make the guy seem as fixated as he suddenly appeared to be about this idea at the end that I really didn't find all that interesting.

The strange turn it took at the end which it claimed this site talked about in more detail was, eh, not such a good turn. Didn't seem to have much relevance to what came before. It was entertaining though. But the first 75% of the book had a bit of interesting stuff, somewhat light I guess, concerning psychology/sociology. And then it suddenly takes this turn which amounted to a variant of the philsophical question of 'how do we know we really exist?' It managed to make what had come before seem irrelevant and ultimately meaningless.

Even worse, I thought he was showing good discipline with regards to this slave type society to mention it matter of factly. For the most part he wasn't preachy about how awful it was. He sort of just mentioned the situation in passing from the POV of Stom, whom just isn't really concerned about it, which was I thought a neat way to write it. (Although then there is the skinning device and how he finally becomes somewhat changed by war, etc.) But then at the end he posits that the vast majority of people are just simplistic programs who matter a lot less anyway, lol. Which, not saying this actually tells us anything about the author, but it could funnily look like the actual reason he managed to be so reserved, so dispassionate in describing the social system is that he was actually thinking of them as if they really were less than human. Which if he was planning the seemingly nonsensical final turn from the very beginning, it does take away from what I thought was some kind of good restraint on his part in how he wrote the first 75%.

But it really reads like the ending kind of was slapped on. Like he wrote the first half with no idea at all what the ending would be. From Dusk Till Dawn comes to mind. I guess it's nice to be unpredictable...

I enjoyed reading it more than the "serious" literature I've been trying to read lately.