Hristo's FI Journal

[Cheepnis]

In my field I'd certainly like to see a return to apprentice-style legal educations

There's so much that makes sense about the apprenticeship framework, especially when most jobs require job, company, or even task specific skills. When my GF went back to school to get her teaching license she spent 18 months going to school and only student taught part time for the last 6. She took an entire class on how to engage special needs kids while in the meantime receiving almost no actual practical teaching experience. And she had to pay for it! We wonder why our schools suck?

I also think an apprenticeship style education would work in a broad range of jobs. The benefits are so numerous: increased help with menial bits (allowing the more experienced more time to perform their tasks well), increased experience, which leads to increased competence, and of course payment for learning the trade provides pretty good incentive to keep it up. We'd have teachers in early career stages who have practical teaching experience, more adults in the room to manage ever growing class sizes, and people to help with all the chores of the classroom. An early apprentice would start with the grunt work like grading, and eventually work their way up through giving small group/one-on-one help/tutoring, to curriculum and syllabus writing, to actually teaching. They should be paid the whole time, with a sliding pay scale that adjusts up as they gain more experience and new skills as measured by hours worked/their supplementary classroom education. It's not a bulletproof strategy, but it's a lot better than pushing someon out the door with a slip of paper and calling them a ______.

As a bit of an aside (less about apprenticeships, more about the education system), here's a hunch I've got: I think all the discussion of testing, curriculum, IEP's (individual education plans), restorative justice, homework +'s/-'s, etc... that is ostensibly aimed at improving our schools misses the forest for the trees. Non of that is going to matter when standard class sizes are pushing 40 kids. Let's double the number of schools, double the number of teachers, cut class sizes in half or better, and lots of problems would work themselves out. An apprenticeship model could fit into that plan very nicely.

[jacob]

PhD-school is essentially an apprenticeship program, so in my experience, the apprentice approach has many things going for it, but its success depends very much on the master--apprentice fit. Consider that a widespread model would need to include masters who learned their approach to teaching through their own experience.

This will ultimately converge towards the same structure that parenting has today with parents teaching/raising their kids in accordance with how they themselves were taught/raised for good or bad. And don't forget the importance of fit here too. Some situations can get downright abusive. Other situations are wonderful. Who will do the matching?

Whereas the current "factory-model" of education allows for some standardization and efficiency in having one teacher for each 20+ students.

In short, you'll get something very similar to the current movement towards home-schooling. Instead of a Gaussian distribution of outcomes, this kind of "individualized" schooling will result in outcomes where some are spectacularly good and some that are spectacularly bad. Reputation thus becomes important---much more important than it is today. This is already partially how it is today for phd graduates. You don't ask which school they come from because that is irrelevant. You want to know who their supervisor was.

In particular, the apprentice model already exists to some extent once people start their first job. Here they're shown the exact ropes for what they need to know. They're subsequently awarded "degrees" like "junior", "senior", and "staff". Same thing. You already have what you're asking for. Including good as well as terrible bosses. Changing into the apprentice model just means getting a boss at a somewhat younger age.

[Hristo Botev]

She took an entire class on how to engage special needs kids while in the meantime receiving almost no actual practical teaching experience. And she had to pay for it! We wonder why our schools suck?

Funny you mention that. I spent a year as an education major in college (started with history, then to education, then back to history). For that year I spent a massive amount of time taking this huge class (can't remember how many credit hours, but it was a lot) that was all about the paperwork involved with taking a special needs kid out of a mainstream classroom. And as I recall, there were a lot of really ridiculous posterboard-type projects of the sort my elementary school kids do now. During that year I think I saw the inside of an actual public school classroom about 5 times, for roughly a half an hour or so each time. I said screw it, and I went back to history, knowing that I could join the Peace Corps or Teach for America after college where I knew I'd get thrown into a classroom, with support from my colleagues, where I could figure out for sure if this is something I wanted to do with my life. The 2 years of Peace Corps teaching experience taught me that I enjoy teaching in the Balkans, but my 1 year as an education major in college taught me that I don't want to touch the bureaucracy involved with (or that I was led to think is involved with) teaching in a public school in the US.

Also, I was a really, really lazy college student; and my 1 year as an education major was the only time I got (or came anywhere close to getting) a 4.0.

I have continued to scratch my itch for teaching since, but it's been in the form of things like teaching ESL for private (visa-factory) learning centers, teaching Sunday School, and volunteering with reading programs, etc.

[Hristo Botev]

I guess I'm really not interested in the macro level of this at all. I think our constant focus on the macro is a problem; that's not how our country is designed to operate. The LAST think I want is to have some sort of education/apprenticeship tsar at the federal level (or even the state level) in charge of tracking kids, whether by testing or otherwise. I like (LOVE) the hodgepodge seemingly inefficient--as compared to some sort of authoritarian 5-year plan type model--way we do primary and secondary education in this country. If you want your kid to go to public school, great; I'll even help pay for it. If you want your kid to go to parochial/religious school, great; fancy college-prep private or boarding school? also fine. Do you want to home school your kid and you have the time to do it? Even better, and perhaps ideal. The only change I'd make at the primary/secondary level is to decouple school placement from zip codes; and allow for property tax revenue to follow the kid to wherever they choose to go to school.

But as for the apprentice model already existing to some extent in the job market; no kidding. I was "apprenticed" to a federal judge, and then to a handful of partner-mentors at my first firm (this was a natural selection; firm leadership/admin's attempt to artificially pair people up with "coaches" is a waste of time). The problem is that this apprenticeship process should start much, much earlier. At ~18 as opposed to the mid 20s or so. It just seems like universities have lost track of their purpose; they aren't forming young minds (how could they!), they are focused on self-preservation.

For my own version of helicopter parenting, I'm surrounding my kids with adults from as many different backgrounds and career paths as possible, so that they don't grow up thinking that the only or primary path to success is by winning at the meritocracy game and getting a mid-level management job at a soul-sucking corporation that takes all of your time and energy save what you have left over to be able to manage your hour long commute. But hey, you get a decent salary and benefits, and a fancy business card and LinkedIn profile.

Make yourself useful and don't be a drain on society; everything else is noise.

[jacob]

@HR - I'd have to disagree a bit wrt acting for yourself (or children) on the micro-level. Education is something one does for oneself. Learning things and improving as a human being. Degrees, on the other hand, is something one does for others or does because others demand it. The former is personal (at the first order), but the latter is social (at the first order). Robinson Crusoe benefits from education but does not benefit from degrees.

I learned this during my stint in high finance. My finance sector backstory is that I tried hard breaking into high finance in 2008ish w/o success. It was only after I made it in via personal reference in 2012 that I saw why I had previously failed. High finance is very much an "elite club" (in the ladder system linked above, it's E4 (junior up or out) and E3 (senior partner)). In the job ads, they ask for "good schools" ... but what this really means is "the right schools". As I was told: "Education just has to be good enough". Later on when I got involved in the later-stage interviews for new recruits, it became clear that the standard path was via these institutions was showing up at recruitment fairs at select schools (Harvard, Stanford, MIT, ... ) to get interns ... and then the interns were hired almost exclusively. This meant someone with a "good education" from "State University" was SOL because these students never got to intern.

Having received a "good education" from the "social democratic" equivalent of a "state university" myself, we used to believe that all the students from "US brand name good school" were minor gods. Subsequently, after meeting and working with such it became clear that their education was merely robust in the sense that you could count on anyone from MIT or Harvard to have solid skills. But godlike intellect they didn't have. Indeed, they were about comparable in intellectual strength to graduates from the institution I came from. The only difference was the "brand name", the "recruitment channel", and the alumni network.

I suspect I'm arguing for the position of "optionality". W/o the degree from a "good name school" there are simply some paths in the US system that are shut out. Being great is not good enough. It's not about merit as much as it is about connections. Like Jason said (and I think I implied it too earlier). It's not about getting a lecture from a Nobel Prize winner at Harvard; it's about the network created while hanging out with other people who go to Harvard for 4 years.

I note that of the people I still keep in touch with (as someone who has moved around multiple times for many thousands of miles) are the people where statistically "overlapping interest/intellect/focus/goals" x "quantity of people given overlapping .../.../..." was maximized. This happened during the latter half of "college". After that point, while overlaps where stronger, there were far fewer people. Before that point (primary and secondary education), there were far more people but much less overlap. This means that the people one associated with at the bachelor/masters stage are the most likely to be brought into one's later work because they are known quantities at all levels (skills, social, personal).

Insofar, there's no interest in joining these "class members only" careers, one can forego the brand name degrees.

Overall, I wouldn't know what to do. The precise answer likely depends strongly on the person.

[Hristo Botev]

Insofar, there's no interest in joining these "class members only" careers, one can forego the brand name degrees.

Yes, this. When I'm referencing "meritocracy," this is what I'm talking about. BigLaw is like High Finance in the way you described it; you check all the boxes to get in to the fancy undergrad, where you check all the boxes to get in to the fancy law school, where you check all the boxes to make sure you meet the basic hiring criteria for the fancy firms (in my day, it was graduating in the top 10-15% of your class, and being on a law journal). But ultimately, you're dependent on having someone on the inside moving your resume to the top of the pile, because even at that level, qualified applicants/aspirants are a dime a dozen.

It's my "lived experience" (see, some of this new-fangled wokeness jargon is working its way into my vocabulary) in that world that makes me NOT want that for my kids; OR, perhaps more honestly, I'm not going to push my kids into needing to check all those boxes, overscheduling them and stressing them out so they're sure to hate me and themselves all eternity. To be fair, my parents certainly didn't push me in that direction, and I still ended up checking all the boxes I needed to check (it just took me a lot longer to get there). But when I look around at the folks that didn't go the meritocracy route, or who did and then changed course relatively early on, those are the folks who seem to me to be the most content and stable (both mentally and from a livelihood standpoint). Those are the folks who have developed skills and interests and strong and stable communities and family relationships that will allow them to persevere, no matter what. My friends and former colleagues who "won" at the meritocracy game just seem much less stable and content--lots of divorces and health issues, lots of problems with kids that have become normalized among their peers, and frankly, a lot more financial instability despite rocket high incomes (e.g., if you think you need to spend thousands of dollars on an international vacation, etc. in order to "spend time" with the same people you share a house with, then you got problems).

I'm not sure what we're disagreeing about as it concerns micro vs. macro levels. When I say I'm not particularly interested in the macro, I mean I'm not particularly interested in anyone "solving" education at a nationwide or even statewide level. That's the small-government conservative in me. I'm interested in educating my own kids and helping with the educations to the extent I can with kids in my extended family, in my church community, and in my local community. That's what I mean by micro; I mean personal/local. When people start talking about "macro" solutions to things like education, that's when I bust out the Orwell and Huxley quotes.

[Hristo Botev]

I am so much more a man because I am married to a woman who expects me to be.

“A man without a woman is only half a man.” - An Indian proverb, apparently.

[Hristo Botev]

2 weeks into the change to a semi-ere mindset at work, and it’s been fantastic. It’s re-energized me, and I’ve been much more proactive with my cases to the point that I’m actually really looking forward to going into work again; and I’ve been more productive than I’ve ever been. From a firm economics standpoint, I’ve been front loading my weeks with 8-11 billable hours a day, which has left me with my Fridays to bleed into a 3-day weekend, where I can focus on non-work projects. And at this pace I will have met my minimum billables by late October or early November, even with giving myself one weekday each week for non work stuff. The change in mindset has made me much more deliberate as to how I spend my time, both at work and at home. To that end, we let the YouTube TV subscription expire, and so now there is nothing at all to watch on TV except for the 4 channels we get via antenna. It’s wonderful (the kids hate it). We now have NO streaming subscriptions (TV, music, etc.) AT ALL.

Yesterday I spent 5 hours with my Knights of Columbus buddies building a nature trail at a safe house for women rescued from sex trafficking. We cleared 300 yards of trail (we had the world’s most competent bobcat operator helping us) and spread 2 tons of mulch. It was a very rewarding morning/afternoon, and I think the last time I was this physically drained I was intubated in the ICU with pneumonia (or COVID?). I personally shoveled, delivered, and spread more than 50 wheelbarrow loads of mulch, down and up a pretty steep hill. Great way to spend a Saturday: good friends and fellowship, manual labor, manly tools, DOING STUFF, and helping folks.

Then I met up with the family for the return (finally) of what our family calls “soccer Saturdays,” with both kids playing their first inter league soccer matches since March, when COVID shut everything down. The kids played great and they were over the moon to be back on the field playing competitively. (It helped that they both won their games convincingly; and DD drilled a rocket shot goal from 25-yards out that the goalie had no chance of saving.) DW then dragged us all to a restaurant with outdoor seating for dinner with some friends who had come to watch the kids’ soccer games (people are that desperate for live sports apparently; they’ll watch 8 and 10 year old soccer matches). We’ve avoided restaurants and even take out for several months, which has been wonderful, as COVID has made me realize how much I really prefer to eat at home. So I wasn’t thrilled to go to a restaurant for dinner, but I soldiered through despite having nothing left in the tank. All I could think of was what a total waste of money the experience was ($60 total), and the fact that as good as my burger was, I can make a much better one at home on my grill. I would have much preferred to host our friends for dinner at our house, but that would have involved some pre-planning.

I was in bed by 8:30 and slept like a baby.

For today: Mass, laundry, house cleaning, cleaning the garage, and I’m bottling the Scotch Ale home brew (which I think might be a bust, unfortunately). Also, DS’s flag football league starts today. I’d also like to start painting the kitchen, and I want to re-refinish the coffee table I did last weekend, because I’ve realized I put 2 coats too many on; and I want to get it right.

ETA: I fried my first couple of eggs on the new cast iron skillet yesterday morning, and they flipped effortlessly and perfectly. I highly recommend the electric sander approach to re-seasoning your new Lodge cast iron.

[Hristo Botev]

plus you are a fellow RPCV. Three things that make me want to read your journal.

Where’d you serve, if I might ask?

[Hristo Botev]

@ffj: Wonderful to see another RPCV on here; though certainly not surprising--seems like you have to think at least a little differently from the mainstream to make that decision.

I'm about 3 pages into your journal at this point, and from what I can tell you're roughly 10 years ahead of me doing pretty much what I'm hoping to be doing 10 years from now, and you retired right around the time I hope/expect to do likewise. So, I'm very much looking forward to catching up on what you've been up to for the past 5 years.

Also, you've figured out how to post photos on this forum, which I've yet to do; I've always preferred picture books.

[Hristo Botev]

Got to spend some time yesterday with a firefighter buddy, as our kids started their flag football season. He's a paramedic and as I'm trying to think of skills to dedicate time to with my new semi-ERE mindset, something that for sure is on the list is learning some advanced first aid and perhaps medic skills. He explained the process a bit about getting certifications, and having to do clinicals to get medic certification, which is pretty much just first aid certified except that you can push IV meds and also something about the heart? Anyway, it's something to look into. He's the guy that we all look to when someone gets hurt (e.g., baby gets dropped, a kid gets attacked by bees, etc.--we fancy ourselves a pretty rough-and-tumble group for city slickers)--he has the knowledge and the temperament to triage a situation and make everyone feel at ease. That's a good skillset to have around. He asked: "but why would you want to take the time to learn to be a medic?" My answer: "well, when/if the government collapses and anarchy reigns free, I'm trying to build up a skillset that will ensure my family's survival--and the mob will probably value the guy that brews the beer, and the guy that can set a broken arm." (he was quick to point out to me that medics DON'T set broken bones; though he admitted that he could if he needed to.)

As for brewing beer, I bottled my Scotch Ale yesterday, and the final gravity reading was actually where it is supposed to be, and it looked/smelled/tasted pretty good (I've not developed the taste/nose to judge whether a beer is good before it's been bottle conditioned--just tastes like old, flat beer to me), so that eased my concerns a bit that I'd screwed this batch up. Still have to wait a couple more weeks for bottle conditioning to see if it ends up being a bust. I've got another batch (a red ale) that will be ready for bottling next weekend. But for right now, we're without any homebrew in the fridge, as word spread among my various communities about my first batch (a west coast IPA), and everyone wanted to try it out; which I'm of course happy to oblige in the interests of building up my social capital.

I definitely want to do another IPA soon; seems like the bitterness of the hops can probably cover up a lot of mistakes in the brewing process.

Speaking of social capital (and alcohol), I was greeted to a nice bottle of wine on my desk at work this morning; seems like my re-energization at work the past couple of weeks hasn't gone unnoticed by my law partners. It's a nice gesture; though of course at 42 years old I'm past the point of being incentivized by tax-write-off "carrots" like bottles of wine; just pay me. Also, the benefit of having FU money is I'm also mostly past the point of "sticks" as well.

[Hristo Botev]

Also, as someone who can be a bit obsessed with the 3-5 minute YouTube infovideo medium, was thinking on the walk into work it'd be great if an ERE-minded person put together little ERE-type life hacks in short infovideo forms (not for the ERE community, but for people who've yet to take the red pill and who think "saving the planet" is paying for a company to come pick up your small compost bin and then posting your yard sign on Facebook). E.g., a well-produced video showing how to take a camper shower, while also shaving, using concentrated soap and a safety razor, and then adding up the annual costs of that process (water, soap, razors) and comparing it to the average. Could do the same thing for walking/biking to work vs. commuting (no doubt this has been done already). Could do it for ERE-style homecooking vs. non ERE-style cooking and also eating out. Homebrewing vs. buying craft beer. Line drying clothes vs. using the dryer. If you hit people with the linked "web-of-goals" concept of significant money savings AND conservation/sustainability, seems like that kind of thing could go viral.

[Hristo Botev]

Last thought from the weekend, and then I'll turn to work: in our efforts to replace all of our eating-out food cravings with stuff we can make equally as good (or even better) at home, DW tried her hand with making bread for subrolls yesterday. We got a new oven last week, which preheats in ~5 minutes as opposed to ~an hour with our old one, and it's also a convection oven, which DW fell in love with a couple houses ago. Anyway, DW has been a baking machine the past few days now that she's got an oven that really works (not helping my waistline, but who cares). And her subrolls were FANTASTIC! She found a recipe that just replicates what you'd get at Subway, and they were perfect. Everyone in the family did a half-sub of Italian, and a half-sub of meatballs. Delicious! I'm a sub/sandwich guy, so being able to replicate restaurant sandwiches/subs at home will go a long way to keep me from eating out. The kids already christened Sundays as forever being "Sunday Sub" night!

[McTrex]

Of course you’ll share the link to that recipe?

[Hristo Botev]

Of course you’ll share the link to that recipe?

Good call. https://www.blessthismessplease.com/hom ... ad-recipe/

[jacob]

It's interesting and also cool how the pandemic shifted so many cooking and eating habits for the [much] better. Some shifts have been ratchet-like. Once you know the difference, it's hard to go back. In our case it's been making tortilla shells and hotdog buns instead of buying them. I don't see us going back to store bought any time soon or ever. Cardboard. Talk about WLs. Probably 3+ level shift at least. Thoroughly spoiled now.

[Hristo Botev]

It's interesting and also cool how the pandemic shifted so many cooking and eating habits for the [much] better. Some shifts have been ratchet-like. Once you know the difference, it's hard to go back. In our case it's been making tortilla shells and hotdog buns instead of buying them. I don't see us going back to store bought any time soon or ever. Cardboard. Talk about WLs. Probably 3+ level shift at least. Thoroughly spoiled now.

Speaking of pandemic shifted cooking habits and WLs (well, not really), I FINALLY figured out how to post photos on this forum; inspired by making it 20 pages through ffj's journal. So, to jacob's point, can't think of a better first photo to post than frying bacon in a brand new and freshly re-seasoned cast iron skillet.

[Hristo Botev]

In our case it's been making tortilla shells and hotdog buns instead of buying them. I don't see us going back to store bought any time soon or ever. Cardboard.

I'll add, I represent a couple large commercial bakeries, and they are good folks that really do care about making quality products for affordable prices. BUT, you need preservatives to make something shelf stable and commercially viable when you are going to ship it all over the country (or even just your region) and it's going to sit on a Wal-Mart or Kroger or whatever store shelf for, at a minimum, a few days. It's hilarious when I hear people complain about the fact that the bread they bought from Wal-Mart has preservatives in it; what the hell do you expect!?! If you don't like it, then PLEASE, you've got 2 really fantastic and far superior options: (1) make it yourself at home; or (2) buy from your local bakery. Either option is going to taste much better; and it's more sustainable.

[jacob]

Yeah, during the past couple of generations people^H^H^H^H^Hconsumers became used to either one of two options. Get someone else to make it at a restaurant at heavy mark up prices XOR buy the preprocessed variety at the big box store. It's either quick, good, and expensive or quick, bad, and cheap. Most have largely forgotten the skills to make it slow, good, and cheap. Last week our neighbors had a backyard BBQ party and seeing them out there while drowning in cucumbers and tomatoes from our garden, we offered them some produce. In return, we got a taste of what they were making. Wow! We had to go back and ask for the recipe. Hopefully we got something started here ...

It's just that the current generations have largely forgotten because the idea during the past 20ish years has been that we all go get degreed and get fancy paying office jobs to pay so we never have to know. Worst mistake of the late 20th century.

[Hristo Botev]

It's been interesting to watch, for sure. I don't want to do the generation blame game thing (especially since my own Gen X seems to be doing a fantastic job of living up to its slacker stereotype), BUT, it's amazing to me that my grandmother and her many sisters survived the Great Depression through sheer craftiness, frugality, and badassity, with a skillset and community mindset that would have made them ERE all stars. And yet, NONE of that seemed to have been passed on to my own mother (God rest her soul; she's a saint, naturally) and her first cousins, whose idea of home cooking was a frozen lasagna from Sam's Club thrown in the oven (delicious) or fish sticks, etc. I was always blown away when we'd go to family reunions and the cooking would be out-of-this-world amazing (compared to what I was used to at home), because it was my grandmother and her sisters and cousins who were doing the cooking. Then, as that generation started dying off and handing over the reigns to the next generation, the cooking at family reunions consisted of casseroles made with processed food ingredients and a lot of already prepared stuff from Costco or whatever.

It's the same with DW's mom; we (and our kids) have to detox a bit after DW's parents have been in town, because her mom insists on bringing us all of this "homemade" food for us to eat; and it's all casseroles of the type that my mom's cousins make at family reunions--processed cheese, some form of boxed pasta, something from a Campbell's soup can, maybe some frozen peas and carrots, and some chicken or sausage. And then we have a "salad," which means a bag of shredded lettuce from the store, which has the primary purpose of being a receptacle for store-bought salad dressing.Anyway, I shouldn't bash on my MIL or my saintly mother, because with DW's mom it really comes from a really generous and loving place--she's trying to take the load off of us a bit by doing the cooking when she is in town. But she doesn't realize that DW and I both LOVE cooking--it's really important and high quality family time for us--and, not to be too dramatic, but MIL's cooking makes us feel like shit.

But it really is amazing to me how much confidence the "Greatest Generation" must have had to have come out of the Great Depression and WWII, into the "American Century," thinking that our future prosperity was so assured that it'd be a complete waste of time to pass on their vast survivalist knowledge and skillset to their sons and daughters.