Was anyone else slightly disappointed that this new product doesn't respond in Haiku, as the name would imply?
35 karma · joined November 9, 2015
What he was actually doing was trying to guess what upper management wanted before they requested it. This way, when the request did come through, he'd have the solution on the spot. It made him look great. It wasted about half our team's time. One thing it did do for us is give us more experience in solving new problems, but at the expense of getting our day-to-day work done on time.
But I did get to the point of not being so eager to jump on his "call to action" meetings unless I had outside verification that it was an actual call to action by management.
He ended up being the head guy in charge of IT.
I got my undergrad in math and physics. I was good at math. It wasn't until I had been teaching high school for 3-4 years when some gave me a copy of Shortcut Math by Gerard Kelly. After reading it and practicing the techniques, arithmetic made so much sense. I was able to easily add, subtract, and multiply larger numbers in my head.
Interestingly enough, many of the techniques taught in this book are also part of the common core math curriculum. It's a way to help students gain number sense.
The ones that tend to go wrong are those parents whose primary motivation is to keep their children from learning things, usually on religious grounds. I'm not saying that parents who provide a religious education do a bad job, but if the goal is to avoid having kids learn certain basic level facts (like reproduction), they will have gaps. I've also seen where parents expect to throw their kid in front of a computer to do all their learning, which also goes bad. In these first few cases, I've seen situations that come close to neglect. A third path that can go either way are the single-issue families. This would be parents who want their child to focus on one specific talent in order to nurture it, like singing, dance, or a sport. In these cases, so long as there is other topics covered, the kids can turn out ok as well as be at the top of their field. There's also cases in this area that can look like abuse when the parent is a little too vested in their child's success.
The home-schooling stories that are super successful are usually where one parent (or ideally, both take turns) at turning every day activities into learning opportunities. One family took at least one trip per week to a museum, zoo, botanical garden, park, public government building, or conservation area. The kids had to research the location before the visit, write up a list of questions they had, had questions added by parents, find and record the answers during the visit, and write up a report afterwards. They would research an issue and write or visit government representatives to discuss the issue as a well-informed member of the public. In those families, it seemed the entire family was about daily and life-long learning. The parents also had the kids involved in a lot of outside activities like local plays, orchestras, sports. Just as busy as the public school kids, just a more holistic approach to learning.
The kid was a grade or two below me, so I wasn't really friends with him. 40 years after the fact, that event still sticks with me.
On the other hand, it might be worth considering a trade for labor for whatever it is they sell. When I go this route, I usually end up getting way more in trade than I would have in cash. But again, this is only if they're selling something that you may want.