On Jobs: A Perpective

I have learned a lot about what I usually like to do when I'm working. This reminds me of a visit to a Professor's office a while ago - I think I was on my 5th semester at college. She was the eldest teacher in the Modern Languages Department and had taught every single subject more than once over more than 42 years of service. In that moment, another Professor was in her office and the former gave me this remark: "You're always doing things as you see fit. And usually you skip instructions."

I was not going to argue about it. I remember her class was about talking. So you often had to prepare presentations of topics that were either free or selected by the teacher. She used to give outlines to perform these presentations. That had the purpose of helping people with organizational problems get a grasp on how to research the topic and present it in a sequence.

The other Professor agreed on the remark. She had also been my teacher some semesters prior to this. But then my dear old lady added "but your work is also so good that those instructions you skip are not actually that important." This was the opinion of both of them.

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When I look back at my time at college and think about those jobs were I have had problems, I see only one thing: lack of flexibility. I like to come up with ways of making my job easier without hampering its quality. My reasons for this are twofold: I like having free time to think and do other stuff and I like to have autonomy over my work.

Nowadays, I'm working on my posts here and also the DIY projects, poems, creative writing. I have put music on a hold, but it will come back in the future while I adjust some things in my daily routine. But I haven' been doing just this. When I came back from my last teaching job, I got a call from a colleague and friend so is my senior (she graduated in 2015, 3 years before me). She was having troubles with her workload during the quarantine. Basically, I ended up working for her as a assistant. I help checking grammar and spelling activities, so she can have time to plan and do other things.

But there's more than just helping to get the grades on time. When I see something troublesome in the way she's doing a specific task, I give her my opinion and possible solutions for the problems. So far all my suggestions have been put to work with great results in the workflow.

The most important part is that it helps us both get the work done quickly and have spare time to use at will. Talk about the complaints I would get about things not being done in one way and having no choice but to stick to the way.

The way is what you make on your own. If you want to predetermine things, you hamper your own ability to react to problems and solve them. I'm not implying instruction aren't important. If you don't know how to do something, you need to be careful with the steps to take. However, when you get past the point of following the same pattern, it's advisable to stray from the path into something that could prove to be better. Maybe it could be worse, but you'll never know if you don't try.