@ossobuco,
Yeah, this should do it, actually, (or they might be just the right people to turn to with this one):
me wrote:So to fill some of the income leaks, I'm teaching some technical students. And teaching the ones who are further along and know a bit about medicine and clinical technology is easy money, low-hanging fruit. They're interested, they want to learn stuff, I know stuff -- except for the bureaucratic hassles, it'd be like stealing money. They sit out at the lunch area and quiz each other, and will grab anybody who teaches them to ask them a question. They've got motivation, and I don't have to do much more than show up.
But the younger ones -- the ones who haven't failed out yet...
Well, I drew a clinical math class. The students can test out of it pretty easily, so the ones who are stuck taking it are either wasting loan money (one, maybe two of them) or really can't do math for ****.
Anyway, there's a whole bureaucratic hassle because two of them claim learning disability and need special considerations to take tests, but it also has to be completely confidential and anonymous. Federal law, apparently.
So, I've talked to them both, and seen how they do math, and they just have no business training to be veterinary technicians. They will never be able to become competent at it, and aren't likely to be able to pass the board exam.
It's simple, really. The exam and the profession require that you be able to read technical writing and respond appropriately and make somewhat tricky calculations that, if wrong, may constitute malpractice (will all that entails for the patient as well as the client).
So, if you need a quiet place to take an exam, and extra time to do it, and maybe somebody to read the questions to you, maybe you shouldn't be making life or death calculations half in your head based on poorly translated writing in 5-point font under harsh light surrounded by activity and noise (including, frequently, rock-and-roll radio) and tension with a mask on and a needle in your teeth. The people who do this well -- competently, even -- are usually only special in that they don't do things like screw up math in that situation.
So, if you sit at a desk and look at a piece of paper asking you to multiple 6.1 by 1.5, and you actually do the math out by hand like you learned in grade school, but botch it, and in retrospect conclude that 90 is in fact an acceptable answer, maybe you shouldn't be spending around the price of a Mercedes C-Class trying to do that sort of thing for a living.
OK, I'm done. I'm trying to find a way to express that that the right people will understand but that won't lose me future work or hurt anybody too much.
I'm open to suggestions.
Quote:Quote:Quote:Quote:(I mean, for chrissake, most of them aren't even all emotional about animals, like you'd expect from people who start down this path in delusion... And which is itself a little unnerving...)
