Final edits to get to 40 pages

005/codex-005.tex

@@ -203,7 +203,7 @@ That business died after three or four orders, which was probably a good thing.
 
 Unfortunately, it did not live long. I had seriously underestimated how much money was required just to exist and when it came to putting gas in the tank \textit{or} paying webhosting fees, it was an easy decision. One of those things was helping me make money and the other was not. Something had to go, and so the website went. (Fortunately, it was so short-lived that \texttt{archive.org} never caught wind of it.)
 
-As it turns out, the education community is not as progressive as some people would lead you to believe. Once they find something that works, they are loathe to switch to something new. Having a website wouldn't help me find substitute gigs. Only being a good substitute teacher would help me do that. Who knew?
+As it turns out, the education community is not as progressive as they would lead you to believe. Having a website wouldn't help me find substitute gigs. Only being a good substitute teacher would help me do that. Who knew?
 
 Anyway, I kept trying. The educational-industrial complex was pushing ``Web 2.0''\footnote{which was basically social media, but also included blogs} really hard. I did make another website (\kref{https://kjodle.net/}{kjodle.net}, which survives to this day) and my webhost at the time offered a one-click install of WordPress which at that time was pretty much a blogging platform and little else. So I clicked on the ``install'' button, wondered for a moment what I had done, and suddenly, \textit{The Big Bad Book Blog} was born.\footnote{\kref{https://bookblog.kjodle.net/}{bookblog.kjodle.net}}
 
@@ -229,13 +229,13 @@ And…it got me nowhere. Summer came, and I was out of substituting work, so I s
 
 That was the plan anyway, but it wasn't exactly how things worked out. The agency sent me to interview for a position at a small local manufacturing company that needed someone to operate equipment and keep an eye on inventory during the second shift. I can operate machinery! I'm great at managing inventory! Woot!
 
-What I didn't know (and what the agency also didn't know) was that they also needed someone to completely rewrite all of their technical documentation\footnote{work instructions and processes, mainly}, and to create a training program out of whole cloth and then implement and manage that program. They also needed someone to handle their domestic and MRO\footnote{Maintenance, Repairs, Operations—that is, paint, duct tape, toilet paper.} purchasing as the part-time person they had doing this currently spent most of her time buying furniture on eBay for her rental properties.\footnote{True story!}
+What I didn't know (and what the agency also didn't know) was that this company also needed someone to completely rewrite all of their technical documentation\footnote{work instructions and processes, mainly}, and to create a training program out of whole cloth and then implement and manage that program. They also needed someone to handle their domestic and MRO\footnote{Maintenance, Repairs, Operations—that is, paint, duct tape, toilet paper.} purchasing as the part-time person they had doing this currently spent most of her time buying furniture on eBay for her rental properties.
 
 I've never had a job interview take such a dramatic turn before (which was the first of many red flags—in retrospect this place looked like a May Day parade in Leningrad) but the things they laid out—paid time off, a retirement plan, health insurance (including vision and dental)—were too much to resist. I pushed my tongue against a sore tooth and agreed to take the job. We all shook hands and I left, wondering what on earth I had gotten myself into. 
 
 Quite a bit, actually, as it turned out. I thought I might stay a year to get caught up on some things, and then try to get a teaching job again, but the educational-industrial complex is a jealous god who does not trust people who walk away, so the longer I stayed away, the less it would be possible.
 
-I ended up staying with that company for almost six years, despite the fact that I gave notice on three separate occasions. In retrospect, it was a terrible experience (and the subject of an entirely different zine) but I learned a lot. (The main thing I learned was to never work for a small company with no HR department where the boss is also the owner, and who is a rich boy who was born on third base but walks around thinking he hit a triple. But I digress.)
+I ended up staying with that company for almost six years, despite the fact that I gave notice on three separate occasions. In retrospect, it was a terrible experience (and the subject of an entirely different zine) but I learned a lot. (The main thing I learned was to never work for a small company with no HR department where the boss is also the owner.)
 
 The biggest thing I learned is to never underestimate yourself. When a former student told me that his current employer had openings and that I should apply, I did. Six weeks later, I was sitting in the training room of my current employer, which brings us to today.
 
@@ -291,13 +291,13 @@ As for the teaching thing, I'm not quite sure. I've always enjoyed learning thin
 
 Long ago, I realized that information is just data—which you can get from encyclopedias and dictionaries (and these these days the internet if you know where to look). But knowledge is information \textit{in context}, where it's part of a whole that helps you understand how the universe is put together and how it works. Most people think that teaching is just about providing information (no doubt a result of our over-reliance on worksheets and scantron sheets and Bush II's policy of ``no child left untested''). And that is unfortunately what a lot of teachers do—they force feed kids information, which most kids retain just long enough to regurgitate on a test and then promptly forget.\footnote{Although some of it sticks with us—Mr. Rex insisted that we would need to know the definition the ``mercantilism'' to succeed in college comes to mind. Oddly, the last placed I was asked for that definition was on his final exam. (I've written about this in a different zine. See \textit{just13} \#2 at \kref{https://just13.click/just13/002.php}{https://just13.click/just13/002.php}.)}
 
-Good teachers provide that context. They provide information along with the context and then guide their students through the process of building knowledge out of those. If you can figure out the information and figure out the context and know how to weave those two things into actual knowledge you'll always be able to figure out any task, any role, any job. You'll be able to do anything you set your mind to.\footnote{I haven't even talked about wisdom yet, which is knowledge tempered by experience. And I don't want to discuss it, perhaps mostly because I lack it. But basically information is knowing what a thing \textit{is}, knowledge is knowing \textit{how to do} a thing, and wisdom is knowing \textit{when} to do a thing.}
+Good teachers provide that context. They provide information along with the context and then guide their students through the process of building knowledge out of those. If you can figure out the information and figure out the context and know how to weave those two things into actual knowledge you'll always be able to figure out any task, any role, any job. You'll be able to do anything you set your mind to.\footnote{I haven't even talked about wisdom yet, which is knowledge tempered by experience. And I don't want to discuss it, perhaps mostly because I lack it.}
 
 That was what I loved about teaching—that if I were allowed to do it right I could empower people just now but for the rest of their lives. I once answered a question in a job interview that when it comes to teaching of course I take the long view. The kid I'm teaching today might be working on my brakes in ten years. The kid I'm teaching today might be doing heart surgery on me in twenty years. This is not selfishness. The kid who is working on my brakes is also working on lots of other people's brakes and the kid doing open heart surgery on me is obviously not doing this as a one-off.
 
 The point is that human existence is a tapestry. We're all connected, like it or not, to other people. That tapestry has a lot of holes in it (thanks to war, disease, capitalism, etc.) so of course most of the time we can't see a direct connection to some other people simply because it isn't apparent. But we are all connected nevertheless, whether directly or indirectly. Our choices and our actions have effects that we cannot predict on people we cannot even see, sometimes because they don't exist yet.
 
-So yeah—that is what teaching was about for me—showing kids that they are part of a rich tapestry and that it's okay if they can't see the entire thing because \textit{none} of us can.\footnote{I would like to carve out an exception here for someone like the Dalai Lama, but I think he would be the first person to say that he can't see everything. He can merely see further than most.} The important thing is knowing that you are part of something larger than yourself and to know how to reach out to others when you need help and knowing how to respond to others reaching out to you because they need help. That was my mission as a teacher. I suppose that now, it's my mission with this zine.
+That is what teaching was about for me—showing kids that they are part of a rich tapestry and that it's okay if they can't see the entire thing because \textit{none} of us can.\footnote{I would like to carve out an exception here for someone like the Dalai Lama, but I think he would be the first person to say that he can't see everything. He can merely see further than most.} The important thing is knowing that you are part of something larger than yourself and to know how to reach out to others when you need help and knowing how to respond to others reaching out to you because they need help. That was my mission as a teacher. I suppose that now, it's my mission with this zine.
 
 It's also why I am not a teacher or now and never will be again—because there is no fucking way that any part of that can ever be converted to a multiple choice question that can be graded by running a scantron sheet through some 1970s-style technology.