The Motley View …..a melange of irregular
comments on professional life
On Seeking Dirty Work and the Value of Shoveling S--T*
by Dr. Edmund Medley, PE, CEG, F. ASCE (MS 1991, PhD,
1994)
(*A person with a dirty mind would read this as SILT)
I started work in 1959, delivering groceries by bike in West
London. By the time I left my teens, I had worked part-time
as a sales clerk in grocery, food and book shops, and also
had stints as a bookkeeper, a laundry man, a TV Special
Effects technician. I later washed dishes on a cargo ship to
travel to Canada and by age 25 had spent a few years as a
prospector. None of these jobs would likely be considered
“professional” by the standard of today’s graduate
geoengineer. All of them required me to perform much dirty
work; hard, often physically demanding work that
sometimes felt demeaning, was often boring, and which too
often left me tired, hot (or very cold), wet, and bruised.
For example: in 1973 I built an outhouse perched above a
glacier in the magnificent Stikine Range of British Columbia,
a few miles from the Alaska border (requiring a bold Maple
Leaf be painted on the roof to deter the occasional flying
American intruder). Since the ground was permanently
frozen, a cess pit was impossible so I incorporated an empty
45 gallon fuel drum into the edifice. It was a splendid toilet.
As I purposefully did not build a door, patrons had a glorious
vista of Mt. Kallahan and its glaciers, a view sometimes
obscured by mid-summer snow storms.
The next summer, resuming work at the prospect, the crew
needed a toilet. Rather than rebuild one, I decided to re-use
the old one. Which required me to shovel s--t from the
drum. Was shoveling dirty work? Yes. Was it tiring? Yes:
one could say I was pooped after finishing the chore. Did it
need to be done? At the time, I judged Yes. Was it
rewarding? Yes: judge for your self from the picture above
if the view was indeed worth the effort.
And so to the Motley View on dirty work and some
suggestions for those of you early in your careers:
Define your “dirty work”. Dirty work is often the work other
people do not want to do, work that they do not care for
because it is “beneath them”, or it is “boring”, or it is not
what they “went to Berkeley to do”, or it is the “same old
silt”; or, it is not “professional”. Dirty work may literally be
dirty: observing drilling and logging soil samples and rock
core; performing laboratory tests; performing construction
monitoring and field density tests; and mapping landslides.
Or it may be boring, repetitious, dull or difficult office work:
performing computer analyses; writing field memos; and
reading depositions. All these chores seem nothing like the
kind of geoengineering work you went to Berkeley to study
for, and may not be the glamorous work you thought you
were signing up for with your glamorous employer. But
believe it or not; this is the sort of work your supervisors
did and if you want to be a successful geoengineer, it is the
sort of work you will have to do too.
If dirty work need to be done: then you do it! In fact, in
your careers you should seek dirty work. Dirty work is
essential and somebody has to do it. Why not you? Take the
less traveled dirt road, if you will. If nobody else in your
peer group likes doing the work, your employer will
appreciate you doing it. You will not be doing it for ever,
because after a while you will have shown that you can do
“what it takes”.
Don’t whinge when you are shoveling. Australians have a
crunchy slang word for incessant complaining: “whingeing”
(almost always used to denigrate Brits such as I). Nobody
likes a complainer and you shall endear yourself to your
supervisor by not complaining about the dirty work he asks
you to do. Just get on with it. If the work is hateful, and you
really cannot see the point, then find another job. But you
will quickly learn that you will do dirty work there too;
different dirty work, but still dirty work.
Enjoy the rewards of shoveling. There are rewards to
performing dirty work- it is through performing dirty work
that we learn about ourselves and our limits, we gain
entrees to adventures, and most rewarding of all, we learn
some humility. Indeed, in the words of another generation:
dirty work “builds character”. (Of course, much of the dirty
work that generation was talking about was war). But I
assure you that the more dirty work you are able to cram
into your career, the more experienced a geoengineer and
the more mature an individual you shall become.
Please, by all means share your tales of shoveling s—t, or
any other kind of dirty work. We would love to read them!!
Regards
Ed Medley
Biography: Dr. Ed Medley is a Senior Consultant in the
Oakland, California office of Geosyntec Consultants, Inc.
With about 30 years experience as a geological engineer,
he specializes in the investigation of geo-failures and the
geotechnical and geological characterization of bimrocks
(block-in-matrix rocks) such as fault rocks, weathered
rocks and melanges (http://bimrocks.geoengineer.org).
Contact Dr. Medley at emedley@geosyntec.com.
comments on professional life
On Seeking Dirty Work and the Value of Shoveling S--T*
by Dr. Edmund Medley, PE, CEG, F. ASCE (MS 1991, PhD,
1994)
(*A person with a dirty mind would read this as SILT)
I started work in 1959, delivering groceries by bike in West
London. By the time I left my teens, I had worked part-time
as a sales clerk in grocery, food and book shops, and also
had stints as a bookkeeper, a laundry man, a TV Special
Effects technician. I later washed dishes on a cargo ship to
travel to Canada and by age 25 had spent a few years as a
prospector. None of these jobs would likely be considered
“professional” by the standard of today’s graduate
geoengineer. All of them required me to perform much dirty
work; hard, often physically demanding work that
sometimes felt demeaning, was often boring, and which too
often left me tired, hot (or very cold), wet, and bruised.
For example: in 1973 I built an outhouse perched above a
glacier in the magnificent Stikine Range of British Columbia,
a few miles from the Alaska border (requiring a bold Maple
Leaf be painted on the roof to deter the occasional flying
American intruder). Since the ground was permanently
frozen, a cess pit was impossible so I incorporated an empty
45 gallon fuel drum into the edifice. It was a splendid toilet.
As I purposefully did not build a door, patrons had a glorious
vista of Mt. Kallahan and its glaciers, a view sometimes
obscured by mid-summer snow storms.
The next summer, resuming work at the prospect, the crew
needed a toilet. Rather than rebuild one, I decided to re-use
the old one. Which required me to shovel s--t from the
drum. Was shoveling dirty work? Yes. Was it tiring? Yes:
one could say I was pooped after finishing the chore. Did it
need to be done? At the time, I judged Yes. Was it
rewarding? Yes: judge for your self from the picture above
if the view was indeed worth the effort.
And so to the Motley View on dirty work and some
suggestions for those of you early in your careers:
Define your “dirty work”. Dirty work is often the work other
people do not want to do, work that they do not care for
because it is “beneath them”, or it is “boring”, or it is not
what they “went to Berkeley to do”, or it is the “same old
silt”; or, it is not “professional”. Dirty work may literally be
dirty: observing drilling and logging soil samples and rock
core; performing laboratory tests; performing construction
monitoring and field density tests; and mapping landslides.
Or it may be boring, repetitious, dull or difficult office work:
performing computer analyses; writing field memos; and
reading depositions. All these chores seem nothing like the
kind of geoengineering work you went to Berkeley to study
for, and may not be the glamorous work you thought you
were signing up for with your glamorous employer. But
believe it or not; this is the sort of work your supervisors
did and if you want to be a successful geoengineer, it is the
sort of work you will have to do too.
If dirty work need to be done: then you do it! In fact, in
your careers you should seek dirty work. Dirty work is
essential and somebody has to do it. Why not you? Take the
less traveled dirt road, if you will. If nobody else in your
peer group likes doing the work, your employer will
appreciate you doing it. You will not be doing it for ever,
because after a while you will have shown that you can do
“what it takes”.
Don’t whinge when you are shoveling. Australians have a
crunchy slang word for incessant complaining: “whingeing”
(almost always used to denigrate Brits such as I). Nobody
likes a complainer and you shall endear yourself to your
supervisor by not complaining about the dirty work he asks
you to do. Just get on with it. If the work is hateful, and you
really cannot see the point, then find another job. But you
will quickly learn that you will do dirty work there too;
different dirty work, but still dirty work.
Enjoy the rewards of shoveling. There are rewards to
performing dirty work- it is through performing dirty work
that we learn about ourselves and our limits, we gain
entrees to adventures, and most rewarding of all, we learn
some humility. Indeed, in the words of another generation:
dirty work “builds character”. (Of course, much of the dirty
work that generation was talking about was war). But I
assure you that the more dirty work you are able to cram
into your career, the more experienced a geoengineer and
the more mature an individual you shall become.
Please, by all means share your tales of shoveling s—t, or
any other kind of dirty work. We would love to read them!!
Regards
Ed Medley
Biography: Dr. Ed Medley is a Senior Consultant in the
Oakland, California office of Geosyntec Consultants, Inc.
With about 30 years experience as a geological engineer,
he specializes in the investigation of geo-failures and the
geotechnical and geological characterization of bimrocks
(block-in-matrix rocks) such as fault rocks, weathered
rocks and melanges (http://bimrocks.geoengineer.org).
Contact Dr. Medley at emedley@geosyntec.com.
The Motley View …..a melange of irregular comments on professional life
