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
