Producing Health and the difference between Utbildning and Bildning
So, a month into International Committee and things are coming together. This week has been 35 hours in the office. Despite taking 9 days free for Interrailing and visits in the the South of France I have clocked up roughly 70 unpaid hours work. Rather a lot of work when you consider this is not technically a voluntary post! The first of my ten modest monthly cheques will arrive at the end of August. So far there is a running total of 10.5 hours overtime… if you count the likelihood I will work 8 hours during each of the next two days that means 16 hours; plus 4 of the overtime and my week’s quota of 20 are filled before the Mexico excursion begins. There are still 6.5 extra hours carried over to the next week meaning that my total deficit is just 13.5 hours when I return home. No fear that I will not double the recommended weekly working hours in the following week, and reasonably triple them the week after with the arrival of our new students. No problems. It is not stressful. Taking this jobs was a conscious choice. Overtime in the summer was to be expected.
However, knowing this there are a couple of aspects of human behaviour that are becoming increasinly hard to ignore:
PRODUCING HEALTH
The weekend has been spent at both work and play. There has even been a 3 hour stint in the office on Saturday and 4 hours here today. Yet spending time developing the CG-MZ relationship and “producing health” in it’s simplest form i.e. quality time with the partner, leaves us both with something of a guilty conscience. Is it genuinely wrong to spend a rainy weekend watching films, eating and laughing while discovering physical and mental potential? Or has our culture/ambition got the better of us?
UTBILDNING VS. BILDNING
Utbildning = academical development
Buildning = personal development
It has to be said that a few of the emails I receive as head of the IC leave me a little lost of words. Incoming and outgoing students alike write the most extraordinarily un-proficcient emails about the most trivial subjects. Many lack basic etiquette (names, greetings and a signoff) while others contain problems which they could, honestly, easily solve alone with a little research and common sense…
After composing several diplomatically worded “sorry, but that is really not something my job is related to, but there are people who are much better equipped to help you” IC have declined to: work as wardrobe consultants, personally provide housing, find jobs or share details of personal monthly income/outgoings.
Simple proof that academic excellence does not necessarily mean ability in life’s daily challenges!
























