About the time that this issue of the Motley View will be published [April 2008] the 2008 class of UC Berkeley GeoEngineers will be finishing the Spring Term, soon to graduate. They will work through the night to complete the CE270L report for Prof. Seed, attend the Distinguished Lectures, party at the Banquet, listen to the…
Category: Professional
Stories related to my careers
The Motley View: On Seeking Dirty Work and the Value of Shoveling S–T*
*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…
Motley Views
I used to write The Motley View, a column of occasional pieces for the Newsletter of the now dormant Berkeley Geoengineering Alumni Association (BGAA) hosted by the GeoEngineer website. Why Motley View? I wrote the first article, so I named the column. I no longer write for the defunct Newsletter but am loathe to retire a…
Motley View: The Vitality of Good Contacts
My career evolved because of my vital network of contacts. By “vital” I mean both life-sustaining and necessary. Over the 40-year random walk of my adult life, the suggestions, encouragements, ideas, insults, challenges, job leads and personal introductions from other people nudged me bit-by-bit from my first full-time job in 1966 (as a clerk for a…