Stockbroker becomes a Teacher
Paul Salopek, walking round the world. Hanif Kureishi on paralysis, disability and life UK Climate Change reports, adaptation analysis. Stock Broker to Teacher, Jade O’Brien’s journey. Chatbots, Poe.
Paul Salopek, walking round the world
Hanif Kureishi on paralysis, disability and life
Climate Change reports, adaptation analysis
Links: thinking about climate jobs; chatbot app available on IOS (Poe)
My week has really been filled with the craziness of stock markets. Rightly, this is not directly felt by the real economy, but we have equity price moves of high ferocity mostly on shifting macro-economic perceptions. A roller coaster start to the year, challenging (and stimulating) but mostly challenging. Meeting many CEOs and management teams as they explain the year ahead and the year gone by. Now in most sessions, I hear an extra-financial related question (and not just posed by me!) this is a shift from 5 years ago not everyone is interested but it’s certainly higher than ever before.
I listened to Paul Salopek (with Tyler Cowen) who is walking around the world. Or, more precisely, Salopek is half way through his “Out of Eden Walk” following the footsteps of the first humans out of Africa from Ethiopia to Tierra Del Fuego. This will be 24,000 miles and he started in 2012/13. I had not heard of the project and have started reading the essays.
As a teenager I loved fiction over non-fiction, and poetry and plays as much as novels, and experimental form perhaps even more so. Today, I am more balanced and tilt with more non-fiction. Especially life writing from women, and life writing essays. I’ve always liked travel writing, in part perhaps as it echoes my own travels.
Salopek’s work gives you glimpses and insights that you wouldn't typically find. The work also echoes back to travel writers and commentators all the way back in human history.
Salopek starts:
“Where are you walking?” the Afar nomads ask.
“North. To Djibouti.” (We do not say Tierra del Fuego. It is much too far—it is meaningless.)
“Are you crazy? Are you sick?”
In reply, Ahmed Alema Hessan—wiry and energetic, the ultimate go-to man, a charming rogue, my guide and protector through the blistering Afar Triangle—doubles over and laughs.
I am not entirely sure how I’ve missed this journey until now, but it also shows how much is going on and how small my world is despite constant reading and thinking about the world at large.
Some previous brief thoughts on to travel is to learn from me.
From Hanif Kureishi:
On Boxing Day 2022, in Rome, after taking a comfortable walk to the Piazza del Popolo, followed by a stroll through the Villa Borghese, and then back to the apartment, I had a fall.
I woke up a few minutes later in a pool of blood, my neck in a grotesquely twisted position, my wife on her knees beside me. I believed I was dying. I believed I had three breaths left.
Now, without the use of my hands, or any other limbs, which is a considerable inconvenience, I write a daily dispatch from my hospital bed, which I dictate to my family who then send it out to you.
He writes (on Jan 30):
“...Being a tetraplegic isn’t all bad. As I write this, I am having a pedicure while eating caviar with a plastic spoon. My girlfriend is tickling me under the chin. I have just proposed to her. ‘Barkis is willin’’.
While she pretends to contemplate the question - to my surprise, and that of most of my friends, who consider me to be less than a good catch, in fact a bad catch, and had advised me against proposing while I am in this condition – she eventually says yes, of course, and laughs.
As a kind of celebration, as I said, I’m having my first ever pedicure. The man doing the pedicure wears a sort of miner’s harness on his forehead with a bright little torch attached.
From where I am lying, with his whirring machine and his glasses covered in foot-dust, he resembles someone cleaning the inside of a nuclear dump. ...”
There is a thread on what it means to be disabled and of course a thread on the creative life and observations of a writer (not free from controversy over his career) on life.
Of course, if you wish to be critical you can observe… he has many to help him, he has this outlet, he has wealth… but on the other side, I have a glimpse into a humanity, and a creativity which I find very moving and compelling.
A recommended read, I think the essays will reflect back something about how you think about your life and the world; as well as disability and - of course - death. He’s quite funny too.
I had a great conversation this week with Chris Stark, CEO of the UK’s climate change committee. Podcast out later in the month. In the mean time I will highlight two recent reports from his committee. One on house energy ratings… (quite a specific area)
…and the other broadly on how the UK should be thinking about adaptation, large with an insightful emphasis on instution building needed.
Jade used to pitch me stock ideas. She then told me she was training to be a teacher.
I wanted to know what she thought about being a woman in finance, what took her to finance in the first place and how she is finding teaching, and her views on many of the hot-button topics in education such as class streaming, funding, uniforms and school food.
Jade O’Brien was a stock broker (equity sales) for over 7 years. She then retrained as a teacher and has taught in both the state sector and the private sector in the UK.
Jade used to pitch me stock ideas and speak about the investment world. I was very curious on why she decided to change careers to become a teacher.
We chat about what drove Jade to the world of finance. What she viewed as the pros and cons, and what it is like as a woman in a male-dominated world and advice she has.
Jade outlines her experience of finance which has many positives as well as challenges, and what might have changed over the decade.
(Ben) So what would you say to women wanting to make it in the city or in financial services?
Do it. Give it a go. I mean, I'm speaking for myself here and I have read that the imposter syndrome feeling is very common within women in finance. But then again, I think, well maybe that imposter syndrome is for everyone in finance but men can hide it better. So I would say do it. Everybody feels insecure and doesn't really know what's going on at times. To have the confidence to go for it and also to not necessarily feel like you need to follow my path of giving up finance and becoming a teacher. I don't think that's something you need to do if you are genuinely interested in finance and you want to get to the top. I think it's definitely possible.
We discuss the factors that made Jade change her jobs. How we might think about death and how she found teacher training.
We chat on how we might “value” teaching and why it’s hard to rate teachers. Why some people ask for more homework, and others ask for less homework and how both views can have merit.
We address:
The importance of mentors
the funding situation in UK state supported schools
A glimpse of teacher training
Differences between state and private schools in the UK
Why she thinks teacher quality in both state and private settings are similar
Why teaching class can feel private
Views on SEN (special education) policy
Streaming (where it might work, where it might fail and why she changed her mind)
What Jade’s perfect class size is, and why
Her views on uniforms
School start times
School food
Exercise
The importance of gratitude
This was an amazing long form conversation addressing many of the debates within education today. Transcript/video here.
Links:
If you want an interactive chat bot try Poe, it’s IOS only for now, but it’s a chat bot in your pocket. (Recall, last week the link to how you should think about using AI to supplement your work / thinking).