Skeptics vs. Skeptical Activists

I'm a skeptic. It's a thing you can be. The internet is full of places to learn about it, but I think a good, thorough starting point is here.

I'm part of the broader skeptical community. It's a thing you can take part in, but it's a bit hard to know much about the skeptics who avoid communal participation, because they're harder to spot. But there's certainly some subset of unsocial, non-communal skeptics. I think it's fair to say they have very little impact on the world, in terms of skepticism. Those who join the skeptical community have much greater opportunity to learn and teach and explore and cooperate.

I also try to be a skeptical activist. A lot of skeptics do, but the term doesn't get used much, perhaps because it sounds a bit clumsy, perhaps because there's value in displaying an apparently united front under a single title (value to the activists because they look more numerous, value to the non-activists because they look more accomplished). Regardless, I think it's worth making the distinction and being clear about who's doing what and why.

There is no King of Skepticism, no Grand Galactic Council of Critical Thinking. Some parts of the world have some formal societies set up, and there are a few celebrities of skepticism whose names are recognised (by other skeptics, at least) everywhere, but the whole thing remains a grassroots effort, and nobody can tell anyone else what to do or not do. And I think this is good. The big names got big by going out and earning it. The societies that lasted and grew did it because their members support each other. If you don't have to do anything, the only way to get things done is by wanting to do things. And the end product seems to be a pretty good indicator of how strong the want was, because while there's nobody telling you what you must do, there's also nobody (internally) limiting where you have to stop doing things.

There are also skeptics, sometimes very social communal skeptics, who have no interest in the activist side. This is their right (until I'm finally crowned Pan-Galactic Hyper-Emperor of Ultra-Doubt), because of the voluntary nature the skeptical community seems to universally share (and I'd love to see a contrary example). I'm not about to put a gun to anyone's head either, but I don't understand that crowd at all. Why accept that skepticism is important and go to the trouble of joining the community, if you're then going to refuse to do anything about it? I have no clear numbers, which limits this discussion for now, but I've spent enough time chatting with skeptics, both on- and offline, to get a reasonably clear idea that there are many for whom that meagre chatting is their sole skeptical effort. They don't want to commit to actually doing something, it seems, and quite a few are even actively opposed to getting involved in society.

Perhaps I'm unfair. What I studied was exactly "how to fix society" and now I work in science education. Writing comes so naturally to me that I would be blogging even if there wasn't an internet. And of course, for logistical reasons, we can't all be guest hosts on Africa's greatest science and skepticism podcast (I'm not even sure how I got that gig). So maybe not everyone can be 100% me. But plenty of non-me people manage to get useful things done. Who organises all the Skeptics in the Pubs/Parks, and the Rumbles in the Pubs (which I must get to one day)? Who got Ideas for Africa going? Who started Consilience, who keeps it going and does all the post-production? Who writes to newspapers or calls radio shows when they're too full of woo? Not me, nor any of a bunch of other things I could be doing to help the skeptical cause. The point is, none of us do every single thing that can be done, we all lean on our strengths; but some prefer not to lean at all, and do nothing to help. These people, to me, feel like a problem.

I struggle to avoid being derogatory in describing and explaining such behaviour. It mostly just seems snobbish and lazy to me, and this coming from a guy who's quite comfortable being labelled lazy. But calling people snobbish and lazy seems unlikely to solve anything; quite the opposite. If they take offence at it, they won't help. If they feel cowed into helping, they're not likely to be hard-working or dedicated. And slave-driving all the non-activists is not the best use of time for all the really eager activists. So is it better to just cut the dead weight loose? This sort of parallels the atheist community's recent kerfuffle over Atheism+ and similar notions that atheists should be social activists, except that I don't think atheism necessarily implies any positive action (because there are quite a lot of different experiences people can have with religion), while skepticism does. Although I'm having some trouble justifying exactly why that should be, right now.

That's where my thoughts on this currently stand: On some path, but clearly not at a specific destination yet. So, give me ideas: What keeps skeptics from acting actively? What could be done about this? What shouldn't be done about it?

Feeling a Sham

At the risk of contradicting my own do-not-internet-diagnose advice, I definitely have this impostor syndrome, at least to a moderate degree. It's hard to be sure about my younger years, as I often really wasn't too competent yet, but now I'm awesome, and yet still feel it. If anything, I feel it more.

I think there are 4 relevant factors: General self-doubt, the broadness of existence, my generalist approach, and the job market.

The first one would make an obvious contribution, and I've mentioned some examples of it before. Another example was the narrative I had in my head until a few years ago that I was "bad with women", which is madness, as I'm clearly gorgeous (with a split vote on the question of facial hair) and generally fine with women, socially. I'm no Casanova, I don't always spot or act on opportunities, and I don't do well in stereotypical courtship scenarios, like bar/club pick-ups and formal dates. But in more relaxed, unforced situations, I'm fine and clearly not "bad with women", or men, as far as I can tell. And yet, for years I had myself convinced that I was. So I can totally believe that some of my current assumptions, like that I'm "bad at dealing with customers/clients," are similarly flawed.

The second factor is obvious when you think about it, but hard to bear in mind while reading through job ads: There are thousands or millions or gajillions of possible skills to be learned, depending how you divide them up, and nobody can learn them all. So it's easy to find fault in yourself if you focus on what you can't do. I find this is worst if you compare yourself with others too much, and especially people in completely unrelated fields. Having lots of really brilliant friends, as I do, compounds the problem.

This is closely related for me to the third factor, my own vague, wishy-washy generalist's attitude to everything. I don't like specializing, I want to explore everything as widely as I can, and I feel left out when I discover some new field that I know nothing about, which means I probably cover quite a lot of skills, and my general knowledge really is excellent, but it also means that I'm definitely not the best at most of those skills. There are always people better at any given thing than me. I chose to study development studies partly because it's such a broad, multi-disciplinary, generalist thing, and I could get my brain into a hundred new things with it. But it also means that I never get to be the top specialist expert: The economists all know economics better, the environmental scientists know the environment better, the engineers know the technical stuff better, the teachers know education better, and even in political science, my first undergrad major, there are those who embraced it more deeply than I did, especially once dev. studies stole my attention. I know quite a bit about all of those fields, certainly enough to give a decent high school-level introduction to each, and probably enough to be fairly useful at a job dependent on them, but I still never get to feel like I'm truly on top of any one of them.

Compounding this, my career history is similarly all over the place, with experience in retail, admin, education and the manual packing of tens of thousands of promotional pencil and ruler sets. Add to this my "hobby" experience with all the skeptical activism, blogging, daily absorption of dozens of science blogs and podcasts, some serious GMing, starship command, and some model-building and -painting. This all gives me an even wider set of skills (though it's harder to prove it all on my CV, which relates to the fourth big factor), but still none I can claim to have thoroughly mastered, nothing I'd feel comfortable claiming to be an expert at. I was going to suggest that maybe I've mastered GMing, but I don't believe that deep down; I run some decent games, but my NPCs are always a bit weakly expressed, I never know the rules properly (whether or not I plan to ignore them) and the plots I generate myself seldom have solid endings. You see how easy it is to self-deprecate even with the fiddliest split hairs?

Each of these other things comes at a cost of further lost specialisation down the already-general development path. My work in education, for example, is great experience to have, but it's the main thing that's kept me away from development for the last 6 years. I've not kept a hand in my field of study in any way, nor maintained regular contact with those who do, to the point that browsing through development blogs now feels like an alien encounter; I struggle to tell what's over-complicated jargon and buzz words (of which there are always plenty) and what's an important concept I'm not familiar with (and will be laughed at by all the other dev. kids for not getting).

Fourthly, there's the brutality of the job market. Too many people, not enough jobs to go around. And according to my mom and sister, who both have a fair bit of HR experience, most job ads are written to be over-demanding, asking for more things than employers really need, so that they can pick an acceptable candidate from among the pool they expect won't quite meet their stated standards, but will still be good enough for the job. From their perspective, I can totally see how this is a safe way of finding adequately competent candidates, but from my perspective, it freaks me out, being advised (by people I trust) that I have to take this leap of faith and ignore the fact that I don't fit the 'Requirements' section in most job ads.

Worse, I'm also told (and my anecdotal experience kind of fits this) that job ads are for chumps, that employers use them as a last resort, and that the real way to get jobs is to just march into places and demand employment (which is, to me, a maddeningly upside down and haphazard way to organise things), or at least get in through connections and word of mouth (also not the way I like to do things, though possibly a healthier way for a society to operate, in some ways). That all adds to my uncertainty and self-doubt, because I have no objective measurement of whether I'm 'good enough' yet, other than the minority of jobs I do get accepted for. And with hardly any employers bothering with rejection letters (I'd estimate only 1%, in my personal experience), it's very hard to judge what specifically I'm lacking that kept me from being selected. So my imagination is free to feed my self-doubt even more.

(As an aside, this desire for clear estimates of my relative competence level is probably why I like the shiny, shiny badges.)

And if I actually want to make a sustainable independent living, which none of these many things has yet provided (and I'm not getting any younger here), I may have to take on some other job in another field, further diluting my qualifications.

It's no good telling me to accept that this is just the way things work; I'm not intending to change reality just by complaining about it, but I'm not going to suddenly stop thinking about how things work, and thus getting worried by what I see. I analyse things, it's one of my sexier features, and I worry about potential hurdles, perhaps sometimes too much. All of this together combines to (sometimes) make me seriously doubt whether I'm capable of doing anything I hope to do, even if my qualifications and experience suggest I should be capable. It's a pretty unpleasant way to feel, and it seems to strike me worst while actively job-hunting.

Annoyingly, there doesn't seem to be a simple, easy solution to impostor syndrome. Just "pushing through" it seems to be inevitable, since it's a mental obstacle, not a real disability or insanity, but talking about it and trying to recognise how I'm being unfair or unhelpful to myself should also help, right? I'm also curious to know how this affects anyone else, and if it gets to you, how you deal with it.

Sneak Preview of the Teaser Trailer for my Icon module

Icon 2013, Johannesburg's greatest and probably onliest games convention is going to be fucking awesome this year, because they should be running a roleplaying module that I wrote. What more could you possibly want at a con? I just submitted  the completed document now, after spending only 10 days writing it and 1 evening getting the formatting right. Last time I submitted a module (Icon 2008's Lead the Way), it took me well over a year to write it, fighting the damn unreliable MS Word formatting system every step of the way. And then, after Icon had used it, I got various feedback and spent another year refining it, as a sort of public-use version (which you're welcome to download here). So I surprised myself with this 10-day thing.

What's the module about? I can't say. I'm not even going to state the title until the Icon people have got everything printed and ready on their side. But I will say that it uses the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition system and setting, which means it'll fit in well enough with this year's post-apocalyptic theme. By coincidence, the same could be said for 2008's Lead the Way, but that's where the similarity ends. Lead the Way uses the Spycraft 1.0 system, and almost absolutely everything else about my two con modules is different. Apparently, I've just got a thing for post-apocalypses.

But you'll get to see for yourself, come July, either by attending Icon 2013 (Yes, do that!) and playing it there, or by waiting for my post-Icon public update revision to be become available here.

Astronyms, part 6: Chinese Condoms and Stations

This is part of this series of posts on the history of spacecraft naming.

Shenzou
(Space condom. In space service 15 October 2003 to present)

Shenzhou 5 and Shenzhou 7

The Chinese space program has had an interesting history, far less panicked and rushed than the USA-USSR space race, but still difficult to assess as a true example of slow and steady progress, because they've borrowed so much from the Soviets/Russians. Shenzhou is a prime example: It really is just a Soyuz variant, somewhat enlarged, but not so much you'd easily notice it without measuring equipment - unless you're sitting inside, and then the extra elbow room is really clearly obvious. The most interesting change has probably been to the orbital module (OM), the 'front bit'. Initially, China decided it wanted to make the OM work as a stand-alone unit after ejecting from the rest of the vessel, as some sort of free bonus satellite. So, the first 6 Shenzhous all had double pairs of solar panels: The usual aft pair inherited from the Soyuz design, and a smaller forward pair attached to the OM. Shenzhou 7 and onwards flew without the OM panels, making them look much more like the Soyuz again. However, the Shenzhou OM still seems to be unusually modular, and no two launched so far have looked quite the same (see images at right).

Chinese naming policy seems pretty straightforward so far, basically similar to the pre-Apollo American system. The crew capsule has a class name and a sequential launch number, and this is also the mission code. The crew seem to have no special designations that I can find. The rocket also has a type name (so far, it's always been Chang Zheng 2F rockets), which is different to the capsule name (unlike the usual Soviet/Russian Vostok-on-Vostok, Soyuz-on-Soyuz naming convention). The Chang Zheng rocket family does originally derive from a Soviet design (and ultimately from the German V-2, as so many large modern rocket families do), but has been gestating separately within China for decades and is now quite a different beast to anything the Russians use. The 2F variant was optimised for crewed flights, but is significantly less powerful than the Soyuz rocket, suggesting the Soyuz might actually be wastefully overpowered [EDIT: Must have read something wrong, that's not true].

Chang Zheng translates as 'long march', and most English texts will normally talk about Long March rockets. But I like consistency and I like getting as close to the original name as my untrained tongue will allow, so it doesn't make sense to say Soyuz and Vostok for the Russian stuff, but Long March for the Chinese, and neither would I like to have to write Union and East in English. Even weirder, most articles mix things up just within the Chinese names, writing Shenzhou in Chinese and Long March in English. Consistency, please.

Anyway, the reason I translate Chang Zheng first is that it illustrates a change in Chinese naming policy; initially, the Chinese government was determined to keep all names secular and nationalistic, sort of like the Soviets were doing. But then at some point, in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, there was an urge to use terms from Chinese mythology, much as the Americans (and later the Europeans) had been using Greek and Roman mythological names. So while Chang Zheng drew on the specifically pro-Mao recent history tied up with the Long March of 1934-35, Shenzhou translates as 'divine vessel' (or, more amusingly, 'magic boat'), which is a literal enough name, except that it's very sneakily also a homophone for an older name for China. So it gets to be both mythical and nationalist at the same time. Pretty sneaky, and a bit of a jab at the "young" Americans and Russians.

Of the 9 11 Shenzhous launched so far, 4 6 of them (Shenzhous 5, 6, 7, 9, 10 and 11) have been crewed, each making one successful flight each.

Tiangong
 (Space station. In space service 18 June 2012 to 16 November 2016)

Tiangong 1, docked with Shenzhou 9, with EVA chorus line adjacent

China wanted to get in on the ISS. The US wouldn't let them, because they didn't want to spoil their long-running spy-vs.-spy contest. So China built their own damn station, Tiangong 1, roughly in the format of the old Salyuts, but also enlarged [EDIT: shrunk a little]. The idea, as I understand it, is to follow a similar path to the one the Soviets followed, with some disposable, stand-alone mini-stations (Salyuts for the Soviets, Tiangongs for the Chinese) eventually leading up to a big, modular, long-term station (Mir for the Soviets, unnamed future thing for the Chinese). After an uncrewed test mission using Shenzhou 8, Tiangong 1 was occupied during Shenzhou 9's visit, and should be then visited once more by Shenzhou 10 in mid-2013. Then Tiangong 2 and 3 (slightly larger, I believe) are due to launch next, with the one major difference of having both fore and aft docking ports (Tiangong 1 only had the forward port), allowing for resupply ships to dock while there's already a crew there. There seems to be a little confusion about whether Tiangong 3 will be another stand-alone test station, or whether it will be incorporated into the large modular Mir/ISS-style station China has planned.

[EDIT: Tiangong 2 launched in September 2016 and was boarded by the crew of Shenzhou 11 in October 2016, with a plan to keep them there for a full month.] [Shenzhou 11 departed on schedule, leaving Tiangong 2 vacant but operational. The station will continue to run a number of experiments by remote, but is not expected to be crewed again. For my purposes here, its crewed service life is ended.]

The name translates as 'heavenly palace', which again is nice and literal, while still retaining a charming air of mythos. I do also like the idea of naming stations after supposedly fixed, immoveable entities. Where are our Olympus station, Uluru station, Atlantis station, Babylon stations 1-5?

The onlyfirst Tiangong so far is currently in orbit, unoccupied, and it's no longer clear how long it'll stay there is expected to re-enter the atmosphere sometime vaguely soon.

Employ Me!

[EDIT: It seems Blogger has gone a bit crazy with the formatting on this one, and every time I fix one thing, another thing breaks. I hope it's legible.]

This is written for anyone who might want to employ me. I need a new job. My current job is fun, and it's better than unemployment, but I don't make enough to live independently. I have a plan to cohabit and split costs, but a more secure financial situation would be nice. But more importantly:
I WANT TO DO DEVELOPMENT STUDIES!!!!

Development studies is not particularly well known nor well understood. I (and at least some of my colleagues) like to summarise it as "Saving the World!™", but a more useful explanation is that development studies is to the social sciences what engineering is to the physical sciences, or what medicine is to the life sciences. It's primarily about practical application, not pure research, and it relies on a broad, multidisciplinary approach, rather than specialisation. If you've ever played a game from a series like the Civilizations or Master of Orions, you've had a taste of what development studies addresses. You spent more resources on research than tax income? Opted to build a trade center instead of a shipyard? Chose to run your empire as a democracy instead of a monarchy? I'm sure you can't have played games like that without making those choices. Well, why did you? Because you're trying to achieve something, but you can't do everything at once, and unless you just click things randomly, you have to try to work out some rational way of deciding how to proceed one step at a time. Now add hundreds or thousands or billions of people, each with rights and requirements and desires that you can't just ignore with the click of a mouse (in fact, they're the reason for the work, its primary objective, not just an obstacle to avoid), and you've got development studies.

I fell into it through a series of chance occurrences. At one point, I wanted to study journalism, but in looking into that, I happened to spot a politics course, which triggered all sorts of interesting things in me, so I did a BA Politics. I had more or less equal choice of doing it at Wits or RAU, and picked RAU for no better reason than that it was about 5% closer to my house. And by the RAU syllabus, I had to pick as a second major either law, economics or development studies. I had no idea what the last one was, but wasn't too excited at the time about the other two, and so I went blindly into dev. My first year of it sucked and I considered dropping it, because I just didn't get it, until eventually something clicked, and I started loving it. I did better at it in 3rd year than my primary major, politics, and even won a prize for it, and then went on to do my BA(Hons) Development Studies. I was top of my honours class. I was certain I was going to have a great career in that field. And then I never got to touch it again.

My job-hunting skills were poor. I got some "easy," basic jobs via friends and family, just to have something to do, but didn't really push for my ideal kind of job. Then I got headhunted by a company called NMA, supposedly involved in development work, claiming they really wanted master's degree holders, but would accept honours kids as a compromise and a favour to us. Turned out, they were little more than a rubber-stamping agency for government projects, and I was a glorified data-capturer. I was told directly by my boss that they knew a major construction project was a bad idea, but we were getting paid to make it happen, so that's what we'd make happen. I was explicitly told to ignore what people were literally saying and "read between the lines" to make their complaints fit his predefined categories. Today I'd give him serious shit for that, let him know exactly how unacceptably unethical that crap is, but 6 years ago I was shy and unworldly, so I just left. Biggest salary I ever had, and it's been pretty close to all downhill from there.

After some time unemployed, I took the sideways step into teaching. It was definitely worth the experience, I'm much more confident and worldly now, but I've been trying to step back sideways to development ever since. I've also been trying to sort out my master's, but there's a whole separate blog post for that.

More specifically, what really interests me is, 1. education (I didn't go into it for no reason, I just don't want to be a teacher), and B. civil society and non-governmental organisations. Working for an education NGO would be fantastic for me. Put me in a planning or management role and watch me be awesome.

As a more detailed account of my career history, for those who're interested, here's an annotated version of my CV. I feel that while the plain, conventional CV format is good for initial HR bureaucratic processing, it doesn't really reflect the full "me" very well. Consider, for example, that I've never yet gone in for an interview and not gotten the job; I'm hugely impressive. The problem seems to be getting into interviews in the first place.

(Full CV available on demand.)

__________________________

Education

Present:

University of Johannesburg 

MA (Development Studies), still in progress

Yeah, see the other blog post about this one.

2011 (October):

ACTION Support Centre

Certificate in Applied Conflict Transformation

I got this, I think, as a consolation prize for not getting an internship with them. I wrote about it at the time. I think it was very useful as a refresher/update on a lot of the stuff I covered in my undergrad years, plus a chance to meet some very interesting people from the rest of Africa.

2009 (January – August):

TEACH South Africa

Accelerated teacher training prior to and while working at Landulwazi Comprehensive School

I can't say it was the best training they could have given us, but it was enough to make us not-incompetent. We got provisional SACE numbers and everything. The bulk of it was in the first 3 weeks of January, with a reduced dose the following 3 weeks (as we started going into our schools for the first time) and then sporadic extras after that. The best part, for me, was exposure to so many different teachers at so many different schools. It really gave me a good look at the variety of possible styles and effects.

2006:

University of Johannesburg 

BA (Honours) (Development Studies), completed. Subjects included:

• Independent Field Work & Research Report (distinction)

• Research report titled: An investigation into Alzheimer’s South Africa’s recent organisational difficulties: How to sustain its operations indefinitely

• Methodology of the Human Sciences
• Contemporary Development Theories
• Statistics for Human Sciences (distinction)
• Management & Planning in Development
• Key Issues in International Relations

Best academic year ever. I understood more after this 1 year than I did after the entire preceding 3 years. The stats course was the first maths I'd had to do in years, so I was pleased it went so well. Methodology was shared with an anthropology honours course, led by an anthro lecturer, and she really didn't like or understand us dev. people, but I think I still tried my best to ignore her and understand the work she presented. The international relations course was the only unscheduled filler, as all the dev. kids had to find themselves an extra subject from another department, and I really enjoyed being back with the politics kids after a 6 month break.

2003 – 2005:

Rand Afrikaans University / University of Johannesburg

BA (Politics), majoring in Politics and Development Studies, completed. Subjects included:

• Politics 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B, 3A, 3B, 3C, 3D
• Development Studies 1A, 1B, 2A (distinction), 2B, 3A (distinction), 3B, 3C (distinction), 3D
• Anthropology 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B (distinction)
• Sociology 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B
• German 1A, 1B

Received Merit Award for Best Academic Performance in 3rd Year Development Studies, 2005.

You'll note I tended to do much better in later courses, even getting that merit award, as my performance just got better and better at an accelerating pace. German 1 filled my language requirement, though I had originally tried my tongue at Arabic 1 instead. I might have taken on a wee bit much there. The only subject I consistently disliked was sociology, a tediously dry subject, except when a certain freelance lecturer (who, coincidentally, was the first graduate of my high school I ever encountered doing a real, grown-up job) did some courses with us in 2nd year in a much more interesting and refreshing style.

2000:

Potchefstroom University 

Certificate in Entrepreneurial Skills

This was a course offered through my high school. I learned some useful stuff, but it caused me to be pushed into taking business economics for matric, which I hated. It's only recently occurred to me that I might have been pushed in this direction by my dad because he's always wanted to have his own business (and he still occasionally tries to get me to start something up). I couldn't give a shit about that, but I don't mind having learned new things.

1997 – 2001:

Aurora Private School

Matriculated, all subjects passed on Higher Grade, including:

• General Science
• Computer Science
• Mathematics
• Business Economics
• English 1st Language
• Afrikaans 2nd Language

Received Silver Award in 2001 National English Olympiad.

Named Aurora College when I started there, and now called Curro Aurora, part of the Curro schools group. It was far from perfect and perhaps not worth what my parents had to pay for it, but still a damn good school, or at least a school that employed some damn good teachers. I'm pleased to say there was virtually no emphasis on formal sports there, which my recent teaching experience suggests to me is a horrible tradition that should be excised from the schools that embrace it. I've seen too many bright kids recently who get obsessed with moving balls from A to B and neglect the important stuff as a result, all with their schools' explicit blessing.

That English Olympiad was a neat thing. I hadn't considered myself a writer at all until some of those damn good teachers spotted and nurtured my latent ability, leaning on my love of science fiction in particular (remind me to post my mini-play "Starship Crucible" here sometime). And that year's English Olympiad, conveniently, had a scifi theme. Never really got comfortable writing conventional fiction, but I'm still blabbing on here, which is nice for me.

1990 – 1996:

Primary education at Rand Park Primary School, except for 3 years spent in Germany at a German-medium school (Grundschule Königstein, 1991 - 1993).

Rand Park was a pretty conventional late- and early post-apartheid government model C school. The  principle was an exceptional stickler for fussy little rules and discipline over anything else. It wasn't a nice environment, but the education was at least good. My years in Germany, on the other hand, were a fantastic eye opener, as my first look at a different way of teaching. Half the reason I went ot Aurora is that it used to be quite like my German school, with little regard for frivolous appearances and sport, just a good, sensible focus on learning. Also, I learned German and we had a castle, so I liked Germany.

Volunteer Experience

2003 – Present:

Alzheimer’s South Africa, National Office, Randpark Ridge

Position: Ad hoc office & technical volunteer

Duties have included basic IT support, writing & proofreading, and the filing & sorting of mail, membership data and the organisation’s private library.

My mom started working for Alzheimer's SA in late 2002 or early 2003, and from about mid 2003, I occasionally went in to fix computers and things, or helped with work she brought home. Sometimes I did it quite frequently, sometimes there were months between these odd-jobs. I think the last thing I did for them was in September this year?

I've done little specks of other volunteer work over the years (half a day with Habitat for Humanity, some envelope stuffing for... can't even remember who now), but nothing big enough that I'd want to include it on my CV.


I've also been around for the formative stages of two different NGOs. First, there was Amnesty International RAU, a branch of Amnesty International SA started by friends in my politics class. Sadly, that didn't last more than a year, and my own contribution was minimal; I bought more gingerbread abused women from their stall that one time than anyone else, but that was about it. Then there was an attempt a year ago or so to form a formal Gauteng Skeptics society, and I tried to contribute more there in the way of ideas, but that didn't get off the ground... yet!

And I suppose my association with the USS Dauntless is technically voluntary, but it's mostly a fan club, not too relevant to my CV. The really good stuff, the blood drives and such, aren't organised by me.

Work Experience

2011 (July) - Present:

XL@Science, Bryanston

Position: Resources Manager

Responsible for organising educational software and online content for students' and other tutors' use, maintaining and organising computer and laboratory equipment, and preparing study and assessment documents for students. This position was created to formalise work I had started on my own initiative in 2010.

2010 (August) – Present:

XL@Science, Bryanston

Position: Senior Science Tutor

Teach small groups of students from various schools, grade 10, 11 and 12 Physical Science, grade 8 and 9 Natural Science, as well as International Cambridge Curriculum Physics and Chemistry. Duties include teaching standard curriculum content, identifying and addressing individual student shortcomings, and encouraging a general appreciation and understanding of science beyond the standard curriculum. Promoted to Senior Tutor, October 2012, with added responsibility of supervising other tutors.

My current job, though you can see it's technically split into two different bits. I'd have to say my current boss is probably the best boss I've had - very encouraging and supportive and a nice guy - aside from the money thing; I could do with more of that. If I had to do this job forever and could afford to live off it, I'd be ok with that, because I love science and I can see I'm making some difference with some of the kids, and it's nowhere near as stressful as real teaching. But I feel I could do more, that I'm wasting my abilities.

2009 (January – August):

Landulwazi Comprehensive School (Gauteng Department of Education), Thokoza

Position: Grade 10 & 11 Physical Science teacher

Taught grade 10 and 11 Physical Science classes. Duties included preparation and presentation of lessons, student assessment, laboratory organisation and maintenance, and exam invigilation for all grades.

The most difficult job I've ever done. Heart-breakingly difficult. I don't want to talk about it again.

2007 (April – June):

Pop! Art and Culture, Randburg

Position: Sales assistant

Assisted customers with purchases, banked daily takings, organised stock and kept shop presentable. Responsible for running shop alone three days a week.

I was luckily able to pick this up again after NMA crapped out so soon, but it got sooooooo boring. Have you ever worked in a comic shop? You finish reading everything pretty soon. Literally everything, but it becomes just a blur of panels and speech bubbles. Then you rearrange everything. Then you have to dearrange it all again, because the boss likes it his way. They offered to promote me to store manager, but it was more responsibility for no increase in pay, and I was already desperate to escape. Retail is not for me.

2007 (March):

NMA Effective Social Strategies, Observatory

Position: Project administrator

Duties included conducting field research and data processing, primarily for social impact studies.

See complaints above.

2006 (December) – 2007 (February):

Pop! Art and Culture, Randburg

Position: Sales assistant

Assisted customers with purchases, banked daily takings, organised stock and kept shop presentable.

Got this through my friend, Scot, who worked there. I missed the main xmas rush, but there was still a lot of business for the first few weeks. Then I got the offer from NMA and moved off, until I came back. This was never intended as anything but a temporary job, a working holiday that I didn't have to leave home for.

2006 (November – December):

Alzheimer’s South Africa, National Office, Fairland (now in Randpark Ridge)

Position: Temporary receptionist

Processed incoming helpline calls and other telephone communication, greeted guests, reorganised office space, filed and sorted mail, membership data and the organisation’s private library.

Having done my honours research on them, I was already spending a lot of time there. They needed a temp to fill in until funding for a full-time receptionist came in, so I had a few weeks' bonus work as soon as my exams ended and this suited everyone very well.

2006 (February – October):

Department of Anthropology and Development Studies, University of Johannesburg, Auckland Park

Position: Student assistant (administrative)

Duties included front desk reception, processing and sorting incoming and outgoing student work, mass production of student documents, exam invigilation and assisting lecturers with library research.

Lots of fun, mixed in with my honours year. My natural orderliness came in really useful.

I see I've left out two earlier jobs. One was with jewelry retailer, Galaxy, as a sales monkey. Retail is not for me, plus they only actually called me in 2 random days a week for October 2002, then nothing at all during November. Really difficult leaving that job. Then there was packing 30,000 pencils and rulers for O'Kagan's Brand Aid in December 2000 or January 2001. It paid for my expenses at Icon 2001, when I found the cash tucked in my cupboard.

 Published Work

Guest host on Consilience: An African Science Podcast, episodes 24, 43, 47, 52, 57 and 61.

Not exactly 'published', but you give me a better category name to file it under. If you've been following this blog, you must surely know about my humble contributions to Consilience, as well as the inevitable driving adventures it causes me. This is the first and so far only thing of this nature I've been involved in.

Several articles in specialist hobby magazine, Diplomacy World, issues 101 – 104, 106 – 108.

That's right, I'm officially a published table-top gaming writer. I originally submitted a piece for a competition in issue 101 and (obviously) won that. After that, editor Douglas Kent asked if I'd write some more, and I did, until I ran out of ideas. I have more for him again, but just haven't gotten round to writing them up yet.

J. van Wyk, L. Kinghorn, H. Hepburn, C. Payne & C. Sham. 2007. “The international politics of nuclear weapons: a constructivist analysis.” Scientia Militaria: South African Journal of Military Studies. Vol 35(1).

My sole academic writing credit so far. Jo-Ansie van Wyk was a guest lecturer we had in Politics 3, who took it upon herself to help the kids with the best essays that semester combine their efforts into a publishable piece. This was the result. Most of the credit should really go to Linda Kinghorn, who did the bulk of the work writing it all up, but I can point out my ideas lurking within it. (My original essay had been quite different, focusing less on actors' perceptions of WMD and more on the actual physical capabilities of different weapons; turns out, WMD is a bit of a junk term, very vague and sometimes unrealistic. Narrowing it from WMD to only nukes made it much more sensible.)

I might also have included here my contribution to Icon 2008, a roleplaying module entitled 'Lead the Way', for the Spycraft system. I gather it was well received, and I'm hoping to have another module done in time for Icon 2013.

Other Skills

• Extensive general knowledge
• Excellent writing skills
• Excellent English
• Conversational Afrikaans
• Conversational German
• Thorough computer literacy

The CV template I started using back in 200X had this section and I've never been entirely comfortable with it, but never cut it out either. My general knowledge really is magnificent. My Afrikaans and German are atrophying.