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On hobbies...
Feb. 12th, 2006 10:57 amA recent off-topic post on another forum asked what kinds of hobbies translators pursue, which immediately brought to mind the "fun" I used to have reviewing résumés at Plenum, back in the day.
As an employer, you see, Plenum was, um, something else. The official work week was the minimum allowed by law at the time (37.5 hours, if memory serves) and all of the extra work - and there was always work left to be done - was left to be done by freelancers, the ranks of which typically included most editorial employees. This was a slick way for the company to skirt the time-and-a-half rule, but then again, nobody I knew was prepared to live on just salary, a subject that was discussed with animation, from time to time, during coffee breaks, with the general consensus being that, well, it couldn't be done on what Plenum was paying.
Most employees, including me, arrived by way of an employment agency, under an arrangement where the fee was paid by the employee (unusual, but not unheard of), whereupon the company would reimburse half the fee after 6 months of employment, and the remaining half on the one-year anniversary. That one-year date made it fairly easy for "management" (i.e., bottom-of-the-food-chain editors like me) to know when it was time to start looking for a replacement, because invariably folks were ready to move on the day after they were eligible to get back the second half of the fee - which by that time was like getting an "extra" two weeks' salary in your pocket.
In any event, most of the résumés I reviewed were barren of any value, except perhaps comedic, on occasion. I recall there was one young man who felt it helpful to tell me, as a prospective employer, that he had once been entrusted with "all aspects (except financial) of running a bumper-car ride" with a traveling carnival. (If I am not mistaken, his cover letter mentioned that he was "turgid with excitement" to start working at Plenum. Hmmm.)
Then there was the young woman whose major experience in life to that time had been a stint in the Peace Corps, the value of which was summarized by the phrase "...demonstrates my commitment to a situation."
There were others as well, enough to probably seed a book on how not to write a résumeé, but I am well and truly far afield...
What always got me - when I got that far in my review - was how so many people put down "reading" as a hobby. (I suppose one might think such a "hobby" might be a plus when applying for a job in an editorial office, no?)
Reading, a hobby? I don't think so. You may as well put down "watching TV" or "drinking beer" as hobbies. Which got me to thinking: What, exactly, qualifies an activity as a "hobby"?
I would maintain, purely on the basis of an emotional reaction, that collecting odd bits of twine and winding them onto a ball is not a hobby. I also think that, toutes choses ègales d'ailleurs, neither is reading.
The online Merriam-Webster provides a starting point for understanding the word "hobby": a pursuit outside one's regular occupation engaged in especially for relaxation. This pushes the question back one step, to: What's a "pursuit"?
The same source says a "pursuit" is: an activity that one engages in as a vocation, profession, or avocation, suggesting "work" as a synonym. Checking on "avocation" reveals it to mean either your usual job or "a subordinate occupation."
So, massaging all of that together, it would appear that, to be a hobby, an activity must/should have the characteristics of an occupation or profession, meaning... what? Let's try the following: For an activity to be a hobby, it must require a level of discipline or knowledge acquisition comparable to that of someone who works professionally in the field.
Thus, operating a ham radio station - which involves knowing the regulations, knowing about antennas, radio wave propagation, types of modulation, and so on - would qualify as a hobby by my tentative definition. Operating a CB radio, which requires little more than a knowledge of selecting a channel and using a push-to-talk microphone, would not.
Someone who tries out new recipes and new techniques for preparing food can, I think, fairly list "cooking" as a hobby (though there is probably a better word for it). Someone who microwaves ready-made dinners or who repeatedly cooks the same tried-and-true dishes as part of daily life would be hard pressed to add this to their résumé, methinks.
Stamp collecting is typically thought of as the quintessential hobby, and though I no longer collect stamps ('twas a boyhood avocation), I do remember that even with my undisciplined juvenile approach, I still managed to learn a lot about the world by handling those funny bits of paper. My friend Feht, on the other hand, gets excited sorting pre-1900 stamps from Germany, and can tell you - based on the interval between perforations and the color variations among several stamps that look identical to me - quite a bit more than I could imagine you'd want to know about the individual specimens. Can you collect stamps without being a hobbyist? I've seen it done, by a person who never looked at the stamps he bought, and who was only buying them as a long-term investment.
What about visiting museums or attending concerts or the theater? While excellent forms of relaxation, I don't know that these activities - by themselves - constitute hobbies. Under my tentative definition, they are as suspect as reading.
But can reading (or visiting museums, etc.) be a hobby? I suppose, under some circumstances, it might work. Say, if you wrote book reviews for the local paper or a club, or if you researched the movements of a character in a book, or if you compared the styles of two different writers, but I think that's pushing it. Anyway, if, say, you wrote fanfiction based on some series of books (e.g., Harry Potter), then I think your hobby would be more along the lines of "writing" than "reading."
Apropos of which, in distinction from "reading," I think "writing" can qualify as a hobby, except that most people who claim it as a hobby never really write anything.
With that, I seem to have run out of steam on the subject. Now, I can turn to finishing the last 3800 words of the translation due tomorrow without undue distraction.
Cheers...
As an employer, you see, Plenum was, um, something else. The official work week was the minimum allowed by law at the time (37.5 hours, if memory serves) and all of the extra work - and there was always work left to be done - was left to be done by freelancers, the ranks of which typically included most editorial employees. This was a slick way for the company to skirt the time-and-a-half rule, but then again, nobody I knew was prepared to live on just salary, a subject that was discussed with animation, from time to time, during coffee breaks, with the general consensus being that, well, it couldn't be done on what Plenum was paying.
Most employees, including me, arrived by way of an employment agency, under an arrangement where the fee was paid by the employee (unusual, but not unheard of), whereupon the company would reimburse half the fee after 6 months of employment, and the remaining half on the one-year anniversary. That one-year date made it fairly easy for "management" (i.e., bottom-of-the-food-chain editors like me) to know when it was time to start looking for a replacement, because invariably folks were ready to move on the day after they were eligible to get back the second half of the fee - which by that time was like getting an "extra" two weeks' salary in your pocket.
In any event, most of the résumés I reviewed were barren of any value, except perhaps comedic, on occasion. I recall there was one young man who felt it helpful to tell me, as a prospective employer, that he had once been entrusted with "all aspects (except financial) of running a bumper-car ride" with a traveling carnival. (If I am not mistaken, his cover letter mentioned that he was "turgid with excitement" to start working at Plenum. Hmmm.)
Then there was the young woman whose major experience in life to that time had been a stint in the Peace Corps, the value of which was summarized by the phrase "...demonstrates my commitment to a situation."
There were others as well, enough to probably seed a book on how not to write a résumeé, but I am well and truly far afield...
What always got me - when I got that far in my review - was how so many people put down "reading" as a hobby. (I suppose one might think such a "hobby" might be a plus when applying for a job in an editorial office, no?)
Reading, a hobby? I don't think so. You may as well put down "watching TV" or "drinking beer" as hobbies. Which got me to thinking: What, exactly, qualifies an activity as a "hobby"?
I would maintain, purely on the basis of an emotional reaction, that collecting odd bits of twine and winding them onto a ball is not a hobby. I also think that, toutes choses ègales d'ailleurs, neither is reading.
The online Merriam-Webster provides a starting point for understanding the word "hobby": a pursuit outside one's regular occupation engaged in especially for relaxation. This pushes the question back one step, to: What's a "pursuit"?
The same source says a "pursuit" is: an activity that one engages in as a vocation, profession, or avocation, suggesting "work" as a synonym. Checking on "avocation" reveals it to mean either your usual job or "a subordinate occupation."
So, massaging all of that together, it would appear that, to be a hobby, an activity must/should have the characteristics of an occupation or profession, meaning... what? Let's try the following: For an activity to be a hobby, it must require a level of discipline or knowledge acquisition comparable to that of someone who works professionally in the field.
Thus, operating a ham radio station - which involves knowing the regulations, knowing about antennas, radio wave propagation, types of modulation, and so on - would qualify as a hobby by my tentative definition. Operating a CB radio, which requires little more than a knowledge of selecting a channel and using a push-to-talk microphone, would not.
Someone who tries out new recipes and new techniques for preparing food can, I think, fairly list "cooking" as a hobby (though there is probably a better word for it). Someone who microwaves ready-made dinners or who repeatedly cooks the same tried-and-true dishes as part of daily life would be hard pressed to add this to their résumé, methinks.
Stamp collecting is typically thought of as the quintessential hobby, and though I no longer collect stamps ('twas a boyhood avocation), I do remember that even with my undisciplined juvenile approach, I still managed to learn a lot about the world by handling those funny bits of paper. My friend Feht, on the other hand, gets excited sorting pre-1900 stamps from Germany, and can tell you - based on the interval between perforations and the color variations among several stamps that look identical to me - quite a bit more than I could imagine you'd want to know about the individual specimens. Can you collect stamps without being a hobbyist? I've seen it done, by a person who never looked at the stamps he bought, and who was only buying them as a long-term investment.
What about visiting museums or attending concerts or the theater? While excellent forms of relaxation, I don't know that these activities - by themselves - constitute hobbies. Under my tentative definition, they are as suspect as reading.
But can reading (or visiting museums, etc.) be a hobby? I suppose, under some circumstances, it might work. Say, if you wrote book reviews for the local paper or a club, or if you researched the movements of a character in a book, or if you compared the styles of two different writers, but I think that's pushing it. Anyway, if, say, you wrote fanfiction based on some series of books (e.g., Harry Potter), then I think your hobby would be more along the lines of "writing" than "reading."
Apropos of which, in distinction from "reading," I think "writing" can qualify as a hobby, except that most people who claim it as a hobby never really write anything.
With that, I seem to have run out of steam on the subject. Now, I can turn to finishing the last 3800 words of the translation due tomorrow without undue distraction.
Cheers...
