The training gap

A conversation with a friend this week gave me a chance to catch up on what's been going on with a mutual acquaintance I hadn't seen in a long time.

Here's what he's been up to: curing AIDS. Really. Unfortunately not quite there yet, but he and his team have made some very interesting progress, and their nanomedicine start-up is in among the front-runners for the Start-Up of the Year award.

It makes my own intellectual achievements over the course of the past five years or so (calculating the grocery budget, passing java, managing not to drool on myself in public) look rather unimpressive.

But then, I'm getting to a point in life where many of my friends' professional achievements make mind look less-than-impressive in comparison. That's not a bad thing - the world needs doctors and lawyers and computer programmers, and none of them are going to be me, so it's nice that someone else volunteered.

What's embarrassing isn't the difference in job titles (I work in what could optimistically be called the media; if I have a job title, it's "the one who goes on maternity leave all the time"). It's the training gap. Namely, the extreme difference in the time it would take my neighbor the doctor (for example) to learn my job and the amount of time it would take me to learn his.

Him doing my job:

Me doing his job:

That said, I have no regrets. I'm glad I spent the last few years helping small people become slightly larger people. And hey, I'm probably learning all sorts of valuable skills that could be used to, say, interact well with rude clients (as long as they don't spit up on you, it's not so bad, really). Or even work as a police negotiator ("Let the hostages go RIGHT NOW.... That's it, I'm going to count to three."). It's not curing AIDS, but it's a start.