• Question: whats proudest thing you have ever done while working?

    Asked by chlooee to Jed, Alex, Chris, Harriet, Ken on 12 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by fedge.
    • Photo: Jed Ramsay

      Jed Ramsay answered on 12 Mar 2012:

      When I started to work as an engineer, my boss back then had a good idea of getting me to work in a gang to get some experience. What this meant was, that rather than be in the office on a computer for a lot of the time, I got put with 4 guys who were all at least 60 and had been working outside building things on the rivers all their life.

      I then spent the next 6 weeks working with these 4 guys and helped them to build a new weir at a place called Otmoor. The weir is a set of gates on a river that can be closed or opened to control the flow of water. What was great about this was that I worked with my hands and tried every type of power tool, machine and process you can imagine on a building site! So I used huge drills, flame cutters, huge bashing tools, compacting and smashing tools and I was terrible with all of them!! The 4 old guys I was with would be so much better at everything it meant I learnt so much from them that I still remember it all today, over 10 years later.

      So I guess that is my proudest experience, as I learnt so much and was also really proud when the weir was finished and it works well – despite my poor skills with all the massive power tools!

    • Photo: Ken Gibbs

      Ken Gibbs answered on 20 Mar 2012:

      In 1967, one of the maths classes that I was given to teach was made up of seriously brilliant 14 year old pupils. I had trouble keeping ahead of them. During that year, I was asked by my headmaster if any of my pupils from that class should be sent to sit the South African Maths Olympiad ? I said, “Yes, all of them.” The headmaster was taken aback because usually only one or at most, two pupils would be sent from any one school, and here I was suggesting that all fourteen of them should go – from one class ! I pointed out that, actually, only 13 really should go, but not including the 14th pupil would make him feel terrible. All of them went, while my headmaster kept muttering that he shouldn’t have given in so easily.

      About six months later, I was called to the headmaster’s office – and I went, wondering what I had done wrong this time ? He invited me into his study and announced that the Maths Olympiad results had just been announced. What he said next astonished me. He told me that in the top ten places in the Maths Olympiad that year, our school had taken no fewer than four of them, all from my one class of 14 year-olds.

      The Olympiad is NOT a test of how good your teaching is but rather a test of the intelligence of those taking the test. Was I ever proud of those pupils ? You have to believe it !

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