I think it is fair to say that this year has been challenging for everyone. However – not to brag – but this semester has been pretty good for me. In general, I have been very distracted and whilst I might not have had my best semester work and marks wise, university has certainly kept me focused.
BCM313: The Future of Work has been an interesting subject for me. I went into it expecting a typical university course with lectures on the topic, research essays and projects, which I got, but the approach was different. Instead of an in-depth examination of industries we would be working in and how those might change, the focus was on us. We were encouraged to look at ourselves, our values and what we wanted from our working futures. Drawing heavily on ideas of storytelling and defining values, the subject provided a framework to reflect on who we were as individuals.
I really enjoyed the reflectiveness of the subject and learnt a lot about myself, especially by listening to other’s experiences in the tutorial classes. We looked at Michael White’s theory of ‘The Absent but Implicit’, to examine our reactions to values and situations we had been in as part of some in-class exercises. I found this to be a helpful theory to apply to the class discussion times as well. In many cases, my fellow students would share stories where they acted in a certain way based on the values they felt to be important (for example, being able to stay in the area they grew up for work). Listening to these stories and applying the theory of the absent but implicit, I identified some of my own values by accident, for example, I like the idea of relocating for work.
Another aspect of the class which I enjoyed was the interview assessment. This was a values driven interview rather than the more surface level dates and times kind of interview with which I was more familiar. This was a valuable learning experience for me as it was an opportunity to try another interview style that is not only highly valued in the workspace, but also required a different approach. The narrative interview required an approach where moving from topic to topic had to happen more smoothly and needed to be driven primarily by the interviewee. Whilst this applies to standard interviews, it was crucial to capture the narrative aspect of the interviewee’s story, as opposed to their more isolated responses to individual questions. I found this challenge, coupled with the idea of uncovering underlying values and unconscious reactions to be a fun challenge. As someone who would like to work in film and documentary, I was able to expand out my interviewing skillset in a way which I felt would be very applicable to my future work and helped enlighten me to some of my own values.
Overall, I can say that the highlight of the subject was the connections in class. I’ve previously found BCM classes to be more forced when it comes to the student’s interactions with each other, but the class developed a nice community atmosphere as the semester progressed, and for me became a refreshing end to the week where I was able to chat, or just listen to everyone muddle through the year.
The Space Between The Sky 