Re: Which? Telescope

From: Jon Isaacs (jonisaacs_at_aol.com)
Date: 11/13/04 

Date: 13 Nov 2004 01:17:04 GMT

>It was the same kick-*** response I'd tell my son! Learn to align or quit. I
think this way, the alignment of a main scope and a finder is relatively easy
task and only a bit of common sense is required. 

----
Again, you weren't there so you don't know what the actual issues were with
Gavin's scope. With your son, well, you ought to know that the scope was in
working condition and that it was a reasonable scope.
But you don't know this about Gavin.  
It is entirely possible that something serious was wrong so that alignment was
impossible. 
Personally if any of my three sons told me that he couldn't align the scope, I
would assume that something was wrong because I have confidence in their
mechanical abilities.  
>What is wrong with an honest appraisal of skills based on a person saying they
can't fly. You seem to advocate I push him off a ledge to prove his point. 
Some things to consider:
1.  Go back to your first assumption, that the scope was indeed alignable.  You
weren't there, you don't know what the real situation was.  I will harp on this
one because it is an important one.
2.  Even if he had difficulty aligning the scope the first time, I am confident
that he could learn with a little help and encouragement.
3. In the past 8 years equipment has come a long way in this regards.  The new
two screw finders on the Asian scopes are far easier to align than those old 3
and 6 screw finders were we using 8 years ago.
They are so simple and are so easy to use its amazing how long it took to
"invent" them.
>Well I don't do that. I listened carefully 
>to the poster, made an assessment, derived a conclusion, and decided his skill
set based on his post is insufficient with basic alignment required in
astronomy. I didn't fool him!
What you did was read one sentence and decide that someone was "hopeless."
Listening carefully you might have heard what I heard.....
I saw someone who was apprehensive and unsure of his mechanical skills.   I
suggest this is to be expected for a Newbie posting to a forum full of
technical guru's.
This does not mean he has no mechanical skills, rather it simply means he needs
a bit of help and encouragement to get over the hump.
>If you have management experience you'll learn to listen carefully to the
applicant. Frankly I do not recommend over promoting someone who has expressed 
>no confidence in his skill set, that's what I heard.
------
Fortunately this is not a management situation, it is a Teaching situation, we
are not paying people to do a job, we are helping them (and ourselves) to
learn.
I spend my days assisting graduate students in materials science/engineering
laboratory at a major university.  Many of them come in with GRE's of 800
across the board but with no common sense and practical experience in a
laboratory setting.
So what I do everyday is work with these "helpless" young people and help them
gain the experience and understanding that is necessary so that when they leave
4 or 5 years later with a PHd they will be competent and skilled at working in
a laboratory situation.  
Some have more difficulty than others, but with encouragement and understanding
and a few years of time, many of these seemingly "hopeless" students develop
the ability to not only solve the difficult analytical problems but to actually
be able to apply their analylical understanding to the real world.
 >> If you are not interested in taking the time to help Gavin, then don't
bother,  posts like yours are a disservice to those who are willing help.
>> jon
>
>Good for you "jon", but I think success requires a skill set, ah, and
geometric common sense may not be a transplantable quantity.
>
>The OP Gavin, classified himself as geometrically incompetent, and I agreed,
i.e. I didn't argue with Gavin. Now if Gavin lifts his appraisal of himself to
one that is tending to becme competent that's a different matter.
------
I suggest you go back and read your first post you wrote once again with the
ideas I have presented here.  
See what you see this time.  Remember that in this forum you ought to be a
teacher/nurturer rather than a manager.
Over the years I have written several thousand posts to S.A.A., many are
attempts to help and nurture newcomers and folks having problems, many are just
friendly chats, some are flame wars and some aimed at learning something.
I am confident that I have helped at least some folks such as Gavin gain the
self confidence and skill to feel better about themselves.
Putting out the message that someone who had difficulty aligning a finder at
the age of 14 is "hopeless" is a bad message in my view.  Not only have finders
improved but people grow and learn and we ought to be helping them.  Many
people read this forum as lurkers and looking for information.
--------
The bottom line here is best summed up I think by the following quote:
"Everything is easy if you know how to do it."
You know how to align the finder so it seems easy to you.  
So, I have taken a lot of time writing this in the hope that you will come to
the understanding that people grow and learn with time and help and that their
own self-options are often the result of frustration and disappointment and are
often easily over come by simply a helping hand.
Best wishes, clear skies
jon isaacs