Tuesday, June 1

I have spent most of the day in Arcada reading and writing.

The VAKEN project (which for some reason people have taken to spelling in all caps – I must ask why) has taken a lot of my thinking time recently which has proved very useful because it turns out that everything I think about VAKEN has complete relevance for the third paper of my doctoral plan.

My problem: VAKEN should provide learning tools for learning so-called soft skills, but I can find no real consensus at all about what we should count as soft skills. I have found an article, for example, called The 60 Top Soft Skills for Work which includes Being Drug Free as soft skill number 20. Now, you may take any attitude you want about recreational drugs in the workplace, but I can’t imagine anyone, except presumably the author of this essay, regarding not taking drugs at work as a skill of some kind.

What other “skills” does this list contain, you might wonder. “Understanding what the world is all about” gets listed as skill number 51 while “Good work history” counts as skill number 26.

Spending the day reading this kind of stuff serves to convince me that I certainly do not have skill number 51. I demonstrate this by sitting on the bus one stop longer than usual, and getting off at the gas station.

Once I have crossed the road safely (skill 73 on my forthcoming list) I turn round to take a picture. Then walk home in the belief that summer has actually arrived.