Abstract

After 35 years working in Education, I am, arguably, no longer an outsider to the world of education, with the last 25 years in Higher Education. However, while I was at secondary school, my dad’s sage advice was ‘get a trade behind you son, and then you’ll be alright’. What he meant was having a trade and becoming a tradesman in something, meant being able to earn money from my certified skills as a plumber, bricklayer, or electrician to whomever might pay for them: i.e., to employ me.In my dad’s view the only way to be useful to others, in a manner that one might exist professionally in life, was to repair or make stuff. Becoming a teacher was not on my dad’s list of useful things to do. Education was a place you visited; stepped into, took what you needed and stepped away from, back into the ‘real world’ of work. Born from my background in sport and engineering, this autoethnographic opportunity traces some characteristics of how I learn, and continue to learn, plying my ‘trade’ of helping others to learn, that others may relate to or find some sense of being not-so-lost in Higher Education.