I have no objections to Cecil’s definition, but I hate the word professional. It seems to me that most the people I’ve heard use it mean “unemotional”. Oh yeah? Why don’t you try being unemotional you jerk.
I have never heard the term used to mean “unemotional” and expect that interpretation
arises from a typically confused late-20th century American schooling.
I have heard it to indicate behavior appropriate for a particular business or other formal
setting, such as a police officer being polite to the point of addressing a drunk driver as “Mr.”
Referring to this column, I presume: What makes a man a “professional”? - The Straight Dope
And unless it was a joke, the word “the” should be removed just before “Gstaad” at the end of the column. It’s not like Sudan or Crimea used to be, or The Hague still is: Gstaad - Wikipedia
Some professionals should do their work dispassionately. I don’t want an emotional accountant.
“Unemotional” and “behavior appropriate for a particular business or other formal
setting” are very often the same thing.
“Professional” really has two meanings. One is touched on by the column; the other, much broader, meaning simply refers to any means by which a person earns a living. If your hobby is fixing old cars, you’re a shade-tree mechanic; if you work in a repair shop, you’re a professional mechanic.
So’s your old man!
I’d heard that the three classic professions were, lawyers, doctors and priests. Most other “professions” these days fall into the merchant class.
A professional setting is not typically one for being overly emotional. Crying, yelling, cursing and swearing - these are not appropriate in a professional setting. Neither is making wisecracks.
But that use of “professional” as well as the dichotomy between an amateur and a professional are different uses than the one that the questioner asked about. Cecil addressed the question that was asked.
The dating sites and whatnot are looking for white collar workers, not blue collar workers. They want dentists and bankers and accountants, not car repairmen and factory workers and construction workers.
No, they are never the same thing, and saying so is typical of the specious homogenization
and blurred distinctions that modern education foists upon us.
Even if professionalism always connoted unemotional behavior the word “unemotional” would
describe only one attribute out of the many necessary to define what it is to be professional.
Similarly the word “intelligent” would be inadequate to describe what it is be be a theoretical physicist.
Of course highly emotional behavior may be usefully employed in numerous prefessions,
such as sport coaching (although not all successful coaches are highly emotional, at least on the sidelines).
I’ll go along with this.
And a fairly common response is “That’s so unprofessional.”
Yes, professionals can behave unprofessionally. I hope that’s not intended as support for the idea that unprofessional behavior is acceptable for a professional.
Rarely, unless the behavior is somehow abusive, such as Woody Hayes slugging opposing fans and players,
or Bobby Knight throwing a chair onto the court.
There is nothing unprofessional about properly vented emotions. The great coach Vince Lombardi
was a master of it.
There are many senses. In theatre, for example, at least on the east coast of the United States, a professional theatre is one with a union contract. A professional athlete is, traditionally, one that gets paid anything at all (ha!-ha!). But it does get complicated. For example, I’m definitely a professional computer programmer, definitely an amateur scholar of 18th-century theatre, and definitely an amateur actor, but I really don’t know whether I should be called an amateur or a professional opera singer.
Then the major point to be made is that the standards (and expectations) of professional behavior vary according to profession. A surgeon who tears into a scrub nurse because she handed him the “wrong sponge” is arguably less professional than a football coach who snarls at an offensive lineman for causing a drive-ending false start.
To a large extent, yes.
In your example I would think the surgeon is certainly being unprofessional, for
reasons that are not arbitrary.
Calmness is surely always important during surgery. The increased blood pressure
that attends anger may impair the fine-tuned dexterity needed by the surgeon, and
the mental distraction that attends being degraded may impair the ability of the
nurse to perform any of several functions. I do not see how anger can do anything
other than reduce the effectiveness of a surgical team.
A football player, in contrast, thrives on the anger, so It is much less clear that
an angry football coach might impair the effectiveness of his players. In fact, many
players might be positively motivated by a coach’s anger.
I think most references to “professional” behavior in that sense are not thinking of coaches motivating players during games (high excitement), but rather office settings.
Yes, situations differ. A coach smashing a chair over his player’s head could be considered “unprofessional”. There are probably better words, however.