specialty focus
Nurse turned comedian Georgie Carroll . Photo : Jodi Nash
A dolphin , a penguin and an orca walk into a bar
A nurse turned comedian gives her unique take on life .
Georgie Carroll interviewed by Conor Burke
The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias whereby people with limited knowledge or competence in a given intellectual or social domain greatly overestimate their own knowledge or competence in that domain relative to objective criteria , or to the performance of their peers or of people in general .
Or so says the Britannica online encyclopedia .
16 | nursingreview . com . au
Basically , it ’ s people who are not good at stuff , thinking they ’ re really good at stuff . I had to look that up when Georgie Carroll brought it up in our interview . She actually told me to look it up , in that firm , jocular way that she has .
It ’ s the northern English accent . At points lyrical and light-hearted , but also stern and forceful , at least to a former Londoner like myself .
We ’ re talking about the career change she made when Messrs Dunning and Kruger came up . Georgie is a veteran nurse of both the UK and Australia , but is now perhaps better known for her comedy .
“ I ’ ve got this obnoxious arrogance to me that I ’ m good at stuff before I am good at it , and then later on I realise how shit I am ,” she says .
I had asked her if she was more nervous before that first hospital shift , or that first time on stage .
“ And then I put the work in and I did the same with comedy as well . The first one I thought , ‘ I ’ m so good at this . I ’ m the best comic that ever lived ,’ and I was like that as a nurse , and now looking back I was like ,” she interrupts herself . “ It ’ s called the Dunning-Kruger effect .
“ Like you start stuff and you think you ’ re amazing but your skillset is shit , and then you go to the next bit where your skillset is way better but you don ’ t think you ’ re anywhere near as good and you start