Getting Your Dream Job
First, let’s set aside the insanely inefficient circling want ads in the newspaper, and carpet bombing every employer within a 5-10 mile radius with your résumé. That’s about getting a job, any job, and purely expedient when you’re between everything flowing out in monthly bills and day to day expenses and next to nothing flowing back into your bank accounts (plural, as in checking and savings).
Instead, let’s do a little ’strategery’ - like mapping out the next 50 years or so of your life! There’s nothing on the boob-tube worth watching anyhow with all the reruns, and you cannot do anything about the news - or the apocalyptic terms in which it is always presented. With the late fall and early winter changes forcing you inside, this is a great way to spend an otherwise dreary afternoon, and it just might change your life for the better. We’ll assume that you know and can do what your college degree indicates - unfortunatly, that is NOT always the case, so if the shoe fits…
Not to be maudlin, but the best place to begin is at your funeral way, way off in the distant future. How to you want your obituary to read? What do you want to accomplish? Then simply plan backward, with each step practically screaming what had to obviously come before that, until you reach where you are today.
If you want to be rich and successful, you either have to born into a wealthy family, win the lottery, or somehow earn it. My guess is that most of us will have to settle for the latter.
For the traditional student, with a thin résumé, I recommend Alexandra Levit’s They don’t teach corporate in college, and for all for all entering freshmen, regardless of your major or the delivery mode for the instruction, Bill Coplin’s 10 things employers want you to learn in college. These will tell you in detail I simply don’t have the space for here the knowledge and skills you will need along the way:
- establishing a work ethic
- staying fit and healthy
- verbal communication skills
- written communication skills
- working with your peers and working in teams
- leadership
- gathering information
- quantitative skills
- asking the right questions
- solving problems
If you need inspiration or guidance, it’s all around you - all you have to do is check the perennially popular ’self-help’ books at your local library or bookstore. Obviously, some are better than others, but I have no reservations about recommending classics that have stood the tests of time like Napoleon Hill’s Think and grow rich and Dale Carnegie’s How to win friends and influence people, or Anthony Robbins’ Awaken the giant within and Unlimited power. Achieve your dreams: Six steps to accomplish your goals and resolutions by Susan M. Heathfield is also an excellent place to get started online. You can follow the links there, or Google to your hearts content.
The key is that this is an ongoing process, not an event; you’ve got to put it in writing. You’ve got to keep revising and updating it. You’ve got to keep moving forward, adding to your knowledge and experience, adding and improving your skills. You’ve also got to be honest with yourself, not choose goals and careers to please mom and dad or impress your friends. That’s the whole point of starting at the end and working backward. Was this the life you really wanted? You can change any of that now, but you won’t be able to then.
Join the Crowd!
The financial crisis started a long time before anyone really took notice. I can remember hearing students complaining about how difficult it was to get a college loan starting at least 15-18 months ago. I didn’t pay too much attention and dismissed most of it as simply more students returning to college to finish their degrees and a fixed amount of that lovely green stuff to go around. I did start to connect the dots late this past August when enrollment figures began to come in and there was a slight decline in the enrollment at the hypothetical ‘average’ community college.
A week ago, I started my usual daily scan of news sites across the Internet and ran across this: Survey reveals economy’s impact on schools and one I had missed from last Friday: Why some of the best and brightest skip college. I picked up another one: Tough times strain colleges rich and poor. Things are pretty bleak and aren’t likely to get dramatically better anytime soon.
For the most part we’ve been on a national vacation from history for far too long already. If there is any ’silver lining’ in this recession it would have to be the golden opportunity for everyone to review what it is they’re doing, where they’d really like to go, and exactly how much they’re willing to trade off for that renewed chance.
Case in point, I think, is the article today With students flocking online, will faculty follow? My contention is that they are and have been for some time, but with some major impediments too often ignored.
First and foremost, is the same annoying time-sink for any writing: it takes three to five times as long to keyboard anything in than it does to just blurt it out. For transcripts of lectures, syllabuses, study guides and other learning resources, you simply cannot go with the first cut - that’s not good enough for distance learning. My own experience with this in corporate training (where I don’t have Miss Thistlebottom, PhD breathing down my neck or the board of directors having fits of hysteria that their reputation might be inadvertently damaged) is that it takes me six to eight hours to adequately prepare for an hour of contact with the troops. My guesstimate is that it would take two or three semesters to realistically replace live lectures with an equivalent online course - and that’s with 100% of the teaching load devoted exclusively to preparing it; not too many institutions are going to be able to do that. (The only ‘jump start’ is that many of the younger instructors grew up with PCs and routinely use digital formats; older instructors who grew up with typewriters and Xerox copiers or commercial offset print shops (even if it was done in-house) will have to duplicate the final product into digital format. At best, these courses would be a third or a quarter of the time required for a new course to be developed from scratch. (Again, that’s only my guesstimate.)
Second, like you and me, the would-be online instructors have to somehow squeeze in this time within their existing schedule and other commitments.
One example of what can be done is in the wildly popular and ever growing Open Course Ware that has been popping up on university websites around the globe! This is NOT distance education, and you won’t get college credit for it; indeed, most people won’t actually get very far beyond downloading the zip files and exploding it on their local PC.
WGU Featured in TIME Magazine Article, “Go Western, Young Man”.
STORY: “Let’s not waste anyone’s time or money. You won’t find that phrase emblazoned on a T shirt, but it’s essentially the motto of Western Governors University (WGU), a private online school that has worked hard to prove it is anything but a diploma mill…”
Click here to read the full article.
Avoiding Procrastination
Procrastination. It is the curse of students everywhere, whether online or not. It haunts you for the rest of your life. It takes control of your inner being and transforms you into a creature that you would rather not be. OK….it’s October and I’ve already eaten too much candy corn. But seriously, procrastination can make or break your college experience. Putting off your schoolwork until the deadline is looming can kill you. It makes for sloppy work. It doesn’t allow time for revision or reflection. It usually ends up eating into your “other” time as you try to steamroll the project through at the last minute. The sound you hear in the background is my wife laughing out loud right now. She is wondering why I, of all people, am talking about not procrastinating. I’ll deal with that issue later.
Why do we put things off? Often times it is because we are overwhelmed. It might be that we are overwhelmed with the task at hand. It might be that everything ELSE in our life is so frantic that we can’t figure out how to work in one more thing. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step… yeah, so does falling off a mountain. How do you begin? Once again, it all comes down to organization. Henry has provided some excellent organization advice in several of his postings. I really enjoyed this one about setting goals. You have to find what works for you, though. I’ve already shared with you my problem with using things like Franklin Day Planners. (I’m hoping that if I keep mentioning their name that they might send me some freebies and an instruction booklet that will get me fired up.) What DOES work for me? I’ve got a couple of things that I can share with you.
So here is one of my favorite organizational things to do. (As if someone could actually HAVE a favorite organizational thing) Online learning, by its very nature, involves lots of writing. I have taken online courses from a couple of different universities and they have been fairly consistent with their written assessments (as good instruction should be). They have almost across the board given you the rubric by which the writing is scored. WGU provides Task Aids, as well. To help keep me on track, one of the first things that I do is to create a template for the project. I use the rubric to set up headings and subheadings. Then, and here is my favorite part, I use the Reviewing feature in Microsoft Word to make Comments to myself. (OpenOffice3, a freeware version of an Office Suite that is actually quite good, calls them Notes). Here is an article from TechLearning that shows more about doing this. As I go through the coursework or readings, I add additional notes to myself. When I am ready to actually start writing the darned thing, most of my work is already done. It is, of course, the “actually start writing” part where MY procrastination kicks in. But I at least have my template ready to go!
Information overload can also keep you from moving forward. My school district provides an abundance of resource materials for me as a teacher. A plethora of plans. A cornucopia of curriculum materials. Too much almost. Having been out of the general classroom for almost 10 years, things have changed. It is difficult to even know where to begin looking for the material that I need as I wade through my many options. I find myself freezing up sometimes. The same thing can apply to your online education materials. You’ve got the whole WWW thing going for you along with any required texts. I have found that, for me, it makes it easier to NOT have all of my materials for the quarter/semester/term/course piled up around me in one place. It is rare that I need them all for any given project. I pull out just the ones that I need and then put them back when I am done. (Alright…I PLAN on putting them all back when I am done…but I’ll do it later.)
And finally, my most important suggestion on how to avoid procrastination. When everything else is not working there is one more plan. I’ m still working on the details of how it will work. I’ll get back to you on it. Next month. Maybe.
What is a Blog?
I am an Elementary School teacher. I have worked with all different grade levels. We have covered the water cycle, the food chain, and the rock cycle. We talk about how kindness begets kindness. “What goes around comes around.” Life, it seems, operates in a circular pattern. A good blog, in my experience, should operate the same way. It functions best as a cycle. Return back to where you started. Like the water cycle and the food chain, it is essential for growth.
Let’s look at this blog as an example. The first part of a blog being cycle comes from responding to posts. If you just go to a blog and read passively, there is no give and take. No opposing thoughts or additions to the thoughts that were posted. If it never goes anywhere, it becomes stagnant. Once it stagnates, there is no longer a reason to return. On the other hand, if you respond to posts, conversations begin. Other viewpoints are presented. New resources are shared. In an active blog, subscribing to an RSS feed or email updates can keep you in touch with the changes that occur as they occur. This is a very essential part of your job, as the reader and visitor. On that note, take a moment now to scan through the postings here and respond to at least one of them. I’ll wait.
Oh…are you back already? Thanks for doing that. Your job doesn’t end there, though. Watch for responses to YOUR posting and respond to those, as well. You will watch the wealth of information grow exponentially on a Blog when readers are active.
So why HAVEN’T you responded before? Maybe the post just didn’t seem to apply to you. Maybe you came in search of specific information and that particular posting was not it. That’s OK. We can’t be all things to all people, but we can try to meet as many needs as we can. Although I AM an Elementary School teacher and a father of four, my mind reading abilities are severely weakened by the narrow bandwidth of the Internet. My feelings will not be hurt if you reply to a posting of mine by saying, “Although this was probably useful to someone, it wasn’t me. I REALLY needed to find out more about…..” (OK….don’t everyone rush out and start posting that response to all of my postings! That WILL hurt my feelings.) Go ahead..reply to someone’s posting on this Blog. I’m just going to rearrange my desk until you get back. Hey…glad to have you back. Thanks for taking the time to make this a great place to be.
Another great way to get the most out of this Blog (or any Blog) is to check out the links that they have share with you. Sometimes we try to put them into the postings. Other times we will add them to the Blogroll located on the right hand side of this Blog.) Take a moment to read through some of the links over there. I have always particularly enjoyed Lifehacker. It has been a source of technology links and ideas for several years for me. Check out ELearner.Com News Blog. You will find all kinds of links within the articles, or postings. You will also find additional links on their menu on the left for additional Blogs. And now you are off and running. One link leads to another to another to another. It reminds me of the children’s story books that allowed you to choose the direction that you would like to go. In that way, you and I could both go the Elearner site and end up in an entirely different place. How wonderful it would be for you to come back and tell me where YOU went. Share with me something wonderful that YOU found that I might have missed by going off in my own direction.
And so, I am going to share a link with you. TOP 100 Education Blogs It is a link to a page of links. It covers a wide range of topics that deal with online education. I don’t have the time (and my wife would kill me if I took it) to go off and explore ALL of them. Go find something useful. Bring it back here and share it with me. Keep the cycle going!
