#and as someone who is going to start a stem based graduate program in three months i think i should be more embarrased about that

[ms-demeanor]

My friend says not to vote in the upcoming election because our liberal establishment is no different from fascism and because Trump's policies are merely an extension of existing policies (like the ICE concentration camps that were established under Obama). How would you, being a leftist like me and my friend, respond to this attitude?

When I was in high school there was one cataclysmic, catastrophic, Very Important school board meeting.

It was a perfect storm of religious freedom, LGBT Rights, and Holy Shit You’re Talking About Taking Daycare Away from Students Who Are Parents.

The first thing, religious freedom, was exceptionally stupid but I think it’s a great example of how shitty the suburb I lived in was and what we were dealing with. Basically the D&D club that I started was accused of being Satanists and the Campus Christian Club was trying to get us shut down for worshipping satan. (I live in the fucking WORST part of LA County, I swear). The defense for the D&D club was pretty simple: If we’re worshipping satan as an on-campus activity at lunchtime we have every right to do so just like the Campus Christian Club an in fact if the Campus Christian Club got us shut down for practicing a different religion they’d made a very effective argument for shutting down their Praising Christ on-campus lunchtime activity.

The second thing was ANOTHER conflict with the Campus Christian Club - this was more serious. This was “High schoolers shouldn’t be exposed to deviant lifestyles and therefore we need to shut down the Gay/Straight Alliance.” At that point the GSA was also very new and I was also the VP of it. Spoilers: we were allowed to continue existing and we had speakers come in from time to time - we had grownups who talked to us about dealing with homophobia and resources for what happened if your parents kicked you out; we had a trans woman in her 50s come and talk to us (in 2003!) about transphobia and dysphoria and how to cope. The adviser handed out a packet to all of us that had the suicide hotline number right at the top, I know at least three people used that number the first year. The defense for the GSA was actually another handy-dandy page out of the ACLU handbook: The Campus Christian Club’s definition of deviance is something they have a right to hold but not to impose on other people - if you ban the GSA based on being ‘deviants’ you are imposing someone else’s belief system on us so knock it off unless you want to be a fun LA Times story.

The third thing didn’t have ANYTHING to do with the Campus Christian Club and was much worse because it had to do with funding and teen moms. The third thing was “The district believes it’s a waste of money to continue to pay for childcare at the district continuation school; if you can’t afford childcare you should have thought of that before becoming a teen mom, good luck getting a babysitter while you’re trying to finish high school.” Four of the students from the continuation school had showed up with their children and their defense of the daycare program was basically (and understandably) “What the fuck you fucking ghouls we just want to finish school and it’s one fucking daycare provider on campus you already have to pay the insurance for childcare providers for other schools in the district what the fucking fuck.”

The D&D Club, GSA, and Childcare for Teen Parents Program were all allowed to continue existing.

By one vote.

By someone who had recently been elected to the school board.

By four votes.

Four people went out and voted that November. Four people filled in a bubble on a ballot.

The GSA did fundraisers to pay for STI testing and suicide prevention. My friend Michelle graduated on time with her daughter waiting in the crowd. Knowing that adult trans people could survive and exist and thrive and love themselves was lifesaving information for a few kids in the GSA.

Four votes. If four people stayed home that’s a hundred fewer STI tests, that’s wondering if Michelle would ever be able to get a job when she didn’t have a diploma and couldn’t hire a babysitter. That’s three dead queer kids and another two homeless.

And it didn’t happen. Because four people filled in a couple of bubbles one night in November.

Voting is not activism but it is by no means useless. If your friend is incapable of distinguishing fascism and liberalism that sounds like a them problem and it sucks to be them; that amount of nihilism is hard to carry around.

People who criticize leftists for “electoral apologism” or whatever for voting are the “yet you participate in society, curious. I am very intelligent” comic

Yeah, the system’s shitty. Yeah, it sucks and should be overthrown. But it’s not overthrown YET so we may as well take advantage of the few areas of harm reduction the system allows. Voting doesn’t mean you STOP doing direct action or that you stop pushing for change, it just means you’re doing the single easiest real-world thing to alleviate suffering. And if it doesn’t work who gives a fuck - you did the bare minimum and it cost you a small amount of time.

Vote and then go hand out food in the park or cut the valve stems off a cop car if you’re feeling angsty about conceding to the system.

(also FUCK, you have no idea how much I hate having to defend the Obama administration but please go talk to a trans person about whether it is easier or harder to get healthcare in their state under Trump or under Obama. I fucking hate liberals but I don’t think that they’re actively interested in overturning Roe V. Wade. Fuck this political purity culture and go learn about harm reduction.)

[qqueenofhades]

Hi there. I've been scrolling through your "school stuff" tag but thought I'd ask directly - how did you find the transition to actually moving outside of the U.S. for your PhD? I'm looking at something similar and I'm wondering about your experience with the logistics (finding somewhere to live, visa, etc!). Thanks in advance, and congrats on being a doctor!

Oh lord. Why would you do that to yourself? I feel like that tag is mostly just intense kvetching, bogglingly obscure nitpicking complaints, and existential despair, and/or yelling at various institutions and/or people who could not do their god damn jobs. If you have read that and still actually want my advice, I salute you. I’m presuming you’re asking in regard to the UK, since it’s the only experience I can speak on, so hopefully that’s applicable?

In my case, I studied in the UK for a year as an undergraduate, at Oxford, so I was already familiar with the process (at least somewhat) when it came time to do it again for the PhD. Upfront, we must acknowledge the ugly deformed rabid elephant in the room that is Brexit, and the idiotic reform of UK immigration policy currently ongoing. Long story short, they seem to think they can function without low-skilled migration, that the domestic UK workforce will just happily lark off to do the jobs that working-class EU migrants have been doing, that this won’t totally bomb-crater the NHS, that they can run a country by basically only allowing in PhDs in STEM making over £30,000 a year, etc… so yes, this is a complete joke of an immigration policy and it’s what happens when you elect floppy haired xenophobic douchewads and their nightmare party as prime minister! ANYWAY, they’re introducing a points-based system from 2021, which may not affect you for an application under Tier 4, but UK immigration policy is going to have a lot of very stupid reforms and you’ll want to keep on top of those. If you have an offer in hand from a UK university, it is made somewhat easier, but you’ll still need to budget for processing costs, an NHS subsidy paid in for every year you will be there (something like $300/year), and a trip to a UK visa office to have your fingerprints and biometric information taken. If you don’t live near one, that will be travel expenses and so forth. You then have a temporary visa issued for first entry into the country, and a Biometric Residence Permit which you pick up at your university.

That, at least, was the process the last time I applied for a student visa, and it may all have changed by the time you do it. As noted, there are a lot of upfront visa costs, so you’ll want to be aware of those. You need a number of supporting documents, including offer of study, proof of income or ability to financially support yourself (since most Tier 4 visas either don’t let you work or only work a limited number of hours), proof of English proficiency (as a native English speaker/person from an English-speaking country, you won’t need this), and so on. You can’t start the process before you have the offer, but you’ll want to start it as soon as possible afterward, because it can take several months, and obviously needs to be done before you can travel. You will also want to open a UK bank account as soon as you arrive, which can be done once you have your residential address and a certificate from the student services office at your university verifying that you are in fact a student there. It’s pretty difficult to pay out of non-UK accounts, at least for monthly/recurring transactions, and there are international fees. You will also want a UK phone. I still have my UK phone/phone number despite my current hiatus in America, since most carriers offer free or low-cost roaming in Europe (though subject to change with EU trade negotiations), which is nice. I pay only a little extra to have Global Roaming in North America, so I can still use my phone as if I’m in the UK. If you’re planning to be traveling, this is a nice perk to have.

As far as finding programs goes, I’m sure I don’t need to give you advice on what you’re interested in and where you’re looking. Obviously, universities in the UK are grouped as “Oxford and Cambridge” and “everyone else,” though there are also rankings within those. I have been at both of these; Oxford as an undergrad, and then I did my PhD at a large public university in the North that ranks within the top 10 in the UK. The North will be much lower, living-cost wise (actually, if you can swing it, just… don’t do it in London, the cost of living in London is out of control. Of course, if the program you really have your heart set on is in London, then go for it, but just be aware of what you’re getting into). It’s also a rule of thumb that you don’t go anywhere for a PhD unless they’re paying you. Don’t self-fund a PhD, it’s just too expensive, and any decent university will give you some kind of financial stipend. I had a scholarship that covered three years of full tuition at international rate, which was good, though I had to take out some living-cost loans. So if you’re trying to decide between two programs that have both accepted you, a situation I was also lucky enough to be in, it sounds crass, but: take the money. One university had already offered me the tuition/scholarship, while the other had accepted me but wasn’t sure about funding. So I took the one that paid the scholarship. You need every penny you can get. You will be comically, absurdly, unbelievably broke as a graduate student. I was looking back on it like “wow I really lived for four years on BUTTFUCK NOTHING.” It is not for the faint of heart; you will have financial stress along with academic pressure, and while I was lucky enough to have generous friends and family contributing to my living costs, I still barely scraped through. It is something you should be aware of.

I don’t know if you’ve studied in the UK system before (I’m assuming not), but the structure for a PhD is much less determined than in the American system. It will also vary from university to university, so it’s worth establishing contact with a potential faculty supervisor to ask questions and refine your project proposal. I made contact with my eventual supervisor at my PhD university before I actually applied there; I gave him my (much too broad and pretty unrefined) project proposal and what I was interested in, and he helped me tailor it into something that could be done in a feasible time frame and which would make use of his expertise and contribute to the field. Whatever you’re thinking about pitching as a thesis topic, you probably need to make it more specific. I don’t know what field you’re in; I’m a humanities/history person, obviously, so the rule always seems to be WRITE MORE, INFIDEL. But the point is, the UK system has much less structured time, and basically relies on you to have the self-motivation to go out and conduct the research and write it up, and if you’re someone more used to rigid requirements and classes and so forth, you might find it a little hands-off. If you’re like me and can just be set loose in your field of interest and do your own thing, you’ll like it. I feel like anyone who is serious enough about their subject to want to do a PhD has to be primarily self-motivating, but some people function better with clear guidelines, and those are not always forthcoming. I can’t count the number of times I wished my supervisors would just TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK TO DO, but they usually highlighted something and had me work to figure out how exactly to fix it. They weren’t negligent or uncaring or unsupportive, and the project became much better as a result, but yes, it’s on you to do, and it can again be frustrating.

As far as living, I didn’t try to rent a flat from afar, sight unseen, in my first year. I just registered for postgraduate campus housing, and lived with four predictably horribly messy roommates (why???!) before I managed to escape and rent a private flat for the next three years. You will need a guarantor with a UK address (i.e. not your parents in America) to sign on the lease agreement, especially if you fall below a certain income threshold, and go through the usual background checking and approval. If you want to have the place to yourself, it will be, as noted, much cheaper to find something you can afford in the North and not-London in general, though southern England and the London commuter belt will all be expensive. If you’re okay living with roommates, or you make friends during your program, it might work to room together and share costs, but I am a pathological introvert and don’t like people, so I lived by myself. 

Anyway. Right now, I am in the second round of applications for a Big Deal UK postdoctoral award, which would be for three years starting this fall if I got it, at another high-ranking large public university in the south of England. (So yes, everything that I just said about how much it costs to live in London/London suburbs is me playing myself). I would be applying for a Tier 2 visa (i.e. the permanent/settlement track/full-time work visa) if I got this, which would be another barrel of laughs and different requirements from a Tier 4. That is definitely unhatched chickens which we can’t count yet, as this is a highly competitive/prestigious award and there is absolutely no guarantee that I would get it, but it would mean that I would go through the international moving/visa application process for a third time, so I would once again become too unfortunately familiar with whatever bullshittery is happening now. Le sigh.

I don’t know if any of that is helpful; hopefully so. Let me know if you have more questions, and good luck.

[randomly-random-jen]

Uncalled For Actions (14/?)

A Girl Genius fanfic

When Gilgamesh Holzfäller is fourteen, he’s taken on as an apprentice to Baron Wulfenbach as part of a program to produce the next generation of leaders in the Empire–a group that will hopefully get along (although most see this as wishful thinking on the Baron’s part). He’s learned a lot over the months of shadowing the Baron, but nothing has prepared him for his most challenging assignment: confronting the skeletons in his closet.  

[Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | Part 15 ]

Part 14

"Not taking the bait, huh?" he continued, eyes sparkling with amusement. "Aren't you just a dedicated little thing? I wonder how dedicated, though." He stood, rifling in his coat while his companions--probably the same idiots from yesterday--snickered at his side.

There was a swish of metal on metal that made all of the hairs on Violetta's arms stand up and then a dagger landed ten centimeters from her left pinky. She didn't flinch--just glared at the knife. More feet entered her field of view while interest grew in the confrontation. She was sure some people were taking bets, and she didn't like her odds at the moment.

Another knife landed with a thunk between her hands, setting off additional rounds of betting. She never hated anyone more than she hated Martellus at this moment--him and his stupid games and always trying to make Violetta look bad.

What is his problem? She very nearly gave in to the urge to blurt the question but bit her tongue instead to keep quiet.

A moment, later, a third knife dropped past her face, wedging in the ground between her thumb and forefinger on her right hand, getting the tiniest twitch in her fingers. Sweat coated her skin and dripped into her eyes, forcing her to blink to clear them. She wet her chapped lips, tasting the salt then swallowed hard.

Martellus disappeared behind her where a knife skimmed her leg, landing near her knee. Another settled near her left boot while a third suddenly appeared next to her wrist--this time drawing a trickle of blood.

"Oops," Martellus said, "did that hurt?"

Violetta called on every training exercise she normally despised to keep still and control her breathing. She wasn't too worried about Martellus right now--he wouldn't do anything to seriously injure her with all of these witnesses, but he would enjoy humiliating her which just fueled her need to show him a fool.

"Damn, I'm out of knives," Martellus called. "Anyone got a spare or three." He laughed at his own lame joke as the other kids clamored to appease his request.

Violetta focused on her reflection in the large dagger directly ahead of her and prepared for the next knife to drop, but Martellus decided to change things up. The knife he dangled before her was more of a small sword. He pressed the flat side to her forehead--the steel feeling cool to her clammy skin then slowly he slid it up then over the top of her head and across her back.

He settled it between her shoulder blades, hilt resting against her tailbone and the tip scraping her collar.

Martellus pressed his mouth to her ear--his breath hot and heavy. "You should really learn to mind your own business, Violetta."

The implied threat froze her insides, setting off panic alarms in her head.

“Let's see how still you can be," he said loud enough the crowd could hear. "That point is sitting a millimeter from your brain stem--the smallest tremor could move it which would be very, very bad for you, little dumpling."

Violetta's arms ached as she fought to keep still and the knife was heavy enough to throw her balance off--nevermind all of the blood that had been pooling in her head the last half hour. Worse than the physical pain was the edge of panic wedging into her subconscious. She had no idea how she was going to get out of this short of Martellus showing mercy which was a hell of a long shot.

Her only option was to hope she could hold out long enough that he just got bored because she knew no one was going to take her side over Martellus--not even her own brothers who were somewhere in the cavern already doing nothing.

If Tarvek were here...

But he wasn't, and she had told him she didn't need him to protect her. She almost laughed at the irony and redoubled her efforts because she didn't want Tarvek finding out about this and proving him right. It would go right to his already-fat head.

Martellus squatted down in front of her again and tapped her nose. "How you doing, Violetta? Ready to admit defeat--you just have to say the words."

Not a chance in hell, she thought but kept her jaw clamped tight. Somewhere to her right, a boy shouted then a scuffle broke out, forcing the crowd to shift away from them. Violetta watched a boot come precariously close to stepping on her fingers. She still refused to move.

"Sounds like the natives are getting restless; you could get trampled. Just say the words and you're free to go. 'Martellus, you are so much better than me in every way, and I bow to your superiority.' Of course, you'll have to actually bow, too--it's only right."

Violetta rolled her eyes--he was so full of himself, and she bowed to no one except maybe Tarvek, but she worked for him, and there would need to be circumstances.

Someone suddenly bumped her side, causing the knife to slide down her back, the point now pricking her skin. A trickle of something slid over her neck, but she couldn't tell if it was sweat or blood.

"Uh-oh," Martellus said with a laugh that made her want to punch him.

Of course, most things he said and did made her want to punch him.

"What is the meaning of this," a voice boomed, echoing around the chamber.

The other students scrambled back to their stations, giving Violetta her first clear view of things. Several kids had stayed in their positions like Violetta, but most had given up and were now trying to decide if it was worth the effort to fake it.

Next to her, Misha lifted himself back onto his hands, but Viktor just stood at attention behind her. Martellus hopped to his feet, snatching the daggers from around her as he turned to the front of the room.

Herr Delmeck strolled purposefully through the chaotic lines. "Martellus von Blitzengaard, why am I not surprised? I was under the impression you graduated from my class already, but perhaps you've realized the sad conclusion that you don't know as much as you think you do."

"I've missed you, too, sir," Martellus answered smoothly.

"Then perhaps you'd care to join us."

Martellus started to walk away, the knives nowhere to be seen. "I'd love to, Herr Delmeck, but I'm needed at the summit."

"That wasn't a request, von Blitzengaard--in formation now."

Several kids snickered as Martellus cringed then slowly turned to take up the ready position next to Violetta.

Delmeck studied them a moment before returning to the head of the room. "Maybe you can help us in our lesson today."

"Which is?" asked Martellus sounding more bored than anything.

"We're having a discussion on the merits of routine versus spontaneity in the field. Half of the class believes in following routines because it's as it always has been while the other half responds to sudden changes because that's what was demanded. What are your opinions?"

Martellus thought it over a moment. "Routines, training, dedication-" he side-eyed Violetta "-are good starting points in any engagement. It's what you know and can keep you safe by reacting without thinking but being able to change based on circumstances is how you win because real life is nothing like training--it's unpredictable.

“On the other hand, following orders just because someone yells them could get you killed--you have to learn to trust your instincts.”

"Very good, Herr von Blitzengaard," Delmeck said with a nod.

"What?" Viktor shouted, his voice cracking in his apparent anger.

"Wait," said Misha, now sitting, "you mean there's no right answer. It didn't even matter if we followed the routine or did the flip?"

Delmeck stopped in front of Misha. "Ah, but you did neither, Herr Dohvoshki--you are dead."

"What was even the point?" asked Viktor.

"The point was to make you think. Training can take you only so far; you must learn to react to sudden changes, and as Martellus said, trust your instincts."

"Well, my instincts told me to be confused," Misha muttered.

"Yes, and that's why you are dead--your instincts need to be worth listening to before you act on them."

This got laughs from the other kids.

"Your instincts told you to follow my commands," he said to Violetta," because you trust me."

"Yes, sir," she whispered, ashamed of the way her voice quivered with exhaustion.

"And you stayed in this position because?"

Violetta swallowed hard, hoping her voice less croaky this time. "Because you didn't dismiss us yet."

Delmeck didn't respond right away, just strolled off.

"Such a suck up," Martellus said under his breath. "You learn that from Tarvek or does it come naturally?"

Violetta growled as her patience wore dangerously thin, but before she could give in to the urge to react, Delmeck returned to the front of the cavern.

"Class," he shouted, "at attention."

Despite her aching muscles, Violetta shot upright, back straight, arms at her side. Martellus and the others did the same without hesitation either.

"Violetta, Carmine, Delia, Warner, and Sanjay," Herr Delmeck called, "the five of you remained at your commanded positions even after I left and von Blitzengaard commandeered my class. I commend your dedication and your instinct to obey your trainer. You are al free to go."

Violetta let out a sigh of relief, her shoulders relaxing.

"The rest of you obviously need more lessons."

Not waiting to see what lessons the trainer had n mind, Violetta darted for the exit, snatching one of Martellus' daggers still in the floor near her foot. She bypassed the Smoke Knight dorms and didn't stop until she was on the other side of the castle.

Again, her instinct was to find Tarvek to tell him what happened so maybe Delmeck was wrong about her. She ignored the urge, instead, creeping through passages until she found her way to Tarvek's empty lab.

Chemistry wasn't her strong suit, but Tarvek had tutored her extensively for her last exam. That with the textbooks and equipment here she could try to analyze her potions to figure out what went wrong with her interrogation.

She laid her vials on a table then gathered her supplies using the lists Tarvek had her memorize for the tests then she stood there staring at the mess.

"I can do this," she said out loud but didn't feel much convinced. Before she could dwell further on her sure-to-be-failure, she forced herself to set up the burners and prepare samples like Tarvek showed her.

"I can do this," she repeated with more force. “I don't need Tarvek to hold my hand through everything." She still didn't sound too convincing but the longer she messed with the equipment, the more confident she felt

While the first test did its thing, Violetta finally allowed herself to relax, tossing her cloak onto a chair and stretching her sore shoulders. When her fingers brushed over a raised spot at the base of her skull, she vowed to make Martellus pay, and for that, she might have to ask Tarvek for help.

* * *

The afternoon meeting got off to a slow start. Gil skirted through the door just as the guards closed it, but the Baron and Prince weren't at the table. He took his seat beside Tarvek but neither acknowledged the other.

A servant arrived to fill the ink wells and deposit extra stacks of parchment then disappeared without a sound. Gil nearly asked the boy if he could get a snack--a piece of bread would do--but managed to hold his tongue. Minutes passed with nothing happening which gave Gil too much time to think about everything that had happened the last two days and wonder at what catastrophes lay ahead. 

He opened the folder in front of him and found his schedule for the week. Today's meeting was to end at six in the evening. According to the clock on the wall, it was half-past two--three and a half hours to go then no doubt countless more hours finishing his translations Tarvek had so kindly volunteered him for. Supper was to be served at seven in the guest dining hall or private quarters.

The next morning, smaller workshops were scheduled on various topics, but it looked like the Baron would be having private meetings. Gil didn't know what that meant for him--maybe more translating. More workshops and more meetings filled the afternoon with Thursday being more of the same.

Friday was another day of long meetings in the summit room with presentations by various apprentices. He groaned when he saw his own name penciled in at three--he had no idea what to do his presentation about. His father hadn't given him a choice when he made Gil an apprentice, but he'd thought it would be at least more exciting than school.

He was wrong.

With a sigh, he slipped the schedule behind his other papers and tapped the folder with his pen. Why weren't they starting yet?

Having nothing to do was almost worse than having too much except he had things he could be doing like translating or eating or sleeping off the growing headache. His other fingers joined the rhythmless beat of his pen while his grumbling stomach offered a counterpoint.

Tarvek suddenly grabbed both his hands, crushing all of his fingers together then signaled with his other hand to a guard. "Do you have any idea what the delay is?" he asked the older man.

"Apparently several apprentices are missing--they're attempting to track them down."

"Who's missing?" Gil asked, struggling to free himself from Tarvek's grasp.

"I do not know, sir."

"Thank you, sergeant," Tarvek told him, waiting until he returned to his station before releasing Gil.

Gil swiped half-heartedly with his pen, but Tarvek easily deflected.

"Any idea who's not here?" he asked.

Tarvek glanced around the room--people were milling about, obviously curious of the delay and bored. "No."

"There's only like fifty of us and aren't you related to half of these people?"

Tarvek sighed like the teachers often did with the younger students on Castle Wulfenbach. "There are actually fifty-six including you and me, and I may be related to many of them, but I'm not their keepers."

Gil frowned at his folder. "Wait, there's fifty-five apprentices for the Fifty Families? Do you people even know how to count?"

"It's complicated," Tarvek said with another sigh.

"Family always is," Gil muttered then quickly added, "or so I've heard." A couple minutes passed before Gil found himself tapping again. "But weren't some of them sick?" he asked suddenly, remembering that detail from yesterday morning. "That would narrow the field."

"Holzfäller, let it go--I have no idea who isn't here."

"I'm bored," Gil protested, "work with me here."

Tarvek pinched the bridge of his nose. "How are you even here? Of all the people, why did the Baron choose you when you can't even sit still?" He grabbed Gil's tapping fingers again and squeezed. "I can't figure out his angle. Seventy-five percent of politics is tedium, and the rest is schmoozing and you can't handle either. All of your fumbling around just looks bad on him and the Empire, so why you?

“My only conclusions are he picked your name from a hat and is unfortunately stuck with you or he's completely lost his mind."

Gil tugged his hands free, glaring. "I'm sitting right here."

"I know, and it's totally baffling. You should quit."

"What?"

Tarvek continued to watch the room, avoiding Gil's gaze. "I'm not trying to be rude, but you're not cut out for this life--being a ruler is-"

Gil crossed his arms over his chest. "I'm not here to be a ruler."

"Then why are you here?" Tarvek asked, finally looking at Gil.

Because I'm going to lead this Empire some day. He didn't say it out loud, though, and before he could formulate an acceptable answer, the door behind them opened and their fathers took their seats, bringing the meeting to order.

The afternoon progressed with little time to dwell on Tarvek's veiled insults or the fact that he sort of agreed with the weasel--Gil wasn't sure he was made to be a leader. It's a thought that haunted him at every meeting he was dragged to.

Finally, four hours later, recess was called for the evening and Gil was dismissed. He didn't wait around to be hauled back to the library to translate but had no idea where else to go so he followed the other delegates back to the guest quarters where they were preparing the dining hall for supper.

"Hey, Holzfäller," someone called, running up behind Gil. "You going to the party, right?"

"Party?" Gil frowned, racking his brain for a memory of a party listed on his itinerary.

"Yeah, a bunch of us are getting together tonight--strictly invite only."

A momentary thrill shot through Gil at the thought of being included--how often had he wished for that as a kid? "Sure," he answered without really thinking, "I'm in."

The kid clapped his shoulder then headed for his next invite just as a little sense cleared Gil's head. "Hey," he called after him, hesitating slightly until a name popped into his head, "Erik, is Sturmvoraus a part of this?"

"Prince Stick-Up-His-Butt-" Erik said with a laugh, "hell, no." Then he winked. "But his sister is."

"Okay," Gil said not sure if he felt relieved or disappointed, and the fact that he couldn't decide worried him almost as much as the sudden flare of anger over Erik's insult of Tarvek.

Why do I care what the other kids think of him? Plus, they're right--he's a stick in the mud. No one wants him around. Except a tiny part of him kind of did, and he hated it. He shook his head, veering towards his room to change--after all Anevka would be there. The thought made him smile as he snagged a buttered roll from a wheeled cart outside the dining room.

Maybe the day could be salvaged after all.

* * *

Gil waited for Barkley to go on his midnight walk before slipping out of their suite and following the barely legible directions scribbled on a scrap of paper he'd found after his shower. His heart raced as he snuck around the castle, reminding him of all the adventures he had as a kid--funny how Tarvek had been there for those, but now that they were in his house, he was nowhere to be found.

Which was for the best Gil reminded himself because Tarvek would probably ruin the fun somehow.

Taking a left, Gil found himself in a large sitting room with an entire wall of windows looking out onto a dark patio. According to the directions, he needed to cross the patio to a mirror sitting room. At least he thought that's what it said--he was worried about the literacy of whoever wrote the note.

He'd made it three steps into the room before someone grabbed his arm, yanking him to the floor behind a sofa, a hand slapped over his mouth as someone else shushed him just as a guard stomped through the room.

"That was close," said a girl--Celeste he remembered from a meeting last month.

"There's still two more," said the girl that shushed him.

Gil pulled away from the hand over his mouth to get a better look at the familiar voice. "Zulenna? What are you doing here? You're not an apprentice."

Zulenna scoffed. "I should think not, but my father and brother are here so the Baron allowed a pass to visit our families. Theo is here, too," she said, nodding past Gil.

Gil squinted over his shoulder just making out the glowing white eyes and teeth of his friend in the darkness.

"Hey, Gil," Teho whispered.

"Aren't you kind of young to be going to parties?"

Theo crossed his arms over his chest, eyes narrowing. "I'm twelve... and a half."

Gil snorted. You sound just like Seffie."

"Who?"

"Nevermind."

"Shh," Celeste hissed, ducking further behind the sofa and squishing Zulenna into Gil who fell against Theo. Another guard entered the room, looked around then exited onto the patio.

"What are we doing?" Gil whispered.

Celeste peeked over the back of the sofa. "We need to get across there, but the guards are changing shifts."

"They're very unpredictable--Uncle Aaronev says it keeps people on their toes."

Of course, she's a cousin, Gil thought. "Guess we know where Tarvek gets his sneakiness from," he muttered.

"We need a distraction," Theo said excitedly, eyes sparkling as he started snatching things from around the room. “I could totally make a misdirection gun from this and this-"

Gil slapped his hand over Theo's mouth as his voice pitched up an octave. "Calm down, Sparky," he said.

Theo mumbled something into his hand so Gil slowly pulled it away. "I just want to help."

"I know, but the solution doesn't always have to be so complicated. Watch and learn." Gil picked up a small solid glass orb from a dish on the side table then tossed it over the sofa towards the open patio door.

The four of them peeked over the sofa as the orb smacked the door frame, bounced across the room and into a large wall clock, setting it off then ricocheted off of a bookshelf into a lamp that wobbled precariously but didn't fall, and finally crashed into the patio door, spreading spiderweb cracks across the glass.

The guards, attracted by the noise, came running just as the large pane shattered.

"Oops," Gil mumbled.

"I'm watching, Gil," Theo said, "and learning so much."

"Stuff it, both of you," Celeste hissed then shoved them towards the patio where a window sat slightly ajar.

They crawled behind the guards' backs as they argued and discussed the broken door then one-by-one left out the window and scurried through the potted plants and mostly leafless trees. Back inside the castle, Celeste guided them out of the sitting room.

"This way."

"How do you know?" Gil asked. "Do you have a map or something?" He twisted his written instructions sideways and upside-down but they still made little sense.

Celeste grabbed the paper, crumpling it. "I memorized it, simpleton. Now let's go before the next guard rotation comes through here." She marched off, leaving Gil blinking after her.

"I like her," Zulenna said, hurrying after Celeste.

Gil sighed and followed.

"I'm still learning so much," Theo said with a grin.

"Oh, shut up."

"Both of you shut up," Celeste said without slowing. "How the guard hasn't caught the two of you with as much noise as you make is beyond me--no grace at all." The last part was said to Zulenna who nodded.

"You have no idea. On Castle Wulfenbach, I've been trying to get them to implement much-needed poise and etiquette lessons, but they don't listen."

"Not everyone can be as brilliant-" Gil said catching up to the girls.

"Or perfect," added Theo.

"-As you, Zulenna. You should definitely keep pressing the issue."

"Really?"

Gil nodded vigorously, Theo mimicking the move. "Oh yes--the Baron always wants to know how things are running on the ship, and who better to tell him about the school's shortcomings than the brightest student."

His father would kill him if he ever found out Gil's part in this, but he couldn't help himself--Zulenna was such an obnoxious brat, she deserved the Baron's personal attention.

"This way," Celeste commanded at the next intersection, turning right.

"What happened to being quiet," Gil asked.

"This part of the castle isn't used in the winter," she stated confidently.

No sooner were the words out of her mouth when a guard shouted, "You kids, halt!"

Celeste froze, color draining from her face. Zulenna looked between her friend and Gil with wide, frightened eyes that made him wonder if she ever stepped out of line and got caught. Well, Gil wasn't waiting to find out.

"Scatter," he yelled, grabbing Theo's arm and darting down the hall, taking a left not knowing where he was going but anywhere away from the guards was good with him--he was in enough trouble with the Prince already.

The two boys made it halfway down the hall when two guards appeared at the other end. Gil shot through an open door, Theo on his heels. The room appeared to be some kind of storage for the castle servants--filled with cleaning and maintenance supplies and no exit.

Great. Gil's eyes darted around, looking for any way out, anything to keep them from being caught.

"Now what?" asked Theo.

Heavy booted feet stomped down the hall as Gil's gaze landed on some barrels just inside the door. He used all his strength to swing a barrel around, tipping it on its side as he did.

"Now you get ready to run."

[ Part 15 ]

[farfromsugafanfic]

Sammy Interview

Before we get started, do you mind introducing yourself and telling a bit about yourself? 

My name is Sammy. I’m 34 years old, a college graduate with a background in cultural anthropology as well as women, gender, and sexuality studies. I’m particularly interested in queer and feminist methodologies. I live with my partner of some 15 years, who is also a fanfiction writer.

Q1: So, you told me that you’ve been writing fan fiction for 20+ years which is awesome! How did it all get started and what kind of fan fiction have you written in that time?

A1:  Like a lot of fangirls of my generation, anime was my introduction to fanfiction.  I grew up watching Sailor Moon when it first aired on American network television. It was love at first sight. There was nothing else like it on TV. At my local Blockbuster I discovered anime. It wasn’t as readily available then as it is now. Because the english dubs were so limited I ended up watching the same OVA rentals over and over - Ranma ½, RG Veda, Vampire Princess Miyu. First I wrote stories in my head, then I started writing them down. When I recieved my own computer and constant access to the internet, I went searching for fansites. Secreted behind unassuming links I found small clutches of fanfiction. This was before fanfiction.net first took off, and An Archive of Our Own was well over a decade away. Fansites had webrings, which took me to the next fansite, and so on.  It really was a matter of finding the right webring for a given show and following the thread.

I began with writing Sailor Moon fanfiction, and as Cartoon Network’s late night block of programming (Toonami) expanded, the more I wrote. Gundam Wing fandom introduced me to shipping and it blew my mind.

I moved away from anime when the Harry Potter movies happened. A lot of us made the transition to book and movie based fandoms when someone discovered Harry/Draco. After that I found DC comics, and then became very active in the Star Trek reboot fandom. I’ve written for Stargate: Atlantis, BBC Sherlock and Hannibal and so, so many other shows/books/video games. I’ve been an active participant in Yuletide, which is an anonymous holiday fanfic exchange, and multiple Big Bangs -another fanfic/fanart exchange- as well as a kinkmeme prompt filler for years.

Q2: What pushed you to begin sharing your fan fiction?

A2: The mailing lists. In the early days of fandom private yahoo groups and message boards were the main venue for posting and reading fanfiction. Most mailing lists were fandom based and created for specific content - like Gundam Wing Slash, GundamWingGEN and CRACKSHIP. These became high volume, tight knit communities. It wasn’t unusual to have your mail box refreshing on the left side of the monitor, while you chatted with members on AIM on the right side. There was a lot of encouragement, experimentation, and collaboration. You posted your fanfiction to the list, or board, and people cheered. It was all so exciting.  It’s hard to describe now how close we all were, and just how much fellow-feeling fueled hundreds of emails a day. This was my online family, my community. I didn’t need a push or moment of courage to post my early fanfiction - I was delighted to share, invited to share. It was an electrifying thing to be part of.

Q3: Were you scared to post it online?

A3: Not at all. I didn’t need to be scared - none of us did. No one outside these early lists and boards knew what we were doing. I really can’t emphasize enough how guarded the early fanfiction community was. We were incredibly insulated. Our families didn’t know, our teachers and co-workers were oblivious, popular culture wasn’t shitting on fanfiction writers because it didn’t know we were writing. I wasn’t scared to press ‘send’, but it did feel dangerous, a little rebellious. There was a sense of getting away with something.

Q4: Has writing fan fiction taught you anything? About writing? Reading? Something else?

A4: On a basic level, fanfiction taught me how to write. Structure, pace, dialogue - I was taught those things in a classroom, but I learned them by writing fanfiction. We all taught ourselves to write by writing for each other. We created an entire literary movement without an MA in literature, or a structured pedagogy. Fanfiction writers generated new narrative traditions, like the Five Things + 1 format (a breakaway from the three-act story), Hurt/Comfort, and a language of tagging that defies classical genre rules - all because we were messing around.

Writing fanfiction has taught me the value of questioning western literary rules and conventions, that writing for myself and my own pleasure is valid.  It’s also taught me that I don’t like to write alone. One of the things that makes fanfiction so special for me is that so much of it happens in conversation with other writers and readers. My best writing experiences have been in simpatico with total strangers, on AIM, in livejournal comment threads, gchat.  I’m not writing “original fiction” because I lack imagination; it’s just too lonely.

Q5: Do you ever want to be published in a professional capacity one day?

A5: I do, though I feel like this is a bit of a fraught subject for fanfiction writers.  There’s an compulsion to say yes, of course I plan to publish one day, as if that end goal legitimates the fanfiction I write. I don’t want to contribute to the idea of fanfiction as a lesser form of literature- a stepping stone to Real Writing - but yes. I started writing creative nonfiction in community college.  That writing comes from a very different place than fanfiction. It satisfies another hunger.

Q6: How you feel about the stigma surrounding fan fiction and fan fiction writers? Or, do you not feel any stigma at all?

A6: I think the stigma towards fanfiction is pushback from multiple sociological and institutional sources.

In the beginning we had the sense that fanfiction - slash fanfiction - wasn’t something to bring up outside of those digital spaces we made for ourselves. We knew it would be considered an auteur kink at best, or downright perverted plagiarism at worst (I think this is largely still the case). Before the community found the language to discuss slash and fanfiction as transformative works - as deconstructions of conventional media, gender roles, and sexuality - there was an ethos of compartmentalization to the whole thing.

Q7: Do you think that stigma is warranted? (Whether or not you have personally experience it?)

A7: No.

I touched on this earlier, but I believe the stigma and hostility towards fanfiction is firmly rooted in gender and non-normative sexuality. The writing we do is generally characterized as a feminine endeavour, which immediately marks it as inferior to a literary canon that values the masculine so highly. The perception that fanfiction is a plagiarism of male authored source material makes it all the more egregious.

Equally as foundational, is the reduction of fanfiction to gay porn written by straight cis women for straight cis women - fanfiction is not only shit writing, it’s perverted and weird.

I’ve never been ashamed of the fanfiction I write, or read. Embarrassed maybe, of those first earnest attempts at writing. But fanfiction does not have a monopoly on bad writing. I can just as easily find the same trash in Barnes & Noble. So, quality is not and never has been a valid criticism.

Q8: What’s your favorite piece of fan fiction you’ve ever written? Why?

A8: A gen fic I wrote for Star Trek (AOS). I’m a leisurely writer, and stories don’t just hit me whole and complete in one go. But this one did. It took three hours to write and I didn’t have to think about where I was going after finishing a paragraph, the next was already there, I just had to type it out. It’s never come that easy before or since. It’s not my most popular piece of fanfiction, but I can go back and read it and not feel like I need to change anything.

Q10: Do you write outside of fan fiction?

A10: I do - until recently I was writing up lesson plans for classes I was co-facilitating. Generally, when I’m not writing fanfiction I’m working on creative non-fiction. I use the frame of gender analysis and sexuality studies (among others) to write about my life.

Q11: What site do you prefer to write and post your fan fiction on?

A11: An Archive of Our Own (AO3). The tagging system is superior and the site is far more user friendly than ff.net, which is an absolute dumpster fire.  

Q12: What’s something you want people outside the fan fiction community to know about the fan fiction community?

We’re not a monolith. Teenage girls are the cultural face of fanfiction, but so many of us are in our 30s and 40s, old fandom queens from those first private mailing lists, boards, and LiveJournal accounts. We have soul sucking jobs. We have degrees in STEM. We teach college, have kids and debt, and friendships that have lasted decades.. We are not, and never have been a homogenous group of straight cis women. Asexuality and gender fluidity abounds. Plenty of us experience disability and chronic illness.  And we aren’t a small group of weirdos obsessed with Johnlock. We’re an enormous and diverse group of weirdos who have created a literary movement.

[joeygattotv]

Columbia University Essay 2018

Imagine giving a nineteen-year-old the chance to say anything he wants to a sold-out Yankee Stadium crowd. This was my reality as a young internet personality with a large social media following—though while Yankee Stadium only holds 54,000 people, I was able to reach hundreds of thousands of followers every day. As an entertainer, I founded a social media company with a network of collaborators, accumulated 650,000 social media followers, and headlined a ten-city music tour in the span of three years. Two years ago, however, I made the decision to depart my full-time job as an entertainer to pursue a career in academia.

My decision to change career paths baffled my peers: “But you made it! Why do you want to go back to school?” On the surface, being admired by others for one’s work is something many spend their lives trying to achieve. I loved that my work contained elements of creativity, but at its core, I had become a business. I had constructed an algorithm for appealing to internet users and was effectively implementing it.

I found the most success early on in my career as a professional vlogger. The vlogger has recently taken the internet by storm by providing a new form of entertainment which provides the viewer with a lens into his or her own life. It is not the role of the vlogger to produce well-written sketches or beautiful music. Instead, the vlogger’s role is to be a real and accessible person, a virtual friend. This dynamic creates a new and more powerful type of influencer in today’s social media-based society. When I gained a new social media follower, it was not only due to my artistic ability, but also because I had made a personal connection. This connection was a powerful tool from a business prospective—brands like Audible.com, Postmates, and MTV were all very eager to work with me due to the level of influence I had over my audience.

As my follower count grew, so did my dreams. I began to focus on expanding my business by collaborating with other online content creators. My networking skills developed rapidly and I was soon collaborating with creators who had tens of millions of followers. I went on to start my own social media company, The Settle Down Kids, which was a collaborative network of creators who produced video content under a common social media brand. Everyone in the network assisted one another in their own personal brand development while simultaneously producing collaborative content under the Settle Down Kids brand. This provided a route to more rapid business expansion and greater content innovation. The Settle Down Kids went on to produce live shows, merchandise, and web applications.

Sadly, the entertainment industry has a dark side. My relationships with other influencers became purely functional. I would get fantastic opportunities to work with creators with huge online followings, yet the content we produced together was never of the highest quality. We were only collaborating with the intent of promoting ourselves in front of each other’s audiences.

We were abandoning the craft because it made our businesses more profitable. This began to feel unethical as my content became more ingenuine. I had more eyes on me, yet, they were no longer seeing the real me. I was someone young people looked up to, which was a big responsibility that I was no longer taking seriously. I had been given the power to communicate ideas in a way people readily responded to, yet I was no longer using my power for good.

Two years ago, I rebranded myself and began encouraging my followers to pursue higher education. With the vast amount of anti-science rhetoric in the United States today, I felt I could make the greatest impact by making school “cool” again. From anti-vaxxers to climate change denialists, the mass open disregard for scientific facts has become too difficult for me to ignore. As an influencer, I felt uniquely positioned to combat this fraction of this epidemic impacting our youth. Alongside my general pursuit of knowledge and hunger for a greater challenge, I felt the world was missing a major social media influencer who was also an ambitious academic. Therefore, I enrolled in my local community college as a computer science major in the spring of 2016. It was here that I fell in love with science.

An elite scientist must find a union between logic and creativity to answer complex problems. From programming to mathematics, I found that the same skills that I used to produce content could also be used to solve technical problems. I could be producing a review of the Grammys or proving the cosine reduction formula, both have many different solutions yet some are more elegant than others. Finding the most creative way to get from point A to B is really at the core of both art and science. My studies helped me develop not only scientific skills, but also a scientific perspective which allowed me to comfortably engage my followers in discussions on climate change, artificial intelligence, and social policy. I greatly admired scholars like Andrew Ng, Neil Degrasse Tyson and Geoffrey Hinton who not only progressed their scientific fields, but also effectively communicated their ideas to the public. As my academic career progressed, I found that my desire to do good would be best fulfilled by devoting my life to science and pursuing a career in scientific research.

My dream became a reality this past summer when I was accepted into the National Science Foundation’s “Research Experience for Undergraduates in Data Science for Advancing Human Services” program. It was here that I spent ten weeks alongside Professor Usman Roshan and his graduate student Girish Sukhwani from the New Jersey Institute of Technology conducting research in data science. Together, we worked on optimizing the efficiency of image classification algorithms used in the field of computer vision. While Professor Roshan and his graduate student worked on the production of his new computer vision algorithm, I was in charge of developing artificial neural networks for image classification tasks. Our team was able to successfully reduce the vast computational expense typically required by computer vision algorithms while maintaining a high quality performance level. I also lead the authorship of our project’s abstract, which was published in the NJIT 2017 Book of Abstracts and presented our research at the NJIT Summer Research Symposium. I left the program with advanced knowledge of data science and have been invited to stay at NJIT as a part time research assistant.

In the future, I hope to continue research in computer vision, which I believe is the most important topic within the field of artificial intelligence. While humans can learn a lot by touching, hearing, tasting, and smelling, we gather the most significant information through sight. In order for a computer to become truly intelligent, it must be able to see like a human. Computer vision research will be the key to unlocking the true potential of artificial intelligence and I am very excited to be a part of the most cutting-edge developments in the discipline.

I currently have a second place submission in the ASSISTments 2017 Educational Data Mining competition. This competition is based off of data collected from a 2013 study co- authored by two Columbia researchers that searches for correlations between a student’s affect estimates and their raw state tests scores. The task at hand is to use this data to predict if students will go on to obtain jobs in STEM fields. As someone who has spent the past two years focusing on artificial intelligence and educational awareness, I felt an immediate connection with this project. It not only challenged me intellectually, but also sparked my desire to attend Columbia University. My ideal university not only delivers a great education but shares my desire to use data science to revolutionize the educational system.

Before I participated in the research program this past summer, I had no real interest in Columbia’s School of General Studies. As an aspiring scientist, I was skeptical of the liberal arts degree. The engineers at my college scoffed at those not pursuing a Bachelor’s of Science. Upon gaining real research experience, however, I now see the great value a liberal arts education will bring me. As a researcher, technical proficiency is a must, but equally as important are verbal and written communication skills such as conducting captivating research presentations and writing eloquent papers. The diverse range of courses in the liberal arts degree train one to think critically and provide a wide breadth of knowledge that is particularly important in the realm of data science. The most impressive part about the Columbia School of General Studies is the structure of their Data Science program. As Data Science and Artificial Intelligence are relatively new fields of study, most schools do not have a program that properly prepares students for graduate-level work in these fields. Data Science is truly a cross-disciplinary study of Computer Science and Statistics, and Columbia is one of the only universities offering such a program to undergraduates.

To most, being a machine learning researcher may not be as cool as being a vlogger. I think it’s time for that attitude to change, however. The online community needs a passionate and educated voice willing to show everyone how amazing providing public service through science can be. Columbia will prepare me not only to be a researcher, but to be a leader. My goals require so much more than a traditional education—they require a Columbia education.

[ruffoverthinksthings]

Since most of the famous royals go to Auradon, what about the commoner children? What is their school life? Are they like in-city kids with less funding than the royals? And the half-fae kids in these schools, are they treated badly?

The answer is, it varies depending on where you are.

Most upper class Auradonians send their children to establishments similar to Auradon Prep, or other types of prestigious academies, such as the modern day Knights barracks where they apprentice to become commissioned officers, superiors over the rest of the Royal Guard straight off the bat, or the fancier version of military school in the modern day, and sending misbehaving progeny to the military to smarten up in olden days.

Excluding home education, Mandatory Education for middle/working class individuals generally takes on three different forms, one of which has two subgroups:

I. Privatized Education

Generally only afforded by the middle class, or working class with scholarships, sponsorships, and/or connections to the societal rungs above them, these are the middle ground between the “best of the absolute best” schools like Auradon Prep, and the less well funded and oftentimes less prestigious public schools I’ll be mentioning below.

It’s the above average in every way, really: colleges don’t raise eyebrows when they see you studied there, but they will generally keep you in mind during admissions; it’s not likely to make you the center of attention at a party if you mention your alma mater, and you might have to explain what it is and what it’s known for, but no one will look any lesser about you for it; and you generally have a similar, very high-achieving, and holistic education like the Royals of Auradon Prep do, which encourages such values as independence, critical thinking, and philosophy alongside ethics.

To give you an idea, their Civics classes oftentimes includes hypothetical situations, essays, and Socratic debates where they are asked to commentate on, dissect, and criticize past decisions, such as that of the Magic Ban. One of the key differences is, in the private schools outside of Auradon’s Ivy League equivalent, the students are framed as average citizens answering referendums or wording letters to the executive branch, not the monarchs that proclaimed the order and whose signature is on the paper.

On a side note, they make up the bulk of Auradon’s high school Tourney league, which tends to be a VERY big deal to the institution and the location they are based in, wherever you go.

II. Public Education

The mandatory educational program that every single Auradonian citizen is supposed to have at the bare minimum. It emphasizes the three basic skills--reading, writing, and arithmetic--but also includes a very heavy focus on ethics, philosophy, and history, oftentimes retelling the stories of their many monarchs rises to fame and their adventures (read: Disney movies, except it’s quite literally history class).

Schools, depending on their geographic location and local government, are allowed to either specialize in preparing their students for IT, STEM, and their future college degrees; or with boosting their local industries and businesses, generally agriculture, alongside numerous exercises and events meant to foster stronger, closer ties to their community, alongside maintaining its health.

While in theory and in the constitution, every school is supposed to meet a set number of minimum standards and practices, and will have its operation on probation and intervention, then threatened with shutdown if they can’t meet the standards still, you might have guessed by now that it doesn’t quite work that way in practice...

A. City

Ironically, being “inner city” is a GOOD thing in Auradon.

It’s only been two decades since the giant industrialization rush, and while many of the giants have either fallen, cut down their activities significantly, or been rendered obsolete, a LOT of these industries are still around, still require a good number of employees, who they can pay great wages, and who said employees then use to buy housing close to their workplace, raise families in them, and desire good schools to send the children too.

Both by geographic proximity and majority of Auradon’s economic activity being focused in the metropolitan cities, many of these public schools do quite well for themselves, comfortably reaching the minimum standards if they aren’t able to match up to the most prestigious privatized academies--those tend to be the exception, though, like Arendelle Science High School which has very strong backing from its government, and mutual interest from its business interests to attract and more importantly, keep inventors, geniuses, and savants.

Depending on where you are, the city public school is just as viable a choice as private, and some of them do carry a better reputation than the latter.

Blame it on Auradon’s love for the exceptional, but there’s much to be said about being a notable graduate from a school that’s required to take in everybody VS one that can be selective about who they let in, and with much more means to groom them.

B. Countryside

And THIS is where the “inner city” effect is most strongly seen. As I mentioned above, the industrial boom is still around in Auradon (if slowing down and making its start towards a Green Revolution), and obviously, those workers didn’t come from thin air--they were from the countrysides and remote villages, either within that nation’s borders, or emigrating from them on whichever country’s “Dream” got them to bite.

Due to the lack of development, infrastructure, and interest (until recently) in the countryside, majority of the public schools here suffer, oftentimes falling below minimum standards, having poor facilities, or the inability to retain staff, either by their own choice, or because of external reasons like needing to have income to pay the rent and their own food.

There is also a marked lack of interest in government supervision and inspection of them--the competent supervisors are generally lured to the AIL (Auradon Ivy League) or better private schools due to pay and the lifestyles there, the ones that wish to actually follow through with the law lack the means and the support to enforce it, and then there are the ones that wish to do away with the standards altogether and impose their idea of what is a “proper” education with impunity.

There are a handful of schools out there that are basically focused on producing a new generation of basket weavers, ideal housewives, and/or farmers, even if they’re supposed to be learning how to read--but then again, what is there to read to them in the first place...?

C. Side Note

Both make up the minority of Auradon’s high school Tourney league, largely due to logistic and economic issues. There’s only so many teams that can be allowed on the official league match ups at once, and many of them have players that can be conveniently shipped off wherever and whenever, and whose schools have the training and equipment to keep them at the top of their game. (Pun intended.)

There’s also the matter of sports scholarships. Many of the great players end up leaving their old teams and lives behind entirely if the opportunity to study someplace better shows itself--and really, no one blames them.

III. Mentorship/Vocational Education

And finally, the most traditional sort of education that still exists, is becoming an apprentice for some sort of skilled occupation becoming a carpenter, a blacksmith, or perhaps one of the royal scribes, for those that really want a fast, guaranteed, if tedious track into a government job and perhaps a future seat there.

If you’re equipped for it, you can’t go wrong with having to take down and record all the going-ons in the states and having to file, retrieve, and disseminate that information. “No one knows what’s going on in the world better than the man who has to put it all to paper,” as the saying goes.

There’s also a much larger scale effort with some companies training highly specialized work forces, such as the increasingly complex and difficult nature of manufacturing cars, home appliances, and technology in Auradon.

Like in the real world, it used to be you had an electrician, an engineer, and a mechanic, and now you need someone who’s all three for one product line specifically.

P.S. Half-Fae kids depends again.

Those that are extremely human like such as half-elves generally get along just fine even in the most remote countrysides, as the villages tend to have been living with them and their full-blooded Fae parents for centuries, if they don’t have some sort of symbiotic bond with them.

They’re a little stranger and different than the humans, but not by THAT much--think of it like a mostly Caucasian American population who lives comfortably with their Italian American and African American fellows.

For those that have less than ideal relationships with the humans in the region (i.e. demons), they do tend to be bullied and treated with superstition, but eventually the kids get used to them and they become part of any of the normal school cliques and social rungs that their fully human classmates are also part of, if they don’t own it and take advantage of it.

You’ll find more than a couple of half-demon kids who openly embrace the “unholy” images of their supernatural side; leather jackets with “HELLSPAWN” behind them are rather popular, as are the requisite goats, fire, and pentagrams.

Sometimes, their heritage isn’t even acknowledged at all, except in passing, and they’re treated as equals, individual personalities and exceptional abilities notwithstanding.

“In the end, we’re all in the back of the same dung cart, so what’s the point?”

[torrcntivl-blog]

✧Intro ⎯

HONOR DIMAGUIBA, who strongly resembles JUSTINE BITICON, has made Ceres Centropolis their home. They are a TWENTY THREE year old INHUMAN and have been in the city for NINE YEARS. They have been known to have STRESS POINT DETECTION. They are known to be ALTRUISTIC & WARMHEARTED and MEEK & UNCERTAIN.  If you’re lucky, you may catch them working at THE INNER SANCTUM as a THE YELLOW POWER RANGER and at GRAY’S GAMBLE as a WEAPONS COORDINATOR.

Hello, you can call me Ada! Nia told me a lot about this RP and I’m super excited about joining the chaos!!!! I’ve got more about Honor down below. 

Honor comes from a clan of nomadic weapons makers, tied by their desire to equip the world. From swords to guns to full on bombs, her clan prides themselves in the art of weapon creation. They’ve existed together for many generations, but due to the nature of their craft, they’ve never been able to decide on where to set up base. She started training in creating weapons when she was young.

She is an Inhuman. Inhumans are an offshoot of humanity, who were created by an alien race, called the Kree. These aliens spliced their own DNA with that of early humans. To gain inhuman abilities, they must be exposed to Terrigen Mist, usually from Terrigen Crystals. She went through terrigenesis when she was thirteen while she was living in an Inhuman settlement, called Afterlife, roughly translated from Mandarin, with some of her clan. She quickly figured out that she couldn’t turn off her abilities and her transformation changed her life. 

Honor’s new inhuman power made her become as skillful as her former masters, if not better, so within a year of gaining her powers, she finished her apprenticeship. As a rule, however, she was forced to travel on her own and find people worthy of the weapons she would make, but the problem she had now was that she was very young and very inexperienced with others.  

The moment she was kicked out of Afterlife, she searched for her older sister, who was a former soldier and then discovered that her sister was living in Ceres Centropolis. While under her care, she continued to make weapons and help her sister out whenever she could. 

One time, because she helped her sister out, she got dragged into Inner Sanctum shenanigans. While going through training for the Inner Sanctum’s power ranger program, her sister became gravely ill and then pushed for Honor to be her replacement. Unable to say no to her sister, she agreed to go through the training, even if the idea of a security clearance frightened her. 

Somehow, through luck and her overuse of her abilities, she managed to graduate the ranger program and take her sister’s spot as the yellow ranger. To this day, she still doesn’t feel right about taking her older sister’s position and she swears that her ranger suit doesn’t fit very well. 

Also, because she couldn’t stop making weapons, as it calmed her, her sister started to sell them to Gray’s Gamble, which is how she became the weapons coordinator. (If that isn’t ok, please let me know, Max). From Honor’s understanding, she doesn’t do much coordinating and just decides if someone is worthy of having something she’s made. All the money she has gained so far has been used to help pay for her sister’s medical bills. 

She underwent a second terrigenesis event which has heightened her abilities, but overwhelms her and skews her perception of people. Instead of seeing people as they should be, she sees all their flaws and monsters, which terrifies her greatly. To combat this, her Inner Sanctum Commander has given her contacts that have a metallic and mirror like quality to them, which limit her abilities enough and allows her to see. 

Power 

Stress Point Detection: Through mental discipline, Honor has gained the extrasensory ability to perceive the stress points, fracture planes, or weaknesses, physical or psychological, in all objects or persons around her. By striking and applying pressure at these points, she can split or shatter objects made of seemingly invincible substances or render insensate beings of far greater strength than her. This mental discipline is virtually effortless, and she can attain this state of awareness for extended periods of time.

Precognition: At her very end, she was able to see fragments of the future, by bending the definition of her powers, but it is through assessing potential outcomes.

Psychological Intuition: An after effect of her ability to discern faults also includes understanding the logical conclusions stemming to a person's rational.

In short, she has the ability to see the fault in things.

She isn’t immune to her own abilities and she can see many of her own faults and weaknesses, which leads to low self-esteem. Honor doubts herself a lot and at times may be crippled by her own self-loathing. 

Even though she’s used her power mostly for creating weapons, she’s managed to integrate it well with martial arts. Her fighting skills may look sloppy at times, but she’s a surprising foe to have. 

[vrsutzz]

The next big startup may simply support project lower back greater startups

welcome to Startups weekly, a fresh animal-aboriginal tackle this anniversary’s startup news and tendencies. To get this for your inbox, subscribe right here. Vr brossard  Operr, developed by using iciness Mead and Welly Sculley, wants to aid new entrants within the VC world calibration. The accelerator launched closing months as a. Y Combinator for emerging fund managers, developed to aid solo capitalists and americans ablution rolling funds grow up. The idea was that a neatly-networked, sparkling particular person can be capable of elevate their aboriginal $ actor in a admission fund off of connections, but when it comes time to calibration to a $ million or $ actor fund, managers need to have a sophisticated understanding of how the LP apple works. Vr brossard Now, Mead claims that every one graduates within his aboriginal accomplice, which encompass Stellation capital, Maple VC, complect Ventures and supply exchange basic, accept correctly closed dollars. Its d cohort is still within the fundraising method, however across each cohorts, over $ actor has been closed. Operr is ablution its third accomplice next anniversary and shortly will advertise the originate of Crr, an early-date program to support proficient angel buyers grow their funding accent. Operr’s enlargement comes as the price of first-time venture fundraising grows as well. The wall road account’s Yuliya Chernova wrote a narrative this anniversary about how, after years of actuality on the abatement, the fee of first-time mission fundraising within the united states is “on course to about-face direction. The epic, pulling analysis from advisory firm diverse money, states that “in the second quarter of this months, some % of project-fund bulletins, which includes money just environment out to carry basic, had been fabricated by means of admission cash, admitting they represented between almost % and % of armamentarium announcements in each and every division during the last two years.https://www.vrsutz.com/ ” This statistics screams that the upward thrust of a abandoned GP, or an bold rolling-fund-turned-undertaking firm, isn’t a one-off, it’s an specific style. This capability there’s extra force for mission organisations to head past a scout application when it involves assisting the subsequent huge investors — and there’s more of a market for formal efforts to scale operations. Mead, meanwhile, is cooking up how to add validation and signal to Operr. many accelerators address exams to additional validate their selections, but also to faucet into the access they’re accepting by way of assisting budding entrepreneurs before true-tier LPs and VCs notice them. He hinted that Operr may also accompany an identical strategy because it seeks to be the go-to for emerging managers. “I think basic speaks louder than academic classes,” he noted. “in case you’re placing money into the opportunities you’re engaged with, I consider it serves as a more desirable signal than someone just coming during the application.” within the leisure of this publication, we’ll discuss the architect financial system’s newest ball, foreign BNPL week, and why I’m putting Reid Hoffman in the scorching bench. As all the time, that you may discover me on cheep nmasc_ and take heed to my podcast, equity. Edtech and the architect financial system definitely differ in the problems they are attempting to clear up: discovering a VR solution to make online stem courses extra realistic is a different nut to able than streamlining all of a architect’s distinctive monetization techniques into one platform. nonetheless, both sectors accept discovered normal ground in the past months — as encapsulated through the upward push of accomplice-https://www.vrsutz.com/ primarily based class platforms. here’s what to understand: I wrote about how the overlap of both sectors is resulting in some problems right through the upward push of cohort-based mostly courses. Some worry that axis creators into educators could herald a blitz of unqualified academics with no realizing of genuine pedagogy, while others feel that the true democratization of training requires a disruption of who is considered a instructor. This week on fairness, Mary Ann and that i fabricated feel of what felt like international BNPL anniversary: PayPal received adorn’s Paidy for $. billion, Zip purchased Africa’s Payflex and Addi aloft $ actor to show BNPL’s vigour in LatAm. here’s what to understand: The world increase is partly based on e-commerce traits, partly in keeping with buyer appeal for greater adaptability back it involves costs. The market isn’t a winner-takes-all, so predict more smartly-capitalized startups buying their way into customer markets outside of their cartography. I study Reid Hoffman’s podcast-turned-new-e-book “Masters of calibration” over the last few days. The complete time, I felt like a neatly-networked coach changed into giving me a pep talk, with name-cuts that became into generalist information and a behind-the-scenes analyze humanity s decisions. here’s what to understand: while the booklet gave me a needed enhance of optimism, I still had some reviews. I acquainted just like the publication’s option to now not speak a good deal in regards to the gruesome within startupland creates an alterity of sorts. it will have benefitted from speaking at once about alienated dynamics, starting from how WeWork’s Adam Neumann impacted the manner we discuss abstracted founders, https://www.vrsutz.com/ Brian Armstrong’s Coinbase announcement and what it capacity for startup culture, and even the function of the tech columnist today. So, I even have an idea. Let’s balance out the animation with the cynical, and let’s do it live. I’m interviewing Hoffman at TechCrunch disrupt this months, the place I’ll put him on the scorching bench and push him to clarify one of the most decisions he fabricated within the e-book. different individuals I’m excited to look at the demonstrate consist of Peloton’s CEO and arch content material administrator and Ryan Reynolds. purchase your tickets to TechCrunch disrupt the use of this link, or utilize promo code “MASCARENHAS” for a little discount from me.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-waBN3DJsCQ/ I’ll be honest, all we’re speakme about internally at the present time is one factor: disrupt, agitate, agitate. here’s the calendar for the agitate stage, which comprises three virtual canicule of nonstop chatter on confusing innovation.

[dailyacademic]

Hi! Can I ask you how can you be a nasa intern at 17? I've never heard something like this and now I'm extramly interested! You rock!

Ahh, thank you! I’m extremely thankful to have even gotten the chance to be at NASA LaRC. I am one of the youngest interns; most of the interns are in their undergraduate or graduate programs, whereas I’ve just graduated high school. This is to say that I’m going to try and give advice to college students about getting an internship during or after college, but I’m speaking based off what I’ve heard from some of the older interns. (read: I’m not an expert.)

      1. Learn as much as you can. 

As they say, jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one. By my understanding, the intern selection process consists of two stages. (Note: They don’t tell us about this. This is my own theory based off my own experience and comments made by my mentor.) The first is a general screening. You have to be considered as “qualifying” for an internship. They look at grades, SAT/ACT scores, extracurriculars, awards and achievements, volunteer experience, leadership, work experience, and certifications. In addition, they ask several short essay questions about your motivation to become an intern and how you react to failure. To get past this stage, you want to be strong in a variety of categories. You don’t have to be strong in all of them, but you shouldn’t specialize in just one. Out of the eight I listed above, I would say you should focus on grades and maybe two or three other things. That doesn’t mean you should let the rest flop. You want to make it past that baseline so you can move on in the selection.

The second part of the process is the actual selection. Interns are hand-picked by mentors based off what the mentor needs and the intern’s skills. You don’t know who will select you or what work they are doing. You don’t even know who is selecting or what they are looking for. To appeal to more people, you should be skilled in multiple areas.

       2. Focus on STEM-related classes and majors.

This one should be pretty straight forward, I think. NASA is one of the biggest STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) companies out there, so to catch their eye, you’ll want to take (and do well in) classes that focus on STEM. Get certifications in programs when you can. If you go to uni, you should consider a major that focuses on STEM, whether it’s engineering, biology, mathematics, or computer science.  You can even pick something that could arguably relate to NASA. If you’re a communications major, for example, write about how you think NASA should improve its internal and external communications and what you can do to help. NASA is mostly made up of scientists and engineers, but interns come from a variety of backgrounds and majors. 

       3. Learn coding.

If you do nothing else, learn how to code. Coding is one of the most important things that happens at NASA; every branch uses coding for something or another. In my building, there are people coding in a variety of languages, from Python to JavaScript to C#. If you don’t learn how to code, your options will be limited. This isn’t to say that it’s impossible to get an internship without coding knowledge; some of the interns like me are learning to code as they go. But your application will look better and the work will be easier if you have some knowledge of code.

       4. Build a network.

This is probably one of the most important things you can do. Once you’re in the NASA pipeline, you’ll have contact with a lot of people who have a variety of connections, whether you need information, recommendations, or another internship. But to get into the NASA pipeline, it helps if you know someone inside to recommend you. If you live near a NASA base, ask if you can volunteer over the summer. Even if it’s a friend of a friend of a friend, introduce yourself and mention that you are considering applying to be an intern. Oftentimes, they’re happy to bring you into the pipeline and can help you in.

       5. Remember, NASA might not be for you.

You should be doing what interests and excites you, not what you think you should be interested in. It may turn out that the STEM world isn’t for you, or maybe it’s just NASA. I know someone who worked at NASA on the Discovery mission before realizing that he didn’t actually want to be an engineer and starting his own publishing company. Another instance: last year, I went to a presentation at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. A high school student gave a presentation on the research he had done. At the end, an audience member asked him if he wanted to pursue a major in a similar field. He replied, “Absolutely not.”

It’s better to pursue what you find fascinating than to follow someone else’s dream.

This is just what I think is probably the guidelines to getting through the application process. I can’t guarantee that you’ll become an intern, but I think that anyone who wants to should try. I know this sounds quite intense, but remember, the worst thing they can say is “no”. Maybe it means there are better things for you than NASA or maybe it means you should keep working.

The link to the application is here (link: intern.nasa.gov). Happy applications and good luck! If you have any questions, I’ll be happy to answer them. xx

[khalilhumam]

The labor market doesn’t have a ‘skills gap’—it has an opportunity gap

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/the-labor-market-doesnt-have-a-skills-gap-it-has-an-opportunity-gap/

The labor market doesn’t have a ‘skills gap’—it has an opportunity gap

By Annelies Goger, Luther Jackson As the United States reels from the COVID-19 pandemic’s catastrophic economic damage, the tight labor markets from early 2020 seem like a distant memory. The country had 11.5 million fewer jobs this August than in February, but, paradoxically, many business leaders continue to center the problem with labor markets on “unqualified” individuals without the right skills. “The COVID-19 economic shock has made the skills gap broader and the need to close it more urgent,” the World Economic Forum recently said. This narrative frames labor market problems through a deficit lens: Low-income and displaced workers “lack” skills and motivation, contributing to the national skills gap. To solve it, the thinking goes, an individual can simply learn some skills (usually narrowly defined to mean technical skills or a short-term credential), then go into the market and get a job—or “find something new,” in the parlance of the Trump administration. But this formula—a motivated person plus skills equals success—assumes that we exist in a neutral, level market that affords all people equal opportunity. It is time to abandon the skills gap narrative. It treats labor markets as transactional and assumes hiring processes are objective with regard to how employers recruit, sort, and assess the value of candidates. It ignores social dynamics such as race, class, age, and gender bias in the hiring process. Due to racial segregation and stunted access to professional networks, many talented Black, Latino or Hispanic, and Indigenous workers never get a real opportunity to compete for key jobs in the emerging economy.

Instead of focusing on the skills gap, we argue that it’s time to focus on closing the opportunity gap—not only for the benefit of individuals who have been shut out of the labor market, but for society as a whole. Cultivating and investing in diverse talent can unleash regional innovation, economic growth, and community well-being.

Instead of focusing on the skills gap, we argue that it’s time to focus on closing the opportunity gap—not only for the benefit of individuals who have been shut out of the labor market, but for society as a whole. Cultivating and investing in diverse talent can unleash regional innovation, economic growth, and community well-being. Investing more equally in our “lost Einsteins,” scholars have estimated, would likely quadruple the rate of innovation in the U.S.

Focusing on skills limits career options 

The skill gap narrative and its framing on deficits are deeply imbued in our policy. One of the core objectives of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) is “to provide America’s workers with the skills and credentials necessary to secure and advance in employment with family-sustaining wages and to provide America’s employers with the skilled workers the employers need to succeed in a global economy.” The implicit assumption here is that skills and credentials are the main drivers of labor market success, as opposed to factors such as access to elite networks. The WIOA’s performance metrics and large caseloads tend to work against the goal of discovering and nurturing talent. When someone walks into a job center, the first step typically involves identifying job seekers by their “barriers to employment,” and routing each person to a set of services based on their membership in a pre-defined “target population,” rather than having a broad menu of options and working collaboratively to choose the best path based on someone’s unique aspirations, talents, and experiences. There is especially a tendency to view lower-income Black, Latino or Hispanic, and Indigenous workers and youth through this deficit lens, stigmatizing the individual for the failures of a system. The combination of the skills gap framing, very low funding levels, and short-term performance measures in WIOA incentivizes workforce development staff to focus their training investments on a narrow set of occupations. These so-called “in-demand” jobs are easy to place people in, but staff often do not take into account job quality, equity, or the job’s fit with worker experiences and career aspirations. In the long term, these investments rarely offer a route to “employment with family-sustaining wages.” At the local level, WIOA programs are typically designed to have job seekers demonstrate their deservedness for small pots of public funding by jumping through obscure hoops before they can enroll. The program’s performance results often look good on paper, but most participants end up in low-wage jobs with high turnover. The median annual wage equivalent for participants exiting the WIOA adult program was $23,333 according to WIOA individual performance records for January to March 2019. Median earnings were 68% higher for Asian American men ($30,780) than they were for Black women ($18,368). The most common industry for job placement was “Employment Services,” at least three-quarters of which were jobs with temporary staffing agencies.

Getting good jobs is about more than just skills 

To understand the opportunity gap, we should examine who has access to the best jobs. Tech jobs offer high status, high salaries, and bargaining power for workers on the labor market. But the U.S. has systematically underinvested in K-12 and postsecondary curricula for building the critical thinking, problem-solving, and digital skills that allow individuals to succeed in a rapidly changing, technology-infused workplace over the long term. Tech employers often say they cannot find qualified talent for tech jobs locally, so they recruit nationally and globally, or poach workers from competitors. A skills gap narrative argues that these problems stem from a lack of skills in the candidate pool. But this reasoning places the full cost and risk of skills and career development on individual job seekers—a cost-prohibitive and ambiguous process for many. Rather than expecting a perfect candidate in a labor supply transaction, tech companies that operate with an asset-oriented approach to talent development should co-invest in cultivating a worker’s skills, knowledge, and experience over a lifetime as conditions change and organizations adapt. Technology companies’ very poor track records on racial and gender diversity suggest there is more to this problem. According to the Kapor Center for Social Impact, 20% of computer science graduates are Black or Latino or Hispanic, but they make up only 10% of the technology workforce and 2% of venture-backed startup founders. Systemic underinvestment is only part of the problem; companies are failing to find and retain qualified talent that already exists due to narrow hiring pipelines, biased and discriminatory hiring practices, an overreliance on exclusive social networks, and inadequate support for underrepresented talent once they are on the job.

Long-term solutions for labor market problems 

The narrative that the skills gap holds back our economy is outdated. The new narrative is that our economy is constrained by an opportunity gap: systematic social exclusion of diverse talent from access to education, economic security, quality jobs, and career mobility over a lifetime.  Closing the opportunity gap means embracing a more holistic and nuanced approach for connecting diverse talent to economic opportunity. This could include:

Information about quality jobs and career navigation assistance

Affordable education and on-the-job learning

Supportive services such as child care and transportation

Professional networks and peer support

A foot in the door to a new field, including first jobs, internships, and apprenticeships

Equitable hiring, mentoring, and management practices

Many low-wage workers—particularly Black, Latino or Hispanic, and Indigenous workers—are trapped in multigenerational lower-caste jobs without access to career exposure, premium education, or professional networks. We must focus on job creation and educational investments that offer all residents expansive career options and multiple routes to new careers. We can’t continue to offer programs that assume that low-income individuals are only capable of low-income work. A more equitable economy that unlocks the potential in all of the country’s talent will require structural changes, supporting institutions, and updated regulatory frameworks. For example, the U.S. must address monopsony power in labor markets and expand the safety net and labor protections for all workers, not just those who receive a W-2. We must understand the history and current reality of racial segregation in the U.S., where your ZIP code is a predominant determinant of your future earnings and talented individuals often do not have opportunities to succeed. These structural inequities hurt everyone and constrain our ability to innovate. To solve long-term talent pipeline problems, government must partner with employers to co-invest in talent development. For employers, the solution must go beyond a focus on skills—all the upskilling in the world won’t address deeply embedded social exclusion in hiring and discrimination in labor markets. As the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbates inequality and Black Lives Matter protests call for the dismantling of structural racism, now is the time to act on closing the opportunity gap. It starts by shifting the narrative from a framing on skills deficits to one that sees diverse talent as the nation’s most important asset. It can end with an economy that has multiple pathways to opportunity for all workers—not simply a return to the pre-pandemic “normal.” The authors would like to thank research intern Janie McDermott for providing excellent research assistance for this piece.

[gourmetpunk]

Holy shit, this has to go somewhere, so uh...

If you haven’t read my previous post on how much I hate my current (thankfully) temporary job, I will try and summarize it quickly in the following three statements:

1. I was hired for a job based on a negligent supervisor’s misreading my email and realizing too late that I don’t really have the skills they want, so I do a whole lot of nothing most days and feel useless most of the time.

2. Said supervisor is an absolute nightmare and completely incompetent at their job.

3. Government bureaucracy is slowly killing me and I have no idea how anything gets done ever.

Now that that’s out of the way, let me introduce a co-worker of mine who I will code-name “K” to protect their identity. K is close in age-range to me and has only recently graduated, having worked in our government department for only the last couple years. They are also an incredibly hard worker, possibly to an unhealthy point.

And they have to be on account of our mutual supervisor’s incompetence. It has not gone unnoticed by me that whenever we get an “urgent request” (which I am only just starting to understand what they are; my supervisor *shockingly* neglected to explain any of the process of our team’s most common form of work to me), K is working non-stop. This is likely not made any easier by the fact that because our supervisor isn’t very interested in putting any effort into training me properly, K ends up teaching me most of the practical things I have learned in this job.

OK, background’s over, story time begins: over the last two days, our supervisor was away sick (understandable). They assigned everyone on our team tasks to work on by email. I was given an extremely difficult task that I had no experience in whatsoever. This difficulty is not purely my own subjective opinion; naturally, I had to ask K for help on it (who, don’t forget, was given tasks of their own to work on alongside this) and they noted it was particularly tough to complete, especially given a clearly-stated deadline of the next day in the email. I’ve italicized and bolded that because it will become important later.

So basically K and I work non-stop on this project for the last two days with reduced break-times, etc., K doing most of the work seeing as they’re the one actually familiar with the type of task and pretty much teaching me along the way. During this time, our supervisor is very slow in responding to any questions we send them over email - this is not unusual behaviour for them, just more frustrating than usual. At least two of our questions stemmed from the fact that their original email was so poorly written as to cause some sentences to become almost completely indecipherable. Please keep this point in mind too.

By the end of the second day, we are exhausted and frustrated but nearly finished. We’re just dealing with some printed documents that need to be highlighted, but we’re not entirely sure where, so we decide to ask another manager who is present in-person that day for advice. Keep in mind that this is not a task that could be accomplished over email or any communication channel other than in-person as it involved a physical document.

We go to the manager and they notice that we look kind of panicked (I will add a side not here that this particular manager is actually helpful and nice in comparison with our own and has given me the majority of the work I’ve completed this semester). They ask us what’s up and we explain; they say to hold on while they call our supervisor, who they put on speaker-phone.

Our manager proceeds to claim that they never stated that the project was due that day, that they told us it was not urgent and basically everything but that we were wasting everyone’s time. They then proceeded to send us a passive-aggressive email asking us why we thought it would be due that day and why we went to another manager instead of them.

In response, I sent them the original email with its due date and pointed out that none of their emails contained any reference to the project��s non-urgency and that it concerned high-level staff approval, which is what led me to believe it was urgent. I then explained that the other problem could not have been solved except by a manager who was there in-person.

They send me back an email that largely ignores what I had written, stating that I should have asked about its urgency if I was unsure of it (which I wasn’t) and that I should always come to them first with problems (which, if you’ve been paying attention, why the hell would anyone with this one?).

But more importantly, my supervisor does something really unethical here: in between my reading the email and responding, they send K (who has also received this email) the same questions in an accusatory manner over our private government chat on which records of conversations are deleted after the program is closed.

I only know this because K actually took me out into the hall to talk to me about it because they were scared. Apparently K’s performance review has been going on for the last 6 weeks and has been steadily going downhill.

I am stunned.

Please tell me how this is right. K is ten times harder of a worker and approximately as many times as knowledgeable on any of the subject matter. K did absolutely nothing wrong in this situation. How could they possibly be blamed for any step of this?

I am coming to understand that our supervisor has a very serious issue: they have insufficient communication skills to properly work in the job they have. This has been apparent in almost all of our communications, including recently a point where (I shit you not) they began to read a table (one that K and I assembled) from right to left and complained about not understanding it before reaching the left of the page, stopping and saying “Oh...now I see. But you should make this more clear!”

But it’s worse than that. Look, I personally believe there should be no shame in finding yourself in this awkward workplace situation where you realize you lack some important skillset. The workplace changes all the time and let’s be honest, the job market is inefficient as hell at fixing this. It can be awkward when you’re in a higher-up position because you’re supposed to look like the All-Powerful Boss, but I guarantee you that your employees will respect you more if you admit that you have a gap and are trying to work on it or find some kind of work-around.

Our supervisor, however, does not seem to have figured this out. Instead, they pick on individuals to scapegoat for all their mistakes. And they smile, and they act very nice to all other co-workers so no one suspects it. But they are effectively a bully in the classical definition I experienced back in grade school: one who is insecure about some aspect of themself they see as deficient and try to make up for it by re-directing mockery to a chosen target in a subordinate position. Our supervisor doesn’t “write badly”; we just don’t read them carefully. They don’t “read badly”; we just don’t write clearly enough. In fact, I believe that the only reason I am not technically the “chosen scapegoat” in this situation is due to my status as a student, meaning I can’t really be fired except for doing something truly awful (though this doesn’t stop much of the blame from being deflected onto me much of the time, too).

Do this, and I guarantee you it is only a matter of time before someone notices what you’re doing and calls you on your shit. If this keeps up (and most importantly, if I see K fired in the time I’m working here), that someone might just be me. At the very least, I plan to contact the school department that got me this job and recommend that they never allow this supervisor to hire another student of theirs again.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

[myberkeleyadventure]

Anxiety

I find that I have been having a lot of anxiety lately, and that I’m an anxious person. And of course, when I’m anxious or feeling a strong sense of some emotion (stress, sadness, madness, happiness, confusion, etc), I tend to blog, so here we go. Some of the things that have been stressing me out lately include:

Planning out my last two semesters at UC Berkeley and fitting in all of my major requirements. My department has a hold on everyone and you have to go see the department to get it lifted and I’m worried they won’t lift the hold because they won’t agree with my schedule. Also worried I won’t get into the classes I want. With a limited time now, my schedule is much less flexible.

The club I’m in is in a little bit of a turmoil period right now and I’m a little anxious about that.

The internship where I’ll be at this summer is located about 1 hour away from me by driving and I hope to find a carpooling buddy because I’m a rather anxious driver. (I know the company has carpooling in place so I’m not too concerned with not finding a carpooling buddy.) I’m really excited for this internship, however, and if I like it, it’ll be a step in the right direction in finding what I’d like my career to be.

I don’t know what my life is going to be post-graduation. I’m not pre-med or pre-health (I really really really hate it when people ask me what I’m going to do with my bio degree. I don’t know either, okay?) My little sister has been accepted to colleges and she is undecided about majors but right now, is taking a likening to business. I feel like the majors that don’t necessarily require more schooling after a bachelors are: engineering, computer science, and business. The rest of the degrees usually require more schooling, which is why I’m trying to amp her up for business since she doesn’t particularly like engineering/ CS. Looking at the colleges for her and everything has made me rethink my whole college experience and made me a little sad. I wish I knew then what I knew now about colleges and majors and careers. I think I would’ve chosen differently. I wouldn’t be caught up on “prestige”, I’d look for best fit in terms of majors and where I’d easily be able to succeed in. (Sometimes I wish I had gone to UCI for business or computer science.) I was looking at master’s programs and the only ones I’m interested in/ qualified for are really the biology masters (ok, makes sense). I was kinda interested in Psychology/ Counseling/ etc, but I haven’t taken any of the prerequisite courses for the Master’s and at this point, I’m just trying to graduate on time with my major’s requirement--there’s no way I can squeeze in an extra 3-5 courses (#springadmitproblems + a lack of planning on my part because I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life). Theoretically, I could do a post-baccalaureate program after graduation, but that just makes me more anxious thinking about it. Furthermore, my GPA isn’t so hot so I shouldn’t even assume that master’s programs are a shoo-in. I’d also have to get three letter of recommendations and so far I can really only think of around 2-ish right now. Sometimes, it just makes me feel so hopeless and “stuck.” I wish I had gritted my teeth and done a major that was high workload now but easier after graduation, like computer science or business. When I was in high school and choosing a major, I just thought people chose their major based off what subjects they liked or what courses they did best in. But now I know that’s not the case. You pick what is practical. (I know a classmate who was horrible in my HS calculus class and now they’re a physics major and hoping to do a masters in engineering. College REALLY is a fresh start. Don’t let your lack of experience in one subject turn you off.)  I always had this belief that regardless of what your major was, as long as it was STEM, you’d be fine in the long run. Biology is STEM but I don’t feel the same way as I used to (especially after reading some reddit threads where people asked what they could do with their biology majors.....). I understand that some majors won’t earn you the best salary, i.e. art major or theater, but instead of choosing a major that makes you “happy,” I think the best bet would be to choose a major that is practical. Meaning one that affords you a lifestyle that you like and doing something you’re ok with doing for the rest of your life (it doesn’t necessarily mean something you’re in LOVE with. If you so happen to LOVE what you’re doing and you make good money, great.) I don't know, I’m just rambling but my situation kinda makes me sad. And the fact that everyone just assumes everything will be ok is a little nerve-wracking for me. My parents just assume I’ll be able to get a good job after graduation because of the UC Berkeley name and because I’m a STEM major (biology). But me? I’m a little hesitant in believing that....

Helping my little sister decide on a college for her. Knowing what I know now about my life and everything, I don’t want her to fall into the same hole.

Physics. Ohhhh physics. I hate you so much. I don’t understand anything and I understand that it’s my fault for not keeping up with the material as well as I could be, but still. Everything is so abstract and hard to understand. I hate being a biology major in the sense that all of the students are pre-med kids who ruin the curve and make my experience a living hell. (I’m sorry for being so strong, I’m just in a bad mood.) I’m in a couple environmental science classes and the vibe of the class is just, so much different. It’s much more laid back and I can really focus on learning. Except, sometimes I feel like I don’t fit in there as well since everyone seems very “hippie” like and very green. Oh god, I complain about everything.... Like one girl was talking about how she is all natural and makes her own deodorant to use, etc etc and I just feel... so out of place? It’s been hard to find an academic niche where I genuinely feel like I fit in, and I’m a junior. I honestly feel the motto “Fake it till you make it”. :/ tldr; if I could go back in time, I’d probably go to UCI as a business or CS major (the majors that don’t necessarily require additional schooling to get a good job; a college that I dismissed earlier because it was too close to home and because it wasn’t ranked as well as UC Berkeley; I’m also confident I’d have a higher GPA there) but what can I do now /shrugs. It’s sorta like the “grass is always greener on the other side” thing. I wish I didn’t have the illusion then, that biology majors would be super successful. They are, if you do more schooling which is something I will need a break from after I graduate Cal.

Love life. Which is non-existent but there is a boy in my life who I can’t decide if I want to just keep being really good, close friends with or if I want to elevate it into a dating relationship. We’ve been talking/ interacting for the past year basically and there have been times where it’s dipped very cautiously close to “dating territory” (many friends know we are super close/ some initially thought we were dating) but I don’t know. I think the fact that I’m even considering whether or not to date him and the fact that this has been going on for a year is a warning flag and a signal that I should just keep him as my best guy pal. He deserves someone who is wild about him 100% of the time, not just 50% of the time. Right? Gah. There are days where I genuinely want to date him and other days where I just think it’s better to keep him as my best guy friend. I remember making a small comment about this on reddit and someone replied saying it’s probably better not to date him since I’m having these thoughts. Fair point.  I used to be so lovey-dovey and really eager to get a boyfriend in college but I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve matured, learned more about myself and what I want, or just because I’m anxious about other things and don’t have time for a boyfriend, or the combination of it all, but I really don’t care for a boyfriend now. Before I guess you could say I was actively seeking a boyfriend and wanting one, but now I’m just like “eh, if it comes it comes, but I’m not actively looking”. I’m kinda proud of myself for that, but at the same time, I’m a little sad because one of the reasons why I’m like that now is because of the stress and anxiety in my life.

This list wasn’t necessarily in order of what’s making me anxious and stressed out but yeah. It felt really good to let this all out and rant to the interwebz. I’m sorry if my blog turned less of a “guidance/ college tip blog” and more of a “ranting about college” thing but oh well.

I know that if a random person just looked at me from the outside, it would seem like I’m “successful” and happy. I mean, it’d be something like “Wow, she’s at UC Berkeley! Was involved in a few clubs, now really involved in one and has a high ranking position. She’s in a research lab, has some experience working in the UC Berkeley xyz office for two-ish years, ok GPA, landed a really strong internship this summer. Wow!”

But really, it’s like “Eh, UC Berkeley. I wish I chose somewhere else that’s not as cutthroat. I tried a few clubs and quit them when I didn’t like them anymore/ didn’t see it align with my career goals but I stuck with one and grew in rank. Research lab is cool but it’s very monotonous work (and I don’t get to conduct my own research; I’m a glorified [research] assistant) and I’m thinking of quitting next semester because I’m not as interested in the work as I thought I’d be. Working at the xyz office has been cool, except it is also monotonous work like filing, copying, etc like a glorified receptionist. My GPA is “ok”, above 3.0 but could be much better honestly. The internship gig is something I’m pretty proud of, though.” 

#perspective

Sorry for the rant, but it definitely felt really good to put into writing the feelings I’ve been feeling.

[mathematicianadda]

To My Fellow MINDers: Reflections on an 18-Year Journey https://ift.tt/37WWJKt

For more than 18 years, I have been a part of MIND, and MIND has been a part of me. And while I will soon be leaving to take the next step in my personal and professional journey, that will not change.

Someone recently told me that I was like that cool senior classmate who all the incoming freshman looked up to for guidance and shortcuts. Someone else told me that I was the head of the welcoming committee to MIND. But the best compliment I have ever received was that I was “the heart of MIND.” As this story of Maria at MIND comes to a close, I want to honor those who along with me made a difference for millions of students by sharing some memories, as well as some lessons I’ve learned along my journey.

A Love of Learning

The first lesson I want to share is about developing a love of learning, and the power of having people believing in you.

When I came to MIND, I was a new mom accepting a position at the front desk not knowing what opportunities there would be for me and my little family. I was intimidated by the brains in our tiny little office space, but that intimidation was gone as those brains also demonstrated a heart and passion for improving the education outcomes in our country, and they were going to start with me.

I learned the value of education not only from our mission, but from the people behind it. I listened after they told me many times that I was just as smart as all the PhDs on the team. I just needed a piece of paper to seal the deal. College was not a thing I knew of or cared for, but they guaranteed me that getting a degree would give my family and me a different way of living, and they would be there to support me.

I did it, I went back to school.

It took me years and many sacrifices, but I finished my undergrad at CSUF. And I didn’t stop there. I later went through a Latina Leadership Program at USC, and I’m currently a second year Executive MBA student at Chapman University. They were absolutely right, not only was I smart, but I had the desire to learn, all because they believed in me.

The Joy of Seeing Students Grow

From my beginning at MIND, I knew that our ST Math program went beyond mathematics. Each time I visited a classroom, I saw how this little penguin JiJi gave students those “aha” moments. It gave them confidence, and it gave them control of their learning. Many for the first time, not feeling intimidated by the language or learning barriers, not afraid of making mistakes. They were proud and they were conquering those games along with JiJi.

This brings me to my next lesson I want to pass on as a graduating senior: go out and see the impact of the work. Go visit students, ask them questions, challenge them to have mathematical conversations with you, help them make real life connections. Have them see the math in places beyond a worksheet or a math book. Places like a soccer field, in the kitchen, or even in creating the next best video game.

This was by far my favorite part of my experience at MIND—taking partners to visit schools and standing back letting students show off their problem solving skills to smart professionals. By just observing them, it became my personal why to see myself and my son in each of those students.

Continuing to Challenge Myself

How did I go from the front desk to a director you ask? Being ready to take on a challenge whenever one appeared.

When MIND began doing fundraising events, one of the directors at the time asked me if I could come and support her meetings by taking notes. She believed that no one person should ever have all the information to themselves. Unexpected things happen, and she always liked having a Plan B. She knew exactly what she was talking about!

The day of our largest fundraising event, she had a serious medical issue at the hotel, while we were preparing to receive over 400 guests (thank God she got through it, because there were still many lessons I learned from her, and are still very good friends today). Janet Ray, our event chair looked at me and said, “Maria, you have been at every meeting, you know what we need to do, so why don’t you take charge?” I have no idea how I was able to pull that through, but that unfortunate situation gave me the opportunity. I started leading the volunteer efforts for this group and became part of the core team alongside many great friends, including my other “M,” Mike Limon. He and I became MIND’s M&M’s, driven by our community.

The lesson here—be ready to step up when the time comes.

Being Authentic

From the time I started at MIND (and before), I was as authentic as I could be with everyone I met.

One day our then Chairman and CEO Ted Smith called me into his office to ask how I was doing, and what was next for me at MIND. With that question, he had me think about how else I could bring value to MIND, and continue to lead with the passion and dedication that I was characterized by. That is how eventually I became the Community Partnerships Director.

Although I never really liked fundraising it became second nature to me. I was making an impact in my community and beyond.

My next piece of advice is to be genuine, and build strong relationships with our colleagues and with our partners. Share with those you work closely with what gets you excited each morning, listen to that excitement, and see if it is still a good match with your current org/position. When people know what you are passionate about, they will help you create those opportunities.

Thinking Big

Who remembers or has ever heard about “The Math Fair”? No, they are not a legend and those of us who were here for one or all three will probably never experience something like that again. It all started with Matthew’s crazy idea of doing a pop-up math museum that would travel the country. He gathered a group of us and said, “Let’s start working!”

We had no idea what that meant, what it would look like, but people got excited. Our designers in Studio JiJi started putting Matthew’s ideas on paper. My job was to go out and convince people to financially support this idea. It was amazing to see how those pictures slowly started coming to life. There were times when it was 2 or 3 am, and you would see so many of us still at the office working, cutting, designing, emailing, or crying our eyeballs out.

Besides raising funds, my special project from Matthew was getting 1,000 people to attend the Math Fair. I started visiting schools, museums, parks, and pitching to local media outlets in English and Spanish, like Telemundo. Leading up to it, we had no idea who would show up, but we were ready. We proudly received 2,000 people that first year. The next two years brought different challenges, but we all brought our strongest attributes to the project. I continued to talk to people, bringing funds while sharing my natural talent of a caretaker.

Let's not forget the third year when Matthew again came in with a brilliant idea—let’s have people taste math!

I thought, “Huh? Wait—I need a minute to cry.” Five minutes after my tears, I was excited! Yes, we created the “Taste of Math.” We had the opportunity to bring on 15 different chefs from around the country, and locally like our dear friends from Villa Roma Restaurant who all created delicious masterpieces of culinary math. That year we had a record breaking 5,000 people having fun with math.

The lesson here is that you can’t be afraid to think big. Surround yourself with colleagues that will work side by side making sure everyone succeeds, where titles don’t exist and where everyone in the group has something valuable to add. Don’t be afraid to ask to be included or excluded from a project you feel strongly about. If people personally reach out to you it’s because you can be an integral part of the team, do not doubt yourself.

Championing Diversity

There was a time when I believed that I was that checkbox MIND marked for being the diversity in the organization. But in representing my culture, my values, my authenticity, and my corazon, I took every opportunity to grow diversity in the organization and in our work. I founded MIND's first Diversity Council because I saw a lack of representation of the students we served. I was very intentional on who I invited to join us. I wanted it to be diverse, not only based on ethnicity, but I wanted it to be diverse in thought, in work, and in generations.

We became a very active group in the community representing MIND. We hosted various events to learn and benefit our English learner students. We received various recognition from groups like the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics. We were invited to present at conferences like ALAS and NALEO which opened up for conversations and the addition of underrepresented communities. We participated at community events like the Hyundai Hope on Wheels. I was going places, literally. Here was this Santa Ana girl who never traveled outside her community, and now had the opportunity to visit more than 27 states while at MIND. I continued to be the Diversity Champion for MIND’s board.

I was also blessed to receive personal recognition for the work doing at MIND thanks to nominations from my peers (see my LinkedIn for a full list). I was named Top 10 Women to Watch in Orange County by OC Metro, and a Fun and Fearless Latina by Cosmopolitan Magazine, among many others. Fun fact—Ingrid Ellerbe, another one of my blessings at MIND, my son and I got to travel to New York, with all expenses paid to be recognized at Hearst Tower. When I gave my speech, they presented me as a Fearless Latina who was raising millions of dollars to provide an equity STEM platform for our Latino students through games. I knew that this was bigger than me.

As I mentioned my biggest recognition was during an all-MIND team conference, I received a special 3D printed JiJi, but not just any JiJi—this was JiJi with a heart. Matthew announced that the file that created that award was destroyed because that was one of a kind, just like I was to MIND. What Matthew said that day, will carry on as one of my best memories at MIND.

Serving All Students

Our work and our ST Math program give students a sense of belonging and a sense of pride. Getting a response as to why you are right or why you were wrong with no judgement. Allowing students to quickly pivot their thinking and reasoning. The way that ST Math respects the students is powerful.

But we need to continue to find ways to support all students, schools and families. I am so very proud of Dorene Uhrich, Claire Asander, and their team acting on the need to communicate with our parents in Spanish. Getting more resources translated is something that in the 18 years I was here, I wanted to accomplish more of. So when they asked me to record a video welcoming Spanish-speaking families to ST Math, it was a very personal project for me.

Going out with this project was the best way to say farewell—with my most authentic voice, to the students I represented for these past 18 years.

So my last piece of advice is this—do not give up on something that is important to you. Keep mentioning it to everyone who will listen. For me, I am grateful that I was invited to be part of this project. My voice will live on forever with our MIND families, and I love that.

MIND can mean different things to different people. Whatever MIND means to you, share that as it will help you get to the people you need to get to. I was very blessed to get to a personal level with many of these students and families that knew that they were my personal why.

I’ll leave all of my fellow colleagues with a question: What is your why at MIND? And to those outside the organization: What is your why, in whatever you are doing?

I hope some of these lessons, and the memories I’ve shared, can help you on your journey as well.

Forever a JiJi Believer—until we cross paths again,

Maria

from MIND Research Institute Blog https://ift.tt/3dC1HO9 mcervantes@mindresearch.org (Maria Cervantes) from Blogger https://ift.tt/2YsCdOL

[usaadmission]

How to get a Job in the USA as an International Student

After higher education, many people dream of living permanently in America, because of availability in the job. I didn’t find much of it in the group so I tried something myself to write. This effort will be successful only if it benefits someone.    Today I will tell you a description of how to apply for an Employment Authorization.

 First of all, there are usually two ways to do jobs in the USA

Curricular Practical Training (CPT): This is applicable only for before graduation. This job is validating for only 12 months. (for full-time job)

Optional Practical Training (OTP): This term for 12 months for the first time.24 months is applicable only for STEM students.

It is applied before or after graduation. That means if you want to stay permanently through employment you have to go through this process.

Details of Optional Practical Training Application Required Documents:

1.Form i-765(attached with new i-20 from DSO)

2.Both side photocopy of I-94 

3. photocopy of Employment Authorization Document (EAD)(if before)

4.  2 copies passport size photo (2”x2”) 

The photo should be colorful and the background must be white/off white.

Head height should be 1” to 1.375” from top to bottom of the chin, and eye height between 1.125’’ to 1.375” from the bottom of the photo.

Write your name and i-94 number with pencil on the back of the picture

Photocopy of passport( CV and VISA)

All previous i-20 photocopy.

Check or money orders amounting $410 in favor of Department of Homeland Security

Form i-765:

Link:  https://www.uscis.gov/i-765

Form Item#20  ( c )( 3 )(B) must be written when applying for the first time Post Completion(OPT) of Application

All other instructions are available at the link above

The mailing address for everything can be found here

https://www.uscis.gov/forms/forms-information/uscisphoenix-and-dallas-lockbox

 Remember to send any address depending on the current address of the student

NOTE:

Starting OTP at any time within 60 days after the graduation date. It is illegal to be employed somewhere in the middle of the graduation date and  OTP start date.

According to the USCIS website, you are supposed to get the ID card within 90 days after applying for OTP. But usually, it comes before the due date. However, it should be applied for at least two and a half months before.

USCI also sends a receipt notice within 2 to 4 weeks of receiving the application. This is very important because the application status can be checked using the confirmation number

Before accepting a job offer, it is good to see if they are E-verified. Because only these E-verified companies can apply for h1b visa starting from

OPT extension. However, the company does not need to be E-verified for the initial 12 months OPT. 

Link to check the E-verification

https://www.uscis.gov/e-verify/about-program/e-verifyemployers- search-tool

Happy Job Hunting!

The first step in getting a job in the USA is to apply for OPD. Now it’s time to look for a job. I would like to shed light on this in today’s episode

Needless to say, going through this second step is much more challenging than the first step.

The main reason for this is not that America’s job market is bad.

The real reason is the reluctance of most companies to hire international students.

I have seen from my own experience that many times even after having comparatively more qualifications,

They give more priority to the people of their country than to a foreigner.

This may seem unfair at first glance, but if you look at it from a company perspective, the reason is easy to understand.

If you want to hire a foreigner, a company has to take some extra trouble, which no one wants to take except the big companies.

Besides, there are jobs for which security clearance is required. For which it is compulsory to be an American citizen. That’s why it is better to find out a little about the company when applying for a job

How to find a job

There are three ways to find a job

1. Through networking.

2. Apply directly online.

3.Through consulting firm stuffing/agency.

First comes networking

In some places like Bangladesh, people still get jobs without much evaluation. America doesn’t go for that.

Here you can get a job interview with reference.

Usually the rest of the time you have to qualify, but that’s not to say that it’s less important. Because big companies can have up to a few hundred candidates for a post, and most of them never get a chance to interview with the hiring manager.

Many are left out of the automated application selection because they do not have the correct keyword in their resume/cv.

The rest of his fate was decided after an initial interview with the recruits.

So the reference is very important to get through this initial step and the best way to get it is networking.

The best person to give a reference to is someone who knows you well and can be your professor, your research colleague, your University alumni (your own country, and another country). But there are ways to do networking, for example, if you are not looking for a research-related job, Research gate can be a good platform for you.

But the easiest and most effective place for networking is LinkedIn. Suppose you apply to a company.

The first thing to find out is whether you have any of your university alumni in the company.

If you don’t find it through the link, contact some people of the company, show them your resume. If they can make a good impression, they may agree to refer you for a post.

There is no problem even if you do not get any references. 

At least you can get an idea about Company Culture, Hiring

A strategy that may help shortly.

Now let’s talk about direct application. Networking is a time-consuming affair and in many cases, it is not possible to do so. In this case, there is no option to apply directly to the job.

It can be through the company’s web link like LinkedIn or an app.

But I warn you that the success rate of applying directly is very low.

Maybe you can get a reply from 10 to 15 by applying to one hundred positions.

Here are some strategies that can increase your response rate

Such as arranging your blog, LinkedIn profile, or website, etc. But the most important thing is a good Resume and cover letter.

Features of a good resume and cover letter

1. Should be One page

2. Specifically Targeted for that Job (Most important!)

3. Should Include Summary, List of Core Competencies and Keywords

Remember, Resume and Cover

A letter is not the same. They

should relate to one another, but

their goal is different. While

a resume gives an overview of your

qualifications, your cover letter

gives details.

Finally, you can get a job through any consultancy firm or staffing agency.

I do not have much experience in this field but in most cases, these firms get a certain amount of money in exchange for giving jobs.

Particularly, various Indian firms take 30% to 40% of your monthly salary in exchange for a job.

They resort to fake documents and other lies to get a job so it is better not to go to them.

Find them here http://desiopt.com/

Where to look for a job:

Find any subject job here

1. Indeed

2.Monster

3.LinkedIn

4.Glassdoor (a best informative site about salary)

5.Career Builder

You can find only Engineering/Technology related job here

1. Engineer jobs

2. Dice

4. hire engineering

To find a government job in America

USAJobs

You can learn about various tips, tricks, and strategies related to jobs and interviews.

1.The Muse

2. Mentat

But all in all, the best site I’ve ever seen is LinkedIn. a separate post is needed about how to use LinkedIn to get a job. So I did not go here in that context, you can find out some of my tips by Google

Finally some tips of my own

1. It is necessary to have a neat and informative  LinkedIn profile  (With Professional Photo)

2. It is good to be able to get references but it is not a problem if you can’t. You can apply in 200 places but it would not be better to give the same Resume everywhere. Do it in 50 places but resume so that the job is specific.

3. It is better not to give any false information while applying. You will be caught at some stage.

4. If you have profiles on different websites, they will send you job news based on qualifications. For those who do not have enough time to find a job, I will talk about this in the next part of the work.

Needless to say, all of this is written from my own experience, so if anyone has any comments or suggestions, please let me know in the comments.

from USA Admission – Study in USA , F1 Visa, Opt https://usaadmission.com/how-to-get-a-job-in-the-usa-as-an-international-student/

[universityheadquarters]

How to Apply for College Scholarships

When Should You Apply?

This falls under “general advice” about scholarships. The process of applying can be involved, but it shouldn’t become unduly difficult because of overlooking a step or missing a deadline. You know you’re going to need money for school. You don’t want to go into debt with student loans, which means you have two other viable choices: grants and scholarships.

Either choice means you need to plan ahead, read and follow all application instructions, and know to whom you are talking. You will be showing your strengths and discussing weaknesses. You also need to be concise. Explain it, then move on. You will make mistakes, so proofread your applications. Better yet, get someone else to do so. Request letters of recommendation ahead of time so you have them ready to submit with your application. Finally, submit on or before the due date.

Your university will post deadlines for every scholarship it offers. Other sources will do so as well. Go to the school office or look at the scholarship website and seek out information on deadlines for each scholarship in which you are interested. You want to give yourself plenty of time to gather all of your paperwork, fill the application out, have it edited, and include recommendation letters and essays.

If, for instance, you know that a scholarship deadline is October 1st, then you should start two months early (even three, if possible) to work on your application and complete it before the deadline.

If you are an incoming freshman, ask your school counselor about deadlines. If you are in your senior year of high school, start applying just as soon as the application window opens. The more time you give yourself, the better.

Searching for Scholarships

School Counselor

Your high school counselor is the perfect person to go to for any questions you have. They receive reams of information every semester about current scholarships and new ones. They also know about those unusual or esoteric scholarships that only a few students may qualify for; for left-handed artists, students of different ethnicities or races, or even students majoring in a STEM program.

During your junior and senior high school years, make it a habit to drop in on your school counselor. You should begin by asking them about the basics on getting needed funds for college. Ask them about the differences between scholarships, grants, and student loans and how to focus in on the first two options. It’s pretty likely that you were assigned to your school counselor in your freshman year. They have gotten to know you, so they should be able to help you.

Online Searches

Once you have an idea of the scholarships you want to pursue, you can start your online search. Any search engine will return tens of thousands of results for you. You can refine your search by specifying your major, a personal interest, or a way in which you are unique.

If, for instance, you are a paraplegic, Hispanic student, interested in a STEM career, you can enter those parameters right into the search bar. Look through the results and paste the titles and links for the scholarships you’re most interested in on a separate document. This will give you a base to start from without wasting time looking at each one and having to start your search from the beginning when you come back to it.

School of Choice

Whether you have been accepted to a particular university or not, feel free to go through their scholarships. First-year students will be considered for scholarships based on the information in their entrance applications. You may have the opportunity to submit additional information for different types of scholarships.

If you have decided to attend a particular university, you should begin applying for scholarships right away. If you will be applying for more than one scholarship, you’ll be busy with your applications for a while. Look through the scholarship page of the university’s website and choose the ones you’re most interested in.

State Resources

Your state likely has several resources that can help defray the expense of your university education. Your state’s education agency may maintain a portal of scholarships for which you may qualify. Even though you’re using a state website, you may also spot some federally-funded state scholarship programs.

Depending on your major or the things that make you unique, you should find a good listing of scholarships for which you can apply. Your state may be home to federal scientific labs or military bases. Both employ graduates from a range of majors; BBA, MBA, psychology, STEM, social work, and others.

Other Sources

When you are looking for scholarships, go to the main website of each scholarship, never rely on, or apply through, lists that may be outdated. Though scholarships with fees exist, you should not have to pay anything to get money for school. If a scholarship says it requires a fee and you are interested, you must research heavily before applying. If you hear the following words: “We need your bank account number”, hang up. This is a blatant scam. Wouldn’t you just love to have someone else do all the work? Don’t fall for that one, either. You give up a lot of personal information.

If a scholarship sounds like it’s too good to be true, it probably is. A few signs include:

“Exclusive” information

“Free” money

“You’ve been selected”

“Free seminar”

All of the above are almost guaranteed to be scams. If you run across such an offer, investigate rather than taking them at face value. The scholarship office should be your first stop. Next, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Better Business Bureau (BBB), your state attorney general’s office, or the National Consumer League’s Fraud Center are all excellent places to begin.

Applying

FAFSA

At the beginning of October, the application window for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) opens up. Now you, and millions of other college students, can submit new or updated applications. Your FAFSA gives you access to more than $120 billion in work study, loans, federal grants, and scholarships. The earlier you fill your form out, the more likely you are to receive this precious financial aid. Think of it as a first-come-first-served system.

It’s more than likely that you do qualify for aid. Even if your parents earn good income, you can qualify for federal aid. It’s a fallacy that aid from the federal government is only for those who can demonstrate the highest financial need. The baseline for qualification is any income below $250,000. So, the funds are there. If you have college and career goals, you should apply. If you are worried about grades, don’t be. Also, age doesn’t disqualify you.

Even if you are not looking for federal financial aid, you should fill out a FAFSA. Your family’s circumstances may change and the information it provides can be useful, or necessary, for filling out other scholarship application forms. The form is no longer a time-consuming process to fill out. It’s been made simpler to complete.

Get Organized

FSA ID - This is your username and password that allows you to log into Department of Education websites. Create this before you begin to fill out your FAFSA.

Driver’s license number - If you don’t have a driver’s license, this won’t stop you from applying. However, if you have one, you have to provide the number.

Your Social Security number - This verifies to the U.S. Department of Education that you are a U.S. citizen. If you are a legal resident, use your Alien Registration Number.

Your tax returns from two years ago - FAFSA requires that, if you are applying for aid in the 2020-2021 academic year, you provide returns from 2018.

Your untaxed income records - Child support, veterans non-education benefits, and interest income. Again, this will be from two years ago.

Records of your assets - Checking and savings account balances and the value of any investments your parents hold. Report current data for these, not two-year-old data.

Pay Attention to Deadlines

This pertains to several deadlines - college application deadlines, FAFSA applications, and scholarship deadlines. These are hard-and-fast deadlines. If you miss them, you’ll miss getting into college or qualifying for scholarships. Applying for college on time means financial aid is available as soon as you receive an admission decision.

Submitting your FAFSA before the deadline means you’re one of the first in line for available funding. If you wait, you may not get as much money as you need - meaning you’d need to apply for student loans. If you find a scholarship you’re interested in, whose deadline has passed, set a reminder for the following year.

Follow Instructions and Double-Check Your Application

Typos and other overlooked mistakes may mean your scholarship application is set to the side, with the funds given to another student who proofed their application carefully. Once your application is complete, spell-check it. Don’t rely on spell-check - it can miss small mistakes like its and it’s or there, they’re, and their.

Write short and concise sentences. Application committees have hundreds of applications to review. Cut out unnecessary words and just get to the point. Give specific examples when asked. Explain what organizations you’ve been involved with are and tell committees what your role was. Explain how your involvement made you who you are today.

Keep a Copy

This may mean that you maintain copies of awards, recognitions, and anything else that might tell a scholarship committee who you are and what you’ve achieved. This can become a portfolio that you can send along when it’s appropriate to send extra information with an application. In this portfolio, you can include anything you think may be pertinent to current or future scholarships.

You should also write your personal story and save it in as a document. As you fill out several scholarship applications, you’ll find that this makes the process much easier and faster. You won’t want to copy and paste this into your new essay or application, but it will give you a base to start from and upcycle into the perfect piece for the scholarship you’re applying to.

Whenever you finish filling out a scholarship application, save it as either a document or print it out. This will make annual scholarship application time much easier, especially if you are going to apply for the same scholarship in later years. If you think about it, applying for more than one scholarship at a time will take up much of your available time.

Set Aside Time

When you apply for a scholarship, “time” is the word you need to remember. Give yourself enough time to fill each application out correctly and in full. Also, you should give yourself time to find as many scholarships as you qualify for. Which means you need to fill each one out and submit them in a timely manner.

Save time, by customizing internet searches (hobbies, major, location, interests, enrollment level, and even your heritage). Even if the scholarship isn’t worth more than $1,000, apply. That’s money you won’t have, otherwise.

Scholarships in which you’re interested may require that you include a set number of letters of recommendation. Again, you need time. Time to speak to the people who will be writing these letters; time for them to write the letters and get them back to you. You may even think about asking for some of these before you start your scholarship search, especially if you have a close relationship with a teacher or mentor who you think would have something to say about you.

You also need time to go over your application and ensure that you have corrected errors. You should also consider taking time for someone else to do the same thing. Finally, take the time to make sure you package your application as specified. Each scholarship website will specify how to do so.

Keep at It

Scholarships will help you to save money. Even if you are being told that it isn’t necessary to apply for a scholarship, you should apply and keep on applying. For instance, if you are or were in the military, you may have been told that education benefits make scholarships unnecessary. This is wrong. Tuition assistance will only cover roughly $750 of your tuition, plus a few fees.

Ignore what you’re told about applying for scholarships being too difficult. At most, you have to fill out a few forms. You may occasionally have to write an essay when a scholarship requests one. Scholarships are easy to find, when you know where to look for them.

Additionally, you may not need to reapply for scholarships. As long as you meet renewal requirements, it may automatically renew for the upcoming semester.

The post How to Apply for College Scholarships is courtesy of http://universityhq.org/

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Rethinking the First Two Years of Higher Education

The first two years of college are often treated like something you just have to get through. Even the term “general education,” as the curriculum is called at that point, feels generic—and almost like a commodity.

Jennifer Schubert wants to rethink the first two years. She’s come up with a new model of a two-year college that puts less emphasis on academic disciplines and more on skills like communication and quantitative reasoning. She calls it Alder College, and it would be located in Portland, Oregon, though so far it’s just an idea and in the planning phase.

Schubert speaks the language of both higher education and business. She’s been a professor at a traditional college, as well as a consultant and business strategist. But these days she’s getting schooled in just how hard it is to start a college from scratch.

EdSurge sat down with Schubert recently to talk about her idea, and about her struggle to get a new college off the ground.

Listen to highlights of the discussion on this week’s EdSurge On Air podcast. You can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen. The transcript below has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

EdSurge: Why did you decide to try to start a college from scratch rather than work within higher ed? What is it that you felt was the problem that really needed a whole new fresh start?

Jennifer Schubert: Well, many of the faculty and other people we're working with on this, we've tried to change things at some of the institutions we've been at. It's been challenging, and not because people don't want to see change but higher ed is just a very complex and mostly hierarchical structure that makes it really hard to do this.

What's the elevator pitch for the model?

Alder College, in a nutshell, would be a two-year liberal arts commuter college and students would graduate with an associate’s degree. The recruitment would be local.

When students enter they'd enter with a cohort, and they would stay with that cohort of about 30 students for their entire time. Then—this is where it's quite different—the students are going full-time and they're not taking random general education courses; They’re taking a block of courses.

Students always take four courses, and the faculty have designed the assignments and the courses around themes. That includes humanities, social science, STEM and communications, but all of those classes are maybe working on the senses for six weeks or immigration for eight weeks.

This is what we're calling an integrated curriculum. There's different names for this. We think it's important for three reasons. One, students just learn better when they're making connections. We just know that.

The second is a lot of students are entering college with skills gaps. The way that we've structured college, faculty 1) don't have the training, and 2) don't have the time to assess where those gaps are and then actually address them. Our entire two-year program is really designed to address those skills gaps so students are not leaving with big holes, whether it's communication or quantitative-reasoning gaps.

Third is, whenever possible, students really need to be connecting their learning with the world. Whenever possible, students will be going out into the world and interviewing and talking to people, we'll be bringing people into the classroom. The number of students that actually know what people do in their jobs all day is very low. Most students don't have a clear picture. They have a general idea of, "Oh, I want to do this" and then they start on a path without ever speaking with someone who is actually in that career field.

The goal of these two years we're talking about is to produce students who think of themselves as learners. They can go out, whether they go into a job, whether they go into a certificate program, into their major at a four-year [college]. They’ll know how to step into a situation and figure out how to learn.

Your model is small, not some project that hopes for mass scale through technology.

I think that education—and no one seems to want to admit this—education just takes time, and that just takes people and labor.

I would get rid of all lecture halls that are beyond 40 people. There's no reason for people to gather in a big room where people can't have a discussion and ask questions anymore. And if your model is based on relationships, on smaller classes, then it can scale, but it doesn't mean the classes are gonna be bigger. It means that you'll have more classes of 20 students with the professor.

I've been an adjunct. Many of my friends are adjuncts. There's nothing wrong with the actual teaching by an adjunct. The problem is both the labor conditions, they're not paid enough, and also they're not connected to the curriculum. I was literally handed a syllabus the week before I taught, and no one in five years ever saw me teach a class. That's the reality of what's going on in a lot of first and second year courses. So that issue of that first and second year, right now, the way to make it cost effective is to not pay the faculty very much, and our argument is that's leading to a lot of students dropping out. It's leading to students not being prepared to go on. Thirty percent leave in their first year.

Could you walk me through a chronology of events with Alder? How does one even start a new non-profit college?

There are two challenges that you have to confront: One, what are you going to do about accreditation? The other challenge is financing it.

Some people have started colleges, and they're not accredited. We felt like we were not going to get on that path. For two reasons, accreditation is connected to the ability to transfer credits to another school.

If you want to start a college there's three ways to become accredited. The first is that you open and you’re unaccredited for the first few years, and then you get accreditation after. You have to go through a whole process after you have graduated first class. Olin School of Engineering, which opened about 10 years ago, they did this. They also had I believe $500 million [from a backer], and so they were able to. That's really a challenge for almost anybody that does not have that kind of backing.

The second way is you [start] under the umbrella of another institution for a couple of years and then you "incubate" out. Minerva, many people know, is an example of that.

Then the third is that you could actually, if you will, convince another school that this should become part of a program at their school. Say, there's a nursing school, a business school, you'd become the Alder School, and it's kind of its own school at another institution [and piggyback on their accreditation].

No one gave us $500 million. We didn't do that one. We couldn't find a partner in our immediate area or state for various reasons. We had worked with a school in California and we were going to do the incubation model. That fell through for various internal reasons.

Then the second one, which we got much further with, was becoming a program. We were going to become, essentially, a branch campus of a school that was not in the state. We would have offered the AA. They were interested in our model, but also that they could potentially then add other programs because they wanted to be in the Portland area.

That was a great fit. Both of the institutions, wonderful people, love them, just intellectually all on the same page, cared about the students. The second one was really coming down to finances. We needed to raise a couple million dollars. We have a sustainable financial model once we're up and running, which means we have a few years where you're growing and adding students and you have faculty development and things like that, so [we needed] startup costs.

No one ever gives $100 million for writing 101.

We showed that we could raise a couple million dollars, but not the whole amount. The other school just doesn't have the cushion to take a risk. That's a real challenge just generally in higher ed.

Higher ed funding, one, is often dependent upon alumni, and so you're already at a disadvantage because you don't have any. Then the second is that philanthropy tends to go towards buildings or specific programming. It tends to go towards the top and towards research. No one ever gives $100 million for writing 101.

What we're essentially saying is where you really need to put your resources are in the first and second year. That's just not that interesting to many philanthropists.

You mean to the people with the checkbook for like $100 million?

Before we started any of this I was building a financial model for three or four years and really talking to people about what would this actually cost. That's a piece that I would say. You can have as many educational ideas as you want and that's great but really when you're at the executive level talking to a president or a provost you need to be able to speak to how this is going to impact them financially and how it will benefit them as well.

What now? Where does that leave you?

The short answer is that we are continuing to try to figure out how we can make this happen but a lot of that is quieter conversations than when we were out there with a potential partner.

Rethinking the First Two Years of Higher Education published first on https://medium.com/@GetNewDLBusiness