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wellesleyunderground · 4 years

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Wellesley Writes It: Interview with Anissa M. Bouziane ’87 (@AnissaBouziane), author of DUNE SONG

Anissa M. Bouziane ’87 was born in Tennessee, the daughter of a Moroccan father and a French mother. She grew up in Morocco, but returned to the United States to attend Wellesley College, and went on to earn an MFA in fiction writing from Columbia University and a Certificate in Film from NYU. Currently, Anissa works and teaches in Paris, as she works to finish a PhD in Creative Writing at The University of Warwick in the UK. Dune Song is her debut novel. Follow her on Twitter: @AnissaBouziane.

Wellesley Underground’s Wellesley Writes it Series Editor, E.B. Bartels ’10 (who also got her MFA in writing from Columbia, albeit in creative nonfiction), had the chance to chat with Anissa via email about Dune Song, doing research, publishing in translation, forming a writing community, and catching up on reading while in quarantine. E.B. is especially grateful to Anissa for willing to be part of the Wellesley Writes It series while we are in the middle of a global pandemic.

And if you like the interview and want to hear more from Anissa, you can attend her virtual talk at The American Library tomorrow (Tuesday, May 26, 2020) at 17h00 (Central European Time). RSVP here.

EB: First, thank you for being part of this series! I loved getting to read Dune Song, especially right now with everything going on. I loved getting to escape into Jeehan’s worlds, though sort of depressing to think of post-9/11-NYC as a “simpler time” to escape to. My first question is: Reading your biography, I know that you, much like Jeehan, have moved back and forth between the United States and Morocco––born in the U.S.A., grew up in Morocco, and then back to the U.S.A. for college. You’ve also mentioned elsewhere that this book was rooted in your own experience of witnessing the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11. How much of your own life story inspired Dune Song?

AMB: Indeed, Dune Song is rooted in my own experience of witnessing the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11. As a New Yorker, who experienced the tragedy of that now infamous Tuesday in September almost 19 years ago, I would not have chosen the collapse of the World Trade Center as the inciting incident of my novel had I not lived through those events myself. So yes, much of what Jeehan, Dune Song’s protagonist, goes through in NYC is rooted in my own life experience. Nonetheless the book is not an autobiography — I would consider it more of an auto-fiction, that is a fiction with deep roots in the author’s experience. The New York passages speak of the difficulties of coming to terms with the tragedy that was 9/11 — out of principle, I would not have chosen 9/11 as the inciting incident of my novel if I did not have first hand experience of the trauma which I recount.

EB: Thanks for saying that. I feel like there is a whole genre of 9/11 novels out there now and a lot of them make me uncomfortable because it feels like they are exploiting a tragedy. Dune Song did not feel that way to me. It felt genuine, like it was written by someone who had lived through it.

AMB: As for the desert passage that take place in Morocco, though I am extremely familiar with the Moroccan desert — and have traveled extensively from the dunes of Merzouga to the oasis of Zagora — this portion of the novel is totally fictional. That being said, I am one of those writers who rides the line between fiction and reality very closely, so if you ask me if I ever let myself be buried up to my neck in a dune, the answer would be: yes.

EB: How did the rest of the story come about? When and how did you decide to contrast the stories of the aftermath of 9/11 with human trafficking in the Moroccan desert?

AMB: Less than six months after 9/11, in March of 2002 I was invited back to Morocco by the Al Akhawayn University, an international university in the Atlas Mountains near the city of Fez. There I gave a talk which would ultimately provide me with the core of Dune Song: the chapter that takes place in the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, where following a mass in commemoration of the victims of the 9/11 attacks, an Imam from a Mosque in Queens was asked to recite a few verses from the Holy Quran. The Moroccan artists and academics present that day were deeply moved by my talk (which in fact simply recounted my lived experience); they told me that I should turn my talk into a novel. I thought the idea interesting and began to write, but within a year the Iraq War was launched and suddenly a story promoting dialogue and mutual understanding between the Islamic World and the West seemed to interest few, so I moved on to other things. Nonetheless, the core of Dune Song stayed with me.

Years later, as I re-examined that early draft, I realized that if I was to turn it into a novel, it had to transcend my life experience — and that is when I turned to my knowledge of the Moroccan desert and my longstanding interest in illegal trafficking across the Sahara desert. I returned to Morocco from the USA in 2003 thanks to Wellesley’s Mary Elvira Stevens Alumnae Traveling Fellowship to research what will soon be my second novel, but truth be told I got the grant on my second try. My first try in the mid-90s had been a proposal to explore the phenomenon of South-North migration across the Sahara and the Mediterranean. I remained an active observer of issues around Trans-Saharan migration, but I went to the desert three or four times on my return to Morocco before I understood that this was where Jeehan too must travel. My decision to bring Jeehan there probably emanated out of the serenity that I experienced when in the desert, but if Dune Song was to be more than just a cathartic work, I realized it should also attempt to draw a cartography of a better tomorrow — and so Jeehan would have to go to battle for others whose fate was in jeopardy because of a continued injustice overlooked by many. It seemed clear to me that Jeehan’s path and those of the victims of human trafficking had to cross. Her quest for meaning in the wake of the 9/11’s senseless loss of life depended on it.

EB: I really loved the structure of the book––the braided narratives, moving back and forth between New York and Morocco. How did you decide on this structure? And how and why did you choose to have the Morocco chapters move forward chronologically, while the New York chapters bounce around in time? To me it felt reflective of the way that we try to make sense of a traumatic event––rethinking and obsessing over small details, trying to make sense of chaos, all the pieces slowing coming together.

AMB: Fragmented narratives have always been my thing, probably because, as someone who straddles many cultures and who feels rooted in many geographies, I felt early on that fragmented forms leant themselves to the multi-layered stories that emanated out of me. My MFA thesis was an as-yet-unpublished novel entitled: Fragments from a Transparent Page (inspired by Jean Genet’s posthumous novel). Even my early work in experimental cinema was obsessed with fragmentation — in large part because I believe that though we experience life through the linear chronology of time, we remember our lives in far-less linear fashion. I agree with you that trauma further disrupts our attempts at streamlining memory. The manner in which we remember, and how the act of remembering — or forgetting — shapes the very content of our memory is essential to my work as a novelist, for I believe it is essential to our act of making meaning of our lived experience.

In Dune Song the reader watches Jeehan travel deep into the Moroccan desert. We also watch her remember what has come before. And we witness her struggle with her memories, which is why the New York chapters bounce around in time. The thing she is frightened of most — her memories of seeing the Towers crumble, knowing countless souls are being lost before her eyes — this she cannot remember, or refuses to remember clearly. And it is not until she is in the heart of the desert and is confronted with the images of the collapse of the WTC as beamed through a small TV screen in Fatima’s kitchen, that she takes the reader with her into the recollection of that trauma. Once that remembering is done, her healing can truly begin — and the time of the novel heads in a more chronological direction.

EB: While this is a work of fiction, I imagine that a significant amount of research went into writing this book, especially concerning the horrors of human trafficking. What sorts of research did you do for Dune Song?

AMB: As I mentioned earlier, beginning in the mid-nineties, the issue of human trafficking across the Sarah became a subject of academic and moral concern to me. But the fact that I grew up in Morocco, and spent many of my summers in my paternal grandmother’s house in Tangier, sensitized me to this topic very early on. Tangier, is located at the most northern-western tip of the African continent, and therefore it is a weigh station for many who aim to cross the Straits of Gibraltar with hopes of getting to Spain, to Europe. I recall a moment when as a teenager I gazed out over the Straits from the cliff of Café Hafa, where Paul Bowles used to write, and imagined that the body of water before me as a watery Berlin Wall. One of my unpublished screenplays, entitled Tangier, focused on the tragedy of those who risked their lives to cross the Straits. So, did I do research to write Dune Song? You bet — I folded into Dune Song topics that had been in the forefront of my consciousness for years.

EB: I know that Dune Song has been published in Morocco by Les Editions Le Fennec, published in the United Kingdom by Sandstone Press, published in France by Les Editions du Mauconduit, and published in the U.S.A. by Interlink Books. What was the experience like, having your book published in different languages and in different countries? Were any changes made to the novel between editions?

AMB: Dune Song was first published in Morocco in an early French translation. Initially this was out of desperation, not choice. I wrote Dune Song in English, and I shopped the English manuscript in the UK and the US to no avail. I was told by people who mattered in literary circles that the book was too transgressive to be published in either the US or UK markets. Suggestion was made to me that I remove all the New York passages from the book if I was to stand a chance of having it hit the English speaking market. I refused to do so and instead worked with my friend and translator, Laurence Larsen to come up with a French version. That being done, I shopped it around in France only to be told that a translation couldn’t be published before the original. Dismissively, I was told to seek-out who might benefit from an author like me existing. The comment hit me like a slap across the face, and I sincerely thought of giving up on the work all together — more than that, I thought I might give up on writing — but my students (who have always been a source of support for me — more on that later) convinced me not to trow in the towel. Once I had the courage to re-examine the question posed to me by the French, I realized that there was a viable answer: the Moroccans. That’s when I contacted Layla Chaouni, celebrated French-language publisher in Casablanca, and asked her if she might want to consider Dune Song for Le Fennec.

Layla’s enthusiasm for the novel marked a huge shift in Dune Song’s fortunes: the book was published in Morocco, won the Special Jury Prize for the Prix Sofitel Tour Blanche, was selected to represent Morocco at the Paris Book fair in 2017, which then lead me (through my Wellesley connections) to gain representation by famed New York literary agent Claire Roberts. It was Claire who got me a contract with Sandstone as well as with Interlink and with Mauconduit — she has been an unconditional champion of my work, and for this I will be eternally grateful. It must be noted that when the book got to Sandstone, I believe it was ‘wounded’ — it had gone through many incarnations, but I was not thrilled with the final outcome. My editor at Sandstone, the fantastic Moria Forsyth gave me the space and guidance to “heal” the manuscript — that is, she identified what was not working and sent me off to fix things, with the promise of publication as a reward for this one last push. The result was the English version that everyone is reading today (published in the UK by Sandstone and in the US by Interlink Publishing). My translator, Laurence Larsen worked diligently to upgrade the French translation for Mauconduit.

It has been a long journey, at times dispiriting, at time exhilarating. I am terribly excited that today, my Dune Song has been published in four countries, and there is hope for more. In the darkest hours of the process, I gave myself permission to give up. “You’ve come to the end of the line,” I told myself, “it’s okay if your stop writing altogether.” In hindsight, hitting rock bottom was essential, because the answer that came back to me was NO. No, I won’t stop writing. I accepted that I might never be published, but I refused to stop writing, for to do so would be to give up on the one action that brought meaning to my life.

EB: You’ve mentioned that Dune Song was originally written in English, though I am guessing, based on your background and reading the book, that you also speak Arabic and French. How and why did you decide to write Dune Song in English? And did you translate the work yourself into the French edition?

AMB: Yes, Dune Song was originally written in English. Though I speak French and Moroccan Arabic (Darija) fluently, my imagination has always constructed itself in English. Growing up in Morocco as of the age of eight, I considered English to be my secret garden — the material of which my invented worlds were made. I had often thought that my return to the United States, at the age of 18 to attend Wellesley, was an attempt to find a home for my words. Even today, living in Paris, I continue to write in English.

I chose not to translate Dune Song into French myself, primarily because my French does not resemble my English — it exists in a different sphere belonging more to the spoken word. I wanted a translator to show me what my literary voice might sound like in French. I have done a fair amount of literary translation, but always from French into English, and not the other way around. Nonetheless, as you rightly noted, I have actively wanted to give my readers the illusion of hearing Arabic and French when reading Dune Song. I like to refer to this as creating Linguistic Polyphony: were the base language (in this case English) is made to sing in different cords. I think my French translator, Laurence Larsen was able to reverse this process and give the French text the illusion of hearing English and Arabic.

EB: In addition to your research, what other books influenced or inspired Dune Song? My fiancé, Richie, happened to be reading the Dune chronicles by Frank Herbert while I was reading your book, and then I laughed to myself when I saw you reference them on page 56.

AMB: The Dune Chronicles, of course! Picture this: a teenage me reading Frank Herbert’s Dune while waiting at the Odaïa Café on the old pirate ramparts of Rabat while my mother was shopping in the medina. I read twelve volumes of the Chronicles. Reading voraciously in English while growing up in Morocco was one of the ways for me to always ensure that my imagination was powering up in English. You’ll note that I give Jeehan this same passion for books. Many of the books that she turns to in her time of need are the books that have shaped who I am and how I see the world: Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, Allende’s House of Spirits, Okri’s The Famished Road, Calvino’s The Colven Vicount, Aristotle’s The Poetics, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poetry…

EB: What are you currently reading, and/or what have you read recently that you’ve really enjoyed? What would you recommend we all read while laying low in quarantine?

AMB: I’m one of those people who reads many books (fiction, non-fiction, and poetry) at the same time. If I look at my night stand right now, here are the titles I see: in English — Hannah Assadi’s Sonora, Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing, Du Pontes Peebles’ The Air You Breathe, and Margo Berdeshevsky’s poetry collection: Before the Drought, in French — Santiago Amigorena’s Le Ghetto intérieur, and Mahi Binebine’s La Rue du pardon.

In quarantine, Margo’s poetry has provided me with a level of stillness and insight I did not realize I longed for — and has seemed prescient in its understanding of humanity’s relationship to our planet.

EB: On your website, you mention you are also a filmmaker, an artist, and an educator in addition to being a writer. How do you think working in those other fields/mediums influences your writing? How do you think being a writer influences those other pursuits?

AMB: Writing as an act of meaning making is the mantra I constantly recite to my students. In my moment of greatest despair, they echoed it back to me. Why do I allow myself this type of discourse with my students? Because as a high school teacher of English and Literature, my speciality is the teaching of writing. While at Columbia University, though enrolled in a Masters of Fine Arts in Fiction at the School of the Arts, I had a fellowship at Columbia Teachers College, specifically with The Writing Project lead by Lucy Calkins (today known as The Reading and Writing Project). There I worked as a staff developer in the NYC Public School system and conducted research that contributed to Lucy’s seminal text, The Art of Teaching Writing. Over the years my students have helped me realize why we bother to tell stories and how elemental writing is to our very humanity. I could never divorce my writing from the act of teaching.

Regarding cinema, as I mentioned earlier, my frustration with how to translate multi-lingual texts into one language is what originally drove me to experiment with film. What I discovered as I dove deeper into the medium, was how key images are to the act of storytelling. Once I returned to writing literature, I retained this awareness of the centrality images in the transmission of lived experience. I smile when readers of Dune Song point out how cinematic my writing is — film and fiction should not stand in opposition one to the other.

EB: Writing a book takes a really long time and can be a really lonely and frustrating experience. Who did you rely on for support during the process? Other writers? Family? Friends? Fellow Wellesley grads? What does your writing/artistic community look like?

AMB: It took me over ten years to write and publish Dune Song. The tale of how it came to be is almost worthy of a novel itself. When things were at their most arduous, I went back to reading Tillie Olsen’s Silences, about how challenging it is for women to write and publish — it was a book I had been asked to read the summer before my Freshman year. Though I won’t tell the full story here — I must acknowledge that without the support of my sister, Yasmina, and my parents, as well as essential and amazing women in my life, many of them from Wellesley, Dune Song would never have seen the light of day. Sally Katz ‘78, has been my fairy-godmother, all good things come to me from her, plus other members of the astounding Wellesley Club of France, especially its current president, my dear classmate, Pamela Boulet ‘87. I must thank my earliest Wellesley friend, Piya Chatterjee ’87, who plowed through voluminous and flawed drafts. Karen E. Smith ’87, who reminded me of my creative abilities when I seemed to have forgotten, and who brought her daughter to my London book launch. Dawn Norfleet ’87 who collaborated with me on my film work when we were both at Columbia, and Rebecca Gregory ’87, with who was first in line to buy Dune Song at WH Smith Rue de Rivoli, and Kimberly Dozier ’87, who raised a glass of champagne with me in Casablanca when the book first came back from the printers. The list of those who helped me get this far and who continue to help me as I forge ahead is long - and for this I am grateful… writing is a thrilling but difficult endeavor, and without community and friendship, it becomes harder.

And since the book has been published, the Wellesley community has been there for me in ways big and small, even in this time of COVID. Out in Los Angeles, Judy Lee ’87 inspired her fellow alums to read Dune Song by raffling a copy off a year ago — and now, they have invited me to speak to their club on a Zoom get-together in June!

EB: Speaking of Wellesley, and since this is an interview for Wellesley Underground, were there any Wellesley professors or staff or courses that were particularly formative to you as a writer? Anyone you want to shout out here?

AMB: When a student at Wellesley, a number of Professors where particularly supportive of me and my work. At the time, I was a Political Science and Anthropology major; Linda Miller and Lois Wasserspring of the Poli-Sci department were influential and present even long after I graduated, and Sally Merri and Anne Marie Shimony of the Anthropology department helped shape the way I see the world.

Any mention of my early Wellesley influences must include Sylvia Heistand, at Salter International Center, and my Wellesley host-mother, Helen O’Connor — who still stands in for my mother when needed!

More recently, Selwyn Cudjoe and the entire Africana Studies Department, have become champions of my work. Thanks to their enthusiasm for Dune Song, I was able to present the novel at Harambee House last October and engage in dialogue about my work with current Wellesley students and faculty. This was a remarkable experience which gave me a beautiful sense of closure regarding the ten-year project that has been Dune Song. Merci Selwyn!

I speak of closure, but my Dune Song journey continues, just before the pandemic, thanks to the Wellesley Club of France and Laura Adamczyk ’87, I was able to meet President Johnson and give her a copy of Dune Song!

EB: Is there anything else you’d like the Wellesley community to know about Dune Song, your other projects, or you in general?

AMB: Way back at the start of the millennium, when the Wellesley awarded me the Mary Elvira Stevens Traveling Fellowship, I set out to excavate family secrets and explore the non-verbal ways in which generation upon generation of mothers transmit traumatic memories to their daughters. My research took me many more years than expected, but I am now in the process of writing that novel, along with a doctoral thesis on Trauma and Memory.

In conjunction with this second novel, I am working with Rebecca Gregory ’87, to produce a large-scale installation piece exploring the manner in which the stories of women’s lives are measured and told.

EB: Thank you for being part of Wellesley Writes It!

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donheisenberg · 7 years

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Worst/Most Disappointing TV of 2017

As I explained in my top 20 shows of the year post, its been fantastic year for television, but not one without missteps and disappointments. Here are the shows, episodes and other, that most frustrated and disappointed me this year in no particular order.

Sexual Harassment/Misconduct Scandals: By far the biggest story concerning the entertainment industry this year or for that matter ever. The seemingly never-ending string of sexual harassment and misconduct allegations is something that has rocked the TV world and the TV landscape will be a very different place in 2018. It was a story none of us wanted to hear but one we all had to I suppose. Outside of the actual horror of what these men did, I guess fans are still processing whether or not it is possible for them to appreciate the shows these people worked on, or if you cannot separate the art from the artist. Whatever the case there is no doubting that this was the biggest disappointment in the world of television this year.

Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 9: By the standards of just about every other sitcom season 9 of Curb is consistently funny and overall a strong outing, but when placed against the other 8 seasons of Curb it feels like a broad, self-parody of itself. David for years said he’d only return if he had the right ideas and watching season 9 I was never sure he did. A lot of it felt like it was retreading old ground and on some level it felt like he had lost sense of what made the Larry David character so great. The thing about Larry in the past is that although he could be an asshole often he was in the right and other people were the real assholes. In season 9 90% of the time Larry was just being a bit of a dick and that is a less interesting show and character.

Transparent Season 4: Putting to one side all the stuff concerning Tambor on the set of the show, Transparent season 4 was a bit of a tough watch anyway. I think it was telling that each episode ran for just about 20 mins, there just was not a whole lot of story here. Maybe Soloway and co would have benefited from taking more time between seasons to craft ten fully realized episodes of TV, rather than what we got. It has also got to a point with the Pffermann kids were they just never progress. Transparent would not be the first great show concerning characters who keeping on repeating the same old cycles, but the thing with those shows is that they are really about how people don’t change whereas with Transparent it just strikes me as lazy writing. I’ve loved this show dearly but with all that has happened with Tambor and the quality of the show’s latest season it might be time for Soloway and co to cut their losses.

Shadow Moon in American Gods: American Gods is another show in disarray (although for very different reasons) after Bryan Fuller’s departure. Which is a pity because there were a lot of good things about its first season but it had two big problems, 1 the whole season is essential a long pilot- we should find out who Mr Wednesday is after episode 1 not after 8 hours. The bigger problem though was Shadow Moon, performance issues aside I’ve never seen a clearer case of the main character having absolutely no influence on the plot. It is insane how ancillary he, as a protagonist, is to the narrative. You spend all season waiting to see what made him significant and the show had no answer.

Game of Thrones S7 Ep6 Beyond The Wall: What an amazing looking complete mess of a TV episode. The final moments of this episode are key, because as the ice dragon wakes up it signals the moment I realized just how this whole season of GOT had been reversed engineered around that moment. Season 7 began with a problem, how do we create jeopardy around the question who will end the show on the iron throne, when one character has dragons? So Thrones had its characters make a series of absolutely ludicrous decisions so that they could get to a point where the white walkers also had a dragon. It was dumb, really, really dumb.

You’re The Worst S4 Ep10 Dad-Not-Dad: You’re The Worst season 4 was at best a mixed bag at worst a disaster. There were good episodes and moments particularly at the start of the season but by the mid-point the show was just churning out terrible episode after terrible episode, none more so than Dad-Not-Dad. I know it’s called You’re The Worst but it’s treatment of its characters in this episode goes beyond anything the show has done before. How could they make me dislike Edgar? I thought that was impossible but they do it here. Also why I’m I suppose to care about Becca, she is nothing short of a cartoonish villain. Also all the stuff with Gretchen seeing Jimmy with another woman and then masturbating outside his house is really just taking her misanthropy to a level that is not true to the character. This was an awful episode that embody so much of what was wrong with this season.

Veep/Silicon Valley Finales: Veep had a good year, good enough to see it find a place on my top 20 shows post, Silicon Valley on the other hand was somewhat below par. What they both had though were finales that just stunk of the show completely running out of ideas. Seeing Selena out of office was definitely interesting, maybe it could only be for one year but to just have her run again seems uninspired. Silicon Valley has always been repetitive but this season really took that to another level. In addition to this the whole Richard-Walter White-arc was so misjudged and never added to the show at all. In the end I just hated Richard and I’m not sure how that benefits the show.

Orange is the new Black S5 Ep10 The Reverse Midas Touch: I didn’t dislike this season of Orange quite as much as everyone else, although I’m not sure I would go as far as too say that the-almost-real time experiment worked. What I can tell you for sure is that the tenth episode of this season-the one with the Piscatella flashbacks-definitely did not work. It is an offensively bad hour of TV. Every aspect of this episode is horribly misjudged. How is Piscatella’s backstory suppose to inform our understanding of him as a character? Are we suppose to somehow sympathize with him or are the flashbacks just there to underline what a one dimensional, badly written monster he is? It is about as close to a jump the shark episode as you can get without completely ruining the show forever.

Sherlock S4 Ep3 The Final Problem: The Final Problem is a fitting title for a season-possibly series-finale as awful as this one. Sherlock post-Moriarty was as a show continually finding new lows. The Empty Hearse was pretty terrible but that was nothing compared to The Abdominal Bride which was only slight more stupid than The Six Thatchers, but The Final Problem puts them all to shame with just how ridiculous it is. Coming off the back of one of the best episodes the show has ever done I had some new found hope for the finale but The Final Problem starts badly and just gets worse. Summarizing all that is stupid, uncomfortable and unbelievably convoluted about this episode in a few sentences is impossible but suffice to say this is the worst episode of television I saw in 2017, in a year where I watched The Reverse Midas Touch as well, it was that bad.

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rposervices · 5 years

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How to Evaluate Enterprise Staffing & Recruiting Technology

(By Bobby Bartlett, Enterprise Sales, TargetRecruit ) In my time working with small, mid-sized, and enterprise level staffing and recruiting organizations, I’ve seen many different flavors of evaluations. Evaluating enterprise front, middle and back office recruiting technology that will essentially run your organization is very difficult and often fails. I recently read that organizations switch ATS systems (recruiting technology) every two and a half years on average. Who knows, could be a made up stat but it had me thinking about why the cycle is so short. Considering the quantifiable costs (implementation, double paying for licenses, man hours it takes to find a new system, etc.) and the un-quantifiable costs (dip in employee morale, time to productivity on a new tool, loss of confidence in leadership, etc.), you would think there would be a heavier emphasis on getting it right. That’s not to say that the intent is not usually in the right place but the execution is often lacking and it’s usually because there is not an expert on staff that has deep knowledge and experience with conducting an evaluation like this that touches so many aspects of an organization. In this article I will explore some ways I have seen firms increase their chances of success in selecting the correct solution.

The Data and Measurables

After doing research into this topic, I found data showing failure rates of IT projects ranging between 25% and 90%. Part of understanding the data here is defining failure. In this Couchbase study that had failure at 90%, failure was defined as projects that had “fallen below planning expectations, delivered only minor improvements or altogether failed.” In the Forbes article that showed a study that used 25%, failure was defined as “outright failure,” or not even completing the project. The links to the articles are referenced below if you’d like to see some of the data yourself. One way or another, the data suggests that if your implementation does fully succeed, it will be in the minority.

Coming to Terms

When selecting a committee to help with an evaluation, one must come to terms with an important fact early on… people are self serving in nature. This is not necessarily a bad thing, it is what has helped us survive and thrive! But we didn’t evolve to evaluate technology, we evolved to survive in the wilderness, and those two things that can be in evident conflict when organizations evaluate technology solutions because people (almost) always put their interests above the greater good of the company’s. I cannot tell you how many times that someone evaluating recruiting technology will get hung up on a piece of functionality that will save them from five minutes of agony a day so they choose that solution vs the one that will save their company hundreds of hours a week. We are wired for our own survival, and often it’s difficult for people that especially sit within one function of an organization to see the forest for the trees. Select people who are global thinkers and prep them to think of things rationally, not emotionally, when making their decision.

Selecting the Right Lead

Now that we know what to look for, we need to decide who is going to be on the committee. Should it be just a few people? Should we let the entire organization take part? Ideally, a CEO, CTO or COO would run point for any technology evaluation because those people usually see the organization in a more global manner than anyone else. Unfortunately, execs rarely want to devote their time to the minutiae of looking at technology. Because of this, there is usually someone chosen to run point on an evaluation below the exec level and the reason they are chosen can vary greatly. Some reasons might be: they are a vocal agent for change, they are viewed as being tech savvy, the executives trust them, or maybe it’s just because they happened to be there when the conversation was brought up. None of the above are the best reasons in my opinion. The person running point should be someone who is a pure operations type that has nothing to gain by making one particular part of the organization happy over another. If you don’t have anyone like this in your business, do yourself a favor and hire a consultant from the outside. Maybe even consider someone without a considerable background in the recruiting technology space for the initial evaluation. I find that people in those types of positions bring less baggage to the table that would harmfully impact their decision.

Selecting the Right Committee

This to me can be the trickiest part that staffing leaders struggle with. Especially within organizations under $100MM in revenue. They still often are hyper-concerned with preserving culture (as they should be) and are often of the mentality that if they all choose it, they will have to live with it without complaining. Nonsense! For starters, you will never have a unanimous decision where everyone sings kumbaya and harmoniously selects the one perfect tool for your business to grow on. In fact, this may actually cause a division where two camps viciously fight over which tool to select. Also, end users and even managers and directors, are usually going to choose the tool that fits their agenda best, not the one that makes it so the entirety of the company can accommodate its needs today and 5 years from now. Recruiters will have mostly their needs in mind, as will salespeople, accounting, payroll, IT, marketing, etc. It would go almost completely against our fundamental nature to think otherwise. My recommendation is to have your point person survey each team and maybe even some of its members to see what their needs are up front, document them, and make sure they all make their way into the evaluation criteria. From there, identify the best people from each part of the organization to represent their team, while also understanding the bigger picture, and encourage the most data-driven and pragmatic approach possible. It can help to ask the top 3 things someone would want in a new recruiting technology to make their life easier and the top 3 things that would help the company grow. Their answers may be telling as to whether or not they should be on your committee. Also encourage the committee to not only think of today, but consider the problems that might come up down the road, and how the recruiting technology they are evaluating could solve those problems.

Creating a Criteria & Scoring

Often times we will look at 5 demos from 3 vendors over a 2-3 months evaluation period and at the end just throw our hands in the air and say screw it, I’m just going to choose X vendor because I like them. Or, I like these one or two things Y vendor does so I’ll choose them. Evaluation fatigue is real and it happens to everyone. How can one single person ingest so much data in a drawn out period and remember everything about it? Not to mention they may not revisit the conversation for another 5-10 years, or ever again for that matter! Having a rock solid evaluation criteria documented can make you feel 100% more confident in your decision. You can create one on your own from scratch, or the easier road is ask your friend who works at another staffing company if they have anything hanging around that you could base yours off of. Also, you can weight each feature by level of importance and then rate the features vendor by vendor 1-5 or 1-10. From there you can determine the final score of each vendor. You can also break functionality out by group so they can rate the features that are important to them while they are watching the demos, rather than having to look at the entirety of the document that is largely irrelevant to their life. This way they don’t have to rely on their foggy memory later and it keeps people engaged in the demos. They aren’t going to want to turn in a blank score sheet or have scores on there that can’t be justified because they had no idea why they put them there. Just be careful that if you do decide to score and rank solutions, that you choose line items to score that are clear cut and definable, not confusing and ambiguous. For example: say “Rate the ease of creating reports from scratch” instead of “Rate their reporting from 1-10”. One asks a specific question. The other leaves it completely open to interpretation. They could be rating how visibly appealing the reports are, how many reports there are, how well the reports fit their needs, or even if the reporting tool allows them to create their own report in the first place. In the end, find out what’s important to each team, and give them a manageable list to help them organize their thoughts and help you make a solid decision.

Process – Evaluating a Recruiting Technology

Similar to implementations, too often sales processes face unnecessary delays or get put on the back burner. Even worse, sometimes people reach out to vendors too late, putting them both in a precarious situation because the vendor of course won’t turn down the opportunity despite knowing the implementation is already in jeopardy. Allot at a minimum of 3 to 3.5 months for a smaller organization. If you are larger, there is usually a sliding scale upwards from there. Be wary of any company that is offering to do an implementation in a shorter time frame. They are most likely not spending much time making sure your data migrates properly and/or their system barely has any functionality so there’s just not much to do in an implementation! Another detriment to an evaluation process is when it gets delayed or put on the back burner. I can confidently say that you will need additional meetings to discuss the same things over again because you and your team will forget these details as time elapses. To prevent this, work with your vendor to create a timeline from the beginning to move the evaluation forward. A timeline should outline the expected meetings needed for a company of your size within your vertical. A timeline document will rarely be adhered to perfectly, but it sets expectations that you are a serious buyer. Your time is extremely valuable, as is theirs, so why not make sure you are both not wasting it. One other major time-waster is being unprepared for meetings. This falls on both the vendor and the staffing company but not having clear agendas and prepped teams on both sides, inevitably more meetings will need to take place in follow-up. To quantify this, let’s say an average demo is attended by 7 people. If those people are making on average $100k/year fully burdened then that’s roughly $350 down the drain if another hour needs to be tacked on that could have been avoided. Effort up front can save far more effort on the back end. Having a clearly defined process from beginning to end is time well spent.

Get Behind Your Decision

This may sound simple but it can easily get botched. As an executive or a decision maker, your team needs to know that you are 100% behind your decision. If they feel you are not, some will exploit this fact. It’s basically giving them carte blanche to say if since our CEO doesn’t fully believe in this, why should I? Then they might poison the well for others, really throwing a wrench in your investment. BUT, if they know you are unwavering, they will fall in line. You and your carefully selected team know what is best for the business, and they have to have faith that your goals are aligned. Their success is your success, so you’re obviously not going to purposely impede them. They have to know if it’s not in the system, it didn’t happen. Joe the recruiter spoke to that Jan the candidate but the call’s not logged? Sorry, Jan’s going back into the pool for someone else to take a stab at. Your team is conversing via email about candidates rather than using the internal social collaboration tool like Chatter, they lose out on kicker bonuses for the month because visibility in the system is key for your organization. There has to be value in using the system and everyone needs to know you strongly believe that value.

Closing Thoughts – Recruiting Technology Stack

I’ve seen companies run evaluations that are totally haywire and others that are nearly spotless, and in my experience they are far more often the former than the latter. As people in the staffing industry know, there are no shortcuts in success. Doing the hard thing the right way is not for everyone and it ultimately can determine who thrives and who fades away. Outside of the people at your company, your recruiting technology stack is your biggest opportunity for differentiation. Decisions of a large magnitude like this should be considered accordingly. References Forbes article on 7 reasons why tech projects fail ZDNet article on why 68% of IT projects fail Couchbase article on the data dilemma holding back digital innovation Digital Journal article called “9 out of 10 digital transformation projects will fail ERPFocus article called “Ten ERP failure statistics that highlight the importance of getting it right first time round” Read the full article

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abassi-okoro · 5 years

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WHITE ATHLETES KNEELING IN PROTEST IS NOT HELPFUL. WHY?

I'm not saying that white athletes shouldn't kneel and nor am I saying that they should. But some do and so the question is why do they? Well, the answer is simple. White athletes kneel in protest during the National Anthem because whites are becoming sympathetic to the racial disparities facing this country. That's the cut-n-dry short answer.

But here's the problem we have, kneeling for white athletes has now become a fashionable thing to do. Sort of how it was the "thing" years ago for Hollywood celebrities to adopt little black kids from Africa or how white folks wanted to extend the use of the N-word to their daily suburban colloquialism. It usually takes a little time for white people to catch on to the newest fad or trend but when they do, boy do they claim it and run with it. I don't recall many white athletes coming to the defense Colin Kaepernick when he pioneered the kneel - which caused him his career. If my memory serves me correctly, white athletes either hated him for it or dared not to show their support. And now, white athletes want to be "Rebellious" and "Warriors for Social Justice." Kneeling in protest is now the "COOL" thing to do. It's gone viral. It's like a meme or one of those Internet challenges or like the ALS Ice Bucket challenge years ago where everyone just had to try outdo the next person by showing how creative they can be dumping ice on their head. Wow! Did we find a cure for ALS because no one has even bothered to talk about ALS since? That's what we call, a fad. It comes and it goes. Here's the truth about white athletes kneeling;

1. They're not going to lose their job over it! They might even get invited to the White House for their public protest.

2. Their protest is going to make them a household name. I had no idea who Megan Rapinoe was before she kneeled and chances are, neither did you.

3. If I remake a Stevie Wonder song then I should give credit to Stevie Wonder, right?! If you're going to kneel then you should give credit to Kaepernick who sacrificed himself so that YOU can mimic his actions but without all the negative press, losses and racism that he got.

White athletes kneeling doesn't help oppressed people no where in the world and it doesn't help black people. It's only a "gesture" and it's especially a gesture coming from someone white who falls short of using their privilege to fight the system of oppression or police brutality. And of course there's the media who takes these stories of white athletes kneeling and runs with it and use terms like, "Taking action" or "Great White Heroes Bringing Awareness to Police Brutality." So I guess now white people are the ones getting credit for bringing awareness to police brutality? Has anyone been listening to black people all these damn years? Did not NWA back in 1988 scream, "Fuck Tha Police?" Did not Ice-T in 1990 scream "Cop Killer?" Did not KRS One in 1993 say, "Woop Woop, that's the Sound of the Police?" Did not Rodney King get his ass beat damn near to death by the LAPD? Was not Amadou Diallo shot 41 times by the police in New York in 1999? The police killed 1,165 people in 2018 and it's white "Heroes" bringing awareness to police brutality?

And why are they heroes? Because they kneeled? Because they did something that a black man did first but they get to keep their career and THAT makes THEM a hero? I understand protest but I also understand that protest often lacks mobility. Anyone can protest but can you divest? In the mid 90's the PTC (Parents Teachers Council) didn't appreciate some of the sexism and violence that they were seeing on television. They could have easily "protested" but they didn't. Instead, they divested completely and they encouraged others to divest and ratings for entire networks nationwide dropped significantly. They didn't just not watch particular shows, they disconnected their televisions all together and the Neilson's Group couldn't get ratings across the board and sponsors, aka "money" dropped out. That's mobility!

If you're white and you're not prepared to lose your career for kneeling then don't kneel and if your kneeling isn't enough to put your career in jeopardy then you're not doing enough, no one is threatened by you and kneeling is pointless as a white athlete. There is no success without sacrifice. White athletes are being hailed as heroes and courageous men and women for doing nothing and we ought to be disgusted by it and sick of it. We should be sick of white folks doing the bare minimum and being celebrated for it. We should be sick of white folks taking the "safer" path, the path traveled by the many before them, the path that others cleared the way for, the path of less resistance. Black people have always been on the front line of every social fight in this country and after we have taken the full brunt, after we've become the collateral damage, then and only then do white folks walk through and try to take the credit for being brave and courageous.

America never misses an opportunity to create the white savior.

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tatooedlaura-blog · 7 years

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Comfortable

I think this might fall under @leiascully‘s Rest challenge ... yeah ... I’m gonna slap it under that category and call it a day :)

Also, it’s a post-ep for ‘Millennium’ ...

Enjoy 8^)

&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Mulder hadn’t seen her this weary in a long time … months since she had shadows that dark under her eyes, skin as pale as winter sunshine, lips faded to a hint of the rose they should be. Walking towards him, he stood immediately, taking in her exhaustion with a blinking glance, “hey there.”

She didn’t really answer, more like nodded her head with the illusion of giving a shit that she was upright and mobile. Dropping her bag on the floor by the coat rack and her shoes beside it, she brandished a file folder, tossed it to his lap, missed, didn’t care, ignored the sheaf of paper fanned across the hardwood and crawled, wobbled, swayed, landed face first across his couch.

He didn’t argue, taking in her rapidly encompassing coma state as a sign to keep his mouth shut of any and all sarcastic comments regarding the commandeering of his furniture for her hedonistic napping session. Not caring to move much himself, given his wrapped shoulder and still pulling scabs on his neck, he eventually picked up the folder, glancing through the final report on zombies or reanimated human-like entities before tossing it back to the floor.

He really didn’t give a rat’s fuzzy butt about the case, preferring not to remember it as his apartment fell to the early winter darkness. He wasn’t a fan of fire; he wasn’t a fan of cold; he wasn’t a fan of conspiring assholes and now he knew he definitely wasn’t a fan of reani- … zombies … whatever the hell they were. He mostly just wanted to forget them and enjoy some TV and a nap.

But Scully was in his TV watching spot, face squished into the cushion where he usually sat, the compressed foam perfectly indented to his rear after countless years and which was now cradling his soon-to-be drooling partner, her arm hanging to the floor, hand bent at the wrist, fingerprints pressed to woven striped rug.

And she was fairly cute doing it.

Settling back in the office chair he currently occupied and would occupy for the foreseeable future, he shifted his good arm up, resting his head against his hand, deciding that since he didn’t have a decent angle for the TV now, he’d just watch her.

Turned out to be the best entertainment of the night.

“Mul … ler?”

That startled him a little. She’d been snoring not half a second earlier and he never expected her to say anything.

“Yeah?”

“Muller?”

“Yes, Scully?”

Still not answering, she broke into a grin, her face shifting enough so he could just make out her mouth in full, “Muller.”

By now, his chuckle had emerged, head tilting further to the side to see her better, “Scully.”

Pulling her arm up, she languidly twisted onto her side, back against the back, knees sliding over each other until she settled again, left arm draped over belly, breasts pushed together in tantalizing, nearly spilling out cleavage.

He could see her knees as well.

Shit.

He had a thing for her knees. He’d been watching them peak out from underneath skirts for what felt like decades now and he had been fantasizing about his hand on one of them for just as long. Oddly, he had pictured her on her knees doing … things … to him for nearly as long but those fantasies were nowhere near as frequent as the ones where he simply sat beside her, warm palm cupped over her rounded knee, the beautiful 90-degree joint that carried her beside him everywhere and anywhere without fault and without fail.

He was utterly beguiled and bewildered at the sight of her knees. He’d shake his head to bring himself back to a sense of manly reality but, really, why.

Granted, the cleavage did fight for his attention, don’t get him wrong but tonight, he took his voyeuristic time, enjoying his blue-glowing Scully in all her napping glory, knees out for the world to see.

He chuckled again at the realizing that he was so far under her spell, it was shocking he could still function at all in society.

Then again, his society for the time being, consisted of Scully and zombies.

He gave himself five more minutes before forcing himself to stand, go to the kitchen, silently find some dinner, forget his partner on the couch in order to take a deep breath, sort his head back to the here and now.

“Muller?”

Like a snapping rubber band, he was back at her side before he knew his feet were moving, “Scully?”

This time, though, her eyes were open, staring up at him, confused and squinty, “am I hungry?”

“I … I don’t know.” Giving her a soft smile, “I was just making myself some food. You got here about an hour ago so you probably are hungry. It’s after 7.”

Time stamp sinking in, “hey, we’re missing ‘Wheel of Fortune’.”

God, he really should just propose now and get it over with, “want to find the channel and I’ll heat up whatever the hell isn’t nasty in my fridge?”

Hand already digging in the cushions for the remote, “deal.”

Sooner than later, they were buried deep in the couch, Mulder’s feet on the coffee table, Scully’s tucked underneath her, knee touching his thigh and blanket haphazardly thrown over them, empty plates near his toes. As they waited for the final ‘Jeopardy’ clue, Mulder debated whether it was time.

Scully chose action over debate.

Reaching towards him, she quietly gripped his pinkie finger and slowly dragged his hand from his leg to hers, stopping once her knee rounded out his palm.

In answer, he slid a little further down in the cushions, elbow resting on her upper thigh and fingers curved more securely around the sacred bones.

Mulder left it there through the last question, through two episodes of something he didn’t have the capacity to pay attention to because Scully was real and beside him, only one layer of blanket between skin on skin. Then, around nine, he gathered boldness from points unknown and deftly moved from above blanket to below, back to knee, heat on heat, watching her out the corner of his eye and relaxing when he saw the smallest of smiles curve her lip.

He was golden tonight.

And he sure as hell wasn’t going to push it.

Soon, cliched date night situations aside, her head landed on his shoulder, the credit music of ‘West Wing’ filling the room as she quietly asked, “would you mind if I stayed here tonight?”

“Of course not. Tired?”

“Yeah … but …” he could hear the hesitation beating the space between them, “mostly I … I’m comfortable and don’t want to go home right now.”

Squeezing her leg, he moved to stand, “let me go find you something to sleep in.”

She let him stand, missing him instantly and watched him trek away, sling band across his back, gait stilting slightly because a jostling walk sent pains through his unhealed bones. Following seconds later, she stood in his bedroom doorway, blanket over her shoulders, “anything is fine.”

Turning, “why’d you get up? You said you were comfortable on the couch?”

“No, I said I was comfortable.” Stepping closer, her eyes twinkled and sparked, “I’m comfortable with you and with your hand on me and being in this apartment and I don’t want to go home. There’s a difference between that and not wanting to get up from the couch to follow you.”

After keeping his grin to mere epic proportions, he gathered a t-shirt and some sweatpants, handing them to her after he moved to stand in front, “here you go and does that mean you’re not ready to go to sleep yet? Should we go see what else we can find to watch?”

Nodding, “go start looking while I change.” Quick like bunny, she came back into the living room and Mulder lost his powers of speech. Looking from her bare knees and the bottom of the shirt he gave her, which fell an inch above the aforementioned knees, to her face, she laughed as she settled back beside him, blanket once again over them, his hand moving under the blanket and back to its spot with little hesitation, “I’ll put the pants on before I go to sleep.”

&&&&&&&&&&

The next morning, with the blinds closed and the sunlight non-existent behind layers of gray cloud, she didn’t wake up until after eight and that was only because an especially exuberant burble from the fish tank invading her senses. Ignoring the clock, she puttered around the place while she made tea and found a box of semi-expired PopTarts, settling on the couch once again to have her breakfast before she decided to give any kind of thought to work. Mulder ventured forth halfway through her second cup, hair askew and shirt twisted under his immobilizer. Attempting and failing to straighten himself out, he dropped beside her, “when did you wake up and do you know you’re late for work?”

Doing her best not to spew forth a torrent of crumbs when she answered him, “woke up 20 minutes ago and not too sure I care about work today. How are you?”

Taking the bite of PopTart she offered him, he chewed thoughtfully, “better because you’re here.”

“I meant your shoulder but thank you.”

“You make everything better, shoulder included.”

Moving the blanket to cover his legs as well, mirroring the night before, she watched him put his hand back under the blanket, his eyebrows raising when he ran into skin instead of flannel, “still no pants, young lady?”

“Nope.”

“You should play hooky with me and not wear any pants at all.”

Pretending to debate, she tucked the blanket in closer under her legs and wiggled against him, “you should find me some cartoons. Flintstones if possible … or Scooby-Doo.”

With a non-chalant and non-presumptuous kiss to the top of her head, “I love you and your cartoony, pantsless ways.”

“I love you and your expired PopTart owning ways.”

Finding the Flintstones on some backend cable channel, “today is going to be a good day.”

Already planning a nap, probably in Mulder’s bed and probably not alone, “a very good day.”

#semi-expired poptarts #msr #xf fanfic #xfiles fanfic #post-ep Millennium #I have absolutely no idea if i spelled millennium correctly

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seokmins-thighs · 7 years

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92 questions holy crap

tagged by @pabospoiler

thanks for the tag adelin <3

Rules: Answer these 92 statements and tag 20 people.

THE LAST:

1. Drink: water 2. Phone call: my dAD omg i couldn’t get my headlights on 3. Text message: my sister (Little One) 4. Song you listened to: Bullshit by G Dragon 5. Time you cried: last night lmao

HAVE YOU: 6. Dated someone twice: yaLL im single for seokmin 7. Kissed someone and regretted it: virgin lips for the sunshine 8. Been cheated on: seokmin’s loyal 9. Lost someone special: as a friend, yeah? 10. Been depressed: i guess but i don’t talk about it 11. Gotten drunk and thrown up: no...not yet

LIST 3 FAVORITE COLORS: 12-14: red, (pastel??) yellow, dark blue

IN THE LAST YEAR HAVE YOU: 15. Made new friends: yes! here and in real life :D 16. Fallen out of love: idk it’s more like i realized i never really liked the guy 17. Laughed until you cried: last time was just...last week 18. Found out someone was talking about you: no 19. Met someone who changed you: no 20. Found out who your friends are: ever since graduating high school, yeah i guess lmao 21. Kissed someone on your Facebook list: no

GENERAL: 22. How many of your Facebook friends do you know in real life: probably 99% of them 23. Do you have any pets: i used to have dog and birds before i came to the us of a. then i had a kitten but then found out i’m allergic to them :c 24. Do you want to change your name: no i like people to struggle spelling and pronouncing my name 25. What did you do for your last Birthday: i took placement exams for college then went out to eat with my friend and her mom then ate out again with that same friend and my family 26. What time did you wake up: pretty sure it was 8:30am-ish 27. What were you doing at midnight last night: messaging friends 28. Name something you can’t wait for: my day off??

29. When was the last time you saw your mom: last night before going to sleep

30. What is one thing you wish you could change in your life: i wish i could shut up sometimes

31. What are you listening right now: my sister is playing jay park’s all i wanna do behind me 32. Have you ever talked to a person named Tom: does tommy count? there are no toms here omg 33. Something that is getting on your nerves: people not cleaning up after themselves 34. Most visited Website: tumblr, ao3, this website that makes typewriter sounds when you type (it’s where i write my first drafts of fics and scenarios and all :D)

LOST QUESTIONS.

35. Mole/s: i have a lot oh gosh i have like 9-11 on my face then there are like 7 on my right arm and i still have more body parts to go 36. Mark/s: yeah i have a lot like i still have one from november from when i cut myself with scissors trying to open a box 37. Childhood dream: i was like katniss everdeen with the bow and arrow except i was inside a library and i had to shoot enemies and i jumped on the bookshelves and showed the innocent people the way to the bus. even in the bus, i was jumping from one seat to another with bow and arrow in hand. i told this dream to my dad and he won’t let me live it down 38. Haircolor: dark brown???? 39. Long or short hair: long 40. Do you have a crush on someone: no it’s been years

41. What do you like about yourself: idk i can adapt to situations pretty quickly

42. Piercings: just my ears 43. Bloodtype: my dad says i’m o (because it’s the most common blood type in the philippines and because his name starts with o) 44. Nickname: gen, gene, jollibee, gennybean 45. Relationship status: single and feeling gr8 46. Zodiac: gemini 47. Pronouns: she/her 48. Favorite TV Show: jeopardy? i don’t watch a lot of dramas except show me the money hehe 49. Tattoos: no 50. Right or left hand: righty, sometimes use my left for other stuff like cleaning when my right gets tired 51. Surgery: no 52. Hair dyed in different color: no 53. Sport: used to play soccer and basketball, but i hurt my knee, so i stick to table tennis 55. Vacation: i like going to different places and taking time to enjoy things there, but my family is always like we see it we’re here let’s go somewhere else now i scream 56. Pair of trainers: my pair of air jordans that i’ve been wearing since i was like 15

MORE GENERAL: 57. Eating: nothing but i ate spicy stew thing i made earlier 58. Drinking: water 59. I’m about to: go to the library! 61. Waiting for: college to start oh gosh 62. Want: to finish writing everything i’ve been putting off (which is like 13 stories im crying) 63. Get married: gotta finish college first before dating anyone 64. Career: writer sounds nice, but i want to try engineering or computer science, but my parents tell me no

WHICH IS BETTER 65. Hugs or kisses: hugs 66. Lips or eyes: eyes 67. Shorter or taller: taller 68. Older or younger: older 70. Nice arms or nice stomach: ARMS 71. Sensitive or loud: i like both

72. Hook up or relationship: relationship

73. Troublemaker or hesitant: troublemaker

HAVE YOU EVER: 74. Kissed a stranger: no 75. Drank hard liquor: no...not yet 76. Lost glasses/contact lenses: no 77. Turned someone down: yeah i hate them all 78. Sex on the first date: no 79. Broken someone’s heart: yeah i guess i hate that guy too 80. Had your heart broken: yeah? 81. Been arrested: no 82. Cried when someone died: yeah 83. Fallen for a friend: i guess so? but it’s gone now

DO YOU BELIEVE IN: 84. Yourself: sometimes 85. Miracles: yeah 86. Love at first sight: no 87. Santa Claus: no 88. Kiss in the first date: no 89. Angels: sure

OTHER: 90. Current best friends name: annette, melissa, cindy, and dennis :D 91. Eyecolor: brown 92. Favorite movie: i can’t pick? miracles in cell no. 7, finding nemo, kimi no na wa, kingsman

#im not gonna tag people bc im a loser lmao #i FINALLY DID IT i've been stuck on some questions so yeah #tagged #this was fun #and helped me realize i can't decide heh

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gordonwilliamsweb · 4 years

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As COVID-19 Lurks, Families Are Locked Out Of Nursing Homes. Is It Safe Inside?

Navigating Aging

Navigating Aging focuses on medical issues and advice associated with aging and end-of-life care, helping America’s 45 million seniors and their families navigate the health care system.

To contact Judith Graham with a question or comment, click here.

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Families are beset by fear and anxiety as COVID-19 makes inroads at nursing homes across the country, threatening the lives of vulnerable older adults.

Alarmingly more than 10,000 residents and staff at long-term care facilities have died from COVID infections, according to an April 23 analysis of state data by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

But often facilities won’t disclose how many residents and employees are infected with the coronavirus that causes the disease, citing privacy considerations. Unable to visit, families can’t see for themselves how loved ones are doing.

Are people getting enough to eat? How are their spirits? Are they stable physically or declining? Are staff shortages developing as health aides become sick?

Perhaps most pressing, does a loved one have COVID symptoms? Is testing available? If infected, is he or she getting adequate care?

“This is the problem we’re all facing right now: If you have family in these facilities, how do you know they’re in danger or not?” Jorge Zamanillo told the Miami Herald after his 90-year-old mother, Rosa, died of COVID-19 only days after staffers said she was “fine.”

In recent weeks, amid mounting concern, states including California, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts and New York began releasing data about cases and deaths in individual nursing homes. (The data varies by state.) And the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said it would require homes to report cases to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and to notify residents and families. (Previously, facilities were required to report only to states.)

Families’ worst fears have been expressed in recent headlines, including a New York Times story that described “body bags piled up” behind a New Jersey nursing home where 70 residents had perished. Another investigation called nursing homes “death pits” and reported that at least 7,000 residents across the nation had died of COVID-19 — about 20% of all deaths reported at the time, April 17.

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What can families do? I asked nearly a dozen long-term care advocates and experts for advice. They cautioned that the problems — lapses in infection control and inadequate staffing foremost among them — require a strong response from regulators and lawmakers.

“The awful truth is families have no control over what’s happening and not nearly enough is being done to keep people safe,” said Michael Dark, a staff attorney at California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform.

Still, experts had several suggestions that may help:

Stay in touch. With virtually all visitors barred from nursing homes since mid-March, frequent contact with loved ones via telephone calls or video visits has become even more important. In addition to providing much-needed emotional support, it signals to staffers that family members are vigilant.

“When a facility knows someone is watching, those residents get better care,” said Daniel Ross, senior staff attorney at Mobilization for Justice, a legal aid agency in New York City. “Obviously, the ban of visitors is a real problem, but it doesn’t make family oversight impossible.”

If a resident has difficulty initiating contact (this can be true for people who have poor fine motor coordination, impaired eyesight or hearing, or dementia), he or she will need help from an aide. That can be problematic, though, with staff shortages and other tasks being given higher priority.

Scheduling a time for a call, a video chat or a “window visit” may make it easier, suggests Mairead Painter, Connecticut’s long-term care ombudsman.

AARP is pressing for Congress to require nursing homes to offer video visitation and to provide federal funding for the needed technologies. If you can afford to do so, buy a tablet for your loved one or organize a group of families to buy several.

Band together. More than likely, other families have similar concerns and need for information. Reach out through email chains or telephone trees, suggested Richard Mollot, executive director of the Long Term Care Community Coalition in New York City.

Ask your nursing home administrator to update families weekly through a conference call or Zoom video chat. Explain that families will probably call less often with repetitive questions if communication is coordinated.

Many nursing homes have family councils that advocate for residents, potentially valuable conduits for support and information. Your long-term care ombudsman or administrator can tell you if a council exists at your facility.

Working with a group can reduce the fear that complaining will provoke retaliation — a common concern among families.

“It’s one thing to hear ‘Mrs. Jones’ daughter is making a big deal of this’ and another to hear that families of ‘everyone on the second floor have noted there’s no staff there,’” Ross said.

Contact ombudsmen. Every state has a long-term care ombudsman responsible for advocating for nursing home residents, addressing complaints and trying to solve problems. While these experts currently are not allowed to visit facilities, they’re working at a distance in this time of crisis. To find your ombudsman, go to https://theconsumervoice.org/get_help.

Twice a week, Painter holds an hourlong question-and-answer session on the Connecticut Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program’s Facebook page. Among dozens of questions that people asked last week: What kind of communication can I expect when a family member is COVID-positive and in isolation? What’s the protocol for testing, and are homes out of test kits? Could families get a robocall if a resident died?

One person wondered whether installing cameras in residents’ rooms was an option. This practice is legal in eight states, but facilities may consider this elsewhere on a case-by-case basis. A fact sheet from the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care lays out the pros and cons.

“Most of what we do is trying to work out better communication,” Painter said. “When there are staffing issues, as there are now, that’s the first thing that falls off.”

Lodge a complaint. Usually, Painter advises families to take concerns to a nurse or administrator rather than stew in silence. “Tell the story of what’s going on with the resident,” she said. “Identify exactly what the person’s needs are and why they need to be addressed.”

If you think a family member is being ignored, talk to the director of nurses and ask for a care plan meeting. “Whenever there’s a change in someone’s condition, there’s a requirement that a care plan meeting be convened, and that remains in effect,” said Eric Carlson, a directing attorney with Justice in Aging, a legal advocacy organization.

If that doesn’t work, go “up the facility’s chain of command” and contact the corporate office or board of directors, said Robyn Grant, director of public policy and advocacy at the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care.

If you’re getting nowhere, file a complaint with the agency that oversees nursing homes in your state. (You can find a list at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services website.) This is a formality at the moment, since CMS has temporarily released agencies from the obligation to investigate most complaints. Still, “there may come a day when you’ll want a written record of this kind,” Dark advised.

Complaints that are getting attention from regulators involve “immediate jeopardy”: the prospect of serious harm, injury, impairment or death to a resident. “If you believe your concern rises to that level, make sure to indicate that,” the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care advises.

Also, contact local, state and national public officials and insist they provide COVID-19 tests and personal protective equipment to nursing homes. “Calls, letters — the lives of your loved ones depend on it,” said Dr. Michael Wasserman, president of the California Association of Long Term Care Medicine.

Bring a relative home. Some nursing homes are asking families to take loved ones out of their facilities and bring them home. Every day, all day, Dark said, he gets calls from California families in this situation who are distraught and terrified.

Families need to think through these decisions carefully, said Dr. Joanne Lynn, a policy analyst with the Program to Improve Eldercare at Altarum, a research organization. What if their loved one becomes ill? Will they be able to provide care? If their relative has dementia or serious disabilities, can they handle the demands such conditions entail?

Researchers in Ottawa, Canada, have developed a useful decision aid for families, available at https://decisionaid.ohri.ca/docs/das/COVID-MoveFromLongTermCare.pdf. (Americans can ignore the Canada-specific information.)

At the very least, “get plans in place in case your relative has a bad [COVID-19] case. People can go from stable to serious illness within hours in many cases,” Lynn said.

This involves updating advance directives, including whether your loved one would want cardiopulmonary resuscitation, mechanical ventilation, transfer to the hospital in the event of a life-threatening health crisis or hospice care, should that be indicated.

As COVID-19 Lurks, Families Are Locked Out Of Nursing Homes. Is It Safe Inside? published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

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dinafbrownil · 4 years

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As COVID-19 Lurks, Families Are Locked Out Of Nursing Homes. Is It Safe Inside?

Navigating Aging

Navigating Aging focuses on medical issues and advice associated with aging and end-of-life care, helping America’s 45 million seniors and their families navigate the health care system.

To contact Judith Graham with a question or comment, click here.

Join the Navigating Aging Facebook Group.

See All Columns

Families are beset by fear and anxiety as COVID-19 makes inroads at nursing homes across the country, threatening the lives of vulnerable older adults.

Alarmingly more than 10,000 residents and staff at long-term care facilities have died from COVID infections, according to an April 23 analysis of state data by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Are people getting enough to eat? How are their spirits? Are they stable physically or declining? Are staff shortages developing as health aides become sick?

Perhaps most pressing, does a loved one have COVID symptoms? Is testing available? If infected, is he or she getting adequate care?

Don't Miss A Story

Subscribe to KHN’s free Weekly Edition newsletter.

Please confirm your email address below:

Still, experts had several suggestions that may help:

Scheduling a time for a call, a video chat or a “window visit” may make it easier, suggests Mairead Painter, Connecticut’s long-term care ombudsman.

Working with a group can reduce the fear that complaining will provoke retaliation — a common concern among families.

“Most of what we do is trying to work out better communication,” Painter said. “When there are staffing issues, as there are now, that’s the first thing that falls off.”

At the very least, “get plans in place in case your relative has a bad [COVID-19] case. People can go from stable to serious illness within hours in many cases,” Lynn said.

from Updates By Dina https://khn.org/news/as-covid-19-lurks-families-are-locked-out-of-nursing-homes-is-it-safe-inside/

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stephenmccull · 4 years

Text

As COVID-19 Lurks, Families Are Locked Out Of Nursing Homes. Is It Safe Inside?

Navigating Aging

Navigating Aging focuses on medical issues and advice associated with aging and end-of-life care, helping America’s 45 million seniors and their families navigate the health care system.

To contact Judith Graham with a question or comment, click here.

Join the Navigating Aging Facebook Group.

See All Columns

Families are beset by fear and anxiety as COVID-19 makes inroads at nursing homes across the country, threatening the lives of vulnerable older adults.

Alarmingly more than 10,000 residents and staff at long-term care facilities have died from COVID infections, according to an April 23 analysis of state data by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Are people getting enough to eat? How are their spirits? Are they stable physically or declining? Are staff shortages developing as health aides become sick?

Perhaps most pressing, does a loved one have COVID symptoms? Is testing available? If infected, is he or she getting adequate care?

Don't Miss A Story

Subscribe to KHN’s free Weekly Edition newsletter.

Please confirm your email address below:

Still, experts had several suggestions that may help:

Scheduling a time for a call, a video chat or a “window visit” may make it easier, suggests Mairead Painter, Connecticut’s long-term care ombudsman.

Working with a group can reduce the fear that complaining will provoke retaliation — a common concern among families.

“Most of what we do is trying to work out better communication,” Painter said. “When there are staffing issues, as there are now, that’s the first thing that falls off.”

At the very least, “get plans in place in case your relative has a bad [COVID-19] case. People can go from stable to serious illness within hours in many cases,” Lynn said.

As COVID-19 Lurks, Families Are Locked Out Of Nursing Homes. Is It Safe Inside? published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/

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martechadvisor-blog · 6 years

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Beyond Chatbots: How Artificial Intelligence Can Humanize the Customer Experience

The rise of artificial intelligence has led many people to believe that machines will take over many of the job functions in the marketing industry. However, when it comes to customer experience, the best results will occur when machines and humans work together, writes Dan Gingiss, VP of Marketing at Persado.

When people think of artificial intelligence (AI) and its technological cousin, machine learning, it often conjures up images of a robot taking over the job of a human. Indeed, “the robots are coming!” is a familiar refrain suggesting the human race will soon be invaded. If we can teach the machines to be as smart as humans, consume mountains of data in seconds, and continuously learn more at warp speed, isn’t the useful life of the human brain quickly coming to an end?

The answer: Absolutely not.

Also Read: 5 Customer Experience Tips from Experts on MTA

Anyone who watched IBM’s Watson destroy its human competition on Jeopardy! knows that computers are getting really sophisticated. Professor Toby Walsh of the University of New South Wales said that AI will catch up to human intelligence by 2062 — learning unique human traits such as adaptability, creativity and emotional intelligence. But that’s still decades away.

Today, and in the foreseeable future, the best results come from humans and machines working together. This applies to all aspects of business, even those parts of the customer experience that feel emotional and are inherently relationship based. In fact, when applied strategically, artificial intelligence can enhance a customer’s interaction with a company and, in some cases, even humanize it.

Data-driven marketing that’s inspired by humans, validated by AI

To start, artificial intelligence is becoming more prevalent in marketing at the top of the funnel. This isn’t surprising, as a lot of content across industries like finance (such as earnings reviews) and sports (such as game summaries) has been generated by machines for a while now. In fact, machine-generated content has gotten so good that most people have a hard time distinguishing it from human-generated content.

For example, compare these two real email subject lines from an online pharmacy:

ALERT | We noticed you may need to order your refills.

Don’t wait! Order your refills with one click.

Do you know which subject line was written by a human and which one was written by a computer? Are you sure? In a recent audience of about 75 marketers at Dreamforce, about 90% guessed incorrectly. (See the end of this article for the answer.)

But AI in marketing requires human intervention. The machine-generated subject line above still required human input.

Burger King recently launched an ad campaign that was claimed to be “created by artificial intelligence.” The headline, describing a new chicken product, was “Tastes Like Bird.” The company even issued a press release saying that it was “moving from the traditional Agency of Record to an Agency of Robots.”

The company admitted that the ad was a stunt, but it was backed by a real message

“Artificial intelligence is not a substitute for a great creative idea coming from a real person,” Burger King’s global head of brand marketing told AdAge ($).

While the ad succeeded in getting a lot of laughs and media attention, the resulting sentiment that AI is not a substitute for human creativity is spot-on. What machines can help marketers do is evaluate thousands of combinations of messages to determine which ones will be most effective at any given time. Just as Watson could conjure up far more potential Jeopardy! answers than its human opponents, a machine can generate far more messaging combinations than a human copywriter. And it can do it at scale, as the computing capacity is no match for a human brain.

Machines can also track decades of historical campaigns and analyze that data to provide insights and trends. After testing, a machine can identify why a certain message worked, not just that it outperformed a control message. For example, the presence (or absence) of personalization can be the most significant driver of consumer responsiveness.

(Of course, asking a machine to replace human creativity entirely results in unusable headlines such as “Tastes Like Chicken.”)

A new era of bots that support human interaction

Outsourcing customer service -- arguably the most human resource-intensive part of the customer experience -- to a “robot” seems like it would be bound to fail. But surprisingly, there are many strategic ways to apply AI to better support the human beings on the front lines with customers.

One major enabler is the proliferation of messaging apps. Three of the five largest social media platforms in the world — WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and WeChat — are messaging apps, each with more than a billion active users according to Quartz. If those apps were countries, they would each be more than three times the population size of the United States.

Joshua March, founder and CEO of contact center software platform Conversocial, said two years ago that he believed messaging apps were “the future of customer service,” and he was right. His reasoning was that messaging apps have two main advantages over “traditional” social media: they’re private (which brands love because it keeps complaints out of the public eye) and they’re persistent (which customers love because they don’t have to repeat their problem or even their account information to multiple agents).

This shift has forced companies to adapt quickly, because the move from public to private channels has not decreased consumers’ extremely high expectations of a seamless customer experience. As a result, many companies have turned to AI.

Customer service “bots” have been around for a long time —in the form of Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems on the phone and even some very basic automation on website click-to-chat services. The digitized version of this will most certainly need to be a better, more personalized customer experience, and that’s where bots are still lagging behind. Forrester predicts that in 2019, “Human resistance against ineffective chatbots is on the way, and a groundswell of jaded customers will crowdsource tips for end runs around chatty chatbots.”

So how can chatbots be most useful? The best place to start is routine customer service inquiries, of which there are many. The reason why that IVR on your credit card company’s toll-free number starts with “To hear your balance” is that millions of people call in for just that reason every year. If messaging bots can provide the same service with frequent or repetitive inquiries, it should result in a faster, easier customer experience for the consumer and a more efficient process for the company, which can then focus its agents on more complex inquiries that need human interaction.

The other place where bots can be of value is in support of the agent. Intelligence Augmentation, or IA, is sort of the reverse of AI. Instead of the bot taking over, it assists the agent in delivering a human response to the customer. Imagine an agent having a Watson-like companion constantly at his or her side which can look up customer information and answers to millions of questions in a fraction of the time the agent can? Then the agent is still there to provide actual human engagement.

This will require new training and processes to teach humans how to work with their machine counterparts. “Smart companies know that AI investments must include concurrent investments in education on the impact of AI in their business and employees and how expectations, skill sets, and experiences will evolve,” writes Forrester.

But too many companies will invariably look at bots as a shortcut, a cost-saving opportunity that will result in “IVR hell” again, just on another channel. Instead, bot experiences should be designed to incorporate human interaction at key moments -- and that handoff needs to be both simple and seamless.

Also Read: Does Customer Service Improve Customer Experience?

When humans and AI work together

So what works best? When the machine and the human work together. “Strong CX will depend on getting machines and humans to work collaboratively,” writes Forrester. Self-service is great, and many customers prefer it, but when there’s a problem, they don’t want to talk to a machine. As for marketing communications, human inputs -- such as branding requirements, suggested emotions and preferences of leadership -- can provide the initial inspiration and strategy, helping steer the computer in the right direction from the start.

The robots may eventually take over, but for now, the human touch reigns supreme.

(Incidentally, the answer to the email subject line challenge above is that #1 was created by a machine, and #2 was created by a human. And the machine-generated subject line resulted in a 23% higher open rate and a 73% higher click-through rate.)

This article was first appeared on MarTech Advisor

#martech #marketing #technology #business #cmo

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transcendencenyu · 7 years

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terrie // those fucking brits

My only solace, I had found, was alcohol. I'd found a small bar close by, where all of the antisocial kids watching the highlights of the Olympics went to drink and silently cheer for their country as they tried to catch up on what they missed at work. The majority, of course, were rooting for America, but a fourth of the crowd were scattered between other various countries, most of them drinking a lot more frequently. I was torn between watching and drinking my miseries and failures down until I couldn't remember anymore, but it has dawned on me that I could easily do both, so I began my hazardous descent into a line of shots. It was funny, thinking about how much I’d fucked up with everyone. I’d really ruined my relationship with Stephen, and Steve was pretty pissed with me as well, and I couldn’t even begin to describe the amount of shit I said to Paisley before realizing I could never speak to her again. Somehow, throughout this trip, I’d pushed everyone away from me, one by one, until I was drinking alone in a bar for the third night in a row. Tonight, I was hoping to break my record and not get slightly wasted, but to consume an ungodly amount of liquor and become trashed.

Classic rock echoed dimly through the isolated bar for isolated people, but no one was paying any attention to Led Zeppelin tearing it up, not while the highlights of the previous day’s events were about to start up. I’d found myself staring intently at the screen, at least mildly curious as to what I’d been missing over my drunken sadness, when I heard a glass clank against the table rather sloppily beside me, and a man I hadn’t even seen in the establishment was sitting beside me, and rather close. The glass was empty, and he’d swallowed whatever had remained about the same time he sat down, exhaling over-dramatically as he looked not at me but at the same screen I’d been watching. He wasn’t a very tall guy, but even through his plain white shirt and leather jacket, you could tell he was built. When he sat, he lounged as though he owned the place, and he had the face of a grade-A asshole.

He looked at me, noticing I was staring at him, studying him, and he sat up rather annoyed, as though I’d interrupted him. “Well, who are you here for?” His voice caught me off-guard, and I couldn’t help but to instantly hate him a little bit more for being British.

“Who am I here for?” I repeated.

“Why is a girl like you alone in a place like this?”

I continued to stare at him, too annoyed and honestly too drunk to comprehend what he was asking. “A girl like me?” I asked, narrowing my eyes. “You don’t know me.”

He looked me over for a few moments, taking extra time to carefully examine my breasts and then deciding they weren’t worth his time. “Well, your chest is pale but your arms are tan and you’re here all alone, looking like an easy score, so either you’ve just recently been in a tragic and heart-shattering breakup, or you’ve been insulted rather harshly by people you thought were your friends, and you’re looking to get laid to boost your self-confidence.” As I continued to stare, now even more annoyed, he added sarcastically, “You’re lovely, Darling.”

..He wasn’t wrong.

Looking away, down into my drink, I asked softly, “And if the answer is both?” Quickly, I added, “Although, I’d never get drunk in a bar and hope to get laid. I-I’m not like that.” Had he considered it? God, he’d considered it.

At this, he laughed, and despite wanting to hate him, it was a laugh that made me want to laugh too. “Well then, I’d say, cheers to you for having such a shitty night.” He lifted his drink, realized it was empty, and clinked the glass with mine before setting his down again. I’d finished mine then, and he watched me, then looked back at the screen. He looked back to the bartender and ordered straight whiskey, Jack Daniels nonetheless, and ordered six shot glasses to which he poured and gave me three. “What say you and me play a little game?”

I’d sourly wished I wasn’t already drunk, wished my mind could process everything he was saying at a normal rate, but I couldn’t and just stared at him for a long while, confused and lost and wanting to take those shots while also wanting to leave before I was kidnapped. “What kind of game?”

He leaned in a little bit, resting his hand against his cheek for support, and he stared deeply into my eyes, if it were possible for two drunk individuals to do so. “I give you an answer, and you have to give me the question. Get it wrong, take a shot. Loser buys drinks.”

“So.. Like Jeopardy?”

“The hell’s a Jeopardy?” he asked. I stared for a long time, squinting my eyes at him, and remembering he was British. Clearly, he hadn’t lived here, or at least not long.

“Right, so.. Answers. You go first.”

Satisfied I had got it, he looked back at the television for a while during his contemplation. After several minutes of not speaking, he finally said, “To support a friend who’s competing.”

At first, I was lost and genuinely forgot we were playing any sort of game, but seeing the whiskey helped remind me, and looking back at the screen quickly gave me the answer. “Why you’re here.”

“It’s supposed to be a question, Love, so unfortunately--”

“Why the hell are you here?” I interrupted. He glanced at me, surprised, and laughed.

“Alright. Your turn.”

Thinking of an answer required to think of a question, and then that answer had to be something you could get the question from but not too easily, like I couldn’t say ‘two’ and expect him to know that’s how many times I’d been to this bar alone. Just like him, I’d thought for a long time, or at least a long time in drunk minutes, and finally, I said, “70’s mostly, and the occasional 50’s.”

The guy looked over at me and squinted, trying to find the answer as though it’d been written across my face, and maybe it was (I was really drunk). “Well, you’re obviously referring to decades, most likely music, but you could be referring to cinemas.” Another another moment, he asked, “What are your favorite decades for songs to come from? Personally, I loved the 90’s.”

I couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not, but it made me laugh, and because I was drunk, I laughed a lot. “Okay, okay. Tell me something else.”

This answer did not take a lot of time for him to come up with. “I was seventeen at the time, and she was some girl I worked with.”

If there was anything I felt I knew about the guy, it was his love and passion for, well.. Passionate love. “Who was the first girl you had sex with? Um, how old were you the first time you had sex?”

He narrowed his eyes at me and nudged me. “Get your mind out of the gutter. It was how old I was for my first real relationship.”

I grumbled, “That wasn’t exactly easy.”

“Well, I didn’t exactly say I was a nice man, now did I?” God, he was so sassy, I wanted to punch the British right out of him.

Annoyed, I took my first shot. The Daniels hurt like hell, and like a newbie, I coughed a bit, but the shot was down, and I could have sworn the liquor went straight to my brain.

“Not doing too well, Sweetheart, are you?” he taunted, and I only became more and more pissed off.

“Okay, fine. Four people, including the aforementioned bastard who dumped me a few days ago, while on vacation.” I said.

He laughed once, probably at how bitter I was about the whole scenario, and then he began. “Well, seeing where your mind is, I’d say either the number of men you’ve dated, or the number of people you’ve slept with. Although, seeing as how you’re dressed to get picked up, I’d say they’re probably not mutually exclusive.”

Okay, so that one hurt a little.

“It was the fucking first one,” I replied coldly.

“Well, I’m taking that as I won that round. How many people have you slept with?”

“I’m sorry, that’s not how the game works,” I shot back.

After holding his hands up and going, “Fine, have it your way,” he then said, “Got close to doing it, but then I realized she was a demonic hell-beast and broke it off.”

After his second answer, I wasn’t about to mention sex, although every answer of his sounded like it was what he was referring to. “Well, you’re not talking about dating, because you dated a coworker. I can’t imagine you turning a job down because of a boss. Well.. Possibly. Maybe. Broke it off sounds like something about dating..” Slowly, my drunken mind crawled forward, and I could almost see the question he was wanting me to ask. “...Are you married?” I asked, shocked.

He grinned, but there was also a bit of resentment and remorse for whoever he was thinking about. “I’m impressed. Dated her for a few years and proposed before the entire relationship crumbled apart, much like the American government.”

“Okay.. Wow. Um.. Sandra Bullock, if I were old enough or she were young enough, and I was lucky enough,” I said.

“Sounds easy enough,” he replied, and he thought for only a seconds before asking, “Celebrity you’d meet if you got the chance?”

After laughing, I said, “Celebrity I’d bang if I got the chance.”

He stared, a little concerned, and a little amused, and after turning his head and lifting the shot, he downed it and swallowed both the liquid and the attraction he’d suddenly felt upon imaging Sandra and me. “Okay. It was an antique World War II pistol. I still have it, actually.”

This question got me, and it got me fast. I’d taken almost seven minutes before he said, “Well?”

“I have no idea. What was the first gun you ever shot?”

“First gun I ever owned.”

After taking the shot and feeling its sweet sting, I stared at the last glass in front of me and said, “I have a friend who’s really into World War II. Wish he was born in that time period just so that he could have fought in the war. Not sure he could've done much, but he could have smashed a lot of Nazis’ faces in, that’s for sure.”

“Does he play baseball?”

“He did. One of the several reasons I had the biggest crush on him.” I didn’t think for long before I said, “New York, although I’d love to go anywhere else.”

“Where you were born?”

“Where I live. I was born in Oklahoma. Moved to New York about two years ago, after an incident that I wanted to escape.” He stared at me, confused and concerned after this.

“You’re joking, right?”

“Aren’t you supposed to take a shot?” I asked.

He continued to stare while he drank the whiskey down, then he looked back at the screen. Somehow, it was almost over. “Alright, how about it. Last shot goes to the loser of this game. I’m assuming you haven’t seen the winner?”

“Uh.. No, I haven’t. Know someone competing for America. A friend of a.. Roommate.” It sort of hurt not calling Paisley a friend. Okay, I wanted to cry.

“My friend Hartley was supposed to compete. Magically had her entire arm broken before getting the chance, and yet there ‘doesn’t seem to be any foul play involved’. Still, I’m rooting for the UK. Kind of have to, even though I don’t live there anymore.”

Of course, fucking Germany won, although the UK and America had both won silver and bronze.

“Well, technically we both won,” I said.

“Technically, we both lost.” He and I both lifted our last shot. “To fucked up pasts, and the sweet company in failure.” We toasted to this and drank, and I laughed a little at him when he slammed his glass down, content. The glass, of course, broke and the bartender was on his ass, demanding that was the last of the alcohol for both of us. “I will be paying for that, as well as the whiskey.”

“Since we both lost, shouldn’t I be splitting this with you? Broken glass not included.”

“Don’t worry about it, Sweetheart.” He gave the man cash and stood, straightening his jacket out before heading for the door.

“Wait, Jackass. What’s your name?” I said. I tried standing, but it turned into lean against the bar while watching the Brit walk away before I could even attempt to walk.

He only turned around to look at me but continued walking as he said, “Come back tomorrow, and I might just tell you.” With that, he turned again, and I realized I needed to call someone to haul my drunk ass out.

#Terrie #Rio #Starting from the end of Rio #Hope you're okay with this #hope you can figure out what the hell happened #because I can't #okay but I love him #and I love them #and sad lonely drunk terrie is always fave

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meanwhileinoz · 7 years

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30+ Teachers Tell Striking Differences Between The 1997, 2007, & 2017 Students

Teachers have always been underappreciated and overworked.

They have a time schedule for their job, and they only get paid for that time, but to properly do that, they need preparation. That means that instead of just being at school for 8 hours, they’re actually working close to 12 every day, with the four hours being preparing for tomorrow’s lesson.

Four hours of work that they do not, in fact, get paid for. They oversee the growth of many decades of students, and they were asked what they thought of those they taught in ’97, ’07 and ’17. Scroll down and find out.

’97 – “Quit passing notes” ’07 – “Quit texting” ’17 – “Are you seriously watching Netflix right now?”

Source: hinklesauce

My dad taught middle school from 1968-2004, when he retired i asked him what changes he saw in students from the beginning of his teaching career to the end. he answered; “the kids never changed. a teenager is always a teenager. the parents however, changed dramatically. they used to respect teachers and side with us in disciplinary matters, but now they think their kids are perfect and we are wrong. glad i’m getting out before it gets worse.”

dm219

1997 – “You won’t always have a calculator with you everywhere you go in life!” 2017 – “Before beginning the test, every student must disable the multi-function calculator that goes with them everywhere in life.”

LixpittleModerators

1997: Wasted my time on Super Mario Cart on SNES (HS student) 2007: Wasted my time on Facebook on my computer (Graduate student) 2017: Wasted my time on reddit on my phone. (College professor, aka professional student).

jmorgue

Im not even a teacher, just a high school senior, but i’d like to make a comment. Us kids often hear stories about how our parents were raised. Anecdotes such as, “when we were kids, we used to leave the house after school without telling our parents where we were going or when we would be back. We would bike with out friends to a creek and hang out until 1 A.M.” – (my dad) I bring up this example because it is so drastically different nowadays. Kids back in the 70s – 90s had much more independence than they do now. If i want to go out, i have to tell my parents where I am going, who with, and when I’ll be back. Part of the reason for this is the perceived danger of modern times. Many adults believe their generation was much safer than ours is, despite research indicating exactly the opposite. (Probably because of the media’s coverage of everything bad that goes on.) Anyway, my point is that kids today never had the independence they needed to succeed in life. They/we are constantly relying on another person to help us out. And if you think about it, nature vs nurture… nature hasn’t changed much, but the way we are raised has drastically shifted.

D-Shap

97 – sarcastic, grungy, smoking more cigarettes, more clique-y and edgy 07 – petty, attention starved, overwhelmed, but much nicer 17 – under so many layers of irony and memes they don’t even know who they are anymore or care. there’s no point in being creative or devolving a personality, anything you could think of has already been done.

sadpato

I started teaching 7 ago, and in my first semester I was having lunch with an old veteran teacher of over 30 years. I’ll never forget what she told me about how education has changed in that time… “Used to be if you failed a kid, they would go to the kid and say, ‘What the f*ck is wrong with you?’. Now when you fail a kid, they come to you and say, ‘What the f*ck is wrong with you?’” Biggest difference is the kids used to be accountable, now we just always blame the teacher.

Freddy-Borden

1997- Teacher: “Put your hands on the desk.” 2007- Teacher : “I’m going to call your parents.” 2017- Teacher :” Don’t call your parents please.”

Slothjful

No phones. Small phones. Big phones.

ColinHalfhand

#10

Senior Pranks in 1997 were outlandish and acceptable. Senior Pranks in 2007 were less common and more basic. In 2017 Senior Pranks are illegal.

dubled11

#11

As a college instructor, teaching all of them right now, taking those years as one year removed from HS graduation. 97: I’m taking school seriously to better myself and my career. 07: I should have not taken all those gap years, c’s get degrees. 17: Oh shit if I don’t get at least a Master’s I’m going to be made redundant by a robot.

OPNeedsToBeCalledOut

#12

Mom is a teacher for generally 3 to 5 year olds, I got this: Kids are certainly more abstract thinkers than they used to be. This was a project they did about foods starting with ‘P’

97: Pineapple, Pickles. ’07: Pecan, Peanut, Potatoes, Pears. ’17: Purple lollipops, Pigs in a blanket, Pepperoni Pizza

They’re more likely to tell stories and negotiate. One kid roughly explained the concept of double jeopardy–You can’t get in trouble for the same thing twice–to a teacher he was having a conversation with. One kid said that he wasn’t hitting his classmate, but “the wind pushed him hand when he was running”. If they have a question that you “can’t” (sometimes this means “won’t”) answer, they’ll ask you to use your phone or the computer to find the answer. It seems like they’re aware that information is very close at hand and no question doesn’t have an answer. They don’t take “Just because” or “No reason” at face value anymore.

risingrah

http://ift.tt/2xL9ULa

#ENTERTAINMENT

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