#but they hired SO MANY NEW PEOPLE when all the student crowd left for term time

[hella1975]

it's interesting how when i read the words 'christmas break' i see time off uni to be with family in the holiday season but when my lecturers read it they see 'time to study for four in-person exams in january covering everything we've done in the semester'

[dusk-realm]

Chrysanthemum [Chapter 11: The First Incident]

Tagging: @featurelengthfics @thedungeonsbat @severussnapesupporter @southsiderepresent @pan-lokistan @gbatesx @a-slytherin-sin @wangmangagavroche @theblackdeath87

Visit my masterlist here.

Before someone comes and calls me out: yes, we are inserting ourselves into the story. Yes, I’ve taken literal chunks of the original book and pasted them or paraphrased them in order to merge them with my own writing. No, I’m not intending to plagiarize anything or pretend that the enterity of the text is mine when it clearly isn’t. And yes, you will see more of this in the future as well.

A/N: the app keeps messing up the draft, so if you see many errors in terms of format, spacing, etc, I sincerely apologise, but I couldn’t fix it.

──────────────────

October brought to Hogwarts chill breezes and an air of coziness with it. The disempowered sunlight gave place to the soft lighting of candles and torches, which produced the deepest, darkest shades in the intricate furrows and decorations of the castle, creating new contours and strange shapes in the statues and carvings that enticed the imagination.

(Y/N) spent more and more time in the library as Pansy Parkinson grew insufferable, and more often than not, the girl would stock up with diverse snacks for the day and rush back to her hideout like a little vermin, just to not bump into her fellow Slytherins.

On the other hand, Neville had been difficult to see as well lately. (Y/N) learned that Severus had punished him with not letting the Gryffindor out of the classroom until he could brew the Sleeping Draught perfectly, which resulted into a great deal of batches wasted.

Still, after having been released for successfully brewing a cauldronful of the potion, Neville’s guilt overpowered him and he refused to pair up with (Y/N) again, at least in Potions.

Halloween was around the corner, and the castle was being dressed up with exuberant decorations: live bats hanging on the ceiling and even the walls, giant carved pumpkins… and some even speculated that Dumbledore had hired a troupe of dancing skeletons.

‘Severus?’

‘Mm?’

It was October 30th, and she was spending time in the professor’s company while he programmed the upcoming classes. (Y/N) had chosen the Potions classroom as her new favourite spot to do her homework. It was a safe place, and she could help out Severus as soon as she finished. She enjoyed sitting in the same place she had for class, in the middle rows. Her desk was a bit messy with books, parchment and an unfinished essay.

‘I was wondering… is there any way for students to access the Restricted Section? Like, can Prefects go there?’

Severus smiled a bit to himself, lifting up his head. He had been hyperfocusing so much on his task that he hadn’t realized that he was completely slouching over the paper.

‘Is this about that book again?’ He inquired with a smirk.

(Y/N)’s cheeks lit up with a pinkish tint of embarrassment. Severus was sure sharp, but he didn’t use to be that straightforward.

‘Maybe…’ She admitted meekly.

Well, there was something that just appealed her about that book. Maybe it was just the fact that it was forbidden, but the books available for everyone just weren’t enough to satisfy her avid curiosity.

‘You don’t have to become a Prefect to borrow a book,’ Severus explained softly, ‘a signed note should suffice.’ 

‘Ah…’ (Y/N) lowered her head again and continued scribbling in her parchment. Severus, however, did not return to his task. Instead, he observed his student, wondering why she wouldn’t dare to ask for a note but, at the same time, she would be willing to become a Prefect, with everything that it entailed, just to read a book.

 The professor reached out for a small piece of parchment and wrote:

I, Professor Snape, hereby allow the student (Y/N) (Y/L/N) to borrow a copy of Moste Potente Potions.

Then, he signed the note and stared at it for almost a minute before standing up and gently placing it in front of (Y/N), on top of her parchment.

‘What’s this?’ She squinted her eyes before reading it and lifting up her head, wide-eyed, to her professor, who watched her quietly with a strange look.

‘A-are you sure? Can I have it? For real?!’

Severus nodded with the faintest of the smiles tugging at the corner of his lips as he watched (Y/N)’s (E/C) eyes lit up and grow wider and wider.

‘Of course,’ said he in a soft voice, ‘you have read far more complicated books at home, you can surely handle that one too.’

(Y/N) bolted off the chair and latched on Severus’ waist in a tight squeeze.

‘Thank you!!’ She squirmed with her cheek pressed against his chest.

Her protector embraced her tightly, preventing her from seeing how glittery his eyes had suddenly gotten.

‘You may be able to check it out before curfew if you hurry up.’ Said he. (Y/N) enthusiastically picked up her belongings and storming out of the cold dungeons, but not without thanking him again and almost yelling him good night.

The joyful days soon turned dark after by the end of October, after the first incident happened.

Everybody found out at the same time: having the Halloween feast come to an end, the whole school left in mass the Great Hall with full bellies to go to their respective dormitories for the night. Even (Y/N) had been enjoying the dinner, as she took the chance to drop by the Gryffindor table to go see Neville after a good while.

But then, the multitude’s hustle died down as it arrived to the passage. Three people were already there; Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley. 

The crowd pushed forward to be able to catch a glimpse of the gruesome scene- there was a message written on the wall that read:

THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED. ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE.

And just underneath it, Mrs. Norris, Mr.Filch’s loathed cat, hanged from her tail, stiff as a board and with her eyes open.

Then, (Y/N) saw Draco Malfoy elbowing his way to the front of the scene while shouting:

‘Enemies of the Heir, beware! You’ll be next, Mudbloods!’

(Y/N) had never liked that kid. He was the heir of a rich pure-blood lineage (everyone in Slytherin knew about the Malfoys), and, being aware of his privileged status, the kid had grown into an insufferable stuck up brat that everyone wanted to please just to not upset him.

Soon arrived Mr. Filch, probably summoned by the fuss Malfoy caused,

‘What’s going on here? What’s going on?’ 

After that, he actually saw the scene, with his cat hanging off the torch.

‘My cat! My cat! What’s happened to Mrs. Norris?’ He shrieked. His voice made (Y/N)’s stomach twist with guilt, even though she had absolutely nothing to do with the matter. The caretaker wasn’t and individual you could just get along with; he wasn’t charismatic or nice in any sense, but the Slytherin couldn’t help feeling bad for him. Filch turned to look at Potter with bloodshot eyes:

‘You!’ He screeched. ‘You! You’ve murdered my cat! You’ve killed her! I’ll kill you! I’ll —’

‘Argus!’ Dumbledore arrived, followed by McGonagall, Lockhart and Severus, and in a matter of minutes, every student was sent to bed, except the three suspects. The uproar moved to the Slytherin Common Room, where the sons and daughters from the most ancient wizarding families seemed a bit too excited about the issue, and other less privileged argued that this had to be something Harry Potter had done.

(Y/N) sensibly retired to her dormitory without participating in the conversation, but she did not sleep that night.

The incident was still present in everyone’s mouths even days after. Filch had been seen scrubbing the wall and warding the crime scene in all his misery, while he attempted to blame and punish any student that showed too much happiness.

The young Slytherin chose to continue with her usual life and spend most of her time in the library, reading her new favourite potions book. She was completely absorbed in every single word, with her nose barely an inch away from the paper, an ugly posture she had unwillingly acquired from her mentor. 

The library was quite crowded for being just a regular Wednesday, but (Y/N) was too busy taking notes of the random stuff that attracted her attention to actually have a look at her surroundings.

What she did notice, though, was that Ron Weasley was sitting at the same table as her, but at the opposite end, in the very end of the library.

God forbid your Gryffindor ass comes too close to a Slytherin, (Y/N) had resentfully thought. 

The red-haired was measuring up his essay for History of Magic when Potter arrived.

‘I don’t believe it, I’m still eight inches short. . . And Hermione’s done four feet seven inches and her writing’s tiny.’ (Y/N) heard the former complain.

‘Where is she?’ Harry asked, and (Y/N) couldn’t help but eavesdrop.

Soon after, Granger reappeared from in between the shelves,

‘All the copies of Hogwarts, A History have been taken out,’ she said, sitting down next to Potter and Weasley, being the closest to (Y/N), yet without acknowledging her presence. ‘And there’s a two-week waiting list. I wish I hadn’t left my copy at home, but I couldn’t fit it in my trunk with all the Lockhart books.’ She sounded so ridiculously irritated that (Y/N) had to physically restrain herself from cackling, although the corner of her lips still curled up in a telltale smile.

‘Why do you want it?’ Potter asked his friend.

‘The same reason everyone else wants it,’ said Hermione, ‘to read up on the legend of the Chamber of Secrets.’ 

(Y/N) even stopped pretending to read in order to catch every detail possible, but Hermione said she didn’t remember the story.

Pity, (Y/N) thought, but she didn’t have much time to turn it over as the bell rang, signalling the beginning of the next lesson.

‘Who can it be, though?’ Hermione said in a quiet voice, as though continuing a conversation they had just been having. ‘It has to be a Slytherin, that’s for sure… I’ve thought that maybe…’ But she didn’t dare to finish the sentence.

‘Maybe..?’ Echoed Harry, raising his eyebrows.

‘(Y../N)?’ She finished with a strange expression, as if the simple thought of it caused her some sort of physical pain. Ron let out a little chortle at the suggestion.

‘I mean, what do we know about her, really? Nothing! And she’s smart enough to act and not get caught…’ The girl explained.

‘Smart? She’s the age of Fred and George, Hermione, and she’s in our class!’ Ron argued.

‘But,’ Hermione continued, bending closer to the boys and lowering her voice, ‘she has improved a lot, haven’t you noticed? Plus…’ At this point, she was barely whispering. ‘Neville told me that she doesn’t have parents. Wouldn’t that make her the only Slytherin heir? What if… she failed on purpose because she was… well, waiting for something?’ She locked eyes with Harry with a guilty expression, as though she didn’t want to even suggest that the heir of Slytherin had been waiting for him to come to Hogwarts.

‘Well,’ said he, ‘you’ve got a point there. And she speaks like Snape...’ 

‘What does that have to do with anything?’ Ron frowned.

‘He’s the Head of Slytherin, Ron. What if they’re working together? He has to know something. C’mon, it’s Snape.’ Harry remarked. 

‘I don’t think it’s (Y/N), she doesn’t look like the type. Who’d want to frighten all the Squibs and Muggle-borns out of Hogwarts? Let’s think,’ said Ron in mock puzzlement. ‘Who do we know who thinks Muggle-borns are scum?’ He looked at Hermione. Hermione looked back, unconvinced.

‘If you’re talking about Malfoy —’

‘Of course I am!’ said Ron. ‘You heard him — ‘You’ll be next, Mudbloods!’ — come on, you’ve only got to look at his foul rat face to know it’s him —’ 

‘Malfoy, the Heir of Slytherin?’ said Hermione skeptically.

‘Look at his family,’ said Harry, closing his books, too. ‘The whole lot of them have been in Slytherin; he’s always boasting about it. They could easily be Slytherin’s descendants. His father’s definitely evil enough.’

‘They could’ve had the key to the Chamber of Secrets for centuries!’ said Ron. ‘Handing it down, father to son. . . .’ 

‘Well,’ said Hermione cautiously, ‘I suppose it’s possible. . . .’

 But how do we prove it?’ said Harry darkly. 

‘There might be a way,’ said Hermione slowly, dropping her voice still further with a quick glance across the room at Percy. ‘Of course, it would be difficult. And dangerous, very dangerous. We’d be breaking about fifty school rules, I expect —’

‘If, in a month or so, you feel like explaining, you will let us know, won’t you?’ said Ron irritably. 

‘All right,’ said Hermione coldly. ‘What we’d need to do is to get inside the Slytherin common room and ask Malfoy a few questions without him realizing it’s us.’

‘But that’s impossible,’ Harry said as Ron laughed.

‘No, it’s not,’ said Hermione. ‘All we’d need would be some Polyjuice Potion.’

Harry, Ron and Hermione walked toward the Library in formation. The recipe they needed was supposed to be in a book called Moste Potente Potions, according to Snape (and Hermione), and although it was bound to be in the restricted section, Hermione believed that she might be able to convince Madam Pince to let her consult it really quickly for their Potions Homework. 

Their request, however, was quickly and firmly turned down by the librarian, who gave the trio such a nasty glare that could very easily scare off a hippogriff.

‘What are we going to do now?’ asked Ron as he plopped down at the same table as the other day. He was specially bummed out, and so did Harry, who sat down by his side. 

‘There’s still a way...’ Hermione sighed, sitting down in front of the other two.

‘Which one?’ Inquired Harry.

‘We need a signed note from a professor.’

‘But who’s going to sing it?’ Asked Ron, ‘“Hard to see why we’d want that book, really, if we weren’t going to try and make one of the potions.’

‘I think,’ said Hermione, ‘that if we made it sound as though we were just interested in the theory, we might stand a chance. . . .’

‘Oh, come on, no teacher’s going to fall for that,’ said Ron. ‘They’d have to be really thick. . . .’

And so, the trio went to the thickest professor they knew, Professor Lockhart, who was so full of himself that he didn’t bother looking at which book he was signing a permission for.

However, their plan didn’t go quite as they planned.

‘Sorry, this book has already been checked out.’ Madam Pince had sternly said after barely taking a look at the note.

‘I can’t believe our luck.’ Protested Harry as soon as they had left the library.

‘And now what?’ Ron asked, giving a little kick to the floor.

‘This is incredible…’ Hermione breathed out. She leaned against the giant wooden doors, staring up to the ceiling. ‘Who could have taken it, though? Not someone from our year, that’s for sure. That book is way too advanced to-’

‘Excuse me,’ a soft feminine voice interrupted her rambling.

‘Oh, hi (Y/N), sorry.’ Hermione hurriedly moved away from the door and let the Slytherin girl enter the library. She was carrying a bunch of books and other stuff. 

(Y/N) had to twist her body into a weird position in order to not drop anything she carried. Her body was fully turned toward the three Gryffindors, and she smiled awkwardly. When she turned around again, Ron peeked above her shoulder out of nosiness, and clutched Harry’s robes in shock.

Hermione had also caught a glimpse of the moldy book on top of the Slytherin’s pile and let out a gasp.

On the cover, the title read, quite clearly: Moste Potente Potions.

[luckylq36-blog]

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[turdblossommm]

I’ll Fly Away {12}

Summary: You had a rough childhood and are closed off from people in fear of being hurt again. James Barnes is the complete opposite from you, he grew up well and healthy. James Barnes knew how to get what he wants but when he faces the challenge of knowing you will he succeed

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x reader

A/N: Two more parts and an epilogue! I just posted a new story and if you want you can check it out here!

part 11 / masterlist

Bucky had gone off to say his goodbyes as you waited by the front door

“You must be Y/N” You turned to an African American man with an accent approaching you

“That’s me” You gave him a small smile, your body still buzzing from your dance with Bucky and the three little words said

“T’Challa” He stuck out his hand and you took it

“As in Wakanda Publishing?” You smiled even bigger

“The very same” He nodded 

“I love almost every book that comes from your publishing house” You gushed. Bucky watched you interact with T’Challa, he had a different friendship with him than he did with his other friends. T’Challa found him in a dark place, deep in the crevices of the business world and brought him out of it. Bucky smiled as your eyes found him and he walked to you and grabbed you hand

“T” Bucky shook his hands

“You’ve found yourself a lovely women” You felt your cheeks warm as Bucky gripped you hand and led you from the party and to the car after his finished his goodbyes. Bucky held your hand as Carlton drove you home.

“Would you like to stay at my place tonight?” You felt your heart stop, you have had many late nights at Bucky’s place but you never stayed the night. Your heart began to race and sweat began to form on your forehead. You swallowed  your fear and turned to to him

“I’d like that” Things like this scared you, the commitment that revolved around Bucky scared you. There was a reason you’ve never had a long term relationship, you’d barely had relationship in the past because you were so afraid.

But Bucky got you, he understood when to push you and then pull you back when things were too hard. He knew you were uncomfortable in crowds and how you liked you coffee and how you didn’t allow yourself to have coffee after noon because then all bets are off. Despite not having a remotely similar childhood he understood what happened to you. 

When Bucky laid you down in his bed leaving a trail of clothes from the living room to the bedroom he understood what he meant to you. He knew you weren’t one for long confessions of love that you’d rather use your actions than your words. Like when you cook him bacon despite your distaste for it, or when you bring him his favorite take away from the indian restaurant from down the street when he’s working a late night.

Bucky wasn’t the first person you’ve had sex with, but it was the first time you meant it. You finally understood what it meant to be intimate with the person you truly love. You always scoffed at the hopeless romantic gestures and words of romance novels, never believe a word that you read on the page. But now, with Bucky you felt all those words.

Bucky smiled as he watch you try to keep your eyes open, you giggled as the smile grew on his face. This was a new view for him, your skin dewy from prior activities and your hair spread across the pillow and a content smile on your face. He grabbed your face and connected your lips once more

“I love you” You whispered 

“I love you more” You scoffed and shook your head and rolled over. Bucky quickly pulled you into his chest and closed his eyes once he heard soft snores leave your mouth.

~

In the morning you left with Bucky and he dropped you off at your apartment on his way to work. You quickly jogged up the stair barefoot in his sweats and t-shirt. Once inside you shut the door and leaned against the door and smiled at Nat who looked up from the news paper she was reading

“Stop fucking reading my news paper, I don’t pay for it for you to read it before me”

“You were supposed to be home at midnight” She tsked and you rolled your eyes. you felt her eyes scrutinizing you “You slept with him” She pointed her finger at you

“Nat” You whined

“I swear to god if he breaks your heart” She looked to the ceiling “I don’t care about my job at this point” She shrugged

“Stop it Nat” You shoved her shoulder “I-I told him I love him” Nat sat he coffee down and rushed over to you and hugged you

“My baby is growing up” You shoved her off “When you marry into my company get me a raise”

“Get in the shower before I punch you”

~

Bucky stood in line for a hot dog with T’Challa, Bucky had a grand idea the night before when he saw you with T’Challa last night, he wanted to see if T’Challa had a receptionist opening or something fro you. Bucky paid for lunch and T’Challa narrowed his eyes at his friend

What do you want Barnes”

“Nothing just wanted to have lunch with a friend. Hows business?”

“Busy, I lost my assistant and I’ve been having to read all the manuscripts myself” It was like a light bulb went off in Bucky’s head and T’Challa saw it 

“I have a proposition for you

“I’ve never really liked your ideas” T’Challa brushed him off

“Anyway” Bucky ignored him “You remember Y/N right?”

“Your girlfriend” T’Challa rolled his eyes

“She’s big into reading and literature, she could be your assistant” Bucky sat in anticipation, wringing his fingers as he waited for an answer

“What’s her degree in?” 

“She has a diploma” Bucky smiled convincingly 

“Bucky” T’Challa waved him off “She would never be able to be an assistant with no experience and no degree, I have post grad students who would kill for that position”

“Then why haven’t you hired anyone?” Bucky asked raising a brow

“BecauseI haven’t found the right one” T’Challa grumbled

“Just give her a chance” Bucky begged and T’Challa sighed 

“Fine”

TAGLIST: @skeletoresinthebasement @iamwarrenspeace @youreahandsomedevil @alina-barnes @xi-i-i-whatsyouremergency @ambivalence-is-me @101killer @stat89posts

[immortal-imagines]

Clumsy

Summary: (Y/N) is a Slytherin with a tough exterior. She acts like nothing can get to her and that she cares for nothing except the pride of her house, when in actual fact she is a huge softy. When she first meets Remus Lupin, she knows there’s something special about him. Her gentle nature begins to show, as they start dating in secret. Of course, Remus can’t hide anything from the Marauders.

(Remus Lupin x Reader)

Warnings: Mild Swearing, lots of fluff!

Word Count: 2,472

Requested by: Anonymous

A/N: I love writing for the Marauders, so please send me loads of requests for them! Thank you so much to the anon who sent me this one!

It was the start of her fifth year at Hogwarts and (Y/N) was feeling confident. Last year had had mixed results and she was looking forward to what this one had to hold.

Dumbledore stood at the front of the Great Hall, making his usual start of term speech, but (Y/N)’s mind was elsewhere. She was debating the next time she could sneak down and visit the House Elves in the kitchens. Last year she had managed to go pretty regularly. It had taken a while for them to trust her, however after a few months they rejoiced at her secret drop ins. (Y/N) wasn’t the average, stereotypical Slytherin. Many of the students in other houses saw Slytherins as mean and vindictive. They only viewed them because of the minority that were bullies. (Y/N) was different. She was determined, clever and ambitious, like a Slytherin should be, but was also extremely kind-hearted. The Sorting Hat had had a job deciding which house to put her in, as it appeared that she had traits of a few. However, it had settled on Slytherin.

(Y/N)’s House Elf visits began when she read a book about the treatment which they receive in large organisations that they are hired to work for. She wanted to investigate these claims herself and ended up becoming rather good friends with them.

A loud cough next to her ear drew (Y/N) away from her thoughts.

“Oi, (Y/L/N). You awake over there?” Regulus Black waved a hand in front of her face. Dumbledore had finished speaking now and the hall had descended into chatter.

Although Regulus was a couple of years younger than her, he had grown quite cocky after coming back from the summer holidays. Maybe it had something to do with being the new family favourite. That’s what the gossip around the common room was saying anyway. His older brother, Sirius, was in Gryffindor. There had been a flurry of Howlers at breakfast after he’d been sorted. (Y/N) couldn’t help but feel a tinge of guilt for Sirius. He didn’t deserve any of that. If she was being completely honest with herself, she found Regulus rather annoying and would have much rather hung out with Sirius and his friends. Unfortunately for (Y/N), prejudgment was commonplace at Hogwarts. She didn’t think a Gryffindor would touch her with a barge-pole, let alone be friends with her.

“Sorry, just thinking about classes,” (Y/N) replied hurriedly, “In fact, I think I’ll get a head start on my assignments.” Not giving Regulus a chance to question her, she gathered up her things and grabbed a bread roll, before leaving the Slytherin table and heading for her dormitory.

(Y/N) wasn’t looking where she was going, marching down a corridor and straight into another student. Her bag went flying, along with the food and her wand, which rolled away from her at an impressive speed. She squatted down, grabbing her belongings. “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t…” she glanced up at the victim of her clumsiness, only to meet the bright green stare of Remus Lupin, who was knelt in front of her. (Y/N) wasn’t sure why, but she felt her cheeks grow hot. She looked down at the floor, mumbling another apology.

“It’s okay, don’t worry about it,” Remus smiled, the edges of his eyes crinkling as he did so. He held out a hand to help her up. (Y/N) took it gingerly and they got to her feet. He didn’t let go when he said, “I’m Remus. And you are?”

“(Y/N),” she replied.

“Well (Y/N),” he handed her wand back, “Better be careful where you’re running next time. I’d rather the next time we see each other not be because you’ve knocked me to the ground.” He chuckled, shot her a wink and turned on his heel, continuing his path to wherever he’d been going before she’d interrupted him.

~

It had been a month since (Y/N) had met Remus and she still hadn’t plucked up the courage to talk to him again. He was a Gryffindor. He probably thought she was Slytherin scum. Maybe he thought she’d run into him on purpose, to make a fool out of him. The way he’d looked at her though. When (Y/N) thought about his smile and the wink he’d left her with, it made her heart flutter. She wasn’t of the same mindset as some of her fellow house members. (Y/N) didn’t see a problem with dating in other houses, or even being friends with them. She was certain there were plenty of people throughout Hogwarts history who had had relationships across houses. There had to be.

It was not long after this revelation that (Y/N) was put in the situation where she had no choice but to face her fears: partner work in Charms class. Professor Flitwick called out names from a list, with the pairs the students would be working in for the next few weeks. (Y/N) waited nervously for her name to be called.

“(Y/N) (Y/L/N),” Flitwick’s voice rang out across the classroom, “And Remus Lupin.”

(Y/N)’s face flushed and her breath hitched in her throat. Damn she thought. However, there was a small part of her that was actually excited.

Remus appeared in the seat next to her, a wide grin on his face. “And so we meet again, Clumsy,” he said.

(Y/N) scoffed, “So that’s my new nickname?”

“You betcha,” he replied.

(Y/N) began leafing through the book in front of her to find the pages they would be working from. Remus sat back and watched, enjoying the concentration on her face and the way her tongue peaked out a little bit from her lips whilst she examined the book. He couldn’t help but let out a small chuckle. (Y/N) looked up, eyebrows raised. “What?”

“A Gryffindor and a Slytherin. What a scandal.”

“What are you on about? There are plenty of Gryffindors and Slytherins partnered in here,” (Y/N) gestured around her.

“I’ll bet you ten galleons that none of them are dating though.”

“You don’t have ten galleons… wait, what?”

There was a pause. Remus was still grinning like the Cheshire Cat. (Y/N) mulled over what had just been said. “Are you… are you asking me out?” She tried to keep her voice as steady as possible, but failed miserably.

“I am indeed. What do you say?” he asked. He was still smiling like he was joking, but his eyes were hopeful.

“Is that really a good idea? Like you said, a bit of a scandal. And your crowd aren’t my biggest fans,” (Y/N) bit her lip. She wanted to say yes so badly.

“My ‘crowd’ don’t know you. They know Slytherin, or at least think they do. Plus, I don’t give a shit what they think. I want to take a pretty girl on a date, is that so bad?” His tone was sincere now, no smiles or joking around. Everything inside of (Y/N) told her to say yes.

“Okay,” she murmured. Her heart did a backflip and her stomach somersaulted just saying that one word. Remus smiled. It was soft and gentle, but very clearly relieved. “No one can know,” she added.

“Why?”

“I don’t want to get you into trouble with your friends.”

“But…”

“Remus.” It was the first time she’d said his name. It felt good coming from her mouth and he liked hearing it. (Y/N) sighed. “People will judge you, you know that, right?”

“I don’t c…” He was interrupted by Flitwick’s scolding voice, calling across the room.

“Lupin! (Y/L/N)! Stop gossiping and get back to work!”

(Y/N) quickly picked up the book and began reading the page in front of her, regardless of whether it was the right one or not.

“I’ll meet you by the kitchens at 8,” Remus whispered, “I’m friends with the House Elves.”

~

(Y/N) hoped from one foot to another, waiting outside the kitchens for Remus to arrive. She was terrified of being spotted and even more nervous about the date she was about to have. She hadn’t been sure what to wear, so had put on the nicest clothes she owned: a tan-coloured pinafore dress and with a dark blue turtleneck underneath.

“Hey,” a voice appeared out of nowhere, making her jump. It sounded like Remus, but looking around she couldn’t see anyone. The corridor was empty.

Remus’ face appeared a few centimetres from (Y/N)’s and a hand with it, covering her mouth to stop her from screaming. Once she had calmed herself, Remus removed his hand. “Did I scare you?” he laughed.

“What the hell is that?” (Y/N) gestured the Remus’ body, which had now appeared, and the shimmering fabric in his hand.

“James let me borrow his invisibility cloak, so long as I bring him back snacks.”

(Y/N)’s heart picked up speed again, “You told him about me?”

“No, no, I told him I had a date, but I didn’t say with who. Calm down.” He paused for a moment, taking in the panicked expression of the girl in front of him. He took her hand in his and squeezed it gently. “It doesn’t matter if they did find out. They’d be happy that I was happy.”

(Y/N) forced a smile and nodded. “Shall we go get some food?”

The pair spent all night at a table in the corner of the kitchen, chatting and laughing. It felt so natural, so right. (Y/N) discovered that Remus had been paying the House Elves regular visits, in the same way she had. It was a miracle they’d never bumped into each other, but Remus had an advantage with being able to use the Invisibility Cloak. (Y/N) found herself telling him things very few people knew. She didn’t have a particularly close group of friends at Hogwarts, so it was nice to talk to someone she felt she could trust. She didn’t know why she felt so trusting towards him. They barely knew each other, but it felt like they’d been friends for years.

When they decided it was late enough, Remus walked (Y/N) as far back to the Slytherin common room as he could get, without arousing suspicion. He turned to her, taking both hands in his, “I’ve had a wonderful night, (Y/N), and I hope we can do this again.”

(Y/N) nodded, “Definitely.”

Without thinking, she leaned forward on her toes and pressed her lips to his. There was a moment when she thought he wouldn’t reciprocate, but when his hands left hers and were placed on her hips, she relaxed into him. Her arms wound around his neck and pulled herself closer.

~

Remus slipped into the Gryffindor common room and snuck up the stairs to his dormitory, hoping to go unnoticed. Of course, that was impossible when it came to the Marauders.

“Have a nice date?” James’ voice came out of the darkness. A lamp was switched on and Remus was greeted by the faces of his three friends, sitting up in their beds and all bearing wide grins.

“Didn’t peg you for a rule-breaker, Rem. I thought that was my job,” Sirius teased.

“What?” Remus said, playing dumb.

“We know who you were with,” Peter explained and was immediately hit by a flying pillow from Sirius’ direction. “Dammit, Wormtail. Why did you have to spoil the fun?” Sirius said, folding his arms and pouting like a toddler.

Remus folded up the cloak and tossed it to James. He began rearranging his bedsheets, praying his friends would drop to topic. Unfortunately, they weren’t going to stop until they’d got what they wanted.

“So, a Slytherin?” James asked. Remus’ heart sunk. They knew. He was less worried about the teasing he’d get from the boys and more about how (Y/N) would be treated if her house found out about their date.  Slytherin’s were a lot more judgemental about across house dating. Something about the pure-bloods not wanting others to tinge their perfect appearance.

“A very pretty Slytherin, to be exact,” Sirius added, “Rem, I highly approve. (Y/N) (Y/L/N) is lovely.”

Remus shot him a look, “Thanks Padfoot, not that I need your approval.”

Sirius held his hands up in surrender, “Just saying.”

“You can’t tell anyone,” Remus pleaded, “God knows what they’d do to her in the snakes’ den if they found out.”

“Screw them,” James said, jumping to his feet on top his bed and nearly colliding with the ceiling. He ducked just in time and hopped down. “Who put that ceiling there?” He stared up at it, as if it would fight back.

“What my stupid friend over here is trying to say is,” Sirius said, “Fuck whatever Slytherin think. If she makes you happy and you make her happy, that’s all that matters. And if they try and start anything with you or her, we’ll be there to back you up. My dim-witted younger brother may not be the smartest cookie in the jar, but he knows not to mess with my friends.”

~

Remus and (Y/N) had been dating for a few months now. It hadn’t taken long for everyone to find out, as it was extremely difficult to keep anything a secret at Hogwarts. At first, there had been side glances and judgmental looks, when the pair walked through the Great Hall holding hands. However, people stopped caring after a while. There was still the odd Slytherin or even Gryffindor who would sneer or nudge their friend when (Y/N) walked past, but this was usually shot down with a look by whichever Marauder was nearby. Lately, it had been (Y/N) herself who had plucked up the courage to defend herself in situations like that.

It was Christmas time and Remus and (Y/N) were snuggled up under a blanket in front of the fireplace in the Gryffindor common room. (Y/N) was reading a book, while Remus played with her hair, plaiting it into tiny braids.

“I have a present for you,” he said, disturbing the silence. (Y/N) looked up from her book.

“You do? But it’s not Christmas yet.”

“I know,” Remus said, sitting up and reaching down to the floor next to him, “I just couldn’t wait until then to give this to you.” He produced a small box, wrapped in silver paper and tied with a green bow. (Y/N) took it and carefully unwrapped it. She took the lid off the box to reveal a beautiful silver bracelet. It had two charms on it: a black wolf, howling up at the moon, and a green snake. The snake was decorated with silver swirls.

(Y/N) gasped, taking it out and examining it with great care, “It’s beautiful, Rem. Thank you.” She looked up at him and placed a gentle kiss on his lips.

He took her wrist in his hand and helped her fasten the bracelet. “Anything for you, Clumsy,” he laughed.

[echodrops]

I was thinking of doing an English literature degree in university and was looking into the possibility of becoming a professor. I was wondering about the process of becoming a professor. As in, what type of further degree did you have to get and what was the course load like? Also what exactly does being a professor entail? Do you do research as well as lecturing? I’m sorry for bothering you with this, it’s just that you always explain things well and I don’t know any professors in real life.

Sure, I don’t mind answering these kinds of questions at all!

What type of further degree did you have to get and what was the course load like?

For reference, I have a Masters degree of Fine Arts (in Poetry) which is, for the moment, still considered a terminal degree in the creative writing field, although the Ph.D. is becoming super popular now.

In order to teach at the college level at any accredited institution, you must have a minimum of 18 graduate level credit hours in your chosen field. I.e., you would need at least 18 credits (about 2.5 semesters) of a graduate program in English in order to teach any English college-level courses.

In today’s market, it would be extremely difficult to get any full-time teaching position without having completed at least a Masters degree, so if you want to become a professor, plan on going to graduate school.

Some good news though: Many English graduate programs are generously to fully funded, which means that you’re a lot less likely to leave graduate school with crippling student loan debt than you would be if you went to graduate school in another field like business or medicine. Don’t go to a graduate school that isn’t covering a large portion of your tuition costs. If they don’t offer you good financial aid, just say no thanks!

In terms of what degree you should pursue specifically, that depends on your interest, but three degrees that feed directly into English professor positions, in order of most likely to be hired, are:

Master in Rhetoric and Composition (this is the most likely to get you a job, but personally I would have found a degree like this boring as dirt)

Master in Literature (if you like analyzing other people’s writing, this is where you go; this degree is a double-edged sword though. You can specialize here and get into some really, really niche stuff that you love to death–but if no schools out there need your niche literary background, you may be a less appealing job candidate than the Rhet/Comp person above)

Master in Creative Writing/Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (if you like writing your own stuff, this is the route to go; you will come out of this kind of program fully qualified to teach general English courses. Double-edged sword again though–EVERY school needs people who are experienced in teaching English 101… Not every schools needs someone experienced in teaching, say… Introduction to Poetry)

Course load in graduate programs is more tolerable than undergraduate programs. 12 credits is the minimum to qualify as full-time in undergrad, while 9 is considered full-time for most grad programs. You’ll take fewer classes to get a Master’s degree than an Bachelor’s.

That said, be ready for a completely different vibe and expectation level. People who go to grad school aren’t fucking around. Someone in my program got a B in one of our classes and that was enough to put her on academic probation. My friend, who also went to grad school for English, got an A- that she STILL feels guilty about to this day. So it’s less classes, but the expectation is that you will bring your absolute highest effort to the table in each class and engage fully with the material. (To be honest though, I feel like a lot of graduate-level professors are more chill than undergrad professors; there were “A” grades I worked A LOT harder for in undergrad than some of the “A”s I got in grad school.)

Also what exactly does being a professor entail? Do you do research as well as lecturing?

I’d say there are six general parts to the day-to-day job of a professor:

1) Prep. This is getting your courses ready: writing lectures, building activities, creating homework assignments, building your syllabi, picking readings, designing discussions, etc. This takes a fuck ton more time than you will ever want it to, and you always tell yourself after you get the class done once you’ll never have to do it again, but that’s a lie, because you will find yourself updating and changing things every single semester. Your mandatory “office hours” are basically just prep time since, no matter how much you beg them, students will rarely take advantage of your office hours unless you bribe or force them.

2) Actually teaching. This is your time spent in the classroom. The LEAST time-consuming part of your job. For every hour you actually spend in the classroom, expect to spend 154680060 hours doing outside stuff like grading. If you’re confident in front of crowds, this part is the easiest thing about being a teacher. If you want to get good at the actual “teaching” part of being a professor, take drama classes. Good teachers project confidence and energy at all times in the classroom, and drama teaches you how to do this much better than any public speaking class can.

3) Grading. Hell itself. It never ends. 9/10ths of your job as an English professor is just this. I envy the professors who are out of shits to give and just circle bubbles on a rubric, but I am not that person and so I comment extensively on every single one of the assignments for every single one of my students. If you’re up at 3am in the morning, it’s probably because of this!

4) Dealing with students on a personal level. The scariest part of the job. College is an extremely stressful time in a lot of young people’s lives, and especially if you are not teaching in a rich neighborhood, your students may be experiencing very significant personal, familial, financial, etc. difficulties that severely impact their mental health and well-being. You will encounter situations that you would never expect–students bursting into tears in the middle of class, students coming into your office and telling you they’re contemplating suicide, hearing graphic stories about the students’ abusive backgrounds, and being asked directly for help in situations that are completely outside of your experience level. Because there’s such an incredible stigma against therapists, many students will bring serious mental health issues to their professors long before they would ever consider going to the school’s counseling services.

5) Committees. Dear god. The committees never end. As part of your contract at most institutions, you will be expected to be performing service to the college, aka serving on committees and task forces to do all manner of things. If you’re lucky, you can get on committees you actually care about, with coworkers you like, and then they are fun. If you’re unlucky, you get “voluntold” (aka forcibly placed) on a bunch of committees that you feel completely unpassionate about and you’ll just have to deal until they complete their purpose or fizzle out. The amount of time you put into the committee has no correlation to the amount of work the committee actually gets done.

6) Research and professional development. In the .0002 minutes you have left each week, you will either be required (if you’re at a research institution) or highly encouraged to complete research, publication writing, and professional development activities. At my institution, research is highly encouraged and publication is a sure way to get in good with administration, but professional development is required, i.e. we have to participate in conferences or development trainings throughout the year to demonstrate continued efforts to discover and employ best teaching practices. This is usually a fun part, but you will never, ever have enough time for it.

The path to becoming a professor–some advice:

If you are not yet in college, pick your college based on a combination of three factors: 1) financial aid, obviously; 2) the robustness of their English department (i.e., do they have a Writing Center you could tutor at or other internship opportunities? Do they have a chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, the English honor society? Do they send undergrads to conferences? Do they have department events like essay contests and/or writing clubs? Search the school website thoroughly for info on their department--or better yet, call and talk to them); 3) the courses taught (you should be able to access the school’s complete course catalog before applying. If you read over every course the English department offers and none of them interest you, then obviously that’s not the school for you).

If you are already in college, look for opportunities that will make your grad school applications stand out–try to get a job as a writing tutor, join the English honor society, join/sponsor a writing or book club, be on the staff of your school’s literary journal, submit your work (including essays, why not) to other literary journals, take part in any competitions you can, etc. Strong involvement in your English department will make your application to graduate programs shine.

Consider planning for a day-job after grad school, at least for a couple years. The more English experience you have on your resume, the more likely you are to earn a full-time teaching position. Landing a tenure track job right out of grad school is tragically uncommon. Plan on adjuncting for a few years to get some college-level teaching experience under your belt. It’s common for adjunct professors to teach a few classes as a side-job while they do other work, such as freelance editing, to bring home the real money. Then you can translate your courses taught as an adjunct into years of experience when you are applying for full-time positions!

Phew, sorry if that was longer than you expected!

[ladylynse]

Whirlwind: Part IV - A Secret Quartet fanfic  (FFnet | AO3)

(Part I/Part II/Part III): Jake should be used to ominous predictions by now. Randy should know better than to blindly follow McFist. Adrien should think twice before sneaking away. And Danny should’ve expected something like this when he got that phone call.  (Timeline post)

5:53 PM

Jake couldn’t find an obvious hole in security around the building where the fashion show gala whatever-it-was was being held—every entrance was guarded and all the windows were closed, assuming any actually opened in the first place—and that made his job a little harder. He could probably get in from the roof. After all, a locked door was no match for his dragon claw unless it was magically locked, and this wouldn’t be. No, his problem with that method was the fact that there were cameras everywhere. He’d already have to invent some cover story in case people realized this first attack was due to magic; he didn’t need to add a dragon sighting to the mix.

He flew for about a block and a half before dropping into an alley, changing, and doubling back. His very human eyes picked out even fewer details than he had as a dragon, so he lurked across the street for a bit so he could text Fu and Danny and fill them in. The Ninja had told him enough to worry him. The fact that this place had been targeted out of everything else that was going on in the NYC tonight?

Not a coincidence.

Definitely not a coincidence.

Jake already knew Chat Noir had done some research. He’d found their shop, after all. It wouldn’t have been hard for him to find their family, either. Or his mom’s catering business. But the fact that he knew she’d be here tonight?

Jake made sure his phone was on silent before shoving it back into his pocket. In his book, going after parents was a low blow. His mom might know about the magical world, but she didn’t have dragon powers, so she couldn’t exactly defend herself as easily as her father or her kids. Endangering her was pretty much a declaration of war in Jake’s book. Even the elves she worked with didn’t do much in terms of magic; they wouldn’t be able to protect themselves, let alone anyone else, if it came down to a fight.

Jake kinda doubted she’d drop everything and leave, given how that would look, but at the very least, he could warn her. And hide somewhere nearby in case she needed protection. Even if she didn’t want him to.

Magic was looking like his best bet to get into this place, even if Gramps wouldn’t approve.

Well.

Magic, or maybe just the truth. Or at least a half truth. It would probably look better when he tried to explain this to everyone else if magic wasn’t his first resort.

He tried to pat his hair into something his mother might think was an acceptable position before peeling off to approach one of the security guards, a stern-faced lady with greying hair pulled back into a bun. “I’m Jake Long,” he said when he’d reached her. “The caterer’s son. She asked me to come by and help move some things.”

The dubious look he received had him pulling out his student card, which was about the only ID he actually had. “See?”

“Sorry, kid. Can’t let anyone in without the proper clearance, and unless I hear from someone else, that’s going to include you.”

“But my mom—”

“I don’t make the rules, kiddo.”

Jake managed not to scowl at the nickname. “Can’t you at least radio someone? Ask for Susan Long to come down? She’ll vouch for me.” His mother would not be happy, but she’d understand.

“Look, I don’t think you understand—”

“Are you sure you understand?” interrupted Jake. “This is an important party, yo. Do you want to be the one who ruined it because you wouldn’t let in the caterer’s help?”

“Listen, kid. The caterer has all the help she needs, and all those people have the proper clearance and badges to prove it. You don’t. So beat it.”

Of all the times not to have his board with him. There was no way this lady would’ve been able to catch him if he did, even in this crowd.

He didn’t have time to go back and get Fu to brew up a potion.

He didn’t really have a lot of time to wait around and focus for any fancy magic of his own, either, not when he didn’t know how things had gone down with Danny or if this Chat Noir had set anything up—or if his potential partner had, assuming it wasn’t the Ninja who had baited the trap Jake was trying to walk right into.

So he bolted, making a beeline for the door. The security guard was right on his tail, but he was used to that, and he was as good at ducking underneath obstacles as he was at flying over them. Of course, he didn’t know if the door was locked, and he didn’t have the time to pick it, so he called up what dragon strength he could in human form and wrenched it open. This nearly sent him flying back because it hadn’t been locked, probably because there was some kind of First Aid station set up just inside the doors, and he plowed through them and jumped the barriers without missing a beat.

He had to find his mom.

He had to warn her.

The fact that the first attack had been here couldn’t have been a coincidence.

If she at least knew to keep an eye out, that there was someone around, probably someone who was watching her, she and the rest of her crew could be extra careful. Take more precautions than usual. And spend as little time hanging around as possible.

With that in mind, Jake twisted around the new security guard that had joined the chase and raced down the hall. He tried to get his bearings as he went. He’d come in some side entrance, off the beaten path but not disconnected from the main hall that he could see ahead. He got through the next set of doors and ran full tilt into another pair of security officers. A few quick breaths of flame surprised them enough to give him time to scramble to his feet, vault over the next set of barriers, and keep going.

The fire probably hadn’t been the brightest idea, in hindsight; now, they probably thought he had a lighter and maybe that he was a particularly stupid arsonist. In all likelihood, it would bring more people down on him. But he worked with what he had. Once he got to his mom and warned her, then he’d leave. Sneak out, if that was actually possible, but at the very least willingly be kicked out.

Hopefully, his mom would step in if they actually called the police.

Jake didn’t pay attention to the screams. He just kept running and dodging, zigzagging and sliding, weaving and rolling. He scattered more than a few chairs, tore down a banner or two or ten, and tried to be as inconspicuous in his use of dragon powers as possible.

There was more than a little flame in his wake, though.

Which might have set off the fire alarm.

And activated the sprinklers.

Just a little bit.

He risked a glance over his shoulder, confirmed that they were still chasing him, and then looked forward. Realizing too late he was about to careen into the table, he tried to brake, swerve, jump it, anything, but he was going too fast to control it, especially with the wet floors, and—

“Jake Long!”

Something that may have been caviar slid down the side of his face, joining the mess of unidentifiable hors d’oeuvres in his lap and, well, everywhere else.

“Just what do you think you’re doing, young man?”

He was so dead.

“Um…. Delivering a message?” He couldn’t tell her in front of everyone that he was trying to warn her. Not that there were many people left besides her staff—who knew about him, being elves—and the guards chasing him. The only reason she was standing over him, soaking wet and glaring, was because she’d recognized the magic in the fire most humans couldn’t identify. She thought this mess was his fault, that he’d ruined this show—gala—whatever it was—for nothing.

“You did all this,” Susan Long repeated slowly, her voice quiet and tight, “just to deliver a message? Jake, I’m going to be lucky if anyone hires me after this. Gabriel Agreste has his fingers in a lot of pots, even over here. What can possibly be so important that you would do this?”

Jake looked behind him, decided he had enough time, and hurriedly whispered, “There’s going to be an attack. I think. This new guy in town, Chat Noir, he knows about us. About all of us. He’s going to try to hurt you—”

“Jake.” Something in Susan’s expression had softened, if not enough to save his hide. “I appreciate your concern, but you need to learn to judge the situation at hand.” She was speaking though her teeth now, a tight apologetic smile fixed on her face as she turned to the guards who’d come up behind him. “My apologies for my son’s antics,” she said. “We will of course pay for the damage he caused.”

Jake swallowed.

He wasn’t sure his mother’s company and his family’s savings combined could cover everything he had just done. Insurance wasn’t going to help if they thought he’d done this on purpose, and he couldn’t exactly tell anyone else the truth.

How had he managed to screw up this much in such a short period of time?

XXXXXXXXX

6:24 PM

They were ruined before opening night. Oh, something might be salvageable. The new opening could be staged elsewhere tomorrow night, possibly even with an improvised, shorter show as a teaser outside tonight. But he had come here for more than just the show; that had merely been a convenient guise.

A quick test of the waters had proven fruitful, lending credence to information he hadn’t been sure was reliable.

Finding Chat Noir in the city as well was simply a delightful bonus. Without his usual fighting partner by his side, there was an even greater chance than usual that he’d finally acquire the Ring of the Black Cat.

Especially now.

He didn’t know the details of what had happened, of course. Not yet. But he could find out easily enough. Even in the midst of the terror and chaos, he could feel the anger, the hurt, the shame, the disappointment.

The others could wait for him a little bit longer.

He cradled his hands and called a butterfly to him, infusing it with magic. “Destroyed by a child’s folly and burning with righteous fire within. What better time than now to let her fury blaze freely? Fly away, my little akuma, and blacken her heart!”

The akuma flitted off immediately, and he didn’t have to wait long until the connection was made. Sensing his victim’s heart, he smiled. “Hello, Dracona,” he said. “My name is Hawk Moth. I know how it feels to be betrayed by your own blood, to be painted as the draconian villain. I’ll help you to unleash your inner fire and find fairness in flame to teach a lesson that won’t be so easily forgotten. All I ask in return is for you to gather as much information on what passes for superheroes in this city as you can—and to fetch the ring of Chat Noir if he crosses your path. Do we have a deal?”

He was used to immediate agreement. Instead, he sensed laughter. “Hawk Moth,” drawled his chosen champion, “I haven’t heard of you before. You don’t sound like the Mothman.”

He gritted his teeth, took a breath, and said, “I am far from mere fantasy. I can grant you power—”

“Let me unlock my own power,” she breathed, “and you have a deal.”

“It is always a matter of unlocking your own power,” he assured her, not adding that Nooroo’s magic truly let the transformation occur. “Do we have an agreement?”

“Yes, Hawk Moth.”

He felt the magic overtake her, transform her, but there was something…wilder about it than he was used to. As if Dracona would prove more troublesome than most. The magic seemed stronger than it should, but not in his favour—as if she really did have her own power.

The notion was ridiculous, of course. Mere humans could only obtain power as he had, with magical objects. It was never inherently within them. More likely, this one had simply unleashed an inner fury she typically kept contained.

He heard a roar, a cacophony of screams, and smiled.

Chat Noir would return, as would this Ninja, and with any luck, the power he had granted Dracona would help him gain more of his own.

XXXXXXX

6:07 PM

Randy had barely gotten back inside the venue where this fashion show gala thing was being held when the fire alarm started blaring and the sprinklers went off.

Naturally, he hid, so instead of getting swept out of the building with everyone else, he was still around to see more than a few pairs of sodden security guards escort a sullen teenager from the building. He saw the woman walking a step behind them, a string of apologies falling from her lips, and guessed that whoever she was—she was wearing a uniform, so she had to be someone—that she was responsible for the boy.

And it didn’t take a genius to guess that the poor shoob was probably the one who’d wonked this up big time.

As fire marshals cleared the last of the building, Randy slipped out to follow the kid and the other woman. Hopefully, he’d get a better idea of who was feeling worse before they split up. Not that that would stop the Sorceress if this was her work; she’d just target both of them. Heck, she might just target the entire crowd. There had to be a lot of people out there who were sure their evening had been ruined, Marci and McFist included….

“I can’t go home, Mom,” complained the boy when the guards had finally left—miraculously without calling the cops, as far as Randy could tell. He wondered how many strings had had to be pulled for that to happen. He and Howard probably wouldn’t have gotten off so easily if they’d been caught red-handed like this boy. “I’ve got—y’know—that business I’ve gotta take care of.”

The mother’s lips thinned. “Then go to the store and fetch your grandfather. I don’t want you working alone on this, Jake.”

“But you—”

“The only danger I’m in is of losing my business after what you’ve done.”

Randy winced even as the boy deflated. His mom’s tone hadn’t been angry, exactly. More quietly disapproving, dripping with disappointment and a touch of resignation. As if the damage was done, as if there wasn’t time to be angry. Or—judging by the tightness of her expression—as if it weren’t the time or place to make a scene.

“Just let me fix this—”

“Jake,” his mother snapped, “leave it. You’ve done enough. I don’t have any more strings to pull and my favours won’t mean anything if I can’t recover from this. If you are right about there being more danger than usual, then I won’t let you work alone. You know I’m not unprotected. Go. Your responsibility isn’t for me.”

“But—”

“Now.”

Jake’s burning face betrayed the shame he was feeling, but he still opened his mouth to argue. Randy bit his lip. The Sorceress would make short work of either of these two---and probably practically anyone in the crowd who was crying over a ruined dress or angry over a ruined night or—

This was going to be bad.

He could use some help.

He kinda wished the dragon had stuck around, but maybe it was best that he hadn’t; fire-breathing dragons didn’t exactly exude calm.

It would’ve been nice if cat boy had shown his face again, though, even if Randy had to admit he’d lost Chat Noir’s stick thing in the fire. He didn’t remember dropping it, but it wasn’t in his pockets anymore, so he must have. That was really saying something, considering it had been ages since he’d accidentally dumped his throwing balls anywhere or lost his sword.

Randy touched the earpiece the Am Drag had given him. He’d put it on under the mask, but it seemed to be dead—which was unfortunate because it was probably his only source of backup. Maybe the channel wasn’t actually pre-set on it. Or maybe there was no one to hear him trying to use it. He pushed the button on the side again and whispered, “Hey, uh, whoever can hear this…. It’d be honkin’ bruce if I could get a little help. I’m, ah, pretty sure I’m gonna need it.”

Silence.

He pressed the button and tried again.

“Who is this?”

Randy blinked. He hadn’t actually expected a response, at least not from someone who definitely wasn’t the Am Drag. Maybe this thing wasn’t broken. Or maybe he’d just been hitting the wrong button, or not holding it long enough, or pressing it twice, or something. “I’m the Ninja,” he answered, retreating as much as he could. The wail of sirens had cut off a few minutes ago, and the buzz of the crowd wouldn’t necessarily hide his conversation this close to the people he’d been watching. “Who’re you?”

“The…what? Forget it, where’d you get this?”

“Where’d I get what?”

“The Fenton Phone!”

“The what?”

There was grumbling on the other end of the line, coupled with a sharp increase in wind noise. Whoever it was was on the move. “The communication device you’re using to talk to me.”

Oh. “I’ve got some friends in high places,” he said evasively.

More grumbling. Then, “Where are you?”

“Um.” Randy wasn’t actually sure. He’d found the place; that didn’t mean he knew where it was. He’d planned on following McFist back to the plane when the time came. “Where the big fashion show is. The opening thing. The gala. Y’know. That place.” Even he knew that wasn’t the most helpful description in the world. “You can’t miss it,” he added before the other guy could say something. “Just look for all the firetrucks and stuff. All the lights are still flashing.”

That was definitely a groan. “Fine, I’ll find you eventually. Just stay put.”

“Are you honkin’ kidding me? I’m gonna be waaaay too busy to leave if this shakes out the way I think it will.”

“Which is how, exactly?”

As if he was going to tell some shoob on the other end of the line about the Sorceress and everything she could do. “Bad.”

“How bad?”

“Very.”

“Yeah, but how bad are we talking?”

There was a note of earnestness the other boy’s voice that gave Randy pause. He was used to dealing with the Sorcerer, but this wasn’t Norrisville. This was New York City, and he had no clue about the lay of the land. He couldn’t assume the Sorceress was going to be as clueless because chances were she’d been operating for a while, biding her time until some event like this came up as a perfect opportunity to gain power. He doubted she’d counted on a dragon being in town, much less him or some foreign cat boy, but if she attacked now? With so many people around, all ready to panic?

It would be pandemonium, and the chaos would only make her stronger. The three of them would have a tough time stopping her. And if they failed?

“Worst case? Apocalyptic. So I’d rather wonk her cheese before it gets to the point.”

“You’d rather…what? Who are you talking about? Who are we dealing with?”

“I’ll fill you in when you get here. You won’t be able to miss me. Pretty sure I’m the only Ninja in town.”

“With the secrets this place has, I wouldn’t count on it,” was the muttered response.

Randy didn’t hear a click, but the background noise of rushing wind vanished abruptly. He shut his own earpiece off—or he tried—and crept back outside. The mother and son duo had vanished, though that amounted to little given the crowd not fifty feet away. They could be anywhere, and they weren’t the Sorceress’s only potential victims.

Besides, if the Sorceress had been out for any length of time and regained any power at all, she wasn’t going to be limited to people who were emotionally compromised. She could stank anyone, maybe even him if he wasn’t careful. She’d had zero trouble stanking people when she’d caught everyone at the fake club last time, even before they’d all been really panicking. She’d even gotten Morgan, and that girl was level-headed enough to have avoided the Sorcerer so far.

Still, as far as he knew, the Sorceress actually had to have eyes on someone to stank them like that.

If she was waiting around somewhere, she was either in the middle of the crowd…or somewhere above it.

Randy chewed his lip. The Nomicon hadn’t been flashing at him, so it didn’t have anything to say, which was weird. But maybe it wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world to double check on that, assuming it would open for him. He could probably get back out of it in time to meet whoever he’d just been talking to on the earphone thingy.

He ended up sprinting back inside and hiding under a table. He yanked his mask off and pulled out the Nomicon. It fell open at his touch, and he fell into the dizzying world of spiralling symbols.

He didn’t land so much as crash into a pool of water. He broke the surface, sputtering but not hurt. He swam the few meters to shore and tried to wipe the water out of his eyes. “What the juice, Nomicon? I just want some tips on dealing with the honkin’ Sorceress. I don’t need a bath! I don’t smell that much. It’s the smoke bombs.”

Angrily yelling at the sky actually had a chance of being effective in the Nomicon, and sure enough, clouds began gathering above him. He crossed his arms and waited. After a few seconds, misty words had formed: TO CLEANSE THE SOUL, ONE MUST FIRST CLEAR THE MIND.

“How the cheese do you expect me to cleanse the mind and soul of the Sorceress? She’s the Sorceress.”

The Nomicon, being its usual unhelpful self, only slightly amended its message: TO CLEANSE THE SOUL, ONE MUST FIRST CLEAR THE MIND.

“Clear and cleanse mean the same thing!”

A second underline appeared beneath the first.

Randy scowled.

He wasn’t entirely surprised when the clouds descended to engulf him. Hacking, he sat back up in the real world—and banged his head on the table. Of course. The Nomicon swung closed and slid to the floor. Once he had his mask back on and had stuffed the Nomicon into his pocket, he poked his head out from beneath the tablecloth to make sure the coast was still clear.

It wasn’t.

The officials wouldn’t have cleared this place for re-entry yet; he should have been safe. Instead, that kid’s mom was there. Her uniform was still a mess, and she was still soaked through from the sprinklers. She and her son probably should’ve been looked over for smoke inhalation or something like that if they’d been one of the last ones out; she certainly shouldn’t have been here.

Except she was.

More to the point, she was definitely ripe for the stanking. Her fists were clenched, her tie was askew and—yeah, that was definitely a scorch mark on her red blazer. She just stood in the middle of the room, looking at the mess. The ruin.

She should be safe. The Sorceress wouldn’t have reason to look in here, not right now, not when it was supposed to be clear and she had tons of targets outside. Except….

Except he could see this woman trembling. Anger, frustration, hopelessness—he wasn’t sure why. He just knew she was vulnerable.

After what had happened with the other lady outside, the one who’d called herself the Critic— After that, he shouldn’t have been surprised when he spotted the black butterfly. The problem was, he spotted it too late. He only noticed it when it was right there, and then it landed on the woman’s necklace and melted into it. She froze, her trembling stopping, and he overheard half of a whispered conversation that made zero sense.

Well, almost zero sense.

Let me unlock my own power. Never a good request in his book. Yes, Hawk Moth. Like it wasn’t actually the Sorceress behind this after all, just some shoob obsessed with butterflies. And, worst of all, you have a deal. Because he had no idea what that deal was, just the conviction that it was going to seriously wonk things up.

And then she…changed.

Grew.

It wasn’t exactly like watching someone be stanked, but it was close. Similar enough, at any rate. Suspiciously so. The animalistic features were all too familiar, and the shimmering purple-pink scales—slashed with green on the underbelly—weren’t a surprise, either. The wings and tail, on the other hand? The horns? The ridge of spines from nape to tail? The length of those sharp talons? Yeah, those were more surprising. The intelligence behind those dark eyes wasn’t a comfort, either.

He’d been excited to meet his first real live dragon.

He was considerably less excited to meet the second.

He wondered what the chances were of the first one coming back.

He should really go back outside. Wait for that other person to show up. Try to figure out how to fight a honkin’ dragon without endangering everyone else. The Critic hadn’t been able to breathe fire—he was not going to bet this dragon couldn’t—or fly, which had at least limited her ability to do serious damage. This time….

Randy swallowed. The Nomicon hadn’t mentioned anything about this. Maybe it hadn’t known. If no other Ninja had ever encountered the like, that was definitely possible. And how many Ninjas would’ve met a dragon that hadn’t just been created by the Sorcerer?

At least he knew how to do the Ninja Hydro Hand. That would probably help. Plus the fact that he knew why this lady had gotten stanked. Or, well, butterflied. Same idea. He’d figured out that much.

The dragon beat her wings, overturning nearby chairs and effectively ruining his cover when the tablecloth went flying, but she didn’t seem to notice him. Which was good, because it didn’t seem to be taking her long to get used to her new form. It had never taken anyone who was stanked long, either. It was like a natural instinct.

There was an upside, though: because this was definitely like someone who was stanked—he knew that from the fight with the Critic—then that should mean—

There. It was hard to pick out against the dragon’s scales, but her necklace hadn’t changed like everything else. The stank—butterfly—whatever—was inside it, and all he had to do was get it and break it and things could go back to normal.

Easier said than done.

“Whatever shoob is coming to back me up better get here soon,” Randy muttered as he stole forward, keeping low to the floor as he followed in the dragon’s wake. She flew steadily and nimbly, sliding to fit through doorways he would’ve thought were too small. He’d expected her to be like a fledgling, still figuring out her wings, but this…. This was skill, like she’d studied aerodynamics her whole life or something. Like she was a pilot, not…whatever her actual job was that had her working here.

She was fast, which meant he’d have to be faster. He’d have to find a way to hold her off until someone arrived, whether it was Mr. Mysterious Voice, Chat Noir, or the Am Drag.

The dragon smashed through the outer doors with a roar, and the screaming began. Palming a few Ninja Cold Balls, Randy ran to catch up.

(Next | see more fics)

[rogmeaddows]

Part 1: Do you call my name? Ben Hardy!Roger Taylor x Reader

(This can be used with Roger Taylor x Reader or Ben Hardy!Roger)

Concept: This is loosely based off of Letter to Hermione by David Bowie. You moved to London for a student exchange program in college. Met Roger there and ended up dating for 4 years only to break up once you moved back to the states for a publishing deal on your book. Now, 5 years later, you are married, work as a studio drummer (roger gave you a few lessons and you were actually quite good at it, started taking professional lessons and so it went), also are an author with one successful book, own a house in a boring neighborhood with your husband, and overall have a very steady life, and yet you are still deeply in love with Roger. When Queen comes to America for their tour, you and him meet again unexpectedly. It causes havoc in both your hearts and lives.

how I see the characters 

Warnings: (Angst, slight smut, long-term pining, cuss words)

Word Count: 2400+

—

You just got done with another day at the studio recording some track for some singer with absolutely no talent, your arms were sore from playing so many reps because the singer just couldn’t seem to get through a song once and constantly had re record every track they sang. As a hired studio drummer you had to deal with any ass that had enough money to hire you through the record label. It paid well and was better than a simple 9-5 job, but some days it is terribly frustrating. You turn down the road to your house and come out of your thoughts, starting to pay attention to the song thats on the radio and it sounds really good, not like most songs on the radio.

She’s a killer queen,

gunpowder gelatin,

dynamite with a laser beam

Guaranteed to blow your mind

You swear the voice sounds like someone familiar but you just can’t place it. Then the song ends and the radio hosts announces “That was Killer Queen everybody by up and coming artists Queen” Now you know what it sounds familiar. You hadn’t really heard any of their music since you came back to America, it being too painful to ever really enjoy. But now, things were different, you were different, and you wanted to hear their new album. After all, you were there for the beginning you should at least try to take an interest in them. You drive past your house and to the nearest record shop, buying their album Sheer Heart Attack. Once home you put it on and start folding a load of laundry, on your bedroom floor. Examining the cover of the album a little bit, you realized that each one of them looks so different than when you first met them, however roger still remained just as attractive as when you were together. In fact the position he is in on the album cover reminds you of a moment you shared with him. It was just after you guys had got done having drunken sex on a bedroom floor during a party, you climbed up onto the bed which was abnormally high and looked down at him attempting to light a cigarette. And He looked up at you, sweaty, shirt unbuttoned eyes filled with ecstasy. As your mind began to wander with how you got to that point you remembered the events before hand, his hands grabbing your waist and pulling you onto him, his whispers of praise and commands, his lips ghosting across your neck.

You and Rog ran up to an empty bedroom in Freddie’s house like two teenagers in love, stumbling into the room Roger pushes you up against the door slamming it closed causing you to gasp and him using your surprise to grab your wrists and pin them behind you.

“Don’t you ever tease me like that again in public, I saw what you were doing out there. Bending over just at the right times, spreading your legs when you knew only I could see.” he practically growled against your skin

“What can I say? I love seeing you flustered.”

“Trust me,I’m not gonna be the one who looks flustered in a few minutes.”

“Hmm, is that a challenge?”

“You wish love”

He then inched his hand up your skirt and kissed you softly, licking the bottom of your lip and rubbing soft circles on your upper thigh. You grab his hair and kiss him sloppily, lightly pulling at his hair every time his fingers move farther up your thigh. He moves his hand up and pushes your underwear out of the way lightly rubbing your clit. At that same moment he bites your bottom lip and this causes you to let out a slight moan.

“Want more love?” he whispers against your ear sending shivers down your spine.

      Now leaning against your dresses you pull out the small vibrator in your nightstand and use it to the image of Roger behind your eyelids. Soft moans escaping your lips as you bring yourself to your high. Right before you let yourself release your husband, Nathan Jones, walked into the front door and slamming it loudly.

     Jumping out of your skin you shove your vibrator back into your night stand and quickly go back to folding clothes. Almost afraid that he would be able to see the moments you had just been picturing on your face. Which was preposterous because you had never told him about Roger, you told him about everything else, that you guys were best friends, how you had a life in London, and how you had close friends, but you never told him about Roger or Queen. Almost as if if you didn’t talk about it, You could erase it from your memory too.

You and your husband were sat at dinner with Rachel and Joe, your best friend and her husband. Despite Rachel being the closest you have to a friend at the moment, she knew nothing about you, nothing about who you were, and nothing about anything you truly care about.  Everyone was heavily involved in their small talk, but all you could think about was how you could be using this time to work on the sequel to your book. The first one sold so well that you signed a contract with your publisher for a sequel. However the story isn’t connecting together the way you had envisioned and you were stuck trying to figure out how to fix the plot. Becoming completely lost in your book you didn’t hear your best friend Rachel mention how she and her boyfriend were going to a Queen concert tomorrow. Snapping you out of your daydream your husband says

“Earth to (y/n)”.

“What? Sorry I’m just- exhausted.”

“Well if you had been paying attention, you would be able to answer the question Rachel asked you.” You were taken aback by his aggressive tone.

“Sorry, Rachel. What were you asking?” you said through gritted teeth trying to keep from snapping at your husband.

“Oh just that there was this band I really like coming to town, Queen, I bought tickets for me and Joe but he has business meeting that night and I was wondering if you’d like to come.” she hadn’t caught on to the dynamic between me and Nathan. Speaking with ease as if a man constantly bickering and snapping at his wife was supposed to be normal. However that’s not what had my mind in knots no, it was the pretense that after 5 years I could be in the same room as Roger Taylor. It was the notion that even after 5 years and a husband that boy had my heart in my throat and my contents of my stomach threatening to spill out of my mouth.

“No, I’m sorry I can’t that night. I have a work thing” my voice staying calm but I know my face did not look it.

“Really because I haven’t even told you the date yet? Come on (y/n) you never do anything fun, it’s just one night and the ticket is already paid for.” her words seemed distant and you were trying to bring your head back down from the dangerous place it had gone. Thoughts were buzzing through your head and for a split second You were no longer you, but the girl you 6 years ago looking at who you are now as if through a looking glass. Tears sprang to her eyes as she watched her older self sit at a table with a woman who did not know her and a man she did not love. In a dress she hated but knew it would allow her to feel normal and comfortable among the people she was with. She felt the urge that she had always felt when she was younger, to run. To take everything she had and run. Then it was over and you were who you are now again, but the anxiety had not gone away.

“Sorry my stomachs not feeling well I need to go to the bathroom”

“Do you want me to come with you?” Rachel was a good friend, but she could never help you through what you were working through at the moment.

“Oh no, stay and enjoy your dinner I’ll be fine.”

You made your way back to the restroom trying to regain your steadiness, your comfort, your sensibilities. However that’s when you heard it, a voice you hadn’t heard in years but could pinpoint out of an entire crowd.

“(Y/N)?” He spoke your name like he had been waiting to say it, like it had been built up behind all of his other words and finally got a chance to come out. You turned around in absolute shock that the blonde haired, blue eyed man that You never thought you would see again, was now standing in front of you. You said his name and it felt like every other time you had said his name was mixed into this one, the first time he introduced himself to you, the time you found him flirting with another woman, the time he gave you the best orgasm of your life, the time you showed up at his house at 3 am completely plastered and sobbing for no reason other than that you had lost his favorite shirt when you went to Germany for a week, the last goodbye you said to him at the airport on London.

“Roger?” his eyes looked like they had the first time we met, hopeful, expecting, afraid. Until he looked down at your left hand and saw the wedding wing perched on your finger. His face fell and he looked at you.

“It’s been awhile since we’ve talked cactus.” you were taken aback by his use of the nickname he gave you. You never told anyone about it when I moved back to the states, mainly because it would only remind you of him. After about a month or two of your friendship you two were watching a movie in his apartment and he turned to you and said You know, you remind me of a cactus. You’re so cold, prickly, and very much an asshole on the surface. But I just after having seen you cry over a dog in a children’s movie I now know the truth. You are nothing but a gooey little mushy ball of feelings inside all that false roughness.” Since that moment on he called you Cactus. The memory makes your heart clench inside your chest. Just in that moment, between his words and your words intervened Rachel who had came back to check on you in the bathroom. Low and behold you never made it.

“Oh my God, you’re Roger Taylor!” she said excitedly then took a second to asses the moment that the two of you looked held in and she asked “Do you two know each other?” you wanted to tell her yes, that he was the only person who knew you and that as far as you knew you were the only person who knew him. But instead you said

“Not really, used to hang out at the bar he used to play gigs at.” he caught on to your lie

“Yeah, me and (y/n) just used to be drinking buddies.” he chuckled softly, almost not enough to hear but you did.

“You never told me that (y/n)! And you wanted to skip out on the concert with me tomorrow night.” Roger then had the audacity to say

“Well if you can’t make it to the concert maybe you guys would like to come to a little party we’re having tonight.” before you have the time to shoot the idea down with a shotgun, Rachel says

“We’d love to. But we have dates with us, can they come to?”

Roger looks at you with a sly smile, one he used to give you while you were in the crowd at concerts, right before the band left the stage and he knew that you and him would hook up in the boys dressing room afterward.

“Of course they can come, I’d love to meet the new people in (y/n)’s life.” He then gave Rachel an address and time while you were stood dumbfounded by the hand that life had just dealt you.

“We’ll see you there. It was great meeting you Roger.”

“You as well”

You didn’t say anything. You both went back to your table, Rachel describing everything that had just happened, and you staring off into space still picture Roger’s face in you head. As your husband placed his hand on yours.

Part 2 will be up in two days!

[nyfacurrent]

Creative Careers | Tools for Creative Activism from Curatorial Organizer La Tanya S. Autry

“My real talk: Believe in yourself. You have a right to be there.” - La Tanya S. Autry

As a cultural organizer in the visual arts, La Tanya S. Autry focuses on social justice and public memory in her work. In addition to co-creating The Art of Black Dissent, an interactive program that promotes public dialogue about the African-American liberation struggle, she co-founded the #MuseumsAreNotNeutral initiative, which calls for an equity-based transformation of museums, and the Social Justice and Museums Resource List, a crowd-sourced bibliography. Autry can be found online with the project name Artstuffmatters on WordPress, Twitter, and Instagram.

We spoke with Autry about her vision for the future of museums, the power of social media for artists, curators, and organizers, and the ways in which we can all lead and push for change.

NYFA: What prompted you, along with Mike Murawski, to launch the "Museums are Not Neutral" campaign?

La Tanya S. Autry: Our #MuseumsAreNotNeutral initiative grew from a shared concern about the dominance of the neutrality claim in the field. In my own experience, I have encountered art museum professionals, with advanced level degrees, making statements such as “the museum has to be neutral” or “we can’t be political” to deflect calls to address racism. Those assertions are false because they decontextualize the origins and practices of museums. While Murawski and I do not suggest institutions adopt partisan views, we wanted to make a clear stand against the myth of neutrality. We also wanted to encourage more people in the field, as well as visitors, students, educators, and others, to acknowledge the truth. Since August 2017, when we launched our campaign which supports community-centered social progress, hundreds of people in the U.S. and abroad have joined us. As all the profits from sales of our “Museums Are Not Neutral” shirts go to charitable organizations, our global initiative has raised over $13,000, while sparking much needed public discussion about the histories, functions, and possibilities of museums.

NYFA: How do you use social media in your activism and career?

LSA: Years ago I participated in a workshop on public engagement strategies at the University of Delaware, where I am completing my doctorate in art history. Through that program, I started using social media as a means for sharing my research beyond academic spaces. That role is still important to me; however, I quickly found that these digital networks are useful for thinking and planning in public. For me, Twitter, Instagram, and other platforms have been instrumental tools for expanding my knowledge and collaborating with various artists, educators, museum professionals, and others who are committed to the arts, the humanities, and social progress. The Social Justice and Museums Resource List, an open crowd-sourced bibliography of over 40 pages, is one of the collaborative projects that I have developed through engagement with social media. 

For inspiration, I’d like to share some of my favorite initiatives, makers and thinkers, and organizations. You can refer to this Twitter list to find those who are active on that platform. Many of the accounts that inspire me are present on Instagram as well as Twitter, though some are only present on Instagram, like Bisa Butler, Delphine Adama Fawundu, Toyin Ojih Odutola, The Black School, and Erykah Antiy Killmonger. Additionally, you can follow the hashtags #BlkTwitterstorians, #1960Now, #SlaveryArchive, #MuseumsRespondToFerguson, and #MASSActionMIA. 

NYFA: What kind of museum space should the cultural sector work towards?

LSA: There are important measures underway to make museums more welcoming spaces to broader demographics. I’d love to see more of a central focus on equity, which calls for structural change. An equity-based approach would identify and dismantle the power relations that have created inequalities in museums. This focus addresses root causes, not only the symptoms. 

I believe that having more museum board members and executive staff who are committed to anti-racism and anti-oppression could promote deep change and foster caring environments. Here, I'm thinking of hiring practices and training opportunities, as well as functions related to collections, exhibitions, programs, interpretation, conservation, editorial, accessibility, development, and security. Also, the field would experience substantive positive change if more museum professionals and philanthropic organizations recognized and financially supported the longstanding anti-racist, anti-oppression work that many ethnic-specific institutions have done over the years.

NYFA: You’ve said on the podcast Museopunks that if we see ourselves as creative agents for change we can make that change happen in many small ways, and can encourage other people to do that work. What are some ways to make change and mobilize others?

LSA: Yes, I think individual efforts are just as vital as institutional changes. Each of us can educate ourselves by engaging with the histories of the field, reading literature about current practices, social justice histories, theories, and practices. Listening to, citing, and supporting the perspectives of Indigenous, Black, Latinx, Asian, LGBTQ, and disabled communities are important pathways. Collaborating and building solidarity across racial, ethnic, class, gender, and other social forces is necessary for seeing beyond existing frameworks. No matter our status level, we can each be a leader of change, and we can share our experiences with others through public presentations, publishing blog posts and articles, and posting reflections and resources via social media. While “going public” helps us find collaborators, we also learn more about the field and methods for generating social change. It empowers us.

NYFA: What's your advice for those entering the curatorial field, especially if they identify with a group, or groups, widely underrepresented in the field?

LSA: When I started taking classes in museum studies and working in the field, no one mentioned the difficulties I might encounter as a Black woman from a working class background going into the predominately white and economically-privileged world of art museums. So I am always happy to assist others entering this arena. 

I don’t use the word underrepresented as it’s misleading. Instead, I use the term historically excluded as Simone Austin, an MA student in history at the University of Delaware, suggested in a tweet last spring. The problem has not been that people of color and other groups have not shown up. We’ve been excluded from the field for a long time. In addition to being mindful of the language we employ because it shapes our thinking and actions, it’s crucial to study the history of museums. We need to know what came before, what’s happening now, what the visions for museums are, and who’s shaping the field. People who are from groups who have been excluded need to brace themselves for racism and other biases. These things shouldn’t happen, but they do.

My real talk: Believe in yourself. You have a right to be there. Connect with people across the institution in various roles and in the broader community. Analyze biases so you can both deconstruct and address them. Spend time dreaming about what you’d like to create. Strategize the steps needed to actualize your vision. Figure out who can help you get there. Value your relationships with people. Search for respectful and kind mentors who care about your well-being and professional development. Always remember your communities. Find ways to welcome them and others in the museum sphere.  

- Interview conducted by Mirielle Clifford, Program Officer, Online Resources

This post is part of a regular blog series, NYFA Creative Careers. Find new and exciting career and artist opportunities on NYFA Classifieds. To read more articles on building your professional artist career, visit the Business of Art section of NYFA’s website. Sign up for NYFA News and receive artist resources and upcoming events straight to your inbox.

Images: La Tanya S. Autry and Mike Murawski, Museums Are Not Neutral, August 2017, composite Instagram image, August 2018, Courtesy: La Tanya S. Autry; and La Tanya S. Autry and Gabriella Svenningsen, The Art of Black Dissent, 2017, Institute Library, New Haven, CT, featuring works from left to right: Eric Etheridge, 1961 Freedom Riders, 2010, print; Ricardo Levin Morales, Trayvon Martin, digital print, 2013; Ricardo Levin Morales, We Are the Mainstream, digital print, 2014; Photo Courtesy: La Tanya S. Autry.

[thatishogwash]

Bad Pick Up Lines

KuroDai Week 2018 May 9, Day Four: Admiration / Bad Habits AO3

Kuroo was nervous.  He didn’t really blame himself as he adjusted his jar of brushes for the fourteenth time or moved his canvas before ultimately moving it to the original spot he had it in.  He brought out extra lights even though he had purposefully chosen this space for its natural lighting.  He thought of putting music on but then thought that might be weird.  Would it make it seem like he was trying to set a mood?  He was trying to set a mood but not that kind of mood.

Kuroo Tetsurou knew how fortunate and lucky he was to have the career he did.  It’s not to say he didn’t fight and bleed and lose countless hours of sleep over it.  He worked in shitty jobs for years, stayed in tiny apartments with far too many roommates, did everything he could to save up for just a couple mid-line paints and brushes.  He worked himself to the bone and then continued to work just for the small hope that someday, someday he could do what he loved.

Now Kuroo could comfortably live as a full time artist.  He had permanent art installations at actual museums and not just in Japan either, his art was being shown in twelve different countries around the world.  He had an assistant that kept tabs on his schedule and filtered through all the commissions he got.  Kuroo still worked his ass off but now it was doing something he loved, something he had worked so hard to achieve.

It didn’t mean that everything was perfect.  There was something whispered amongst artists of all different mediums, something that felled even the best.  The dreaded artist block.

Kuroo had faced a couple in his couple decades of life.  He had always managed to power through it, to find inspiration or a muse from something.  But Kuroo had basically run through every single modeling agency he usually contacted when he needed real life models.  He had taken to venturing out to random places to see if anyone fit what he needed.

The commissioned pieces for his next art installation were half done.  The first half had been done in record timing, almost laughably easy.  His model had been tall, nearly amazonian with lean muscles and a grace of a professional dancer.  Those pieces leaned against the wall, laughing at him.

Kuroo had become desperate.  Hope came in the form of his taciturn assistant who sometimes Kuroo could have sworn wanted to watch Kuroo burn out.  Tsukishima Kei was equal parts the best and worst assistant Kuroo had ever had.  Definitely the worst had been the walking disaster known as Haiba Lev, who had thankfully been taken off of Kuroo’s hands by a modelling agency who liked the look of the half-Russian and wasn’t too concerned with his puppy dog like attitude.  The best had Akaashi Keiji, who might have referred to Kuroo as pain-in-the-ass-Kuroo but was still the best damn assistant anyone could ever ask for.  Of course he just had to graduate school and get a fantastic job in his field and fall in love with Kuroo’s traitor of a best friend Bokuto Koutarou.

But that was neither here nor there.  The point was just when Kuroo was on a verge of a nervous breakdown and was thinking about burning his own studio down, disappearing into the night, and changing his name Tsukishima stepped in.  Kuroo thought it was mostly self preservation on Tsukishima’s part.  As much as the younger man complained about the workload, Kuroo knew he paid better than any job a broke full-time student could make.

So Tsukishima had suggested a different sort of company to book a model through.  The type of company that might help lonely people out, someone might pay them for a date or other things.

It was an escort company and Kuroo had hired an escort.

Truthfully Kuroo had hired seventeen escorts and none of them had been the right fit.  Kuroo didn’t even want to question how Tsukishima knew about the company since he couldn’t find a single trace of it online.  Kuroo didn’t worry about his reputation much.  Hiring an escort would probably be on the tame side for the rumors floating around about him.

Kuroo had gotten desperate and the man he always talked to when booking the escorts had sounded rough and annoyed.  Kuroo had assured him repeatedly that he just needed a model for some sketches and maybe a painting or two.  Yes they would have to remove their clothes but a pair of biking shorts could be worn.

The man had sighed and told Kuroo he was sending a guy his way.

Kuroo was nervous.  The impending failure of an unfinished commissioned piece made Kuroo want to hole up in his apartment and never come out.  So much was riding on this and he was being sent an escort he didn’t even choose.

A knock at the door had Kuroo flinching so bad he knocked over the jar of brushes he had been anxiously touching and he managed to kick over his easel.

“Uh- come on, the doors unlocked!”  Kuroo yelled as he attempted to pull himself together while putting everything back into its place.  “Hi!  Hello.  Hey.”  Kuroo wanted to cover his face as his soul attempted to leave his body out of sheer embarrassment.  Three greetings?  Really?

“Hi, hello, hey.”  The man by the door surprised Kuroo, not just from his cheeky greeting but by his looks.

Kuroo had been surprised with each escort he had met.  Every single one vastly different from the last and none of them really screamed escort to Kuroo, which he guessed was kind of the point.  Also he felt a little judgemental about his preconceived notions of escorts too.

The man in front of Kuroo took all those notions about what Kuroo thought escorts looked or acted like, pushed it into the garbage disposal and turned it on until there was nothing left.  He looked like the type who would feel perfectly comfortable with a toddler on his hip as he enjoyed a backyard barbeque with his neighbors.  He looked like he played some type of sport on the weekends and worked in an office where he was always bringing in treats for the rest of his floor.

The man looked plain and boring, as if he could blend seamlessly into a crowd of businessmen.

“Is that Toothless?”  The man, the escort asked, seemingly surprising even himself.  Kuroo didn’t blame him, not many people came into his studio but even Tsukishima showed the slightest shock when he walked in to see a life-size version of Toothless taking up the back portion of the studio.

“Yeah,” Kuroo answered with a grin, finally feeling a bit like himself.  “My friend Oikawa, his son is having a How to Train Your Dragon themed party and I just really enjoy being liked by his kid so much more than him.”  The admission surprised a laugh out of the man but with surprise of his own, Kuroo realized that he had purposefully distracted Kuroo.

He was a lot more cunning than his looks let on and Kuroo found himself enjoying that.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude, I’m Sawamura.”  Sawamura took a couple steps over to Kuroo and held out his hand.  It was a firm handshake, Sawamura’s hands were calloused and warm.

“Kuroo.”  Kuroo stretched out his fingers by his side, still feeling the warm tingly after effects from the handshake.

“So I’m going to be truthful, this is all kind of new to me.”  Sawamura gave a self deprecating grin and oh, he was so good.  Kuroo would have to pay close attention because with one little sentence he had managed to put Kuroo at ease and in charge without either having to really talk about it.  “I took an Art History class once and it was way beyond me.”

“Well why don’t you take your jacket off and get comfortable?  I’m just going to start with some warm up sketches.”  Kuroo stepped behind his easel, glancing over at Sawamura as he pulled his jacket off, causing the plain dark gray shirt underneath to pull tight against his torso.  Without the jacket Kuroo could see that Sawamura was built better than the dad-bod Kuroo had been expecting.  His shoulders were broad and they tampered off into a trim waist with rather impressive arms.

Kuroo started to draw those shoulders, trying to work out the muscles and bone beneath and how they moved and shifted.  Sawamura wandered around the studio, taking a closer look at Toothless, which would be rideable when Kuroo was finished with it.  He was excited to leave Tsukishima with the task of actually getting it to Oikawa’s house back in Miyagi in one piece.

Then Sawamura moved to the long table pushed against the far left side of the studio.  Kuroo opened his mouth but quickly closed it as he got a good look at Sawamura’s back.  He normally didn’t allow people to see his work in progress or his failed works, all of which were spread across that table, but Sawamura was proving a good study.  There was something unique in the plainess, something intriguing past the neat hair and clean cut look.

“These are all for the project your working on?”  Kuroo didn’t correct Sawamura about the term project, it clearly wasn’t meant to be demeaning or offensive.

“Sort of?  They are all the models I’ve tried but something didn’t click.”  Kuroo answered honestly, feeling more at ease with every passing moment.  He had no idea how someone could be such a calming personality and make Kuroo feel as if he was challenging him at every turn.  “None of them fit my first model.  Could you take off your shirt?”

“Like mixing fluorine to hydrogen.”  Sawamura mumbled as he did as asked.  Kuroo was almost too distracted by the stretch of newly revealed muscles to miss the joke, almost being the keyword.

“Did you just make a chemical reaction joke?”  Kuroo asked, earning a grin from Sawamura.  “Hey Sawamura?  You must be chlorine because you are polarizing my bond.”  Sawamura stared at him in muted horror before tossing his head back and laughing.

“That was so bad!”  Sawamura moved closer to Kuroo.  “How many of those have you got?”

“Please Sawamura, I am a professional.”  Kuroo continued to sketch, glancing up at an expecting looking Sawamura.  “My favorite attractive force is van der Waal’s force.  Can you feel it?  I’ll move closer if you can’t.”  Sawamura laughed again, that deep belly type laugh that made Kuroo intake a little too much air.

The rest of the time passed in sharing bad pick up lines and Kuroo was surprised when his phone beeped, signalling the end of their time.  He had moved on from quick sketches to more detailed ones, the floor around him was covered with pieces of Sawamura.  Kuroo had discovered a faint scar on his cheek, the middle and pointer knuckles on his left hand were swollen, his lips pulled up a little higher on the left side then right when he smiled, and several other minute things he could have easily overlooked when he brushed Sawamura off as plain.

“Thank you.”  Kuroo said with real feeling because he finally felt as if he was seeing a light at the end of his dark, artist block tunnel.

“I didn’t really do much.”  Sawamura shrugged though Kuroo couldn’t be but disagree.  He gave the studio one last glance around as he pulled on his jacket.  “All of this, everything you’ve managed to create even your petty life sized dragon-” A flashing, cunning grin at this.  “It’s all amazing.  It’s really admirable, what you do.  Pulling nothing out of your mind with just some paper and pencils, sticking with it even after three dozen different models.”  Kuroo could feel a creeping blush at this.  He hadn’t realized he really needed to hear that until someone said it.

“I think what you do is really admirable too!”  Kuroo rushed out.  “I know your job can’t be easy but you came in here with confidence, not knowing what was in store for you and you made this easy and enjoyable.  Thank you, really.”  Sawamura wasn’t smiling though as Tsukishima came in through the door.

“What do you think my job is exactly?”  Sawamura asked, eyes narrowed.  Tsukishima paused before turning on his heel to walk out.  “Don’t even think about it Tsukishima.”  Kuroo had never seen Tsukishima listen to anyone as well as he listened to Sawamura in that moment.

“I’m sorry?  Is it not okay to talk about it?”  Kuroo asked worriedly, wondering if he had somehow insulted Sawamura.  Tsukishima’s back was to them but his head ducked down.

“Talk about what?”  Sawamura said.  “Say it.”

“You’re an escort?”  Kuroo meant to say it as a statement but it came out as more of a question.  Tsukishima’s bean pole body seemed to slump forward at Kuroo’s words.

“I’m a what now?”  Sawamura practically yelled.  “Tsukishima Kei, what the hell did you tell him?”

It was then that Kuroo realized there was no escort business that Tsukishima knew about.  He had his old volleyball coach pretend to be some sort of pimp while sending various friends and acquaintances of Tsukishima’s to Kuroo.  Turned out that Sawamura really did work in an office during the week and played with a neighborhood association team during the weekends.

“So then, is it okay if I ask you out?”  Kuroo asked to Tsukishima’s obvious horror.

“Please no Sawamura, you could do so much better.”  Tsukishima said quickly.

“I’m telling Kageyama that you sent Hinata and Yamaguchi out as pretend escorts to your boss.”  Sawamura deadpanned.  Kuroo had yet to meet Tsukishima’s longterm boyfriend Kageyama but from what he had heard he was a pretty intense young man and the only one able to wring any sort of remorse from the emotionless Tsukishima.  “And yes it is, but I’m paying.”

Kuroo couldn’t help but grin at that.

[enos1olkklbc]

Add These 10 Mangets To Your BigCommerce

I just read Michael Fox’s post on Australia needing more engineers that are software Mitchell Harper’s SMH opinion piece regarding the deficiencies of our university system for teaching software engineering. Interesting. I’ve done a bunch of hiring of engineers in Sydney over a number of years, so I’ve an impression in these areas too. Curious about I quickly scanned the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations skill shortage lists, but this didn’t reveal any particular shortage in IT generally if it was an accepted statistical fact. Anecdotally and through my own experience, recruiting engineers could be difficult, but we’ve also never had a shortage of applicants, even for niche roles. Most of the difficulty arises to locate top notch talent, not finding individuals to interview. And so the issue just isn't volume, but talent, and it is a skills shortage. We now have the social people, however the people don’t have the abilities. This makes sense: people in software engineering are well paid, and move on to do interesting, challenging work, so there is not any doubt so it’s an role that is attractive. Understanding that you want to work with software engineering and having desirable skills are a couple of separate things. Does university teach how exactly to be a software engineer that is good? Reflecting by myself education that is undergraduatestudying Information Systems during the University of New South Wales), the computer science curriculum was geared towards fundamentals. The first year course was taught in Haskell, that I think many professionals would agree is a superb introduction - it makes prospective engineers think in functions and side effects and it is an ideal teaching language. The sum of these subjects is a great background in computer science, not an industry developer that is ready. Right now (review the curriculum here), the focus is certainly caused by on core computer science and mathematics. You'll find nothing pertaining to industry that is practical, or web development, or best practices for organising work and teams. Reviewing Stanford’s computer science curriculum shows a remarkably similar group of subjects, so I don’t believe it is restricted to Sydney or Australia if we have a problem. What's the role of university anyway? The big, age old question is if it is the role of university to get ready students for industry? For Harper, the answer is "yes": "Australian universities are not producing engineers" that is workplace-ready. While in my estimation it’s not the job of university to organize "workplace-ready engineers" (I’m associated with the opinion that the basic principles and theory perspective is the proper focus for 90% of a qualification, and that a vocation ready engineer will establish at work), i really do think that there ought to be some degree of preparation, and the right amount of preparation will be relatively simple to deliver to students. A couple of semester long courses on industry practices would be give an undergraduate student a head start that is good. The truth is there will never be plenty of time in an undergraduate degree to completely prepare a student for industry (my suggestion of just one or two semester long courses will have to take a very good opinion on languages and operations, and would you should be the beginning). Harper says that "They’re quite simply not being taught the right languages, methodologies, processes and problem concepts" that is solving but even to instruct the "right" languages into the "right" way would take such a chunk of a student’s time that there’d be precious little time left for the true science to be learnt. Indeed, for Harper’s BigCommerce, the right language would be PHP, and would most certainly be counter-productive for young engineers to learn. I’m surprised to learn Harper saying that they’re not being shown problem solving concepts at university, and I’d want to learn more exactly what he means by that. Students are being taught to be engineers, but mostly industry is interested in half-engineers, half web-developers. The web developers that are best have built on fundamentals, the sort of fundamentals a student learns at university. Some good web developers have self-educated rather than attended university, and also for the right individual there isn't any doubt you can find probably few careers that accomodate the self taught so well. You will find precious shortcuts that are few learning those fundamentals though. So, industry wants graduate engineers who are able to hit the ground running and can deliver value straight away aided by the particular languages and processes that a company that is specific chosen, and has no time to build up individuals with potential. Why blame universities for not catering for this kind of demand? University needs to deliver timeless knowledge built on science and learning, not focus on the whims of a quick paced industry, attempting to predict every fad which comes along. Companies can complain, but there’s a quick method to solve this problem: take students with potential and train all of them with your languages, your processes, your engineering ideals. This is certainly also the way that is slow solve the problem, but hey, much better than complaining.

Communicating these ideas and implementing them not merely builds brand credibility, but customers feel much safer and there’s no bigger conversion killer than when a person does feel safe n’t. Being in several channels may work well for your needs, but as long as you can measure results. Make sure to ensure that analytics is a major section of your omnichannel plans! That’s the way that is only have the ability to get the 80/20 of what exactly is working together with your marketing. Tracking cross-channel impacts of advertising is quite challenging. Don’t try to get it perfect, use data to get trends instead. Don’t make any assumptions. Perform some ongoing work to comprehend who your customer is (buyer persona), what they want, and how they research/buy. Retail, especially online retail, is getting to be an even more place that is crowded every day passes. Be really, REALLY clear about your metrics and who your target customers are! What exactly is your average customer lifetime value? What exactly is your acceptable cost of acquiring a new customer? What exactly is your customer persona and what do they care about? Make every decision with those three things in your mind. Concentrate on the buyer’s needs and journey first and then align your teams, data and systems to generate a seamless and customer experience that is integrated. A lot of people do so within the reverse order and then wonder why they have experience gaps. Take the time to sit down with your team and actually map out (1) your customer personas and (2) how these personas flow during your user acquisition channels (i.e. FB ads, Instagram, Google, etc.) and (3) where they end up buying your product (in other words. website, brick and mortar, mobile app, Amazon, etc.). You possibly can make it interactive using this method on a wall in your office and using color coded post-it notes for every step regarding the journey. Don’t undervalue the free stuff. Search, influencer coverage, product reviews, industry directories, coupon/deal sites: they all play a subtle and role that is interrelated’s tough to attribute, but that’s precisely what means they are a simple yet effective usage of spend. In economics terms, that uncertainty is exactly what means they are an marketplace that is inefficient. Most purchases require multiple marketing touches. You can verify it for your brand within the Time Lag or Path Length reports in Google Analytics. Product critiques, search engine results, blogger coverage, social strategy, all frequently play a shared role in a single sale. Try to avoid applying the same goals to every channel and instead consider how each channel can contribute to your strategy.

· SEO-readiness. Provides for the greater data promotion in search engines

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Automated Email Marketing

BigCommerce's stock nearly triples during the open, and keeps rising

4:42 a.m. Sept. 6, 2020

You may use Amazon to get time that is first, a brick and mortar retailer like 7/11 to boost brand awareness, and then drive all of this traffic back to your D2C online storefront where you earn nearly all your margin. Cannibalization of sales from multiple channels is a real risk but it requires to be weighed against the benefits these channels offer. Continuously optimize and test to achieve your goals. You never know what channel, message, time of day, or means of engagement will work best unless you test it. Before entering into new channels, spend some time looking into how competitors or brands that are similar utilising the channel. The intent and expectations across channels varies greatly. For example, somebody scrolling on Instagram is very different than somebody searching for your product on Google Shopping, while the expectations that are post-click costs will differ as well. Omnichannel isn't just having things work technically across channels - it is about providing an incredible experience across channels. Just because customers are functionally in a position to do what they should do does not imply that you’re providing an amazing customer experience across channels. Make sure you’re emotionally connecting with customers at every opportunity. Talk to the consumer. You can’t completely understand the journey or the issues you’re not speaking to the customer to find out how they’re experiencing it in it if. Online focus groups, visit tracking software, reading feedback, actually calling them and asking them! You can’t do a job that is good of if you don’t speak to them. We mistake a buyers journey by convinced that customers desire to control it. This is simply not the scenario in terms of creating a connection that is customer/brand. It has to produce sense towards the Brand and contains to build a memorable journey that’ll be noticeable in the buyer’s mind specially when the internet space is becoming over crowded with options. Aside from channel, customer experience has to be a top priority. You'll have the website that is best or the fanciest retail location, if the service is lacking, you’ll lose customers. Expectations are greater than ever, and modern consumers won’t tolerate lower than stellar experiences. Also, make content for buyers at all stages of it is needed by the journey-customers! One-size-fits all does not always work. Increasingly, consumers expect the retailers they do business with to offer a omnichannel experience that is seamless. The fact is consumers have endless choices of where (and how) to search these days, and if you don’t meet their expectations and gives convenient solutions, they will find one of the competitors that will. Omnichannel is a way that is great brands to simplify the direction they connect with customers through different marketing platforms.

These 5 Simple BigCommerce Methods Will Pump Up Your Gross sales Nearly Instantly

In an effort, to become an even more effective brand and still touch differing people in every kinds of channels you must think like a consumer. My biggest advice is to brand is ensure it is easier not complicated. Developing an omnichannel strategy is a uniquely-tailored process with customer-centric goals. The main focus should be on how your visitors wish to experience shopping online, and that focus should really be supported by the infrastructure partners who is able to help to hold that customer’s experience to the highest standards. Ensure that you have an answer with a hub and spokes that function seamlessly to allow your brand image and promise to shine across channels no matter where your customers decide to engage with you. Most importantly, don’t assume or think you know your customers expectations and desires, but really do the job and research to make sure you are aware, and this will enrich the omnichannel experience you deliver. Think about the buying experience from your perspective. Years back, you would buy in-person only. At some time you started online that is shopping and sites like Amazon. But these worlds are starting to blend and you’re more and much more prone to take a look at something in-person but online buy it. The key as a merchant is to be in a position to accommodate your customer and however take their order they would like to give it. Individuals are almost certainly going to purchase when you present them with an offer that’s personalized for their needs. Studying your data and getting very granular together with your audience segmentation allows you to deliver a highly-personalized promotion that is on-site is more prone to convert. Anticipate to serve your shopper whether this woman is into the awareness, consideration, or decision phases regarding the customer journey. For example, shoppers do not know always what they would like to buy, or perhaps know and cannot verbalize it. Along with great visuals and superb design, brands should always have search, filters, and buy buttons ready for shoppers moving from awareness to consideration, and decision. The same across all channels to make channel switching easy for customers, make sure your brand FEELS. And remember, buyers say they want three things: their desired outcome and an experience. Whatever they really would like is an experience that transforms them. People purchase from people. Be consistent, be approachable and start to become relevant. Smaller brands are more malleable and certainly will adjust and innovate quicker than larger, established brands. Trends change so quickly and often that you need to constantly innovate. Create an omni-channel experience that aligns in what your brand stands for. Stop thinking when it comes to channnels and start thinking in terms of the engagement that is entire irrespective of transactional outcome.

You know more regarding the branding than other people, so make sure you have consistent, accurate branding across as numerous online and offline channels. Don’t let random resellers control your branding. Because over fifty percent of all U.S. Automate whenever possible. Checking up on Amazon, eBay, social media marketing, your internet site, and just about every other channels you’re a part of can quickly get overwhelming. Automation may help things run smoothly without sucking all your time. The things that can’t be automated should be delegated as much as possible, unless it’s a thing that only you can certainly do. Hiring & training the people that are right imperative to scaling your organization without working 80 hour weeks. Really, this really is just good business advice. Nonetheless it’s a lot more true whenever you branch out into multiple platforms. Integration is key. Only 7% of marketers can deliver omnichannel in real time, all the time. To get close, brands need to adopt a strategy that is holistic loops in every avenue of customer engagement. The necessary data to drive the next interaction in the customer journey in theory, each channel should be able to talk to each other and leverage. This level of integration promotes consistency across all touchpoints and offers customers with a experience that is seamless’s channel-agnostic. A brand name that may make this happen could have the benefit over its rivals. It all starts with data management. It’s the inspiration for a successful omnichannel approach. Whether it’s through a PIM (Product Information Management) solution your very own custom built one, you will have to establish a workflow to improve product data to generally meet the various requirements for the various channels. Don’t leave any stone unturned! Test all the channels you might think could "speak" to your web visitors. Just be sure that selling across multiple channels does not take your life over. Automate just as much as you can - which means that your business runs smoothly. The key is customer experience. Brands need to understand the importance of various touch points that impact a consumer’s decision to move forward with them today. Depending on their sales force can be as important as holding a good reputation that is online review sites. In fact, the social media marketing presence and engagement also form important KPIs that impact a customer’s choice. I really believe that brands must up their game in all these areas and approach their customers then as per proper segmentation techniques. Brands that succeed in omnichannel don’t just think about how exactly to sell on different devices, they’re also thinking about how precisely consumers use different devices and channels to see a purchasing journey. Many brands appear to believe omnichannel performance is governed by happenstance.

[newstfionline]

Headlines

US death toll from coronavirus hits 200,000 (AP) The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus topped 200,000 Tuesday, by far the highest in the world, hitting the once-unimaginable threshold six weeks before an election that is certain to be a referendum in part on President Donald Trump’s handling of the crisis. The number of dead is equivalent to a 9/11 attack every day for 67 days. It is roughly equal to the population of Salt Lake City or Huntsville, Alabama. Worldwide, the virus has infected more than 31 million people and is closing in fast on 1 million deaths, by Johns Hopkins’ count, though the real numbers are believed to be higher.

Trump Demands U.N. Hold China to Account for Coronavirus Pandemic (NYT) President Trump assailed China as the coronavirus villain Tuesday in a strongly worded United Nations speech, extolling his own actions in the pandemic and demanding that the global organization hold accountable “the nation which unleashed this plague onto the world.” Mr. Trump’s speech--made via prerecorded video to a General Assembly that was drastically curtailed because of the pandemic--was followed by a recorded speech from President Xi Jinping of China, who called the coronavirus a crisis shared by everyone. Offering no hint of contrition, Mr. Xi portrayed his nation of 1.4 billion people as having acted responsibly to combat Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. Taken together, the speeches by the American and Chinese presidents, broadcast from the world’s biggest diplomatic forum, punctuated the growing schism between the two superpowers during Mr. Trump’s first term, which has raised alarms about a new cold war. “Each of these leaders sees flexibility as weakness, and the ability to make concessions is the essence of diplomacy,” said Orville Schell, director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society. “So they’re at continued loggerheads. It’s a very alarming downward spiral.”

As Schools Go Remote, ‘Lost’ Students (NYT) One month into the school year, Linnet Early, a social studies teacher outside St. Louis, has an anxious new ritual: scanning the Zoom squares on her computer screen at the beginning of each class to see which of her sixth-grade students are missing. It is usually quite a few. “I’ll have kids gone for a week, pop in for one class the next, then miss the second class that week,” said Ms. Early, who has 100 mostly low-income students spread across eight classes, all online. “It’s hard to know what their struggles are, how to wrap your arms around it.” Around the country, teachers and school administrators are hoping that a patchwork of plans cobbled together over the summer will help address one of the most pressing challenges they face as millions of students start a new school year online: How to make sure they come to virtual class, and what balance to strike between punitive and forgiving policies if they don’t. Attendance data from last spring, while limited, suggests that the problem loomed large in many districts after school buildings closed in mid-March. In one survey of 5,659 educators around the country, 34 percent of respondents said that no more than one in four students were attending their remote classes, and a majority said fewer than half their students were attending. Disengagement was especially high in poorer communities, including many urban school systems. In Seattle, elementary school students logged into the learning portal less than half of the time, on average. And in Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest school system, a quarter of students were not logging in at all in May.

Mexico’s López Obrador takes aim at his predecessors (Washington Post) For decades, Mexico’s presidents have handed over power peacefully at the end of their six-year terms. And in contrast to some of their Latin American counterparts, they have been left alone to pursue quiet, comfortable retirements, free of the fear of being held accountable for any misdeeds they might have committed while in office. Now President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is threatening to shatter that tradition, accusing his five immediate predecessors of corruption or unfair economic policies--and seeking public approval to bring them to justice. The 66-year-old populist is asking Mexico’s Senate to back a national referendum on the effort and petitioning the Supreme Court to rule on whether such a vote would be constitutional. “This is not about persecution,” López Obrador told reporters this month. “I am not vengeful and I have no personal problems with them. But I cannot keep silent.” López Obrador won office in 2018 on pledges to fight official corruption and repudiate the neoliberal economic policies of the previous two decades.

Finland to deploy coronavirus-sniffing dogs at Helsinki Airport (Washington Post) Finland is set to launch a pilot program involving coronavirus-sniffing dogs at Helsinki Airport on Wednesday, amid hopes that dogs could come to play a key role in screening for the virus. The voluntary canine tests will deliver results within 10 seconds and require less than a minute of travelers’ time, said Anna Hielm-Björkman, a researcher at the University of Helsinki who is using the trial to gather data. Researchers in other countries, including the United States and the United Arab Emirates, are studying canine coronavirus tests. But the Finnish trial is among the largest in scale and farthest along. In Dubai, health officials this summer began using dogs to analyze sweat samples from randomly selected air travelers, with more than 90 percent accuracy, according to initial results. Changes in health can affect the way people smell, researchers say. Dogs have long been valued for their ability to sniff for drugs and bombs, and have also proved able to detect cancers, infections and other health problems.

Madrid pleads for more doctors, police as coronavirus cases surge (Reuters) Authorities in Spain’s Madrid region on Wednesday requested urgent help to hire hundreds of foreign doctors and reinforce police, as they mulled widening a partial coronavirus lockdown to more areas as cases rise. The region is the hardest-hit in Spain by a second wave of the coronavirus and has restricted movement between and within some districts that are home to about 850,000 people. Ignacio Aguado, the deputy head of the regional government, told reporters the region needed 300 doctors from outside the European Union who had worked in the first wave of the pandemic, but could not hire them immediately due to complex regulations. On Monday, the region asked central government for help from the army to fight the coronavirus surge in and around the Spanish capital, where the partial lockdown of some poorer areas has prompted protests.

Alexei Navalny released from German hospital after 32 days (AP) The German hospital treating Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny for poisoning said Wednesday that his condition improved enough for him to be released, and suggested a “complete recovery” from the nerve agent was possible. Navalny, 44, spent 32 days in treatment in Berlin’s Charite hospital, 24 of which were in intensive care, before doctors deemed his “condition had improved sufficiently for him to be discharged from acute inpatient care.”

Considerate protesters (Washington Post) Demonstrations in Minsk and other cities calling for the ouster of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who claims he won reelection last month despite alleged vote-rigging, are in their seventh week. The rallies represent the greatest challenge yet to Lukashenko’s 26-year grip on power, but rather than cause damage, as many other revolutions have done, Belarus’s has been uniquely considerate. Streets are pristine even after mass demonstrations. Protesters have been seen taking off their shoes before standing on public benches, not wanting to dirty them. If traffic isn’t blocked off and a crowd of thousands is marching down a road, it will still stop and obey a red light.

Greece and Turkey ready to talk (Foreign Policy) On Tuesday, Greek and Turkish officials agreed to resume talks for the first time in four years in order to try to resolve their long-running dispute in the eastern Mediterranean. Officials did not say when talks would begin, but preparations are underway and they could start as early as the end of the month. Both countries have a wide gap to bridge. Greece and Cyprus have been pushing the European Union to take a tougher stance on Turkey, and Cyprus recently scuttled plans by the bloc to sanction Belarusian leaders over its unwillingness to apply similar pressure to Turkey.

Zambia’s debt (Foreign Policy) Zambian President Edgar Lungu’s government said that it was seeking “the suspension of debt service payments for a period of six months” from private creditors holding around $3 billion in international bonds, possibly making Zambia the first African country to default on its debt due to the coronavirus pandemic. Zambia has been hurtling toward a debt crisis for months. In July, the Wall Street Journal reported that government debt was on course to surpass 100 percent of the country’s gross domestic product this year, rooted in economic pressures that far predated the pandemic. But Zambia is one of several African countries suffering from a heavy burden of debt, and if its default represents the first in a string of similar cases, it could be disastrous for countries across the developing world.

[ecoamerica]

Watch the American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 now: https://youtu.be/bWiW4Rp8vF0?feature=shared

The American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 broadcast recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by active climate leaders. Watch to find out which finalist received the $50,000 grand prize! Hosted by Vanessa Hauc and featuring Bill McKibben and Katharine Hayhoe!

[kyotocaitlyn]

Long Term Care: What Dementia Taught me about Life, Nursing, and Love

If some one had told me the day I graduated with my fancy bachelor’s degree in biology that I would spend over a year working in a long term care facility on a lock-down memory care unit, I would have shook my head and laughed at them.  Geriatric medicine was not something in my well-thought out life plan.  

No, my plan was to work as a medical scribe for a while and then apply for a physician’s assistant program.  When all that was over with, I’d finally be able to begin my career working in pediatric medicine, something that has been my dream for over ten years.  That was my life plan that I had designed and it seemed full-proof.  A program called PhysAssist Scribe was going to provide online training and after I had completed the online training, they were going to assist me in finding a scribe job near me.  I was already enrolled and thus my summer post college began.  Like most post-college plans, though, this plan fell through within a few weeks.  My typing speed was excellent, as was my ability to hear and understand what was begin said so I could scribe.  My down side was spelling.  I could not spell any of the medication names to save my life and it clogged up my overall time spent on a patient’s chart.  So, without any warning or indication from PhysAssist, I was let go from the program.

I was devastated.  I was that 22-year-old college graduate with a mostly useless degree living at home with my parents and little siblings with no plan and no job.  I felt hopeless and aimless as a nearly four-month long process of applying for entry level laboratory jobs began.  I was rejected from every job I applied to.  By the end of August and the pressure of having to pay for student loans loomed closer, I began to panic.  I had no idea what I was going to do.  There was one thing, though, that I had told my self I would never do.  I would never get my CNA and work in a nursing home.  I knew about the poor conditions, the back-breaking labor, the emotional turmoil, and the way people saw CNAs.  They saw them as nothing more than butt-wipers, not the essential back bone of modern health care.  I wanted nothing to do with that.  But there was a nursing home literally 5 minutes away from my house with a hiring sign up that whole summer.  As September inched closer and I got desperate, I knew I had no choice.  That nursing home offered in-house certification classes while working full time and I knew they would essentially hire me on the spot.  

So, I swallowed my pride and applied.  I got a call and a phone interview right away and soon, I was in orientation.  I was terrified.  I both knew what to expect and had no idea what to expect at the same time.  I was being thrown head-first into patient care in a field I never even wanted to be a part of.  I was surrounded by people of various walks of life in that class and always felt out of place because of my knowledge, my background, and my degree.  My bosses ranged from people with associates degrees to RNs, some of whom had little to no respect for me or what I was going to be doing for a living.  I had never felt more out of place in my life.  I wanted nothing more than to just quit and work in customer service or something but I knew better.  The patient care experience was going to be irreplaceable and help me get into whatever PA or nursing program I wanted to go to.  This was something I had to do and I knew that.  So I was going to tough it out for how ever long I needed to.

My first day of on the job training had me on the memory care unit.  That unit was small, only 20 residents, and was locked down meaning if the doors leading in or out of the unit were opened without the code, an alarm would sound.  The unit was designed specifically with dementia and Alzheimer’s in mind.  It gave them a safe place to wander (a common symptom of dementia), gave them a place for stimulation and activities, and a place for them to get the specialized care they need and deserve.  Those first few minutes on the unit were the scariest of my life.  I had never been personally touched by dementia so I genuinely had no idea what to expect.  I stood next to my trainer, watching quietly as these elder people wandered with walkers or wheelchairs around the unit, congregating in the TV area.  They looked at me from a distance, trying to size up this new person in their home.  Consistency is crucial for dementia and Alzheimer’s patients so throwing a new person into the mix can cause anxiety and behaviors.  But, as the night went on (I was on second shift until about August of this year), I slowly felt less scared.  The residents began talking to me and though sometimes it made little to no sense (word salading was common as was just talking nonsense or talking as if it was a totally different time or place) it made me feel better.  

Over the course of my on the job training, I spent two more days on that unit and two in other sections of the building.  When I wasn’t on the dementia unit, I felt out of place and even sort of missed it down there.  Most people I worked with disliked the dementia unit.  They didn’t like all the behaviors, the combativeness, and felt like that unit was mostly “baby-sitting”.  A lot of my coworkers felt like because of their dementia, there was a barrier between themselves and the residents, a barrier that might even prevent forming real, genuine relationships. A lot of my coworkers also didn’t seem that concerned with forming relationships with the residents at all.  They showed up, barely did their job and left people soaked, and then left.  That attitude struck me as odd because in my mind, if you were going to be spending eight hours a day or more with those same residents for days on end, you should want to build a relationship with them.  It would make caring for them easier.  Despite all this, there was a thought in my mind that no matter how much I cared for or loved those residents, their dementia would make it nearly impossible for them to reciprocate.  That didn’t really matter to me, though, because each and every day I went in and loved on those people regardless.  Their ability to connect or understand or even know my name didn’t matter.  I loved them and planned on caring for them like they were members of my own family.

Over the course of many months, I began to learn things about those residents and began to notice how many “I love yous” we shared during a shift.  I never knew if they were genuine or just saying it because they felt like it was the right thing to say in that moment, but it always felt nice to hear.  I began advocating for my residents, suggesting new therapies and requesting more help each and every day I worked.  I would bug dietary when they neglected their jobs to the point that they hated seeing it was my unit calling.  I stood up to the other CNAs who belittled my unit, calling it nothing more than “babysitting”.  I would let people know how draining the unit could be, both physically and emotionally.  I would leave in tears many nights because I would get punched by someone who claimed to love me.  I would get yelled at, spit on, ridiculed, teased, and sexually touched by these people who told me they loved me just minutes before.  I knew it was their disease doing it, not them.  I knew they truly didn’t know what they were doing 90% of the time and probably really did care about me.  But the behaviors were hard to work with.  The yelling, the pinching, the hitting were hard to endure day in and day out.  But I did it.  I got bit.  I got felt up.  I got kicked in the shins.  I got my hair pulled.  I got kneed in the face.  I got my wrists squeezed and twisted.  I did it for months because all that bad stuff, while it was hard, never made the impact on my soul that the good stuff did.

The gentle hand holds.  The soft conversations as I got them ready for bed.  The laughs we shared when the residents would say something so goofy that I couldn’t help but laugh.  The hugs I got.  The compliments.  The words of encouragement that somehow despite the dementia they knew I needed to hear.  The way they would laugh during showers when I’d wash their feet because they’re ticklish.  The time spent sitting behind the nurses’ desk with Little Bean.  The time spent learning German so I could communicate better with my German-speaking resident.  The hours I spend coloring and handling soft toys.  The games of balloon toss.  All those good things left a bigger impact than all the nasty behaviors that the dementia was doing to them and me.  I was slowly learning how terrible dementia really was but how blessed I was to be working with them.  Dementia was horrible but these people were incredible.  I loved them all so much, even though I knew the dementia could make it hard for them to love me back.

During the summer, a resident that resembled my late grandma began actively dying.  She had had increased edema in both legs, weeping, a strange red blotchy rash that caused her no discomfort, and a low grade fever.  She had no real symptoms of anything outside of the edema that everyone assumed was from her CHF that was more or less not an issue.  The only other thing I was really worried about with her was that she had a decrease in appetite.  Whenever I’d bring these issues up to a nurse, they’d shrug it off because she was 98 and on hospice.  That response always made me clench my jaw, but I put up with the ignorance and kept bringing my concerns up.  When she started dying, I went to see her and her chin would quiver a little when I’d talk to her.  She passed peacefully with no pain, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that we could have done something more for her if someone had just listened to me and taken my concerns seriously.

A couple weeks before that resident began dying, my Bean was moved to a different floor.  I shared my concerns about her moving to a crowded, over-stimulating floor with a member of nurse admin.  I told this nurse that I was worried that my anxious Little Bean would be stranded at the nurses’ desk in an unfamiliar floor with people everywhere, phones going off, and call lights buzzing and fall out of her wheel chair because she was unsupervised.  I told the nurse that I was terrified that one fall would be the one that killed her and I was brushed off.  I was told that I was favoring Bean over the community and that I should think better of the aides on other floors.  I visited that resident everyday she was up there until one night, the scenario I described happened.  Bean was stranded at the nurses’ desk late at night and fell, hitting her head.  She began to actively pass later that morning.  I was devastated.  I cried practically all shift when I found out that my Bean, the Bean whom I had shared so many moments with over the last year, was in pain and dying.  I went to see her that night, kneeling next to her bed and sobbing.  Then I noticed Bean was rolling toward me.  Her lips were moving like she wanted to say something to me, but couldn’t, and she squeezed my hand.  It was then that I realized that dementia didn’t prevent these people from loving.  No, it was a mutual relationship Bean and I shared.  I meant as much to her and she meant to me.  Little Bean loved me and I knew it then more than I had ever known it before.  Yes, dementia is an ugly terrible disease but when a person with dementia says they love you, they mean it.  They mean it with their entire being.  Yes, they might think you’re their mother, their sister, or their daughter, but they mean it when they say it.  They know you aren’t just some stranger.  They may not know your name, but they know you.  They trust you and they love you.  Believe me, they love you.

After little Bean passed, I began thinking about everything my residents have taught me and now that I have worked my last shift at that facility, a certain thing keeps creeping up in my head.  There’s a verse in the Bible about what love is and it’s all I can think about.  My residents have taught me so much about love and I didn’t even know it until one of them that I loved so dearly left this earth to go be with Jesus.  The verse is 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 and it reads, 

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”

My residents taught me that love really is all of these things.  Love is patient.  Love is having to explain to a confused person why they cannot leave the locked unit 1,000 times a day and having to do it with a smile on your face each time.  Love is being able to patiently take the seemingly endless slaps and yelling, all while being friendly and professional.  Love is choosing to be patient, even when those behaviors seem unmanageable and you’re at your wits end.  Love is kind.  Love is showing unbelievable kindness to someone who was literally just beating up on you minutes before.  Love is just smiling and nodding when someone is being cruel to you, but you know it’s the dementia talking.  Love is choosing to be kind to someone who more than likely is not kind to you in that moment.  Love does not envy.  Love is knowing that while it’s okay to long for something more or something better, that there is no good in envying what others have.  Love does not boast.  Love is knowing that you are no better than anyone else.  Love is choosing to be humble.  Love does not dishonor others.  Love is choosing to be genuine and honest, even when it’s hard.  Love is not self-seeking.  Love seeks to build others up, not tear them down.  Love is knowing that you’ll get peed on or beat up on, but doing it because it is right and it is good.  Love is not easily angered.  Love is knowing how frustrating your job is, but never showing your frustration or even anger to the residents because you know they cannot help the way they are acting.  Love really does keep no records of wrongs.  When a resident does hit or yell or spill bodily fluids on you, you do not throw that in their face to use it against them.  Love is forgetting they were cruel, just as they did.  Love really does not delight in evil, but always does rejoice within the truth.  Love does not look to blame, shame, or condemn.  Rather, love builds up, love supports, and love tells the truth.  Love is celebrating the little victories, rather than loosing it over the things that goes wrong.  Love does protect.  Love is standing up for your residents, even though you know sometimes what you say goes in one ear and out the other.  Love is getting in between two angry, violent residents so they cannot hurt themselves, but can hurt you.  Love does trust.  Being loving builds trust, breaking down the barriers of dementia and Alzheimer’s.  When that resident loves you, they trust you and there’s nothing more important than that.  Love trusts that their cruelty comes from disease, not from the sake of being cruel.  Love does hope.  Love is hoping that tomorrow will be a better day.  Love is hoping that your hard work has given hope to a family that’s suffering through dementia as their family member is.  Love is hoping and yearning that one day, this world will be dementia free.  And love truly does always persevere.  Love is coming back, even when the bad days out weigh the good.  Love is working short staffed, getting flat-out ignored by those higher than you or even ridiculed by those higher than you, and encouraging the families that dementia is tormenting.  Love is coming back with a smile, not tucking your tail in between your legs and running.

My residents have also taught me a lot about nursing.  They have taught me to value the input of CNAs as important and even life-saving because they are.  CNAs are the eyes and ears of a long-term care facility.  They see the same residents day and day out so when they come to you with concerns or changes in condition, you should not shrug them off.  You should not belittle them.  You should not ignore them because they are “just CNAs”.  They are coming to you because they care and they are concerned.  There is nothing more important than that.  It’s better to investigate and find nothing than to do nothing and have someone suffer.  My residents have taught me that health care is a team sport, not an individual one.  Everyone must work together for the benefit of patient, listening to one another and bouncing ideas off each other.  We should not look down on those with a narrower scope of practice or those with less experience.  Instead, we should treat them as the important members of the health care team that they are and respect them.  There is no room in true patient-focused health care for self importance.  Patient-focused health care should be loving and as I’ve seen, love truly doesn’t boast and is self sacrificing.

I’ve seen and learned a lot this last year.  Those residents are family to me and I owe them so much.  They taught me so much about how to not sweat the simple things, how to be more flexible, and how, ultimately, God is in control.  God put me on that dementia unit for a reason I didn’t understand until recently.  I needed to understand what I was getting myself into before I dove head-first into a career in health care.  I needed to suffer so I would come out on the other side as someone who understands the struggles of those I work with and for.  He put me there so I could learn how to be an advocate and how to love, even when it feels like the person may not love you back.  I’ve learned how to deal with death better and learned that it really is okay to cry as long as you know that dementia and old age is no longer destroying the person I loved.  They are restored in Christ if they knew him, that that is the greatest comfort at all.  For those reading who do not share my views, it has taught me that everyone takes comfort when a loved one passes because we know they are free from dementia which I have learned this year to be one of the worst diseases on this earth.  

I have learned so much and this post is already so long.  I cannot possibly talk about everything I have taken away from this experience in long term care so I’ll end with this; health care should always be about love.  If love is absent, true healing, encouragement, and peace cannot be achieved.  When I first started doing CNA work, I was told by some that I should avoid getting too attached to my residents.  I was told it would be too much and interfere with how I did my job; that when one died, I’d be too distraught to do my job if I got too attached.  That is the biggest lie you could tell someone getting into this field.  It’s good to get attached, so long as it’s professional and comes from a place of love and compassion.  Caring goes such a long way and growing attached is only natural if you are doing it right.  Health care becomes robotic if there is no love, and love can only take root if you are attached to the people you are trying to help.  Attachment comes in many forms, not always in forehead kisses or deep conversations.  Attachment can be simply holding someone’s hand in the ER or the back of an ambulance during an emergency when they’re alone and/or scared.  Attachment can be listening, just listening to the patient even when they don’t make sense.  Attachment can be an extension of love and compassion, something that should not be absent in healthy care.  Thank you to all of the residents I have cared for over the last year for loving me and teaching me so much about life and love.  Thank you to all the wonderful nurses who have helped show me that despite the terrible hours, hard work, and emotional stress that this job really is worth it in the end.  Thank you to the resident family members and the residents who have become like family to me.  You all mean so much to me and I cannot thank you enough. Thank you.   

[onlinemarketinghelp]

Maybe She’s Born With It, Maybe It’s Entrepreneurship. https://ift.tt/307It0V

To be an entrepreneur is to be different. Ask any successful entrepreneur and they’ll tell you that they feel it every day. Entrepreneurs don’t want the same things everyone else does. The idea of a stable 9-5 office job? Just the thought would send a shiver down their spine. 

Instead, entrepreneurs are driven by a passion to do something new, to push the boundaries of what’s possible. But often, entrepreneurs have trouble sticking to the rules. They might have struggled at school, forced to spend hours listening to teachers drone on about subjects they have no interest in.

In fact, some of the most successful entrepreneurs never made it through college. Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Travis Kalanick of Uber were all college dropouts. Increasingly, high schoolers are choosing to skip university altogether, feeling that the education system hasn’t kept up with the pace in which new technologies and industries are emerging. 

Larry Summers, the economist and former president of Harvard University agrees, “Not enough people are innovating enough in higher education. General Electric looks nothing like it looked in 1975. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or Stanford look a lot like they looked in 1975.” 

Add the explosion of student debt, and the fact that almost half of millennial graduates feel that their degree was “very or somewhat unimportant” to their current job. It’s no surprise then that so many young people are questioning the path they just assumed they’d be traveling down. 

Emma Reid is part of that new generation. She’s one of many young entrepreneurs who are carving out their own path, outside of the expected school-to-university track.

I called her up to hear more about her story. She takes us back to her beginnings as an 11-year-old entrepreneur, hustling to make $100. Then she takes us through the journey to building a $500,000 ecommerce business that she later walked away from. Through honesty and vulnerability of the realities of what it takes to succeed, Emma shares her experience as an entrepreneur. 

Emma Reid the Entrepreneur

When I first came across Emma on Instagram, I could tell she was different. The 22-year-old Australian has built a following around her ecommerce advice and mentoring services. Through it, she’s committed to sharing the reality of life as an entrepreneur, without the smoke and mirrors. 

The world of ecommerce gurus is crowded, but Emma stands out. In a sea of gurus posing next to lamborghinis, Emma proudly displays her own – a blue 2004 Toyota Camry with sun faded paint. “Cars are not assets,” she declares. “That’s why I don’t need a fancy one.”

She doesn’t need to try to come across as the biggest, baddest ecom hustler. For Emma, entrepreneurship is natural. 

School on the other hand? She hated it. 

“It just didn’t interest me,” she says. “I wasn’t learning at my own pace, and I wasn’t learning things that I was really passionate about learning. But when I was learning online stuff, it just really excited me and I’d get obsessed. I could never do that with school.”

So at age 16, she decided she would skip university and devote herself to a different path. After all, she’d already found her passion online. Choosing not to go to university, Emma says, “opened up some doors for me and opened up my mind to other avenues. I realized that you can make money doing other things. And you don’t have to go and get like that piece of paper.”

Instead she credits much of her success to to video games, and the fact that she’s been at this entrepreneurship thing for a while now. 

Beginnings of Entrepreneurship

At 11 years old, Emma started her first online business. Flashback to the pre-Facebook days, and Emma was spending all her time on the social networking game Habbo Hotel. The site allows you to create a virtual character, build your own hotel, and furnish it with little pixelated furniture. To build the lushest pixel-hotel, you’d need to have enough Habbo credits, an in-game currency that could be purchased with real-world dollars. 

Sensing an opportunity, Emma found a loophole that allowed her to spend her pocket money on Habbo credit gift cards, buy in-game furniture, and then flip it when prices went up. Then she could then sell onto other players for cold hard cash. Each transaction, she’d make a small margin. 

“I made about 100 bucks doing that, which was pretty fun at 11,” she says. 

An avid gamer, Emma believes that video games are ideal breeding grounds for entrepreneurs.  “I’ve met a few people that were really into video games that are entrepreneurs,” she says. “Often they’re successful because they’re used to leveling up, gaining experience, and the grind. Also when you’re young and you’re involved in online marketplaces with in-game currency, I think that can give you a different relationship with money.”

At 16 came her next business idea. Over the previous few years, she’d been spending her time building up followers on her Tumblr blog, and had amassed over 100,000. She installed advertising on her page, and as traffic grew, so did her revenue. She’d heard of affiliate marketing, and realized she could use the traffic on her blog to generate money through affiliate links. Soon, she was making thousands of dollars a month.

What she didn’t realize is this was a big no-no in Tumblrs books. She’d violated their terms of service. In one swift moment, all 100,000 of her Tumblr followers were gone. Ouch. 

She immediately realized how vulnerable she’d been by having her whole audience contained on someone else’s platform. It meant she had to play by their rules, and in the end, they had all the power. 

“I learned a lesson that you have to control the traffic. Otherwise if you’re just on someone else’s platform, then they can shut you down.”  

She stored the event away in her mind, another business lesson learned. 

It was some time in 2016 when Emma first heard about dropshipping. She’d come across a post on a forum detailing the process of running an ecommerce business without holding inventory. 

Her entrepreneurship senses tingled.

“I spent probably 10 hours reading the entire thread,” she says. “Then I chucked up a store on WordPress on my new fitness blog, and got a sale that first day.”

Her first product? Bracelets with fitness quotes attached, a clever product match for her blog filled with stretching routines and fitness advice.  

She was about six months in and her business was growing, to the point she was processing hundreds of orders a day. But then things came apart. Customers began to email her, asking where their products were. They hadn’t received them. She didn’t know what was happening, but reached out to her supplier that was handling the deliveries. “I had around 300 orders, and then the supplier didn’t fulfil any of them,” she says, sighing.

The situation quickly descended into a nightmare, as more customers complained that their order never turned up. “I had to process all these refunds. No other suppliers had it, and I just didn’t know what to do. It was too late.”

Pro Tip: Having a great supplier makes all the difference to your success. Check out our guide to finding the best dropshipping suppliers. 

The Rise and Fall of the $500,000 Store

Then in May 2018, Emma decided to try dropshipping again. This time, she built her store with Shopify and used Oberlo to connect her store to suppliers’ products. 

She began scouring Instagram for potential audiences to sell to. She already knew she wanted to focus on selling jewelry (more on her product strategy coming up), but she needed to find an audience to target. On Instagram she came across a niche community of animal lovers, and began interacting with them. 

She’d spend all day and into the night working on the animal jewelry store. But it didn’t feel like work. The hours would happily melt away, as she entered a state of flow. 

“I was working pretty much 100 hours a week. I was obsessed with it, and just testing everything and scaling.”

Her store began to pick up sales. Slowly, slowly, then all at once. 

By early December, the holiday season was in full force and shoppers were purchasing more than ever before. 

“Everyone was buying for Christmas, so I scaled up my ads,” she says. “I was spending over $5,000 a day.” 

As demand for her products skyrocketed, her supplier began to fall behind. 

“Everything was going crazy but my supplier was taking a while to send because they didn’t have enough stock to keep up,” she says. “I was trying to send to fulfilment centers at that stage, but I started a bit too late. The stock wasn’t arriving in the US fast enough.”

Customers were eagerly waiting on Christmas presents, but they weren’t arriving in time. 

“I had to refund a lot of people, do a lot of customer service,” she says. “That was really bogging me down.” 

Her store had made over $500,000 in revenue, but after spending all of her free time processing refunds and dealing with angry customers, she was burned out. History had repeated itself from her first store, but this time it was at a much bigger scale. 

“I actually quit the store because I didn’t hire out, and I didn’t put systems in place.”

“I wanted to do it all myself because it was so fun for me. But eventually problems happen and you’re so focused on fixing your problems that you can’t hire out once it’s too late.”

So she turned off her ads, shut down her store, and stepped away. “I decided let’s just leave it there, try to recover a little bit and plan what’s next.”

Learning to Master Her Mindset

From the outside, Emma’s business looked like a success. After all, she’d made over $500,000 in revenue in less than a year. 

But it left her feeling exhausted and altogether defeated. She needed some time away.

“I picked a few hobbies and read a lot of books and reflected and kind of figured out where I was gonna go next with this,” she says.

And as she read books like Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins and How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams, she began to see how she was holding herself back. 

“I realized that I was doing way too much myself, and that I needed to actually connect with people and work on myself,” she says. “I realized I needed to build up the foundations, build some confidence to actually go on camera, or go to events and talk to people or hire people.”

Ever since she began her entrepreneurship journey selling Habbo Hotel game credits, she’d been doing it alone.

“Now I’m starting to see that you definitely need to be in that environment where you’re around more people and brainstorming, throwing stuff at each other and improving on ideas,” she says.  “That’s how you can really grow.”

So in mid 2019, in an attempt to push herself outside of her comfort zone and meet more entrepreneurs, she started publishing videos on YouTube and Instagram. She’s started a new store too, and has made over $30,000 in revenue so far. In her videos she proudly shares her successes, but more importantly, her failures. 

“Showing your flaws and failures alongside your success is so important,” she says. 

With a change in her mindset and her burgeoning new store, Emma has set her sights on something bigger than she ever imagined before. When I ask her where she’ll be in five years, she answers confidently, “I’ll be starting a multi-million dollar white-label brand.”

I can’t help but believe she’ll do it. 

Unpacking the Four Secrets to Emma’s Success

1. Jewelry is a Winning Product

Since her first dip into ecommerce, Emma has stuck by one product type – jewelry. “It’s lightweight and small and you can price it higher,” she says. The weight of the product matters too, because you’ll be able to score free or very cheap shipping from your supplier. That means you can pass those savings onto your customers, making a more attractive offering. 

But more importantly, jewelry isn’t just jewelry. “There’s lots of different niches that you can relate jewelry to,” Emma says. “So you can sell fitness jewelry to people who are really passionate about fitness, or animal jewelry to people who are really passionate about their favorite animal.”

Check out some jewelry product ideas you could target to animal lovers:

2. Look for Niche Communities

One of the best ways to set yourself up for success is to look for an audience that is deeply passionate about the niche you’re thinking of targeting. You might choose dogs, babies, fishing, or beauty. These are all things that people will gladly spend their time and money on. 

To find these audiences, Emma first turns to Instagram. “I do a lot of research on Instagram using hashtags, you can find these small little niche communities on there,” she says.

Since you know yourself best, it can be useful to consider yourself as the ideal target customer, and to interrogate your own likes. 

“It also helps to look at your own hobbies, and what kind of audience you’re in. Ask yourself what you’d be interested in buying. You could also consider your friends, what their hobbies are and what they’d be interested in buying. Actually show them a product and ask them what they think about it,” says Emma.

3. Try a 1+ Product Store

As a rule, Emma says, “I just don’t really believe in general stores.” Instead, she’s found success through setting up 1+ product stores. That is, creating a store where all your marketing focuses on one product, but within the store you also offer complementary products that you can use to upsell. You might sell different colour or design variants of the same product, or other products within the same niche. 

In the end, you’re targeting the same audience with all your products, but offering them the chance to toss a few other products they’ll like in their basket before checking out. 

“When you can really focus on one product and one audience then you can really dive deep into that and figure out exactly how to promote to them and create a brand around that,” says Emma. “But if you’re spreading yourself so thin on lots of different products, then you’re not going to go that deep and really make it work.”

4. Try Free Traffic Methods

Especially when you’re in the early stages of building your business and trying to test your products on different audiences, it pays to think about free traffic methods first. But as Emma warns, with free traffic strategies what you save in money you’ll pay for in your time. 

“It takes a lot of time and energy, but anything free usually does.” she says. “But if you have a really limited budget, or are super new in the ecommerce space, then I highly recommend going this route.”

Emma shared her two most successful free traffic tactics. 

Instagram interaction and comments: “I tried to figure out who my ideal customer was, and what hashtags would they be posting in, then I commented a lot on the pictures. In the early days, I was being pretty spammy by following everyone I could, and not leaving valuable comments. It wasn’t until I changed my approach that it started to get results. I began interacting like a real human and actually having conversations with people. I was building a community, not just an Instagram page. I would try to do 100 comments a day. Try to get to know your audience. Build up some sales, some pixel data, and some profit to use for ads later.”

Ambassador programs: “After commenting so much, people started to naturally reach out and wanted to be ambassadors for the products, so I made an ambassador program. I didn’t send out free product but the ambassadors get a 40 percent off lifetime discount, as well as 20 percent commission when someone buys through their 20 percent off code. This code is personalized, like NAME20. The real kicker is, I made a lot of initial sales from the ambassadors buying the product themselves. Since they got 40 percent off and wanted the product in their hands to create better content. And the more ambassadors you have posting about you, the more of their friends start asking to join. Then it snowballs.”

Want to Learn More?

The One Product Store: This Entrepreneur’s Simple Formula for Success

10 Unique Dropshipping Products to Sell in 2019

The $0 Ad Budget: How They Grew Their Business Without a Single Advertisement

Dropshipping Niches That Are Steady, Not Trendy

The post Maybe She’s Born With It, Maybe It’s Entrepreneurship. appeared first on Oberlo.

from Oberlo

To be an entrepreneur is to be different. Ask any successful entrepreneur and they’ll tell you that they feel it every day. Entrepreneurs don’t want the same things everyone else does. The idea of a stable 9-5 office job? Just the thought would send a shiver down their spine. 

Instead, entrepreneurs are driven by a passion to do something new, to push the boundaries of what’s possible. But often, entrepreneurs have trouble sticking to the rules. They might have struggled at school, forced to spend hours listening to teachers drone on about subjects they have no interest in.

In fact, some of the most successful entrepreneurs never made it through college. Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Travis Kalanick of Uber were all college dropouts. Increasingly, high schoolers are choosing to skip university altogether, feeling that the education system hasn’t kept up with the pace in which new technologies and industries are emerging. 

Larry Summers, the economist and former president of Harvard University agrees, “Not enough people are innovating enough in higher education. General Electric looks nothing like it looked in 1975. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or Stanford look a lot like they looked in 1975.” 

Add the explosion of student debt, and the fact that almost half of millennial graduates feel that their degree was “very or somewhat unimportant” to their current job. It’s no surprise then that so many young people are questioning the path they just assumed they’d be traveling down. 

Emma Reid is part of that new generation. She’s one of many young entrepreneurs who are carving out their own path, outside of the expected school-to-university track.

I called her up to hear more about her story. She takes us back to her beginnings as an 11-year-old entrepreneur, hustling to make $100. Then she takes us through the journey to building a $500,000 ecommerce business that she later walked away from. Through honesty and vulnerability of the realities of what it takes to succeed, Emma shares her experience as an entrepreneur. 

Emma Reid the Entrepreneur

When I first came across Emma on Instagram, I could tell she was different. The 22-year-old Australian has built a following around her ecommerce advice and mentoring services. Through it, she’s committed to sharing the reality of life as an entrepreneur, without the smoke and mirrors. 

The world of ecommerce gurus is crowded, but Emma stands out. In a sea of gurus posing next to lamborghinis, Emma proudly displays her own – a blue 2004 Toyota Camry with sun faded paint. “Cars are not assets,” she declares. “That’s why I don’t need a fancy one.”

She doesn’t need to try to come across as the biggest, baddest ecom hustler. For Emma, entrepreneurship is natural. 

School on the other hand? She hated it. 

“It just didn’t interest me,” she says. “I wasn’t learning at my own pace, and I wasn’t learning things that I was really passionate about learning. But when I was learning online stuff, it just really excited me and I’d get obsessed. I could never do that with school.”

So at age 16, she decided she would skip university and devote herself to a different path. After all, she’d already found her passion online. Choosing not to go to university, Emma says, “opened up some doors for me and opened up my mind to other avenues. I realized that you can make money doing other things. And you don’t have to go and get like that piece of paper.”

Instead she credits much of her success to to video games, and the fact that she’s been at this entrepreneurship thing for a while now. 

Beginnings of Entrepreneurship

At 11 years old, Emma started her first online business. Flashback to the pre-Facebook days, and Emma was spending all her time on the social networking game Habbo Hotel. The site allows you to create a virtual character, build your own hotel, and furnish it with little pixelated furniture. To build the lushest pixel-hotel, you’d need to have enough Habbo credits, an in-game currency that could be purchased with real-world dollars. 

Sensing an opportunity, Emma found a loophole that allowed her to spend her pocket money on Habbo credit gift cards, buy in-game furniture, and then flip it when prices went up. Then she could then sell onto other players for cold hard cash. Each transaction, she’d make a small margin. 

“I made about 100 bucks doing that, which was pretty fun at 11,” she says. 

An avid gamer, Emma believes that video games are ideal breeding grounds for entrepreneurs.  “I’ve met a few people that were really into video games that are entrepreneurs,” she says. “Often they’re successful because they’re used to leveling up, gaining experience, and the grind. Also when you’re young and you’re involved in online marketplaces with in-game currency, I think that can give you a different relationship with money.”

At 16 came her next business idea. Over the previous few years, she’d been spending her time building up followers on her Tumblr blog, and had amassed over 100,000. She installed advertising on her page, and as traffic grew, so did her revenue. She’d heard of affiliate marketing, and realized she could use the traffic on her blog to generate money through affiliate links. Soon, she was making thousands of dollars a month.

What she didn’t realize is this was a big no-no in Tumblrs books. She’d violated their terms of service. In one swift moment, all 100,000 of her Tumblr followers were gone. Ouch. 

She immediately realized how vulnerable she’d been by having her whole audience contained on someone else’s platform. It meant she had to play by their rules, and in the end, they had all the power. 

“I learned a lesson that you have to control the traffic. Otherwise if you’re just on someone else’s platform, then they can shut you down.”  

She stored the event away in her mind, another business lesson learned. 

It was some time in 2016 when Emma first heard about dropshipping. She’d come across a post on a forum detailing the process of running an ecommerce business without holding inventory. 

Her entrepreneurship senses tingled.

“I spent probably 10 hours reading the entire thread,” she says. “Then I chucked up a store on WordPress on my new fitness blog, and got a sale that first day.”

Her first product? Bracelets with fitness quotes attached, a clever product match for her blog filled with stretching routines and fitness advice.  

She was about six months in and her business was growing, to the point she was processing hundreds of orders a day. But then things came apart. Customers began to email her, asking where their products were. They hadn’t received them. She didn’t know what was happening, but reached out to her supplier that was handling the deliveries. “I had around 300 orders, and then the supplier didn’t fulfil any of them,” she says, sighing.

The situation quickly descended into a nightmare, as more customers complained that their order never turned up. “I had to process all these refunds. No other suppliers had it, and I just didn’t know what to do. It was too late.”

Pro Tip: Having a great supplier makes all the difference to your success. Check out our guide to finding the best dropshipping suppliers. 

The Rise and Fall of the $500,000 Store

Then in May 2018, Emma decided to try dropshipping again. This time, she built her store with Shopify and used Oberlo to connect her store to suppliers’ products. 

She began scouring Instagram for potential audiences to sell to. She already knew she wanted to focus on selling jewelry (more on her product strategy coming up), but she needed to find an audience to target. On Instagram she came across a niche community of animal lovers, and began interacting with them. 

She’d spend all day and into the night working on the animal jewelry store. But it didn’t feel like work. The hours would happily melt away, as she entered a state of flow. 

“I was working pretty much 100 hours a week. I was obsessed with it, and just testing everything and scaling.”

Her store began to pick up sales. Slowly, slowly, then all at once. 

By early December, the holiday season was in full force and shoppers were purchasing more than ever before. 

“Everyone was buying for Christmas, so I scaled up my ads,” she says. “I was spending over $5,000 a day.” 

As demand for her products skyrocketed, her supplier began to fall behind. 

“Everything was going crazy but my supplier was taking a while to send because they didn’t have enough stock to keep up,” she says. “I was trying to send to fulfilment centers at that stage, but I started a bit too late. The stock wasn’t arriving in the US fast enough.”

Customers were eagerly waiting on Christmas presents, but they weren’t arriving in time. 

“I had to refund a lot of people, do a lot of customer service,” she says. “That was really bogging me down.” 

Her store had made over $500,000 in revenue, but after spending all of her free time processing refunds and dealing with angry customers, she was burned out. History had repeated itself from her first store, but this time it was at a much bigger scale. 

“I actually quit the store because I didn’t hire out, and I didn’t put systems in place.”

“I wanted to do it all myself because it was so fun for me. But eventually problems happen and you’re so focused on fixing your problems that you can’t hire out once it’s too late.”

So she turned off her ads, shut down her store, and stepped away. “I decided let’s just leave it there, try to recover a little bit and plan what’s next.”

Learning to Master Her Mindset

From the outside, Emma’s business looked like a success. After all, she’d made over $500,000 in revenue in less than a year. 

But it left her feeling exhausted and altogether defeated. She needed some time away.

“I picked a few hobbies and read a lot of books and reflected and kind of figured out where I was gonna go next with this,” she says.

And as she read books like Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins and How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams, she began to see how she was holding herself back. 

“I realized that I was doing way too much myself, and that I needed to actually connect with people and work on myself,” she says. “I realized I needed to build up the foundations, build some confidence to actually go on camera, or go to events and talk to people or hire people.”

Ever since she began her entrepreneurship journey selling Habbo Hotel game credits, she’d been doing it alone.

“Now I’m starting to see that you definitely need to be in that environment where you’re around more people and brainstorming, throwing stuff at each other and improving on ideas,” she says.  “That’s how you can really grow.”

So in mid 2019, in an attempt to push herself outside of her comfort zone and meet more entrepreneurs, she started publishing videos on YouTube and Instagram. She’s started a new store too, and has made over $30,000 in revenue so far. In her videos she proudly shares her successes, but more importantly, her failures. 

“Showing your flaws and failures alongside your success is so important,” she says. 

With a change in her mindset and her burgeoning new store, Emma has set her sights on something bigger than she ever imagined before. When I ask her where she’ll be in five years, she answers confidently, “I’ll be starting a multi-million dollar white-label brand.”

I can’t help but believe she’ll do it. 

Unpacking the Four Secrets to Emma’s Success

1. Jewelry is a Winning Product

Since her first dip into ecommerce, Emma has stuck by one product type – jewelry. “It’s lightweight and small and you can price it higher,” she says. The weight of the product matters too, because you’ll be able to score free or very cheap shipping from your supplier. That means you can pass those savings onto your customers, making a more attractive offering. 

But more importantly, jewelry isn’t just jewelry. “There’s lots of different niches that you can relate jewelry to,” Emma says. “So you can sell fitness jewelry to people who are really passionate about fitness, or animal jewelry to people who are really passionate about their favorite animal.”

Check out some jewelry product ideas you could target to animal lovers:

2. Look for Niche Communities

One of the best ways to set yourself up for success is to look for an audience that is deeply passionate about the niche you’re thinking of targeting. You might choose dogs, babies, fishing, or beauty. These are all things that people will gladly spend their time and money on. 

To find these audiences, Emma first turns to Instagram. “I do a lot of research on Instagram using hashtags, you can find these small little niche communities on there,” she says.

Since you know yourself best, it can be useful to consider yourself as the ideal target customer, and to interrogate your own likes. 

“It also helps to look at your own hobbies, and what kind of audience you’re in. Ask yourself what you’d be interested in buying. You could also consider your friends, what their hobbies are and what they’d be interested in buying. Actually show them a product and ask them what they think about it,” says Emma.

3. Try a 1+ Product Store

As a rule, Emma says, “I just don’t really believe in general stores.” Instead, she’s found success through setting up 1+ product stores. That is, creating a store where all your marketing focuses on one product, but within the store you also offer complementary products that you can use to upsell. You might sell different colour or design variants of the same product, or other products within the same niche. 

In the end, you’re targeting the same audience with all your products, but offering them the chance to toss a few other products they’ll like in their basket before checking out. 

“When you can really focus on one product and one audience then you can really dive deep into that and figure out exactly how to promote to them and create a brand around that,” says Emma. “But if you’re spreading yourself so thin on lots of different products, then you’re not going to go that deep and really make it work.”

4. Try Free Traffic Methods

Especially when you’re in the early stages of building your business and trying to test your products on different audiences, it pays to think about free traffic methods first. But as Emma warns, with free traffic strategies what you save in money you’ll pay for in your time. 

“It takes a lot of time and energy, but anything free usually does.” she says. “But if you have a really limited budget, or are super new in the ecommerce space, then I highly recommend going this route.”

Emma shared her two most successful free traffic tactics. 

Instagram interaction and comments: “I tried to figure out who my ideal customer was, and what hashtags would they be posting in, then I commented a lot on the pictures. In the early days, I was being pretty spammy by following everyone I could, and not leaving valuable comments. It wasn’t until I changed my approach that it started to get results. I began interacting like a real human and actually having conversations with people. I was building a community, not just an Instagram page. I would try to do 100 comments a day. Try to get to know your audience. Build up some sales, some pixel data, and some profit to use for ads later.”

Ambassador programs: “After commenting so much, people started to naturally reach out and wanted to be ambassadors for the products, so I made an ambassador program. I didn’t send out free product but the ambassadors get a 40 percent off lifetime discount, as well as 20 percent commission when someone buys through their 20 percent off code. This code is personalized, like NAME20. The real kicker is, I made a lot of initial sales from the ambassadors buying the product themselves. Since they got 40 percent off and wanted the product in their hands to create better content. And the more ambassadors you have posting about you, the more of their friends start asking to join. Then it snowballs.”

Want to Learn More?

The One Product Store: This Entrepreneur’s Simple Formula for Success

10 Unique Dropshipping Products to Sell in 2019

The $0 Ad Budget: How They Grew Their Business Without a Single Advertisement

Dropshipping Niches That Are Steady, Not Trendy

The post Maybe She’s Born With It, Maybe It’s Entrepreneurship. appeared first on Oberlo.

https://ift.tt/2IrnGKX September 18, 2019 at 12:13PM https://ift.tt/30sdFmK