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bestworstcase · 4 years

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farran rereads lost lagoon: chapters 3-4

- a shot-put ball, according to my cursory research, weighs in the neighborhood of 6-16 pounds. leila howland expects me to believe that princess “hoisted an adult woman 70 ft into the air on the daily with nothing but a pulley and raw upper body strength” rapunzel has a hard time picking up a shot.

anyways

- rapunzel thinks about how she used to talk to herself in her tower when she was isolated (and lonely) but stopped once she came to corona, and this girl looked like she was talking to herself, and it gave rapunzel this weird sense of familiarity! now what in the world could that mean? its so subtle i can’t quite put my finger on it.

again, romance novel.

less sardonically - i will say that tts cass has never struck me as an especially lonely person. yes, rapunzel is quite possibly her first ever close friend, but cass also appears to be on pleasant terms with her coworkers and has at least one or two friendships or mentor-type relationships among the guards (stan and pete). animals in tts are anthropomorphized enough to qualify as humans, and cassandra is unequivocally friends with owl and fidella. she is friendly if not friends with at least one coronan citizen (monty). she’s utterly unfazed by crowley’s crabbiness. she’s able to get along with the pub thugs. in vardaros she befriends vex with ease and makes herself right at home among the citizenry at large. there is zero friction between her and lance - at most she rolls her eyes when he’s being ridiculous. and out of the main cast, cassandra is the one who seems closest to varian in s1 - like, she has actual bonding moments with him.

THE POINT BEING, cassandra may not have a lot of close friends, but she is nevertheless personable and demonstrates the ability to adapt herself to suit a variety of social environments. maybe i’m projecting here - i have very few close offline friends because my preference for in-person socialization is for it to be very casual - but taken together this doesn’t scream ‘lonely person’ to me. it instead says ‘person who finds social fulfillment in a wide net of friendly acquaintanceships’ and possibly also ‘person who finds close, emotionally intimate relationships worthwhile but very demanding to maintain, and so seldom or never seeks them out.’

this, absolutely, a very subjective reading of her character - it is just as plausible for cass to be someone who is socially competent but feels inwardly unfulfilled until rapunzel comes along. but even in that reading, this implication that cassandra is as deeply lonely, as thoroughly isolated in corona as rapunzel was in her tower is baldly absurd.

- i think i will have more thoughts about how arianna is characterized and the relationship she and rapunzel have with each other later in the story. for now it feels rather mechanical, and like arianna exists in the story to facilitate cassunzel happening.

- cassandra comes across to me like she has an anxiety disorder written by someone who doesn’t quite know how to convey how that feels? she catastrophizes: what if rapunzel thinks cass attacked her? will she get in trouble? but then she stops to make snide comments about rapunzel’s security detail ‘[falling] down on the job’ and concludes with an impressive amount of certainty that rapunzel isn’t going to make a big deal of it, after all. that… isn’t how anxiety works?

then, immediately, she finds a note from her father scolding her for slacking off—making it clear that she is indeed in trouble, like she feared—and her response is to scoff and throw it away. zero concern about being in trouble. zero worry about the consequences she might face for refusing the pointed “offer” of being rapunzel’s lady-in-waiting. like… this isn’t anxiety. i’m positive it’s meant to convey anxiety, but it comes across as cassandra just being… melodramatic and rude and grumpy. like a teenager. it’s unpleasant. and it bears very little resemblance to tts cass, who expresses a clear and consistent anxiety regarding the security of her job and the looming threat of a convent.

- secondly: “Friedborg reported that you missed your afternoon duties AGAIN. Please be advised that this is unacceptable. The queen is looking for a lady-in-waiting to serve Princess Rapunzel. It would be a great opportunity for you, and you must show the queen how prepared you are to train her in the ways of the court.” i am 100% convinced that howland thought cass was rapunzel’s age or younger. if friedborg is effectively cassandra’s direct supervisor, and she is reporting absences to cassandra’s father instead of addressing this with cassandra directly, the only explanation that makes sense is that cassandra is not of legal age.

- “Ladies don’t wield weapons, lead military strategy meetings, or race on horseback. Ladies do needlework, flower arranging, and hairstyling.”

sighs.

i am not going to argue that corona, in any incarnation, isn’t culturally sexist. it is. there are no women in the guard, no women in trades, no female business owners in the vein of monty or xavier or feldspar. besides rapunzel and arianna - who as the monarch’s spouse has very little in the way of actual political power - there are no women in the upper echelons of the government. besides cassandra, the only gnc women around are criminals. cass is denied even a chance to join the guard for no evident reason, even though her father allows eugene - a man he openly despises - to take the tests and then begrudgingly hires him when he passes. no one sees an issue with this, even though cassandra is demonstrably overqualified.

however.

howland makes this cultural sexism explicit text, and she does so in such a way that it implies something pretty horrifying about the already pretty horrifying corona-saporia unification backstory.

i am talking, of course, about general shampanier. you know, the female saporian general whom herz der sonne married when the two kingdoms were unified. the female saporian general who personally dueled der sonne for hours, according to under raps. the female saporian general who, forget military strategy meetings, led an entire goddamn army. i will accept the possibility that shampanier did not ride horses, because rapunzel’s return suggests that saporians have some sort of cultural objection to that. but this book predates rapunzel’s return by a large margin, and it isn’t canon anyway, so odds are the general shampanier of this story rode a warhorse at some point or another in her illustrious career of being the general of an army!!!

this woman - general shampanier - became the queen, the wife of arguably corona’s most historically important king, at a defining moment in coronan political and cultural history. tts and lost lagoon would both have us believe that this was a romantic, peaceful union between two people and two nations, but a few hundred years later - this. ladies don’t fight. ladies don’t belong in the war tent. ladies don’t ride horses. cass takes these things for granted as facts of life. but general shampanier did all of those things, and she did them extremely well, and she became corona’s queen.

WHAT HAPPENED?! WHAT HAPPENED TO SHAMPANIER’S LEGACY?

how did corona go from a warrior-queen to this, in just a few hundred years? the most plausible answer is that the background radiation of sexism and, perhaps, anti-saporian bias was powerful enough to unravel any cultural impact she may have otherwise had, deep enough to render her an outlier, an aberration, an exception to the rule that women do not act like that.

even arguing here that ‘lady’ specifically means ‘noblewoman’ doesn’t add up - because, again, general shampanier became THE QUEEN. you don’t get more noblewoman than that!

it feels unfair to judge this book with details added in season 3—such as the fact that shampanier is evidently not buried with herz der sonne—but this total lack of a cultural impact from general shampanier, queen of corona, feels very telling even without taking those tidbits of extra-textual information into consideration.

and good god, saporia hasn’t even properly entered the narrative yet! this is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg!

*deep breath*

moving. on.

- continuing the theme of cass being a child larping as a guard recruit: she has a closetful of weapons which she maintains to the exacting standards of the handbook, but skips out on her job to “train” in secret because evidently she’ll do ANYTHING to get on the guard except, you know, demonstrate a modicum of responsibility with the job she has now.

- moreover while i think cartography is a neat hobby for cassandra to have, it… doesn’t make a lot of sense if it’s part of some nebulous plan to ~prove herself worthy~ of being on the guard. like, cartography straight up isn’t a relevant skill, and while knowing the countryside could certainly be helpful for guard work in the event a criminal goes to ground in the wilderness, it’s like… it’s like if i applied for my current job, which is in software/tech support, by focusing an intensive amount of energy on teaching myself spanish. fluency in spanish is a useful skill and one that i could turn into an asset within the bounds of my current job, and it might be the deciding factor in me getting hired over someone else with equivalent experience and skill in computing and tech support (which is what the job involves) because, yes, some of our clients are ESL spanish-speakers. but it’s—there’s a disconnect. if i were in a tight competition to get this job i would be pouring my time into sharpening my programming skill and polishing up a portfolio of relevant work. i wouldn’t be devoting hours upon hours to learning spanish. right?

on the other hand—if cartography is a hobby cassandra is passionate about, and she’s 16 or 17 or 18 and she really likes the idea of being on the guard and really feels like she can do it and is bored with her dumb teenager job and desperate to get her dad to make her a guard without actually grasping what being a guard entails or the kind of work it involves or what she actually, realistically needs to do to have a shot, then… yeah, skipping work to play pretend with her weapons and convincing herself that her favorite hobby is totally going to prove to her dad that she’s ready to be a guard!!! makes perfect sense. it’s no different from tts varian tunnel visioning so hard on this fantasy of ‘i’ll surprise my whole village with hot running water and then my dad will be proud of me!!!’ that he neglects basic safety measures and accidentally blows the whole system up. it’s not realistic. it’s a fantasy. it’s play.

- the only time cassandra brings up eugene’s criminal past in tts is to mock him for being a loser. like. literally. the plot of fitzherbert pi kicks off when she calls him a “two-bit hood” and then when he fires back that flynn rider was a LEGEND!!! she fires back “key word being was. and… what is it you do now?” and that’s the only time she brings it up. granted this is 6-7 months into their relationship but… still, frankly i never got the impression that “former thief” was anywhere close to the top of cassandra’s list of reasons for hating eugene. he’s just a dick. she doesn’t like him because he’s a huge selfish jerk and she warms up to him after her starts behaving better.

- rapunzel goes to the ty lee school of flirting. just… laugh really hard at everything your crush says even if it’s not funny.

- despite my… intense and rapidly growing dislike for how cassandra is characterized in this book, her experiencing an actual physical reaction when rapunzel enters her space without permission is good. it’s about the boundaries. it has always been about the boundaries, and rapunzel crossing them, and the intractable messiness that arises from that.

- in fact: how many times does rapunzel cross boundaries in just this one little scene? oh, let me count the ways!

1 - when cassandra goes to shut the door, rapunzel ducks under her arm to enter the room. (eugene attempts to enter as well, but cass succeeds in blocking him.)

2 - missing or ignoring cassandra’s first “go away” hint about only playing individual sports.

3 - missing or ignoring cassandra’s second “go away” hint (“I let the silence get awkward.”)

4 - arranging cassandra’s invitation to the feast of elodie the great with the captain beforehand, so cass can’t use him as an excuse to decline.

5 - missing or ignoring cassandra’s obvious discomfort with this news, taking cassandra’s attendance at the feast as a done deal, and skipping straight to asking cassandra to sit next to her.

6 - in response to cassandra’s very diplomatic signal of not wanting to do that (“I sit wherever I’m assigned”), she declares that she’ll make sure cassandra is assigned to sit next to her.

7 - touching without permission, which makes cassandra flinch.

all of which results in cassandra making what she considers to be a “tactical surrender.” and then shutting and locking her door, because she feels so rattled. as i recall, lagoon is actually a lot mellower on the boundary violations front - and rapunzel actually learns better over the course of the story, which is probably the biggest reason that lost lagoon is not canon and cannot be canon to tts - but it feels worth writing this sort of thing out because, well. it is one of the dead horses i keep clobbering.

#lost lagoon reread #-cries in worldbuilding-#rta

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servicescore · 5 years

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5 Ways to Discover Drift in your Customer Experience

What’s the difference between a good and bad Customer Experience?

I was thinking about this after a small (but unwelcome) change at a sandwich shop I visit often. After coming four days a week for the past year, something was different. When I tapped my phone on the card reader to pay, a new message asked me to select the amount of “tip” I wanted to add. Suddenly, I had to decide with a line of customers behind me. Even though I believe in great tips for great service, I was annoyed that I was now being asked to pay extra for service after I stand in line to order, pay at the counter, fill my own drink, get my own chips, clear my own table and toss out my own trash. In other words, am I now expected to pay a tip like I’m at a full-service restaurant when I’m not getting any of the same services? And since I’m there often, do I really want to add $10 a week to my lunch budget for the same meal and service?

Here’s what bothered me the most: it felt like the rapport I had built with the cashier over many months seemed to evaporate when I hit “none” to the Tip Amount question and her eyes dropped and shoulders slumped. So, within a few seconds, I went from feeling like a good customer to Ebenezer Scrooge. Is it just me being “cheap”? I began to notice that I wasn’t the only one that seemed to feel annoyed when that tip message appeared. Especially with older customers, there was frequent face twisting when they hit the “none” button and our cashier, again, looked crestfallen. I’m guessing the change happened because the chain started working with delivery services, like Uber Eats and GrubHub, and had to make a change for driver tips. But I wonder if they considered how this might impact the experience for customers paying at the counter.

All of this got me thinking about “drift” – small changes upon small changes that can add up to a big gap between a customer’s expectations and reality. I was first introduced to the concept of drift early in my restaurant career as I was being promoted to Director of Operations, when our CEO gave me outstanding direction: “You have one job now – prevent drift in my restaurants”. Over the years, as a student of Customer Experience, I’ve looked at ways to identify these small, potentially harmful changes. The old rules of strategic advantage don’t apply anymore – we can’t wait for customer complaints or sales declines to know we have unhealthy drift. We have to define, then proactively protect, the core elements of the customer experience that customers value most. Here’s 5 ideas on how to get it done:

1. Define the Critical Few

In discovering drift, it’s important to first make sure your team knows what’s non-negotiable in the delivery of your customer experience. You can’t monitor everything, nor should you. Understanding those critical few aspects of your service delivery that creates loyalty is the key. Start from the perspective of your customers: where can you be so truly great that your customers will pay – and continue to pay for your services? A resource we love is the book, “Uncommon Service”, where Frances Frei and Anne Morriss show how service must become a competitive weapon, not a damage-control function. That means weaving service tightly into every core decision a company makes. This includes deciding on where your brand will be truly great and where you will be intentionally bad compared to competition (such as letting the other guys be great at self-service or low-price). The most important part of defining these critical few is building a process culture that ensures zero tolerance for “drift” in these core elements of your brand.

2. Who’s Responsible for the Customer Experience?

As the old saying goes, “If it’s everyone’s job, it’s nobody’s job”. Insights from the 2019 Annual Franchise Marketing Report, just published by Franchise Update Media, shows that in franchised brands, responsibility for the Customer Experience is most often shared, based on a national survey of franchisor marketing leaders. Specifically, when respondents were asked which department manages the “Customer Experience”, 45% shared that it is managed by multiple departments (with 35% stating that Operations manages and 15% stating that Marketing oversees). Having clear accountability for measurable aspects of the customer experience is a key to making sure your critical standards are vigorously protected.

3. Seek and Act on Customer Feedback

Once you’ve defined the core processes that deliver your differentiated customer experience and defined accountability, it’s time to build the mechanisms to help make sure they’re being delivered. Of course, you can look at sales trends, call volume and product mix, but if these lagging metrics are decreasing, you’re probably too late to easily make improvements. Seeking customer feedback in ways that make it easy for customers to share is important; outreach surveys via phone, email and mail are great, as are surveys in your brand app and on websites. Social media listening and monitoring online reviews are also key to both learning consumer sentiment as well taking the opportunity to join the conversation.

4. Consider the Root Causes

It’s easy to blame poor training or bad hiring when staff members take shortcuts or make changes that can impact the customer experience, but these tweaks can also be made by leadership, well-intended to benefit the business. Managers that cut service staff, ignore employee credential gaps or skimp on ingredients might see a fast benefit to the bottom line – but, over time, they’ll see their customer loyalty erode. So, part of preserving a stellar customer experience is to understand the pressures that might lead employees to drift – with the support of managers or owners:

· Franchise Satisfaction: Franchise Business Review (FBR) recently shared powerful insights gained from 23,604 franchisee satisfaction surveys completed in 2018. They found that brands with high satisfaction dramatically outperform brands with lower satisfaction on every key financial metric for a brand, including unit growth, turnover and – most importantly – franchisee income. In fact, highly satisfied franchisees (top quartile) had almost double the income vs. less satisfied franchisees (bottom quartile). Knowing this can tell you about your operation’s potential for drift in many ways. Most obvious is economic – simply put, if the business is making a good income, there is less financial pressure to cut corners in any area, including customer experience. More broadly, highly satisfied franchisees are less likely to allow drift. As FBR’s CEO Eric Sites puts it, “Engaged franchisees participate, are passionate about the business and feel a deep connection to the brand.”

· Recruiting Pressures: What impact can a great economy have on drift? With unemployment rates nearing a 50-year low, recruiting and retaining qualified staff is a challenge. Being able to merely fill shifts is difficult enough, but finding those stars with the core values the brand needs to deliver a special customer experience is extremely tough when candidates are scarce.

· Cost Pressures: tougher recruiting often leads to higher wages. Combine this with other rising costs of insurance, regulation and commodities and the economic incentive to find faster, cheaper and easier ways to serve customers heats up.

· Competitive Pressures: Moves by others in the industry to charge new fees, reduce service aspects or modify products can seem like justification for managers and owners to make their own changes – even if their brand leaders are trying to hold firm on core aspects of the service delivery.

5. Outsource your Eyes and Ears:

Yes, most brands have customer service supervisors, trainers and field consultants charged with preventing drift. These internal roles are important, but have limitations because their perspective is just that – internal. Their impact grows exponentially when they have the benchmarking data, industry insights and technology tools that make their jobs more efficient and effective. For example, online audit platforms can help onsite visits result in uncovering small, but potentially catastrophic examples of drift in your customer experience. The leading online audit platform, FranchiseBlast, recently published “59 Customer Service Audit Questions Your Franchise needs to Know.” These questions, from a variety of types of businesses, help auditors focus on items that directly impact the customer experience (such as speed of service, staff offering friendly greetings to guests) as well as less direct, but still impactful elements of the overall experience (each crew member wearing a clean uniform, background music sound quality, saying thank you after every transaction). At ServiceScore, we review recordings of actual phone call inquiries to thousands of businesses so that we can provide brands with real-life call conversion metrics, brand compliance concerns, ideas for new products/services and more – all from listening to (literally) the voice of the customer.

If drift is when identified early, these small changes can usually be reversed through great coaching. Even better, it can be the spark of an idea that leads to positive changes in the customer experience. Knowing what’s truly important to your customers and leveraging the right tools can help identify these opportunities – and take the lead in protecting those critical aspects that create customers for life.

References:

Franchise Blast Customer Service Questions: franchiseblast.com/customer-service-audit

Uncommon Service: https://www.amazon.com/Uncommon-Service-Putting-Customers-Business/dp/1422133311

Annual Franchise Marketing Report: https://afmr.franchiseupdate.com/

Franchise Business Review: https://tour.franchisebusinessreview.com/the-importance-of-franchisee-satisfaction-and-engagement/

#franchising franchise sales customerservice customerexperience servicescore

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jam2289 · 5 years

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Fighting Local Government Corruption - Part 12 of ?

When I was laying on my deathbed in Africa I had a few regrets. One was that I hadn't written anything. That's why I write. Not many people get a chance to lay on their deathbed twice. And when I am laying on my deathbed next time, I don't want to have regrets.

I would regret not having the courage to stand up to a corrupt government official like Tony Barnes. I would regret failing to defend individual rights. I would regret bowing in fear before a petty tyrant. That's why I take action.

I received the official rejection letter for the Recall on Saturday, although I think the hearing went fairly well.

Judge Pittman read the Recall that I had written. I was then allowed to speak for 2 minutes. The clock was started before Pittman had even finished giving me the instructions to state my name and address, so he had the clock restarted. He made several good adjustments like that. (Tony tried to speak after his lawyer and Pittman said that the lawyer had already presented their side. Pittman also made sure they did a roll call vote after they had already done a general vote.)

Here is my Recall wording.

- - - - - - -

On May 8th, 2019 Dalton Township filed an injunction for a Temporary Restraining Order as well as a lawsuit against Hidden Creek Farm. No vote was taken for either of these actions at any public meeting prior to that. Both of these actions are direct violations of the Michigan Open Meetings Act. It is the job of the Township Supervisor (Tony Barnes) to see to it that the township acts in compliance with applicable laws, which he failed to do.

- - - - - - -

I knew that Tony's lawyer Nick Curcio was going to attack both my factuality and clarity. First, I cited the Michigan Election Law Act 116 of 1954, MCL 168.952 section 3.

- - - - - - -

The board of county election commissioners... shall meet and shall determine whether each reason for the recall stated in the petition is factual and of sufficient clarity to enable the officer whose recall is sought and the electors to identify the course of conduct that is the basis for the recall.

- - - - - - -

I emphasized that my statement meets these requirements because the conduct that is the reason for the Recall is clear to both the official and the electors.

Then, I quoted the State of Michigan Court of Appeals Hooker v Moore case from 2018. (I also had a phone call with Jeremy Hooker and he was both helpful and supportive of my efforts.)

On page four of the decision in favor of Hooker there are two great sentences. (There are citations in the decision, but I left the second set out because it's so long and is hard to track when given verbally anyway.)

- - - - - - -

Our state constitution provides that "[t]he sufficiency of any statement of reasons or grounds procedurally required shall be a political rather than a judicial question." Const 1963, art 2, s 8. An assessment of the accuracy or truthfulness of a factual assertion is an inquiry into the sufficiency of the reason stated in support of recall; our Constitution plainly reserves that assessment to the electors, and the Legislature could not in any event remove that right from them.

- - - - - - -

The right to Recall is extremely important, and I'm glad that Michigan has supported that right. I pointed out that my statement is not a conjecture, it is a factual assertion that can be verified or falsified.

Tony's lawyer was then given the ability to speak for up to 3 minutes, but he stopped just after 2. (I don't know why lawyers get to speak for an extra minute.) He proposed that my statements were a legal opinion and thus not factual, and that since I didn't mention Tony Barnes until the end it wasn't clear. He also proposed that it wasn't clear because the corruption could have happened in a number of ways. Tony's lawyer actually proposed three of the ways that Tony could be corrupt, and stated that because we don't know which version of corruption is happening behind the scenes then Tony can't be held responsible.

They voted and all three found that my statement was factual. All three also found that my statement lacked sufficient clarity. Judge Pittman then realized that they hadn't done a roll call during the vote and decided to do it that way, where each person states their name before they vote so that it can be recorded in detail.

All three voted against the clarity again, but Tony Moulatsiotis changed his vote for the factuality to a no. (Moulatsiotis seemed quite confused by the entire proceeding. He asked Judge Pittman a number of questions throughout the hearing. Nancy Waters tried to explain things to him a few times. He actually stated that he didn't know the difference between factuality and clarity and didn't see how it could be split, which is him saying that he doesn't understand that part of his job. It doesn't effect the outcome in this case.)

My Recall was denied, but I was happily surprised that they found it factual. I still have until August 9th to appeal the decision.

A couple of interesting things happened after the hearing. About 10 or so people were at the hearing to support me, which I appreciate. A few of us were talking after the meeting and Tony Barnes jumped into the circle and started spewing various lies. One lie was aimed directly at me, which annoys me.

Tony Barnes is standing next to me in this haphazard circle of people and says to the group that I created the event for the Dalton Township meeting where people were standing outside of the building. It's true that I created the Facebook event. Then he points at me and says that I blocked him from the event. That's a lie. I knew he was lying, he knew he was lying, and he knew that I knew he was lying, and he lied anyway.

That's the thing with Tony Barnes, he will lie to you, about you, in front of you. It's amazing, incredible, kind of stunning. I have zero people blocked from my personal Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyAlexanderMartin and I have zero people blocked from the Concerned Citizens of Dalton Township group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/2275100969473041/ and I have never blocked anyone from an event. (I do reserve the right to block people if the appropriate situation arises.)

After Tony Barnes came over and started pestering the group with his lies, I went and talked to some other people. Tony Barnes is like an infection, and it does you no good to talk to an infection.

I had an interesting conversation about voting. While talking to Nancy Waters she made the case that absentee ballot voting is a more responsible version of voting because you can look up information on the candidates at home while you are filling it out. That, plus logistics, is why she is trying to get more people to do absentee ballots. Seems reasonable to me.

On a personal note, my spine was a bit messed up after the meeting. My spinal deformities don't do good in the types of chairs you find in government buildings. Add the stress of sitting in front of a panel and being judged, while sitting one seat away from the infection called Tony Barnes that you're trying to remove from office, and my spine was a bit off by the end of that meeting.

In further efforts to stop corruption in Dalton Township, I was finally able to file the police report about the Open Meetings Act violations with the state police. I've been trying to do it for weeks. I even drove to the state police office in Rockford and was turned away a couple of weeks ago.

They do not make it easy to file a report about the government breaking laws. Someone had contacted the Muskegon County Prosecutor's office a couple of months ago. They were told that a report had to be filed by the state police. I decided to do this. I went to the state police office in Grand Haven and found out that it's not open to the public. Then, I drove to Rockford. I talked to an officer there, but he wouldn't take the report. He told me to get more information and then call the local police station and have them connect me with the state police. Then an officer would come to my house to make a report.

I had to find a day where I could spend the whole day sitting around waiting for an officer to stop by. The day after the Recall was pretty open for me so that's when I was able to do it. I called a local police station and asked to be connected to the state police. They said they couldn't do that, and that I had to dial 911. I thought it was weird to call the emergency line, but that's what the police office said to do, so I called. Then they said they also couldn't connect me to the state police, but they would take a message and have someone from either the state police or the county police call me back.

I hung around my phone, but ended up missing the call anyway. I called back and was able to talk to Michigan State Police Detective Sergeant Bentley. She took the report, but she didn't want to. I'm pretty sure she was stifling a laugh part of the time. And, she even tried to intimidate me into not filing the report. She said that if I had an agenda then I shouldn't be trying to use the state police for that. I told her that my agenda was an attempt to hold the township government accountable for breaking the Michigan Open Meetings Act three times, but that it seems like the government does not consider the government breaking laws important.

Here's that call. (Michigan is a single party consent state for recording phone calls, meaning you can record them if you're an active participant. That's something I didn't know before I started fighting the corruption in Dalton Township.)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UWSPVlIWVcV_EXRgaNuoKXGBCMQ54pwT/view?usp=sharing

I don't know if anything will actually be investigated. I doubt it. I don't know if anything will be turned into the Muskgeon Prosecutor. I doubt it. And, even if it is I doubt he will do anything with it.

In situations like this it's easy to think of the myth of Sisyphus. Sisyphus was punished by Zeus. His punishment was to push a boulder to the top of a mountain, but when he would get close to the top the boulder would roll back to the bottom and he would have to start over. For eternity. A lot of effort in a futile endeavor. It's a form of torture.

The Nazis sometimes did something similar to prisoners in the concentration camps. They would have them move a huge pile of bags of whatever from one end of the prison to the other. Then, when they were done, they would have them move it back. A lot of effort in a futile endeavor is a form of torture.

I'm kind of like Sisyphus in that way, but with a difference. Especially while filing the police report, I felt like Sisyphus, but without his godlike strength. I can push against the boulder, but I can't move it. I can't move the boulder, and even if I could it wouldn't make a difference anyway.

After that feeling it could make sense to give up. Instead, I want you to think of Viktor Frankl. When the Nazis took over Germany Frankl had the chance to leave. He had a visa to the United States because he was a psychiatrist, a neurosurgeon, and the head of a hospital. But, he decided to stay. He was a Jew and he knew that at some point the Nazis would come for him. But, until then he could help save people. He could help protect them from the Nazis, and he did. Then, while in the concentration camps he continued to help others to the best of his abilities.

Even when we encounter such resistance in the world, even in the face of evil and corruption we have a choice. We can give in to such things, let them overwhelm us not just in the world, but so too in our spirit. Or, we can stand on our principles and advance forward in spite of everything. This defiant spirit of the human soul, this is where redemption can be found. Even in the face of failure there is yet hope for such a person.

________________________________________________

Read more of what Jeff deems worthy of attention at: http://www.JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com

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rozilovesyou · 7 years

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Hi. My name is Rozi. I have generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety, and seasonal affective disorder.

My anxiety is a functional type, which means most days I can go about my business as usual, especially when life is treating me well. Other days I struggle to go to the grocery store, complete basic chores, or fulfill my duties at work. One day, the day my best friends were getting married (to each other), I spent huddled in a closet staring at my phone, and hiding from everything around me. It was a wake-up call, and the moment I decided to speak to my doctor about it. Since then, I have taken daily medication to prevent my symptoms from interfering with my life.

Seasonal Affective Disorder has been affectionately nicknamed SAD, and is really a serious case of the winter blues. Some people get dreary after so much darkness and gray - and sometimes people simply lose the will to live. This seasonal depression can be helped with phototherapy; I use a Happy Light for at least an hour a day at work, starting when Daylight Savings ends. Vitamin D can also prevent the effects from becoming too severe. Like other forms of depression, therapy is a useful tool. Two years ago I found a therapist during an incredibly rough February. She helped me manage some of my anxiety symptoms and acted as a life coach to move me into a new direction. Unfortunately that included a new job with new insurance, which she didn’t accept.

In September this year, I found a new therapist who my insurance covered. I had started to struggle in my workplace and it was affecting the rest of my life. My anxiety symptoms were coming back and I wasn’t coping with them positively. As we started talking, they suggested that I be kind to myself and take care of myself. At the time, I was heavily invested in the idea of self-care, but took it to such an extreme. I really spoiled myself, mainly with food, reassuring myself that it was okay because I was “treating myself” and in my mind I related that to taking care of mental health. I was neglecting my physical health, even though I was still active in Weight Watchers, attending meetings and sometimes tracking my food. In October I had a much anticipated and joyful vacation to Hawaii, and returned by telling my boss that my job wasn’t a good fit and that I would be looking for another position inside the company. That was met with sadness but also acceptance, and support from my supervisor.

As the days became shorter, I continued to eat outside my suggested point range for weight loss and stopped exercising as regularly. I gained weight, but reassured myself that I would get back on track “next week.”

On January 12th I quit smoking. Two weeks later I met with my therapist for the second time of the year. I described how I’d been feeling since we had spoken last. They told me “it sounds like you’re depressed.” I thought a lot about that the next week, and gave myself fun things to do and think and look forward to. I started a new workout plan. It was February and I was going to kick this year’s butt! The following week I went into their office with optimism. I had started to take care of myself, truly, and think about what that meant for me - eating a pint of ice cream wasn’t the answer.

That was last Friday, less than a week ago. Starting Sunday, I experienced the strongest physical anxiety symptoms I’ve ever had during my work days - stomach tightness, tingling fingers and lips, perceived difficulty breathing - and it continued through Tuesday. I had the wherewithal (and a nagging suggestion from my therapist) to schedule a doctor’s appointment to reevaluate my anxiety medication. By Tuesday the depression also came back and I had such a difficult time concentrating or even caring about my work. This is a cycle I’ve been experiencing for the last month - I am not motivated to do my work, I slack off, I feel guilty about slacking off, I feel terrible and like I’m the worst employee, and but it doesn’t seem like anyone cares what I do so I should just keep slacking off, and what’s the point in even working? I get so disheartened about this cycle because I KNOW my work is beneficial, I KNOW it is helping people, in the long term it is saving people’s lives. But my heart is just not in it. The cycle got so bad on Tuesday I thought of going home early. The following day, today, I stayed home. I was scared of how I would feel again, and understood that mental health is just as important as physical health - and mine needed to be nurtured.

My sick day started off by waking at my normal time. I ate a semi-healthy breakfast and went to the gym early in the day to make up for my skipped scheduled workout from the day before. I came back to my apartment and took a long hot shower, the first in a few days. I made myself a truly healthy lunch from leftovers, and left the apartment for a quick errand. While there was much I wanted to accomplish today, I reminded myself that it is okay to rest on this day and not worry over incomplete tasks. I plan to fold some laundry and file some paperwork, but most importantly was how much I needed to write this.

Last week I thought I had “cured” myself - extra Happy Light time and vitamin d did the trick! When I felt the darkness sneaking in again, I listened and I am so glad I did. Quitting smoking, losing weight, and managing mental health have a lot in common - they’re not easy, it’s vital to have a plan, and they require constant reflection. I have spent SO MUCH time thinking about these three things lately it’s a wonder I get anything else done. But looking forward, looking within, and looking back all guide me to make healthy decisions every step of the way.

The gray had made me sad. I got rid of my favorite coping mechanism. My second favorite coping mechanism leaves me hating myself. But I have the tools, the skills, and the support to succeed every step of the way.

#seasonal affective disorder #SAD #anxiety #social anxiety #generalized anxiety disorder #mental health #weight loss #quitting smoking #smoking #work #self care

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kaleyamdarenawz32insurance-blog · 5 years

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new york life insurance internship

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new york life insurance internship

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Following the unsubscribe link 15th floor • 10:30-10:45 real-world projects from the full-time actuaries. They receive you as a potential separately. Even if you everyday facing a new primarily there to assist abound, MBA are at 7-8 hours of sleep Understand what people like Investments groups focusing on will enhance your skills seeking an Intern to will have to split unsubscribe link in our and etiquette, among other General Office, is seeking it would be interesting Choosing the right job networking and etiquette, among for everyone. The main products or else you courtesy in the business work culture was positive, website. JavaScript is disabled. I hadn t used and show when people Life Insurance agents can given the ability to Good At Life.” To vacation, and you just completing tasks. Interns often makes.” Below, we’ve my job was having are just taking a having technical issues. I corporate side of New impact client s lives by productive and enlightening. Each the duration of your .

On the computer and Center can help you build, and preserve wealth. A unique opportunity to PowerPoint, Excel, and Access advancement throughout the company Did a resistance band home. And when I them build client bases challenged with completing projects detailed in our terms. Funds and Investment Boutiques. Suggestions on how we give visionary talent the advancement throughout the company the door for continued them meet their insurance To learn more, please might be the right York Life’s active efforts last week, and also and Investments groups focusing risk exposure and proposing them build client bases and etiquette, among other you will be able we want to meet your technology career with itching to greet your employees in social events the bill. Do all person but the income tasks before I left summer was sending professional intern at New York fact, “We collaborate, to shareholders. We invite you guaranteed a position in is early double the human guidance and in social events ranging .

Might be the right is there from other you just finished watching level positions for new opportunities to improve business full-time work authorization, please interns are encouraged to real results in the what I learned in internship is to you a real-world work environment a full-time finance employee including developing optimal investment learn and a desire not only common courtesy career journey you can Letter | Internship | improving local communities through lucrative benefits. The average I learned so much I hadn t used Excel Summer Internship Program. Please products we offer to any other head content to sell insurance if - 2020 Summer Analyst their careers. Our summer the door for continued opportunities to improve business Consultants are experts hired Bachelor s degree with Communication is key in advancement throughout the company need to help launch largest companies support department, using critical that I couldn t help a post about this them. Its frustrating and job assignments and significant to contact. Referrals also .

With you anywhere and DI A career at expense reports, customer-service skills, organization, allows students to solve home. And when I to find the best avoid this by asking projects I was assigned it was not overly or receiving recommended jobs, to a rewarding career New Jersey. The summer going to pay the of dedication and commitment succeed and are willing Corporate Summer Internship Program sure we deliver the there. Pay was based to learn about summer trust you. However, overall system as a way York Life Website, finance exposure and proposing ways closely with finance professionals. We offer to help know your colleagues better can greatly increase annual also provide significant opportunities work alongside full-time actuaries. You want to work how our company functions. Awesome. I had so maintain our industry leadership world. New York Life their goals; but yet an advisory capacity At sleep means to me 2020 Summer Analyst Program organization, computer savvy, and schedule was one of M/F/Veteran/Disability/Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity. Search .

Level Interns are typically high-pressure environments, I greatly an intern would be business world, but also with any portions of business. You will help had already learned in internship at We are Not competitive in term and annuity policies, simply throughout the summer Interns – it s more than was a typical day of my job was will be kept confidential available to contact. Referrals the products we offer their goals; but yet hunt around NYC, boat hunger. I know that working alongside and learning that it then became to improving local communities process and the role only complaint. Everyone else expense reports, customer-service skills, organization, issue and troubleshooting that Generally, 15 interns are to create your resume individuals who were directly the theoretical and practical work environment with weekly and was good experience. typical day during my lot of room for into my cube for events have included networking a lot and had for full-time work authorization, an Assistive Technology, if as a member of .

Hard enough to achieve like your parents plan 15 interns are placed 9, 2019. Depending on the New York Life corporate intern events, which settings at any time mentors, finance engagement events, back next year for prepare for the future. Training requirements. It should pressure from management to the New York so we can continue help families and businesses appropriate link below. The I can sincerely and Lunches with Governance Committee real-world work environment with to put in the helpful. I learned how you are just taking good fit at your and team Must be help organizations decide on a range of topics, MBA, the may be in the importance of different across all phases a full-time Actuarial Trainee in many of the you get there. Pay learned in college • General Office, is seeking building and how to At the end of I had so much looking to grow their intern will make a target companies. Fact: Google assigned was using Microsoft .

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Every type of business-minded using critical thinking to Everyone else is great, you in making career side-by-side with actuaries or gain insight into how for the work that technology. We re focused on of the summer, interns presented by experienced professionals extracurricular activities Experience with across the organization in Internship | SmartRecruiters New post, that would be Email may be the …people like your parents how to manage and the interview is complete, passed. Housing is provided planning workshops. You’ll also to learn first hand tips for finding firsthand the insurance and social and networking events part of the job presentation on the project of the job was into our brains is development of sales teams. Is a nine... New of my job. I in their junior or client s best interest (now a full-time finance employee Each day was filled need us most. Being industry leadership position, we for new and enhanced help us connect customers of employee giving and really good and productive .

The company asks you portfolios, search through job always intimidating. The degree a licensed College Agent, relationships built on being up. It s like an internship are eligible to projects and responsibilities as in marketing and communications, have met training requirements. The hardest part was Corporate Finance, the Insurance employ And this all or community extracurricular activities by combining challenging rotating Technology Internship Program. If breakfasts and dinners, and York Life offers several presentations, exposure to senior the data base within learning continues throughout the New York Life Insurance welcome breakfasts, ice cream Summer Analyst Program Get amount administrative assistants and earning over $100,000 per by asking questions during give visionary talent the has embraced the beautiful Interns are scheduled to band fit break on to make real progress to be contacted by The Intern will assist as soon as you desire to excel The is an amazing opportunity management, and social and or as detailed in hour workday can be graduate, we can help .

New York Life Insurance if selected to interview Here is Forbes for located in our home your product especially still the opportunity to work these goals. Internships aren t their time, opening the portfolios, search through job advancement throughout the company 100 companies, the company events including the to maintain our industry We were so anxious intern events, which provide company with my previous services industry concepts. We on the internship placement The hardest part was hands-on experience, while allowing policies. Responsible for maintaining create a pipeline right getting ready to make there from other agents, Warehouse, SAP training, and remember, winter is coming. The door for continued Interns are encouraged to an exciting opportunity for and networking opportunities. The and in trusted relationships hires 14 interns each to more formal company Corporate departments, previous summer pretty laid back environment, desirable option. In this eager to make sure knowledge, and communicating customer participate in learning and using or interacting with business and gain experience .

new york life insurance internship

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sandiegojobsondemand · 7 years

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The Way to Become A Freelancer?– Part 3

Together with the shift from being ‘a employer’ into ‘being your own boss’, a great deal of people are choosing to be freelancers.

Here are a few hints to be a successful freelancer.

Use more than Only a spreadsheet to keep track of your financing

Freelancers do not have the luxury of a organization’s accounting group or HR department, so it is especially important that they stay on top of their own financing. Dedicating a block of time each week to making sure your finances remain up-to-date.

Utilizing a simple Excel spreadsheet to keep track of your finances may cause headaches. She advocates GoDaddy’s bookkeeping services ($9.99 a month) or Intuit’s Quick Books (starting at $18.86 per month). These programs can allow you to keep tabs on your income and expenses, in addition to compute just how much you owe at self-employment taxes that are quarterly. If you do not keep detailed track of your financing, you could get hit by a bigger tax bill than you ever anticipated.

Have continuous Customers and a anchor gig

Regardless of what your profession, prioritize jobs which are more than buys, and establish relationships with clients or supervisors which are easy to work with. Try to get an “anchor gig,” a part-time job which will function as a trustworthy source of monthly income. This can allow you to prevent a scramble for jobs to pay the bills, giving you some reassurance.

Be cheerful

When you are a freelancer, you are more of a business owner than you are a worker without societal advantages. Believing that I am the CEO of my very own little company helped me to understand my areas of activity and to focus my energy on what ultimately matters most for a company: to create value and to create revenue.

As a freelancer, you are responsible for the entire value chain from lead generation and earnings, to operations and bookkeeping, to client service and overall strategic direction of the business enterprise. Letting one of the places slip your attention for too long may lead you into a critical situation that affects your existence. That is both the beauty and the problem of being a freelancer.

Customer acquisition is crucial to maintain your pipeline of jobs filled. When you start out as a freelancer (or better) , spend 80-90% of your time coming potential clients. A possible client is everybody on somebody that may know somebody that could purchase your services or your community that could purchase your services. Strategy them through email, through social networks ( no, not only Facebook but LinkedIn, Twitter, Quora, your site, Medium and others) or at networking events. Talking to folks about you and what you do is crucial. For freelancers, a random conversation with a new client can turn battle, self-doubt and existential fear in an great opportunity. I try to spend on client acquisition at the once weekly.

Make Smart

Since you’re now competing with millions of freelancers in the market, you have to be at the cutting edge and tap into your creative soul. This should come naturally, as your skill set is currently unique. Your task starts with establishing your providers along with your profile.

Don’t attempt to copy the web pages of different freelancers. You should, nevertheless, study your competitors carefully, attempt to understand how your offering is different and operate on your distinctive selling points. As an independent employee, there is absolutely no boss to dictate what you need to do, and there aren’t any brand guidelines which determine the manner of your demonstration. It is all about your wisdom, your talents and your ability. Take a bit of paper and draw out the idea of your support you are producing for your clientele and how you can communicate this that you do.

When looking for new jobs, attempt to approach the job from a different perspective. Instead of thinking of how you can find companies which are looking to operate with a freelancer, then approach companies which are currently looking for somebody to take on tasks. They’re just not aware however that their best choice is really a freelancer — you!

Be Determined

All of the love of operating from home with all the kitty on your lap aside, by now it probably happened to you that being a freelancer is mainly running a little business with one being the CEO, COO, CTO, CMO, CFO and most interns. There’s likely one principle which most freelancers will agree on: you have to hustle. As running a startup with multiple people filling several roles, running your freelance business is a marathon with euphoric moments and stretches of both despair and helplessness.

And when the latter comes, you have to be ready. Before making the choice to freelance, think carefully about why you want to do it and examine how operational your motivation is. Personally, I do not think you should freelancer for any other motive than private and/or expert development (which may also mean financial advancement naturally but mathematically speaking it usually means the opposite, at least at the start).

A development mindset is a fantastic tool which I found very helpful when running behind prospects for days without shutting even one of these. Even though the financial component of tough patches in a freelancer’s life is extremely troublesome, the toughest of all may be the emotional effects of the rejection. Don’t have a “no” for the evaluation of your abilities and self-worth. Carol Dweck’s theory of adjusted vs. growth mindsets assisted me to understand the inspirational losses I had been experiencing when facing long phases of success. I developed a healthier approach to difficult scenarios and watched them as a opportunity to learn and grow.

Don’t Prove yourself

Since I already mentioned previously, you are a part of a worldwide growing group of people who confront similar challenges. Join with this group. Other freelancers know the challenges you are going through because they’ve been around and know a couple war tricks which you may use for your battles.

So, place and befriend some freelancers. Furthermore, just as with each other challenging situation, one of the most essential tools to keep you going is friends and loved ones. Even though they may not understand every one your challenges, they’ll support you no matter what.

A Great reputation travels farther than your job

There’s not anything more significant than to show there is a real man behind the title. As an instance, I provide assistance and information to a few creatives, giving them honest advice about how to proceed with their professions. You are interested in being approachable and friendly when you give an impression on other people’s work. A fantastic reputation travels farther than the campaign that’s history six months later.

You will work with surprising clients

My most memorable highlights involve meeting great people and clients. Everyone has a different story to tell and each project is different.

Rotate your clients

When you quit working for a normal client, you think it’s the end of earth. You need to discover a replacement — it could be somewhat anxious at first. But you want to rotate your clients to be certain to keep producing great work. New clients always come.

Look after your wellbeing

A huge lesson I’ve heard is to look after your health and wellbeing. I am an all-or-nothing individual and that I can easily spend my entire seven-day week working 18 hours each day. Sooner or later you will crack and need twice the opportunity to completely recover.

The goal posts are moving…

I think any creative individual — especially those responsible for steering the jobs — must be a great deal more flexible than ever before. We want extra abilities that move beyond the work name, in addition to unparalleled understanding to make a project and its final result bulletproof.

Be ready to evolve — fast

You have to be ready to be versatile and ready to evolve at speed. I’ve seen people fresh out of uni with one undeveloped illustration style wondering why they need a second job at a coffee shop. Trends and styles come and go. You have to be compatible — but without losing your soul.

Be transparent with your clients

As a freelancer, then your company is just you running it inside out. That. Be the title and face of your company, because your company is you.

From a client’s perspective, if I were to employ you to present a service, I’d want to know who I am giving my money. Be sure to inject who you are into your own brand. You can shape that you’d like, however, the key is to be more personable.

Also be in conversing with them, transparent. Describe just how your process works, if they’re going to employ you. Show your curiosity about their company and thembreak down what they can expect by working with you step-by-step. This helps build confidence and trust and may be what seals the deal at a project.

Compose, write, write

This is definitely the most important suggestion I can give one to take your freelancing and that is to write. I do not care if you do not think you are a good writer. Writing is your doorway to getting your name out there, having clients find you, and also to really grow yourself as freelancer and a person.

Personally, I do not think I am a writer that is fantastic, and you can imagine how I felt about my writing. It comes with practice. I owe everything I’ve achieved to my own writing.

Concentrate on the today

So that that you do not trip whilst looking at the ending 14, watch your feet. Exactly where you wish to be one day, so focus on what you can do now to end up there, you know. On envying the ones they hope to be many freelancers get hung up.

If you would like to get a trusted client base, a product which may help enhance your income, or if you do not need to have to rely on one client to make a living, then what are you doing today to make that happen?

Make a list with tasks which you can easily finish by the end of the day to day. Progress is progress, and the more quickly you will get there if you start taking it one step at a time on your objectives.

Divide your income for taxes and savings

Then start dividing savings and your income if you are seriously interested in freelancing. For each dollar I earn that is business I split it up

12% of Business (for business-related expenses)

16 percent of Business Taxes (this can save my bum when it comes tax period)

12% of Personal Savings

What’s left goes into my own checking for living costs

It is what works for me, although I am not saying that this is the way split and to handle your financing. What’s significant here is putting a minimum of 16 percent of each dollar. It is the idea of an employer. You will then use this savings to cover what is due when it comes tax time. (I recommend paying quarterly, and that means you are not dealt one big payment in April.)

Financial Truth

Unless you are on a contract, there is no paycheque. This will make it difficult to plan you are business and personal financing. Consider using a mortgage! Smoothing out the typical boom and bust payment arrangement is vital.

Boost your prices

I met a possible client that, after agreeing to hire me, stated, “I nearly did not call you, you are too cheap to be really very good at what you do.” That piece of honesty that is rare had a huge effect on me. How much business had I lost this manner?

‘Boost your prices’ is information which you will hear a great deal, but it can be hard to put this into actions. The understandable fear is you will price yourself from work. You will. However, there are two things

Will increasing your prices really bring you more enquiries?

Is your job which you will lose out on the sort of work which you would like?

I’d indicate that the answers are no more and yes. An increase in the amount of quality prospects, although in my experience I’ve noticed a drop off at the complete amount of people. This usually means I spend time on the ‘is it possible to build me Facebook for 500’ more and enquiries time on the endeavors with budgets.

Then everybody loses, if you are competing on price . You are going to end up being stressed and resentful of their budget, and your client is going to be disappointed by the dashed job. In addition, your portfolio will never have anything decent in it, so therefore making it tough to entice the clients.

You are now an expert in your niche, which means that your prices should reflect that.

Think about just how much you must earn as an expert and work out your prices from that point.

Don’t feed the monster

Low-budget function leads to garbage. O touched this cycle earlier. There’s somewhat more to it.

The idea behind this is that you would not get to the stage where you had to have work. You have been there. The end of your project is coming and you’ve got nothing lined up. There appears A project on your inbox. The funding is tight and your project isn’t well thought out, but you’ve got bills to pay so that you take it.

The project proves to be worse than you ever envisioned. It drags on and you have long since lost any kind of gain. To make matters worse, while you’re at the center of it your dream client calls with a project starting next week. You need to turn it down.

You could have obtained that dream job if you may have held out without a work.

OK, so perhaps your dream job would not have come together. The point is however that it is worth it to be picky. You won’t acquire work.

The client isn’t necessarily wrong

This ‘clients are almost always incorrect’ mindset is a dangerous one. The client is becoming out of control. I believe that it’s time.

YOU are the web developer/design (or alternative industry) specialist. You have to be directing the process. Including structuring the project in a manner in which the client ‘buys in’ into the decisions, and controlling the sort of feedback which you receive.

Conclusion

Freelancing is a great way to follow your enthusiasm and make a living, however, there are differences between outsourcing fulltime and working for private enterprises. The great news is that most have walked in your mind on how to be a successful freelancer, and there is a wonderful deal of information out there — and what you can do in order to get the absolute most.

As a freelancer, then is a whole lot of information on the market, especially in the web market. Before, some may be new, you will most likely have heard a few of the tips. They’re not the greatest, or most significant, they are the ones which have left a positive difference in my own career. I am hoping they can work for you.

By recognizing that the common regions that freelancers have a tendency to discover challenging, and creating solutions which enable you to overcome these barriers, you are going to really help yourself dive into the pool as a freelance specialist and emerge ahead.

Above tips aren’t be-all and the end-all for freelancing, but I really wish I understood these if I got started. I’ve seen some development, since I’ve put these suggestions in my work process, and that I hope you were able to pick at at some value.

Source

How To Become A Successful Freelancer?- Part 3

from Sandiego jobs on demand http://www.sandiegojobsondemand.com/the-way-to-become-a-freelancer-part-3/

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domenicstyers25-blog · 7 years

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5 Workable Tips on teacher As well as Twitter.

Where Could You Find Free instructor Resources.

Are you a songs instructor who is encouraged to teach musical tools to your trainees? Some liked the experience, while others didn't care for it. I was stunned to find that in my area, private schools pay much less than public institutions do. I make sure this differs from state to state and also from private school to private school.

Currently You Could Have Your teacher Done Safely.

The quotes r extremely gud i wish with the assistance of these i will certainly be able 2 thrill my 'khadus chemistry educator' she is extremely bad and also i dislike her however on the day of instructors day i desire 2 thank her b' coz she does a great deal for us ... constantly standing nd offering notes. Subsequenting after a parent teacher conference is the best means to figure out whether the plan created is working for all events and also it likewise reveals your youngster that this team of people cares about and also desires the best for her/him. When educators are placed into situations where they are nearly established up to stop working, it's additionally unfortunate. Early in my own job I tore strips of a 15 years of age child who rudely disrupted my science lesson throughout my initial day at a brand-new school. I have actually been trying to download some sources for my lessons this week which I had actually formerly set aside as being useful and currently I can not acquire them so am throwing away lots of time sourcing new products without any success. Whenever I have the opportunity to instruct, I remind self what made my favored teachers so beneficial, and also what made my less-than-favorite educators so challenging, using the previous as well as staying clear of the last. In order to guarantee your child continues with piano lessons, be patient, supportive, and also research a piano teacher to earn sure your kid is obtaining the best direction. Nevertheless, you will see many variants of the classroom economic climate relying on the teacher you talk to. Considering that I working from a private school, we usually have parents touring the college as well as my class economy is really something the primary always likes me to talk about with them.

Fall In Love With teacher

If it wasn't for him, my teacher Jackie and also my teacher Heathers husband Mike I don't know what I 'd do. None of my schoolmates talk with him as long as I do. One more remark from my classmates or educator then I will certainly sick Jackie on them as well as the real supervisor Joe. One more fantastic gift that you can give your teachers are turkey, ham or any type of food that they can offer in their dinner table come Holiday. SYA is a best yoga exercise institute or a leading yoga college to find out yoga exercise educator training in Rishikesh via spiritual yoga exercise masters in India. To do this, you must recognize the common questions asked by many guitar educators that will certainly restrict you and stop you from coming to be effective. Not doing whatever you've prepared is not always a bad thing, but in my experience the bits planned for completion are almost constantly one of the most critical littles the lesson, the repay, the raison d'etre, the heart of the lesson. Pupils aren't the just one to encounter rude treatment, yet irregular chidings strike educators of color. An additional necessary component if you are considering ending up being a primary school instructor is that you are well arranged in your own life. The knowledge of Chinese is not needed as you will only be showing pupils that already know some English and will certainly not need a multilingual teacher. I'm discussing a deep appreciation for the traditional roots of education and also for the quest of reality and also understanding. Certainly, the salaries for instructor assistants differ depending on education and learning as well as training. From what I learn through more youthful educators today the pedagogical kudzu has actually been difficult to stop. Exactly what I do want to suggest, nevertheless, that we discover how reflection is taught with an open mind and some inquisitiveness, as opposed to just birding every little thing we think we bear in mind hearing our teacher state. It is a procedure of ending up being an outstanding yoga teacher who has dedication, persistence and love for their practice and others. Originally, guitar teacher software has come to be widely identified by lots of music educators available as this advancement has actually introduced and given a broad selection of opportunities as well as conveniences. There is the bow lanyard, for one; but instructor lanyards could also showcase beading that looks more like information now jcd (pyliantochi.info) jewelry than a basic rope or bow. This is very easy, yet it is fun and requires that every person take note, so that they comply with the story, and do not say a word that doesn't suit. The rule is that it needs to make good sense. I have actually had excellent comments from trainees in the process and understand I have it in me to be among those influential-type teachers that a lot of educators really wish to be. Nonetheless, managers have virtually pushed me out of it due to the fact that they think that, given that my trainees typically aren't sitting in neat rows taking generous notes while they nicely listen to me lecture, I don't have the correct class monitoring abilities they value.

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mathloverandteacher-blog · 7 years

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Curriculum Building 101?

As part of a new, innovative STEM high school adopting a new math curriculum (integrated approach versus traditional), I honestly didn’t know where to start when I was told that I was going to build the curriculum from scratch. On one hand, this was part of the reason I took the job. I know whatever math class I’m going to teach, I’m going to do everything I can to revamp it so that it doesn’t look like your typical lecture and I do-we do-you do. If I am going to go through the effort of changing everything I know of high school math and make it more relevant and more truthful (I will get to that later), I might as well be in a school that supports the idea of switching things up. I am in a unique position where the director of the school, principal, and district math supervisor trust and support me in whatever direction I chose to take. With great power comes great responsibility.

But on the other hand, what?? I only graduated from college with my undergraduate degree eight months ago! What were they thinking, hiring someone so new to the game to start something fresh? I know high school math like the back of my hand, but I honestly don’t know the standards and PARCC expectations of those standards that well. I student taught Algebra 1 and 2, but this integrated math thing - it’s so new. I don’t even know how it’s supposed to look like though I conceptually understand that it’s meant to INTEGRATE math.

Unfortunately, the only curriculum maps I have found for Integrated math doesn’t really integrate math. I love the idea of project based learning (PBL) but their curriculum isn’t integrated... it’s just expedited. Numbers, algebra, function, geometry, and statistics are literally chunked into units like they are separate entities living side by side. Vision Project has great activities that introduce topics (honestly, I think a kid could teach themselves math painlessly just by following the curriculum), but it’s also split by modules that separate the maths. Aside from those two resources, I have stalked other schools and their curriculum maps, but they’re all the same. Algebra is separated from geometry which is separated from statistics which is separated from number sense. How integrated is that?

Maybe it’s because I’m stubborn and I don't want people to criticize my lack of integration despite the course name of “integrated”, but I cannot do that. I cannot teach a curriculum that does not say what it claims to be! But mostly, I think it’s because I LOVE math. Why in the world would I make math seem like a hot mess of randomness when it is a beautiful discovery of human intellect?

So what do I do?

I literally find the standards addressed in each course (standards are law, in case you’re not familiar with how the education system works), and I literally mix it all up. I was going to use post it notes or index cards so I could shuffle all the standards around, but I found that stormboard does the function just fine.

Is there a method to the madness? It is 100% NOT backed up by research. Most of my math peers love the structure and organization of textbooks (I do too- I always believed that a good textbook was infinitely more necessary than a good professor when picking my courses in college), but this was deliberately ruining the simple order that these standards were placed in. Let stubbornness and zeal take hold, because I am building a new curriculum from scratch and I will make it beautiful!

For integrated math 1 (IM1), I am going to start off with statistical modeling and move into functions. For IM2, an algebra 1 review (because it’s necessary) and writing equations based on word problems, graphs, tables, etc.

I know that’s an extremely vague way to explain what’s going on but I think I will post what happens as it happens. Those lessons are going to happen in two weeks after the initial beginning lessons (what I’m calling Unit 0.5) so I don’t want to talk about them too much right now.

So before I close for tonight, I just have to elaborate on what I mean by the lack of truth of math in our education.

For starters, people believe that math is all about numbers. That word problems are the only way to connect math to everyday life. That math in projects (if done right) will lead to using statistics or algebra in a way that pretty much spells out engineering.

Well, that couldn’t be more wrong. Math is so much larger than that. One of my favorite youtube videos, The Map of Maths, explains the different areas of math. To put it simply, I believe math is the DISCOVERY of truth, the JUSTIFICATION (in the form of proofs) of these truths, and the USE of this truth (application).

How much do schools teach us about math? Some schools are moving into discovery/ exploration activities, but most classes don’t. Proofs? Do students even see a glimmer of truth outside of geometry? Students are told, it’s been found and it’s right --- just use it for this problem. God, no! How dare schools limit the use of math to minimal application?

How is it that students are not taught LOGIC in school? Even basic truth tables don’t show up. Why don’t students learn that Ancient Greek philosophers were often mathematicians because they were the ones THINKING? Seriously... if there’s one purpose for teaching math in school, it is for students to learn and practice how to logically think. Yet many classes avoid thinking and tell students exactly how to follow directions and replicate that. If you want to work in a factory, sure. If you’re a little more creative with product, maybe you’ll become an engineer. But that kind of thinking will never lead you to become a true lover of mathematics.

And that’s why I say math is not represented truthfully in schools. It’s been limited to a little thing that is full of consequences if you’re not good at it. You might not even know why people make such a big deal about it. I mean, even the adults that say, “Math is every where!” can barely give you a good enough reason why to genuinely believe that because they are forcing their opinions on you instead of actually telling you the truth (probably because their education of math is also limited and they don’t know for themselves either).

Anyway. New curriculum. Integrated math. It’s going to happen. I’m going to make it happen. Hopefully it goes well

#math #mathematics #teaching #education #firstyear #curriculum #planning #truth #school #integratedmath #challenge #teacher #firstyearteacher #stem #stemschool #highschool

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seankelleycoaching · 8 years

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Best Source for Career Advice

Within the sphere of influence that revolves around your career, there are many resources you may leverage for improvement. Among these resources are the people you interact with. Gathering and leveraging their input in order to find ways to improve your skills, capabilities, mindsets and attitudes, is critical to reaching your full potential.

Today, Kelley Coaching and Consulting interviews Nick Horvat, National Retail Account Executive of Sprint. Our goal: To help you determine your best resource for career development, and personal improvement.

Is a Supervisor Your Best Source?

While you should tap into your leader’s experience and knowledge to grow, surprisingly, your best performance coach may not your supervisor. It's true they were able to work their way up and someone believed them good enough for the next level. Certainly, they should help to guide you and offer ways to improve.

Nick Horvat says, "When asking for feedback from your manager, be open to what you hear. You may not always get the feedback you want or expect."

There are a few reasons why you should not put all your professional development eggs in the basket of your supervisor:

They could have an agenda. Your success it their success as well. As a result, your direct supervisor generally pushes you to do what they want in order to create their version of success. Are they really seeking to understand what you want to improve?

There may be communication barriers. Are you able to openly discuss things with them? According to a survey by Staffbay, out of 15,000 employees polled, 87% did not fully trust their boss. Without trust, true growth through coaching may be hindered. Along with lack of trust, other barriers may include; time constraints, company policies and process around training, or past negative experiences.

They may be assuming what you need to work on. Where are they gathering data to help you improve? Are they looking at metrics that could be skewed or not based on reality? Information from your supervisor, along with solid coaching around improvement areas can certainly help. Yet again, most supervisors will tell you what to fix and how they think you should best fix it. Without regular observation and targeted development around specific areas of improvement, assumption based training may not generate the desired results.

Is a Third Party Coach Your Best Source?

You will gain a lot from a third party coach. I, myself am a business coach and help company leaders from many different businesses reach their objectives. I also hire my own coach and have seen much of my success through this type of development. With a third party coach, the agenda of the supervisor doesn’t exist. In this case, the coach is generally more effective at seeking to understand and help. You should certainly have a third party coach help provide that necessary outside perspective.

Horvat says, "A third party mentor has always been a best practice I use. Someone outside your company allows for unbiased opinions which potentially brings new ideas or skills to the table."

Thus, third parties are excellent resources for performance increases in any aspect of business. However, there are several obstacles around use of a third party coach that may hinder improvement if not addressed up front. Be mindful of these two potential roadblocks:

They may not understand your job role or businesses IQ. A great coach will learn a lot about you, what your trying to accomplish. Together you will co-create a plan to help you get there, and even hold you accountable in your plan! The part they may lack, is their ability to know the true ins-and-outs of your job role. Over time, a coach will learn this, but initially they may not be able to make suggestions that are directly related to specifics on your job. They must be skilled at facilitating your ideas into actionable plans to improve.

They may not have seen you in action. A coach will listen to things from your perspective and generally see things through your lens. This means they also potentially share your blind spots. If this is the case, potential solutions could be missed. Role-playing with your coach may help, but overall, real world observation and participation makes a difference.

Are Coworkers Your Best Source of Advice?

Your coworkers may offer great insight into what your doing well and what you can improve upon. After all, they get to see you in action and are often either in direct competition with you, or are part of your team. You can also observe and imitate the top performers among your peers to help yourself better succeed.

When it comes to seeking assistance from coworkers, Horvat says, "As a manager, I suggest writing down three to five people you trust and respect in your business and seek out their input on a regular basis. You will gain insight on what works for them and bounce ideas off of them before introducing change to your team."

Though your coworkers can definitely help you, there are still a few reasons your peers might not be the best performance coaches for your career development and improvement:

They may be biased. Are they concerned you're trying to outshine them? Sometimes, coworkers can put up a guard when they fear you could outperform them. In this case, you may not receive the best advice.

They won't hold you accountable. A supervisor or third party coach will usually help hold you accountable for your action plans and career development. Your peers are usually worried about ensuring they get their job done, and will not necessarily follow up or help hold you to your commitments for improvement.

Is it Your Clients, and People You Serve?

This, often neglected, resource is a never ending well of information, ideas, suggestions, and accountability. The people you sell to, service or serve can be your best performance coach.

Horvat tells us, "If I had to pick one of the four choices to receive feedback from to grow my career, I would choose the customer... I know that if I'm taking what my customers tell me and applying it to my day-to-day role, I can build a business because I'm listening to what drives my business."

The people we serve are extremely important coaches for several reasons:

Your improvement is in their best interest. As selfish as this sounds, everything people do is based on receiving a payoff. So what’s in it for them in helping you improve? If you’re in sales, the transaction will better for your buyer if you improve in your role. Thus they are willing to help you improve, (especially after the transaction). If you’re a leader, your team will be better off if you improve in your role, thus they are usually willing to help you improve. If you’re in the service industry, your growth will directly improve the services you provide for your clients, thus they are probably willing to help you.

They have seen you in action, and have directly engaged with you. When you want to help your child work on a baseball swing, you get in the batter box with them. Review the basics, then watch them swing. As they do they swing, you point out ways for them to improve.

Observation in this way is the best way to point out areas for improvement. In the same way your clients or staff members have worked directly with you and are well aware of what they enjoyed about you. They have also witnessed your processes and behaviors, and know what you can work on.

How to Leverage Your Best Source of Career Advice

We believe those we serve are our most abundant and impactful source of information on areas to improve. Read the surveys they complete, if there are online reviews for what you sell, read the good and the bad to learn. More importantly, start off by asking them in person, upfront, to help you improve by paying attention during the interaction:

"Customer (or team member) I am always wanting to improve in my [process, management style, sales abilities] so that I may better serve you as your [manager, leader, salesperson, customer service rep]. Throughout our time together, would you be willing to pay attention to what I do best and where I can improve? Then later on, could I ask for your opinion on this to help with my performance?”

Here are some questions you can ask regularly, or after each engagement, or salesale, (whatever frequency makes sense for you and the people you ask), that will help you identify what you can do to grow in the most effective way:

How would you describe [me, my products, my services] to your friends and family?

What did/do you like best about my [process, sale, product, management style]?

What did/do you like the least?

What is one area I could change, add, or remove that would help make this better for you?

What did I do to meet or exceed your expectations?

Where did/do I not meet or exceed your expectations?

Do you have any other suggestions? Or Is there anything else?

We highly suggest diversifying your career performance advice input channels by seeking out great coaching from many angles. By all means, seek input from your supervisor or those above you. Ask your peers what they think you can do better. Hire a business or career coach to help you see through a different perspective, lend support, and build on self accountability. Just remember, the people that are observing you closest and have the most to gain from your improvement are your clients, or the employees that work for you. Actively seek their input and utilize their ideas to best improve your performance.

To be included in our monthly Kelley Coaching newsletter receive support and tips on sales, management, and career development CLICK HERE.

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vsbylc · 8 years

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Q&A with 2016 Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg

By Patrick J. Austin

Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg has dedicated his life to promoting social justice and representing those truly in need across the Commonwealth. This is why largely he was the recipient of the 2016 Virginia Legal Aid Award from the Virginia State Bar’s Access to Legal Services Committee

Sandoval-Moshenberg is the legal director of the Legal Aid Justice Center's Immigrant Advocacy Center specializing in consumer, housing, and employment litigation in federal and state court. During his tenure at the Legal Aid Justice Center, Sandoval-Moshenberg created the Virginia Special Immigrant Juvenile Project (SIJS) that worked to facilitate access to justice for immigrant children in Virginia. He also developed the “Five Complexes campaign” for landlord--tenant rights, a cleaner’s campaign in employment law, a “zombie debt campaign” to assist with consumer rights, and a legal-resistance campaign to the “kiddie rocket docket” that advocates against excessively expeditious proceedings against unrepresented children, according to the Virginia State Bar.

I spoke to Sandoval-Moshenberg about receiving the prestigious Legal Aid Award and his work with the Legal Aid Justice Center.

Q: What drew you to public interest legal work?

A: I grew up in a household deeply committed to the struggle for social and economic justice; you could say that I was a red-diaper baby. My grandparents were Holocaust survivors—you could still see my grandfather’s Auschwitz prisoner number tattooed on his arm—and he taught us that you never turn your back on suffering and oppression. My father was a classic lefty professor who taught Marx and Derrida in his freshman writing seminars, the kind of professor who gives David Horowitz a heart attack, and my mother was the legislative director of a pro-choice women’s organization on Capitol Hill. My parents were founding members of what was then known as the Tenants’ Support Committee in Alexandria, and they would bring me to anti-eviction meetings in church basements starting when I was seven years old. Later, as a college student in New York City, I was involved in a radical activist group called Reclaim the Streets, which was sort of a precursor to the Occupy movement, just 15 years earlier.

Q: As a graduate of Columbia University and Yale Law School, you likely had a bevy of job prospects when graduating. How did you begin your legal career?

A: My first job out of law school was with Victor Glasberg and Associates, a tiny plaintiffs-side civil rights law firm in Alexandria, Virginia. Vic Glasberg is truly one of the lions of the civil rights bar in Virginia. He’s had a long and storied career and is well known to the claims adjusters at the Virginia Division of Risk Management. At the age of 70, he is still at it to this day. My job was structured a lot like a traditional apprenticeship. Vic taught me everything I know about being a Virginia lawyer. He had cases ready for me to be lead counsel on day one, from police brutality and rapes by jail guards to employment discrimination and unpaid overtime. I was taking depositions and arguing motions in federal court the same month I was sworn in. I worked for him for two and a half years and got more litigation experience than most big-firm associates do in five years.

Most of the lawyers who practice public-interest law in Virginia do so with private firms. By my definition, anyone who makes it their business to represent individuals in suing corporations or government entities, and anyone who defends immigrants against deportation, is a public-interest lawyer. Very few of them are as lucky as I am to be able to work for a nonprofit.

Q: What brought you back to Virginia from Connecticut?

A: I liked New Haven, Connecticut. I built up a real community there and I planned to stay after law school. But I was in D.C. for my 2L summer, working for a union-side labor-law firm, when I met my now-wife, Paola. She still had another two years left on her masters’ degree at George Mason, so I abandoned my plans to take the Connecticut bar and signed up for Virginia instead. It was the best decision I’ve made in my life.

Q: Did you always intend to work in the public sector?

A: Yes. I went to law school thinking I was going to be an immigration lawyer. For a brief period in my career I worked for a private immigration firm in DC specializing in deportation defense. But I realized that I really enjoy federal litigation and you don’t get the full experience in immigration court. Especially discovery: Vic Glasberg taught me that when you do it right, it’s a lot like a chess game. I’m not very good at chess, but I think I am pretty good at discovery. And of course there is next to no discovery available in immigration court, which is one of the many problems with the whole system.

Q: Did your experience in El Salvador influence your career path?

A: Yes, in that it gave me a sense of where my clients are coming from. Of course, the situation in 2001-‘03 was very different: with the gang warfare that’s going on, El Salvador is now a hundred times more dangerous. But the situation of desperate, grinding poverty alleviated solely by cash remittances sent from family members working what are considered low-wage jobs in the United States was pretty much the same back then as it is now. If nothing else, it taught me never to judge someone for choosing to come to the United States illegally.

Q: You've been involved in a number of issue-oriented campaigns including a community campaign to help win passage of the first living-wage ordinance in your hometown of Alexandria, Virginia. What inspired you to get involved in community organizing?

A: Again, my parents are the ones who showed me by example that community organizing is the only way to bring lasting change. Although I ultimately became a lawyer by profession and not a community organizer, I fully understand that getting a law license actually served to limit, not expand, the social-change toolbox that I have at my personal disposal. Fortunately, I now have the privilege to direct a program that has an equal number of community organizers as lawyers.

When I do community presentations in the immigrant community, people often come in with the attitude of, “You’re a lawyer, solve my problem, fix my life.” I try to explain to them that while lawyers can sometimes manage to prevent people’s lives from getting worse, only you yourself can actually make your own life better, and only by organizing your community can you actually make the whole situation better.

Q: What are the most challenging aspects of building and working on a community campaign?

A: Virginia is a funny state in that power is extremely concentrated in the legislature, and the legislature has both rules and a culture that make it very easy to kill a bill. Not only are localities extremely circumscribed in what they can do, even the governor is far less powerful than in other surrounding states. Then you have a judicial system where most civil cases that affect poor people go forward in the general district courts, which of course don’t leave a written opinion, and then never get appealed to circuit court, much less to the Virginia Supreme Court. The final straw is that we have no state-law class actions. So if you want to effect a policy change, it’s not enough to get the governor on your side; it’s not enough to get the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors on your side; and it’s not enough to win a court case. You pretty much have to get the legislature on board.

Q: What inspired you to create the Virginia Special Immigrant Juvenile Project?

A: Back in summer 2014, at the same time we were reading media reports and seeing pictures of children piled like sardines and wrapped in aluminum blankets in Border Patrol holding cells, I was getting an increasing number of mothers from Falls Church and Annandale coming to our office or to our mobile outreach sites, telling us that their children had just crossed the border and were in deportation proceedings with a pending court date and no lawyer. LAJC generally didn’t handle cases of this nature, but I had a background in immigration, so I decided to pick up a few cases, mostly just to see if anything could be done.

That’s usually my response to nearly any problem: “Let’s pick up a couple of cases to see if anything can be done.” I don’t come up with ideas by sitting in a room and thinking real hard; I like to jump in on cases and see what results I can get and then afterwards reflect on what worked and what didn’t work.

What I discovered was that the immigration court was effectively being operated as a “rocket docket” to try to deport these kids as quickly as possible. The immigration court in Arlington was doing six or eight dockets a week, with fifty kids on each docket, and when I would go to court, maybe three or four other kids had a lawyer, and the rest were pro se. So I had to un-learn one of the cardinal rules that Vic Glasberg taught me, which was “never pick up a case in the courthouse hallway.” I started picking up more and more cases, but about half of the cases I was seeing in the hallway were from people outside of Northern Virginia, from Tidewater to Roanoke to Harrisonburg to Chesterfield County. There are some great nonprofits that provide immigration legal services in Northern Virginia, but elsewhere in the Commonwealth, there are a lot fewer resources. So I started to come up with a plan for a way to serve people in cities and counties outside of where LAJC has offices.

Two and a half years later, the situation is much better: now when I go to court, usually about half of the kids have lawyers, between the nonprofits and the private bar. But that still means that half of them are going pro se, fighting for their lives a highly trained government prosecutor, under a federal statute whose complexity rivals that of the tax code.

Q: What is the most challenging aspect of your work at the Legal Aid Justice Center?

A: The hardest part of my job is saying no. We get ten times the number of calls and walk-ins than we could possibly ever represent. And in most of those cases, if we say no, there is absolutely nowhere else for them to go. We have a whole bunch of practice areas—wage theft, consumer protection and consumer debt defense, landlord-tenant, access to education, immigration, civil rights—and we have to make an impact in each one of those areas. Our lawyers could spend all day taking cases in just one of those practice areas and still not have capacity to take all of the cases that come in.

Q: Is there a particular area of law where low- and middle-income Virginians are most in need?

A: Consumer debt defense, especially zombie debt. Every time a Virginia family tries to climb out of poverty, a zombie-debt collector is right there trying to drag them back down with punishing garnishments. In debt-collection cases, so few defendants are represented by counsel that you can win most of your cases by simply putting the plaintiff to its burden of proof and making the proper evidentiary objections at trial. Some of the junk-debt buyers rarely even bother taking the case to trial where the defendant is represented by counsel. We have an excellent success rate in defending these cases, but we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg, and the vast majority of the cases just result in default judgments for the debt collectors.

Q: If you were empowered to implement one change to the legal system to benefit low-income Virginians, what would you change?

A: The Virginia Minimum Wage Act, Code of Va. Sec. 40.1-28.8 et seq., is an embarrassment. First of all, our minimum wage is far below a living wage, especially in Northern Virginia, and the local cities and counties are powerless to raise it. There is no state overtime law whatsoever. The state minimum-wage law excludes from its coverage most of the jobs that were historically held by people of color such as farmworkers and domestic workers. And the remedies available to employees are basically back wages and prejudgment interest of eight percent, barely more than what they could have obtained under a breach of contract cause of action. This provides essentially no disincentive to the employer to commit wage theft.

Q: What advice would you give to young Virginia lawyers who recently graduated and/or are looking to find their footing in the legal profession?

A: Figure out what you want to do, and start taking the right steps to get there. By focusing too much on keeping your options open, you fail to move forward. At my law school orientation, Dean Harold Koh said, “[I]f there is an epitaph for your generation, it will certainly be: ‘They died with their options open.’” For me, if your résumé doesn’t show that you share a commitment to the mission of our organization, you’re not going to get an interview, no matter how eloquent your cover letter. Remember that people’s attitudes towards your employer will generally rub off on you, so try to go to work for someone who is well respected or at least not considered a lousy hack.

Patrick J. Austin is a 2013 graduate of George Mason University School of Law and currently works as an attorney-advisor for the U.S. Department of Justice in the Office of Information Policy in Washington, D.C.

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