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A Good Name Is Worth…

What is the worth of a good name? The Christian bible states that we should “Choose a good reputation over great riches, for being held in high esteem is better than having silver or gold.” (Proverbs 22:1, NLT bible) In the realm of our professional and personal influence, nothing is more important than having a good reputation. This is why Online Reputation Management (ORM) is so essential to our digital lives.

What is an online reputation? An online reputation is basically what someone sees about you through your online presence. What site do you regularly post on? What are your social networks, and who are your friends on them? What articles or other texts have you published? Some of these places are available to casual observation on the first page of a search, and with a bit more persistence all of them are able to be dug up by a tenacious stalker.

Since we all have an online reputation to some extent, it is important that we take healthy responsibility for it. First of all, we should find what information is out there regarding ourselves. Next, we should discern whether we like how we are portrayed on the web. If there are statements that may be hindering to the image that we desire to create, we should dismantle them ourselves, and if necessary ask the page administrator for assistance. Next, there is the necessity to be proactive about putting out positive and professional sources of information about ourselves. After fixing our image and promoting it, we should be careful to cultivate it and check up on it from time to time. This is the ORM, Online Reputation Management. Always remember: a good name is the foundation of success in any area of the professional sphere. Make certain that your online self is every bit as polished and genuine as you are in person!

A World of Change...

There is no question that the American workplace is under intense pressure to change. The cushioned jobs that our predecessors held through the last fifty years are going out with the tide of jobs that are flowing overseas.

The real question that we must ask concerns not those that came before but those who are coming onto the scene now – the young adults that will make up the next generation of workers. What will they do to secure their own success, and the success of their children and other subsequent generations? The economic depression which we find ourselves mired in is both disturbing and dangerous. We see the possibility of failure and destruction clearly and in high definition on CNN. However, what we do not perceive as young people are the opportunities that we have in this situation: we will soon be the main niche market for this country economically. Our demands influence the large majority of sales and through our purchases large amounts of revenue are produced. What we have to do with that responsibility is direct that demand. We should point it in a direction which will bring about prosperity in time for our country, instead of pursuing idle fancies, goods and services that hold little value or utility. As young people we encourage sellers to give us IPods, video games and high definition TV’s. We should demand better technology in manufacturing, more efficient methods of agriculture, and more efficient allocations of resources and employment. We as young people have the opportunity to demand those things as goods or services. Doing so will help the cause of our whole country and bring us from the brink of decadence and destructive self –interest.

In conclusion, let’s focus our change in the area of the goods and services that we demand. In doing so, we will alter the demand of our economy and bring it towards a healthier place. As a bonus, we will have more resources (and employment!) to allocate to the important things in life such as fuel, energy, water distribution and housing. Forget the IPods!

The Usefulness of Career Inventories

Career inventories are very useful for several reasons: first, they are built to expose the hidden strengths and weaknesses of the individual that is using them. You can learn a lot about yourself, both professionally and personally from a test such as the Myers-Briggs Personality Test. Second, a career inventory test is built in such a way that the information that is garnered is at least marginally trustworthy, since the test is impartial and mathematically weighted. For example, it would not be easy to foul up or otherwise misstate yourself accidentally in the Myers-Briggs test, since the same question is often stated in many different ways. Third, a career inventory is able to be given out to most anyone at any age, since it assumes a low basic level of literacy from the test-taker. all in all, career inventories are definitely an asset to both the prospective employee and employer.

My Mission Statement: Learning How to Learn - The Importance of Understanding and Wisdom in Education

I have always been a student. As a student, I have learned the hard lesson that education is not primarily about learning a subject. In the beginning of my quest for understanding, I thought that I studied history to know what happened in the past – that in mathematics I learned to compute for the sake of economy and wise spending financially. While these were among the products of my education, I quickly realized that this was a secondary achievement: the real reason for pursuing any subject is to learn how to learn. Accepting that we must learn how to learn is the beginning of wisdom. One definition from Merriam-Webster about wisdom states that it is the ability to discern inner qualities and relationships. What is learning, if it is not the mental construction of different experiences and beliefs into a worldview? History isn’t about what happened long ago: it’s about what’s happening now, applying what we know from then to what is transpiring in the world today. Mathematics is not about computing and budgeting: it is about learning to understand a thing without using the physical senses – about seeing with the mind’s eye. These are the real products if a fruitful education. There is no denying the interconnectedness of history and current events or the direct relationship of mathematics to the organization of our minds. My purpose as a person is to teach others the necessary skills and practices which bring about this kind of reasoning. Steven Covey, writer of the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, thought so highly about the necessity to gain understanding that his fifth habit was to seek first to understand, then to be understood. Thinking critically about how and why we learn, and by extension embracing wisdom and understanding, requires a dedication and perseverance that may not be easy for some to give. You have to ask yourself the hard questions. To learn how to learn, you must be endlessly curious, preternaturally bold and abundantly hopeful. I am all of these things. Can you be?

The Page Unturned...

By which of course I mean, the first blog that I have ever created. I am not sure if this will stick, or if transversely I will turn into an unrepentant blogger, facebooker, tweeter, etc. I suppose only time will tell... :)