Today’s column at Da Tech Guy Blog, The Synod and the Pope-A-Dope, is up.
Tonight’s podcast at 8PM Eastern will be on The Cuba embargo plus other US-Latin America stories of the week, with host Silvio Canto, Jr., and guest Jorge Ponce.
An Education: A Passport to Your Journey
An education is a passport: It is not the reason to take a journey. It is not a ticket. It is not a destination. It is a tool to help you get where you want to be. At the same time, as a passport can be used for ID even when you’re not traveling, an education has a twofold effect: As you learn, you simultaneously expand your opportunities to learn. I found this out at a very young age.
I was born and raised in Puerto Rico in a family with a lot of relatives in traditional professions – medicine, law, academics, teaching – and from a young age I was encouraged to read. In a short time, I became a voracious, indiscriminate reader of anything and everything that was in front of me, in English or in Spanish. Be it National Geographic, Bohemia (definitely not a magazine for young readers), books, The World Book Encyclopedia, newspapers, or utility bills. I was expected to do well in school and to obtain a college degree. I also observed that in my large extended family, some had not followed the traditional professions, and they also had attained comfortably middle-class, stable, livelihoods.
When it was time to choose a college major, it was time to ask myself: What were the traits that my successful relatives shared in their educational backgrounds? The first thing was, they all had learned something useful for which there was a demand. The pre-baby boom generation needed not only teachers and professors, doctors, and engineers, but also workers who knew the technology of the day. While they entered fields and occupations that interested them, they kept sight of how their interests would fit the employment landscape. They had passports while they kept sight of the trip.
Each of my successful relatives set out to learn all they could about their jobs and their fields.
They could express themselves clearly and professionally to co-workers, colleagues and clients. They all had made their own learning.
As they made their own learning, they identified and explored the new opportunities that learning opened up to them.
The most successful: never stopped learning.
As in any journey, you need to identify your vision when you decide to pursue an education. In college, I majored in marketing and economics because I’m interested in business and money, and because those two fields afforded flexibility in employment options. I pursued an MBA at night while working full-time, with my employer’s encouragement. My long-term goal has been to remain flexible. I have worked in retailing, real estate, insurance, and on the board of a local non-profit, which led to new opportunities in education-related fields. This in turn, led to a deeper interest in literacy and literature. Recently, I completed an online certificate program in English-to-Spanish translation, which supplements my blogging and my teaching at a local language school.
As you need to renew your passport, you also need to update your skills. By updating your skills, you stay ahead of the competition and become a more valuable worker, and you become more challenged in your job and in your everyday life. You are taking advantage of new opportunities. You are excited about the new blessings your work brings you and your loved ones. Your loved ones, in turn, become inspired by you.
Your purpose becomes your deeds. And it all started when you set out to get that passport for your journey: the education you had been thinking about.
Change is inevitable. But, making change happen when you want it to can be hard. And when you want to make a real change, you need to learn something new. Because education is the key to change, Kaplan has spent 75 years re-writing the rules of education. Because they believe that education is not one size fits all. A system focused on the needs of individuals can give students the power to change their lives. Kaplan wasn’t satisfied with the status quo, and you shouldn’t be either. To jumpstart your change, we encourage you to watch Kaplan’s video series, Visionary Voices, to hear the latest insights on emerging trends from notable thought leaders; participate in Kaplan’s ADVANCE: Career. Education. You. group on LinkedIn to connect with professionals committed to life-long learning; and connect with students, alumni and educational professionals at StudentAdvisor.com, Kaplan’s one-stop-shop for the latest education news, reviews, and advice.
I’d love to hear from you and learn how education has given you the power to change! Leave a comment below and be entered to win a $100 VISA gift card!
Rules
No duplicate comments.
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- 1. Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt on this post
- 2. Tweet (public message) about this promotion; including exactly the following unique term in your tweet message: “#SweepstakesEntry”; and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment on this post
- 3. Blog about this promotion, including a disclosure that you are receiving a sweepstakes entry in exchange for writing the blog post, and leave the URL to that post in a comment on this post
- 4. For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about an alternate form of entry.
This giveaway is open to US Residents age 18 or older. Winners will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail. You have 72 hours to get back to me, otherwise a new winner will be selected.
The Official Rules are available here.
This sweepstakes runs from 3/7/2013-3/31/2013
Be sure to visit the Kaplan Brand Page on BlogHer.com where you can read other bloggers’ reviews and find more chances to win!
Fly standing, my a**, part 2
Remember this?
I posted about this in April, 2006. The NYT article was titled Ready for takeoff? Even if it’s standing room? Back then the airlines involved vigorously denied that they were considering doing away with seats.
Well, three years later, the story is baaack:
Would You Stand on Short Flights if It Meant Cheaper Fares?
According to Marketwatch.com: A spokesman for Ryanair, Stephen McNamara, said the airline is looking to replace traditional seats with “vertical ones,” which on a typical flight would allow between 50 and 60 additional passengers.
The vertical seats
Oxymoron – Dude, if vertical, it’s not a seat!
sound like something you might find in an amusement park:
I’m not amused
Mr. McNamara said the airline envisages having the passengers supported and restrained,
Why does that bring to mind horror movies involving insane asylums?
and not simply holding a rail,
The screaming, floating strap hangers wouldn’t look so good to the rest of the passengers?
so they could handle turbulence or an emergency landing safely, Steve Gelsi reports.
Or perhaps the airline wants you to be on the misericord,
so you pray for mercy on your soul during a rough flight?
Ryanair would need approval both from U.S. and European Union authorities, as well as Boeing, which makes its aircraft. Mr. McNamara said it could take three years before they could even pilot the program, and then additional time to launch it.
Give the sadists enough time, and they’ll push it through, possibly even with a governmental bailout.
The thing is, once an arline reduces travel room, it later becomes a trend to all the airlines. When air travel first started, passengers were treated well, which later became first class (which is disappearing, fast), and now we’re all sardines in coach.
BUT
Yes, it CAN get worse!
Another controversial idea -– charging for toilet use on flights –- is “still under consideration,” according to Mr. McNamara.
There you are, catapulted into the upper atmosphere in an aluminum tube and they’re charging you to use the toilet.
What other humiliation will they think of next? Dare I ask?
Speaking of billing, how about allowing passengers to bill airlines for every minute of delays, at the passengers’ hourly wage rate, chums?
I’ll be joining Jane and other friends at BlogHer09 later today. Blogging will take second place to socializing and fun.
No, we didn’t have to stand through a flight to get here, perish the thought.
We take a break from the inauguration to bring you: Sake and sushi with the girls
Jane Goodwin just posted a video of us having a great time last July at BlogHer:
Yes, this is what women talk about when they’re away from the guys…
Photos from the train trip
Dinner with Jeremayakovka
I had the great pleasure of dining with Jeremayakovka in San Francisco. That means he’s a friend, not just one of the FIHMY, Friends I Haven’t Met Yet. He’s got the photo.
I also like this photo, also from San Francisco:
Why the sweater, coat and scarf in July, you ask? Because it was 55oF in San Francisco, that’s why!
The irony-poor New York Times writes about BlogHer08
The NYT, writing about BlogHer08 in a Styles section article titled Blogging’s Glass Ceiling, bemoans,
At the seminar “How to Take Names and Be Taken Seriously as a Political Blogger,” many women said that their male colleagues and major media groups tended to ignore them, and to link to them less often (unless they are Arianna Huffington).
Let’s give the NYT a helping hand and link to my colleagues at that panel (it was a panel with a question and answer session, not a seminar) Morra Aarons-Mele, Mona Gable and Angry Black Bitch, none of which were ignored by anyone (except the NYT, perhaps).
The panel was liveblogged, if you would like to read it.
By the way, Kara Jesella, the writer of the article, is very nice and talked at length to all four of us after the panel session, but her editor obviously coudln’t think of linking to our blogs in the article.
Any of you ladies who want to be taken seriously as a political blogger would do well to follow Vox Popoli‘s advice (via Robert Stacy McCain) :
1. Have at least half a brain and demonstrate that it actually functions by not writing egregiously stupid stuff.
2. At least 75 percent of your posts should have nothing to do with you or your life.
3. Don’t post a picture or talk about your romantic life, your children or your pets.
4. Don’t threaten to quit blogging every time anyone criticizes you.
5. Learn how to defend your positions with facts and logic instead of passive-aggressive parthian shots fired off as you run away.
To which I add Ronald Reagan’s famous words,
It’s still trust but verify. It’s still play, but cut the cards. It’s still watch closely. And don’t be afraid to see what you see.
Check your sources, and blog on. [And make corrections immediately – I misattributed Vox Popoli’s quote to Robert, and corrected it immediately]
As I said in the panel, your blog is what you make it.
BONUS
I talked to Rachael Myrow of The California Report radio program on KQED public radio. (Note to Sam: She asked how many visitors I’d had that day, and I said 2,000)
Back from the Zephyr
I made it home last night.
The only problem were the train delays. As I mentioned earlier, passenger trains must wait for freight trains and there is only one track in each direction (for brief parts of the trip there is only one track), so you must expect delays. There was one delay I didn’t expect, however. Yesterday afternoon the train left Philadelphia during a huge rainstorm, and then the train stopped somewhere between Philadelphia and Trenton for over an hour. I was glad I wasn’t in an airplane trying to land in Philadelphia or Newark.
What we didn’t know was that the storm had knocked out power for central New Jersey, which affected the train lines. Trains were backed up in both directions of the Eastern Corridor. When we finally got to Trenton at 6:45 I waited for the 4:45 train to Princeton Junction. You know it must have been something when a guy from the NJ PBS affiliate, NJN news, was walking down the platform getting soundbites.
Will I do it again? Absolutely, yes. I’ll probably fly to either Chicago or Colorado and then ride the Zephyr. It is an extraordinary experience. I just got this comment from Melissa, who I met in the train,
Fausta,
My husband Tim and I had the pleasure of dining with you on the zephyr this week and we wanted to tell all of the cynics out there that a trainride should be experienced by everyone at least once in your life. I don’t even consider myself an outdoor person, but when you see the sights on the train, the only word that can describe it is majestic. We live in the city and usually drive from california to denver but, on the train, you get to see the “Real America” that we tend to forget about. It’s also a very nostalgic experience that my husband and i will have for the rest of our lives. Who’s waxing nostalgic in an overcrowded airplane or when fueling at the pump. Who I ask you? WHO?
It was a wonderful journey.