Who Do U Want To Be?

I came across this interesting website today while checking out the webpage of a media teacher at a local high school. Who Do You Want To Be? . It's much more entertaining than the other assessment sites I've found and it actually came up with areas of career interest for me that made sense! Though it is definitely not as indepth as the other sites, it's worth a few minutes of your time.

Stanford School of Medicine Residential Program

It's that time of year again!

The Stanford Medical Youth Science Program has a Summer Residential Program (SRP ) that is an annual science- and medicine-based enrichment program open to low-income and ethnically disadvantaged high school sophomores and juniors who live in northern and central California.

They only receive applications from the following California counties: Alameda, Contra Costa, Fresno, Madera, Marin, Mendocino, Merced, Monterey, Napa, Sacramento, San Benito, San Francisco, San Joaquin, San Luis Obispo, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Solano, Sonoma, Stanislaus, and Yolo.

Information about the program is sent to all high schools in these 21 counties. Check with your school counselor or school Career Center for an application.

This is an AWESOME opportunity for any sophomore or junior who is interested in a possible career in medicine to get up close and personal in a real-world medical setting.

You must submit your application  no later than February 15th........so there's no time to lose!

One of the cool things about their website is their Health Careers Profile  page. Click on any of the profiles and you're taken to a page which has information about what the job entails, what a typical workday is, and also some related links and other information you might find interesting. It took me well over an hour to go through all the profiles.

Do you know what a Biophotographer  is?

Learn something new everyday!!

Letter To Self

First of all.....HAPPY NEW YEAR! I hope 2011 is an awesome year for everyone.

Secondly, I came across this very cool website called FutureMe.org  where you can send a letter to yourself which you will get in the future. The letter will arrive in your inbox at a date that you specify. So you can have your letter delivered in 1 or 5 or 20 years from now! I think this is a great way to remind yourself how you were feeling at the time, what your goals were and whether you are on the same path. And use it to remind yourself of what’s important to you.

Inspirational Speaking?

Today I received this video from a friend who, last week, tried to make a point about what characteristics make someone an inspirational speaker.

I can't say that this makes his argument but it definitely had me ROTFL.

Live in the moment but........

When I was younger. Much younger. In high school. I wanted not to be in high school. I couldn't wait to graduate and be done with high school.

I missed out on enjoying my later high school years. For many different reasons. I was never present for those last 2 years. I was just biding my time, waiting to get out and start my life as an adult. And not only was I not living in the moment during that time, but I also wasn't planning for my future. Double whammy.

The Station  is one of my favorite poems. I have a copy of it hanging up in my kitchen so I can see it everyday. It talks about living the journey of life; being present in the moment.

Yes, you should live in the moment while you're in high school. Embrace all that it has to offer. Value your friendships. Utilize all the resources available to you. Participate in extracurricular activities.

But also live for the future.

Enjoy high school but also think and act towards your future. Even if you are lucky enough to have parents who provide you with direction. Even if you have awesome guidance counselors who provide you with resources, it is still your call. It is your journey.

Live it. Own it.

Seriously?

I just received this brochure from AAA. I'm surprised (though I shouldn't be) that their marketing people allowed this to go out the door. Was there not a second pair of eyes on this?

I went back to one of my older blog posts  to see if I had added your and you're to my list of grammatical transgressions and I found that I hadn't. Shame on me, since I see this mistake made all the time.

Sheesh!

Yosemite Institute Field Research

Two week backpacking adventure in the wilderness of Yosemite. Earn college credit by completing an ecological research project to answer your own questions about the natural world.

Jaime Escalante - A True Educational Hero

Jaime Escalante, the high school teacher whose ability to turn out high-achieving calculus students from a poor Hispanic neighborhood in East Los Angeles inspired the 1988 film “Stand and Deliver,” with Edward James Olmos in the starring role, died Tuesday March 30th near Sacramento.

I loved the movie but, more importantly, I was impressed with what Jaime did as a teacher. The article Stand and Deliver Revisited  really delves into the obstacles Jaime had to overcome in order to make a difference for students.

There are a lot of teachers who are well meaning but they lack the skills to really teach.  You will be lucky to have 2 - 3 really good teachers during your tenure as a K-12 student. Latch on to them. The remainder of your education you'll have to take into your own hands -- sad as that may sound.

10 Amazing Life Lessons

A friend sent me a blog posting the other day entitled 10 Amazing Life Lessons You Can Learn From Albert Einstein . I especially believe in #6.....living in the moment. I wish I had lived more in the moment when I was in high school. But maybe that's because I know so much more now.

Knowledge Comes From Experience is right up there as well. It's one thing to learn the concept of problem solving or working as a team but you actually have to DO it in order to really learn it. That goes for most things. Perhaps that's why I'm such a supporter of project based learning as well as high school internships. We may be able to teach students how to calculate volume or area or the basics of accounting, but, believe me, it will stick if they use it in real life situations.

Time to Get That Money for College

If you haven't done so already, it's time to start hunting down those scholarships and grants. The very first thing you need to do is to submit your FAFSA application. FAFSA stands for Free Application for Federal Student Aid. You need this in order to apply for any type of federal student aid such as a Perkins Loan or a Pell Grant.

More scholarship info to follow. But first and foremost, submit your FAFSA application!!

A Good Adiction

I'm addicted to reading.

My bookshelf is arranged by subject matter......Sort of......For the most part..... All the big books have to go on the tallest shelf, having nothing in common with each other except their height.

I also have one shelf dedicated just to those books that I plan on reading in the near future. The definition of near future is not what you would find in the Webster's Dictionary. It's my very own, personal version. The near future is the time between today and the day I die. I've always liked approximations!

I hear about books from friends, reading articles or blogs on the Internet, or even from a book I'm currently reading. If the book sounds interesting, I immediately go onto Amazon and buy it. They range from biographies to historical non fiction to architecture to home improvement. I consider myself to have fairly eclectic taste in books.

Unfortunately, my appetite for reading is much larger than the actual time I have for reading. I wish I could be more disciplined or more selective and only get the books that I will actually have time to read.

I guess I just keep pluggin' away and maybe someday surprise myself and find that I have no books left on my To Read shelf.

Facebook Can Be Educational

I've become a fan of Correct Spelling, Punctuation and Apostrophe Use's on Facebook.

Writing an Effective Resume

As a recruiter, I'm always amazed (though I shouldn't be anymore), at how poor some people write and how little thought they put into their resumes. A resume is your marketing tool -- to market yourself to a potential employer. It's not your life story.

As a young adult, with little experience, it may seem like an impossible task to put together a resume that has more than your name and address. It's not.

As a teenager or young adult, you probably have very little experience; both life experience and work experience. So what can you put on a resume?

1. Your Contact Info should be kept simple.

• Name


• Address


• Phone number (including cell phone if you have one)


• Email address - get a Yahoo or Gmail address.

2. The Objective Statement is optional. Most people state in their Objective Statement what they want, like To obtain an entry level position in a fast growing company. DON'T tell them what you want. Tell them what you can offer. But keep it simple. How about Ambitious, highly intelligent, go-getter who is ready to take on any challenge thrown her way.

3. Education is where you detail your educational history. Being in high school will make this fairly easy. Just list the name of your school, its city, your dates of enrollment, expected graduation date and GPA (if you know it). If you're in college, list similar information including your major and areas of concentration.

4. Your Work Experience comes next. Include your job title, the company, its location, and your dates of employment. This even includes the paper route you had when you were 10. I would suggest you also list any volunteer work you've done. Recruiters like people who volunteer!

For each job, list a couple of bullet points that explain your work and what you did.Did you take on extra responsibility? Did you help plan the team holiday party? Did you design a database with contact info for your boss?

5. You can also include Special Projects that you may have worked on. Include what your role was in the project.

6. Miscellaneous is that catch-all portion of the resume where you can include clubs and organizations you belong to, any special awards you've received and also any special skills you have, i.e. Level 5 Knot Maker or Eagle Scout or Ruby on Rails programmer.

7. There are a couple of ways you can go with the References portion of your resume. It is perfectly acceptable to just say "References Available Upon Request", but if you need to fill up space then you can actually list your references. It's recommended to have 3 references. At least one should be a teacher or manager from one of your jobs. BE SURE TO ASK THEIR PERMISSION TO USE THEM AS A REFERENCE before listing them!

If you list your references, include their name, title, company/affiliation name, email and/or phone number.

Now you have all the components for your resume. IT SHOULD NOT BE MORE THAN ONE PAGE!! For most of you, you'll be lucky if you have a full page worth of information. Play around with the font; size and type. Make the margins bigger so that your page looks fuller.

Lastly, have someone (or several people) proofread your resume. Most high schools and colleges have Career Placement Centers and people there whose job it is to help you with your resume. Have your English teacher proofread it. The more eyes on it and the more feedback you have, the better. Or just send it to me Beth Fox and I'll be happy to proofread it and offer suggestions.

Miscellaneous Thoughts

• Use spellcheck


• Use bullets


• Use Action Verbs  
  
  
• Don't be cutsie

Here are some sites that may help you with putting together your resume.
Job Search  
CollegeGrad.com  
Yahoo  

Grammatical Transgressions

I get a lot of emails from many different types of people. Teachers, engineers, CEOs, Marketing VPs. You name it, I get it. The writing ranges anywhere from Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? to Ernest Hemingway. For God's sake, every email application and every word processor has a spell check. Use it! And most also have a grammar check. Use that too!!

I find that many people have a tendency to spell by ear. That is, they listen to whether it "sounds" right. So the word may sound right but it has a meaning other than the one intended. Below are what I think are the most commonly misspelled words. They are not necessarily in order except for the first one, which happens to be my biggest pet peeve.

• there, their and they're
  there = at that place (as in "over there"); their = possessive of they (as in "in their best interests); they're = contraction of they are (as in they're going to the store)




• affect and effect
  affect = to influence (as in "lack of sleep affected his test scores"); effect = to bring to pass (as in "her speech had a huge effect on the outcome of the vote")



• weather and whether
  weather = the state of the atmosphere; whether = if



• stationary and stationery
  stationary = not moving; stationery = paper and envelopes



• capital and capitol
  capital = a financial resource (as in "she had enough capital to open her own business"); capitol = a building in which a state legislative body meets



• principal and principle
  principal = chief or primary; principle = a fundamental truth or governing law of conduct



• council and counsel
  council = a legislative body; counsel = advice
  
• it's and its
  it's = contraction of it is(as in "it's a nice day"); its = possessive form of it (as in "the horse has its saddle on")
  
• to and too
  to = motion or direction; too = also. If you can put also in to replace the word, then it should be too
  
• lead and led
  The past tense of the verb lead drops the a (as in "I will lead the horse to water today, but yesterday I led the horses to water")
  
• who's and whose
  who's = contraction for who is (as in "Who's knocking at the door?"); whose = possessive form of who (as in "Whose shoe is this?")

Putting That Civics Class to Good Use

With the Congressman Mark Foley scandal   still in the recesses of our not-so-distant memories, I am going to go out on a limb in suggesting an internship as a Congressional or Senate Page. Thinking about this in your Freshman year in high school is none too soon. Your grades need to be good and it would be a good idea to be doing some volunteer work in some sort of political arena. You may not have a burning desire to go into politics at this time but the summer or school year you spend as a page will give you great insight into how the government operates and will give you some great contacts for later use in your career....whatever that may be.

For more than 100 years, messengers known as Pages have served the United States Congress. Pages are appointed and sponsored by a member of Congress and must be high school juniors and at least sixteen years old. Pages serve principally as messengers. They carry documents between the House and Senate, Members’ offices, committees, and the Library of Congress. They also prepare the House and Senate chambers for each day’s business by distributing the Congressional Record and other documents related to the day’s agenda, assist in the cloakrooms and chambers, and when Congress is in session, sit near the dais where they may be summoned by Members for assistance. In the House, pages also raise and lower the flag on the roof of the Capitol.

For more information on the duties, salaries and requirements to be a page go to the US Senate Reference page .


Contact your Senator’s office   for more information on becoming a Senate Page.

And if you really want the inside scoop on what it's like to be a Congressional Page, the Congressional Page Association   website has some basic information on what it's like to be a Page. I most enjoyed reading the Page Memories   portion of the site. It made me wish I had known about this when I was in high school. I most definitely would have applied for it.

Pet Peeves

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Nursing School -- Getting in is half the battle

When I was going to school to get my teaching credential, I was a single mom with minimal financial resources. In order to conserve funds, I shared a house with another single mom who was going to nursing school. I have never seen anyone work as hard or be stressed out as much as she was. The nursing program was very competitive and everyone was trying to be at the top of their class. Yes, I worked hard as well; studying different methodologies and putting together lesson plans as a student teacher. But this woman was going through something far more intense than I could imagine. So if you are considering nursing as a profession, I would strongly recommend doing some informational interviews with new nurses (someone who is just a couple of years out of school), so that they can share their experiences, not only about their actual work as a nurse, but, also, their experience in nursing school.

U.S. nursing schools turned away 42,866 qualified applicants from baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs in 2006 due to an insufficient number of faculty, clinical sites, classroom space, clinical preceptors, and budget constraints.

There's no getting around it -- it's tough to get into a good nursing program. Perhaps you should first figure out if Nursing is the career you want to pursue. Chatterbean  has a short, online quiz you can take to see if, indeed, this is the career for you.

The most important thing is to make sure you actually want to be a nurse. Use the Internet to research as much as you can about this profession. Registered Nurses  are projected to create the second largest number of new jobs among all occupations! The US Dept of Labor has some excellent data on training, earnings, and occupational outlook that you should check out.


Johnson & Johnson  has a website that gives you an overview of nursing.

Another helpful site is collegeboard.com . In fact, they have information on LOTS of information on LOTS of occupations.

No matter what profession you are interested in, LEARN HOW TO USE THE INTERNET AND LEARN HOW TO RESEARCH! I can't stress this enough. Learn how to do Boolean searches. Try different key word searches. You might do a search on "nursing programs" and then, while reading, you find another term that may be more effective in your research so you do a search on "preparing for nursing school" or "nursing careers". Just doing a search on "nurse association" will give you a plethora of websites; from the American Nurses Association  to the Emergency Nurses Association . And when you find this information, make sure you follow up by sending emails to associations or hospitals or colleges and asking them for even more information.

Good luck!

Careers in Science

I did a presentation to a group of high school girls a few weeks back, who are focusing on "non-traditional" subjects such as science and math. I find it sad that these two areas are considered "non traditional" for girls.

But let's not dwell on that. Though my presentation to the girls was about general skills needed in the work environment, I took some time to research what kinds of careers there are for science and math majors. Needless to say, there are way too many to list here. But here are some that caught my eye.

Chemistry Careers: Beyond Bunsen Burners   is a Job Web site that gives some great advice on what kinds of jobs are available for chemistry majors. I like their advice on getting a comprehensive education in order to make the most of their chemistry major. The career potential is huge!

Computational Physics Grads Make Games Work   is another Job Web site. Interesting spin on combining sciences and making video games.

There are only 13 Graduate Athletic Training Programs   in the U.S. There are many undergraduate athletic training programs but you can also major in sports medicine, kinesiology and other like subjects and still be accepted into the graduate program. Athletic trainers work with college and professional sports teams as well as with private medical programs.

The American Institute of Biological Sciences   has a great website on what careers are available to Biology majors. Things like Research, Environmental Studies, and Healthcare, are just a few of the areas you can pursue. This website also gives you ideas on combining areas of study in order to pursue some very unique and interesting careers.

Computer Forensics   is a quickly growing field of study. There are a lot of crimes being committed that have computers involved. Providing the government or civil authorities with technological evidence is extremely important. This is certainly a high growth career field.

Audiologists   will find plenty of work helping aging boomers retain their hearing. Not only can you work in a clinic but once you have established yourself in the field, there are companies that will want to hire you to help them build better hearing devices.

To find out more about some of the best careers in 2007 go to U.S. News & World Report  : and see what the future holds! And then try doing some searchs, using key words such as "chemistry careers" or "biology careers" or "math careers". You get the idea.

10 Things Employers Want You To Learn In College

I came across a great book that talks about SKILLS that you should have by the time you enter the workforce. I'm not talking about academic information like knowing all the state capitals or Algebraic equations. I'm talking about things like good communication skills, influencing people, being able to use Excel and more.

As a recruiter who works in the Bay Area near San Francisco  California, I interview people for jobs all the time. I've also been a manager at some very prestigious companies such as, Apple, WebTV, and Microsoft. I have seen firsthand how ill prepared young people are who come into the workplace. PhD's from Berkeley, MIT and Stanford and MBAs from Harvard are some of the smartest people around, yet some of them can't communicate their ideas or know how to manage their time!

10 Things Employers Want You To Learn In College  is a wonderful book with a list of skills  that you need to be successful in your career.

I'm realistic. I doubt if you will actually buy this book or take the time to check it out at the library. So I'm going to give it to you in bits and pieces and hope you think about these things as you're working on your career plan. But I do hope you get this book and use it as a guide and reference. If you do learn these skills, you will have a much better chance of getting the jobs you want and moving more quickly on your career path than someone who has the same academic background as you. In fact, I'll put myself out on a limb here by saying that , if you embrace and utilize these skills, you will probably impress your co-workers and bosses enough that you may surpass your colleagues who match your academic achievements. Think about it!

Here are the 10 Skills Groups:

Establishing a Work Ethic
Developing Physical Skills
Communicating Verbally
Communicating in Writing
Working Directly with People
Influencing People
Gathering Information
Using Quantitative Tools
Asking and Answering the Right Questions
Solving Problems

More to follow on each of these groups.

A Sports Scholarship Story

I know a great many high school students who play on sports teams. Half of them have dreams of going to the Pros, whether it be the NHL or NFL, NBA or into MLB. They have all heard stories of high school students getting "full rides" to Division I colleges or being drafted into the Pros right out of high school. Yes, that does happen sometimes, but the chances of making it to the majors are 1 in 50,000. Walter Leavy wrote an insightful article  for Ebony magazine back in 1998 about his own personal experience with trying to make it to the Pros. It's a short article, well worth reading.

I was at my local Starbucks the other morning, waiting for my appointment to show up, when I picked up the local newspaper, The Palo Alto Daily News and read a very interesting story  by one of their columnists, Jason Katz. The article answers the question about full ride scholarships.

Always a good idea to have a Plan B ;-)