Today I am applying for a new job. The application is hard enough. It's pages long and they want my full work history from the time I was 16 years old. Complete with addresses and phone numbers. I worked my way through college, so I have quite the work history of summer jobs and christmas break temporary work.
After the application comes the job interview. I have rarely done well on any job interview. The question that gets me the most is, "What is your weakest skill when you are on the job." I'm sorry, but what is the point of this question? I'm sure that it's to find out who is the best bullshitter of the lot. You cant tell the truth on this question, so you have to package it with some spin and the same type of political half truths the politicians use.
The current job interview practice requires you to package and present yourself according to the same principles politicians use to get elected. Ack!
Every year the special phrases and considerations for resumes and job interviews change and you have to go through all this work to keep up and do you know what employers say, "we still aren't sure how to pick out who will be the best employee."
Well I don't know either, but I can say the entire process stresses me out so much that only apply for the jobs that I absolutely can't pass up. Maybe that's how it should be, but it would be nice if the system was a little more user friendly and a little less spin.
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Saturday, November 11, 2006
Plants or poison?
My neighbors are on a rampage. A rampage to have neat orderly little golf putting green lawns. They are out there nearly every day spraying chemicals and mowing and trimming and pulling.... you know. I can't say that my neighborhood is remotely quiet, even in the rain, the noise from yard machines abounds.
On my block my family is known as the 'trashy' neighbors. We are the only ones without the putting green lawn. Also, due to the wind patterns, most of the neighborhood trash and recycle ends up in our yard. No one has offered to come help pick their trash out of my yard, but they are happy to call me trashy.
Has anyone ever read the label on Weed N Feed? It says use only 2 times a year. 2 times. You know why 2 times? Because the stuff is incredibly poisonous and noxious when it enters the environment. The herbicides kill and poison the water and the fertilizers cause toxic algae blooms in the water.
Now I am a little confused here about the rush to have your lawn look like Martha Stewart's or at least like everyone elses on the block. I thought we lived in America where we were free to be ourselves, but I guess that doesn't apply to lawns.
I like to volunteer, none of neighbors do. They are too busy maintaining their lawns. Hour after hour, day after day. I don't know where they find the time. I barely have time to mow mine once and a while. Forget the weeding and primping.
Wouldn't the world be a better place if we found something to do with all that time spent all lawns? But then I guess everyone needs a hobby.
My hobby next spring is going to be finding native plants that I can grow in my yard that don't require all this poison, fertilizer and maintenance. Maybe a few days of back breaking labor can reduce all the rest of the labor involved the rest of the year. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going crazy about it. Just the back yard, which is just no fun to hang out in. Not to mention that we have lots of wild life that likes to hang out in the backyard and I'd like to encourage that wildlife to stay.
When we moved into our house there were butterflies, preying mantis, grasshoppers, frogs, huge dragonflies, hummingbirds and many other critters that went unseen this 4th summer after our house purchase. I had stalked croakers and kidnapped them from my brothers, only to find, only the male frogs croak. I created a wonderful froggy bachelor pad in my back yard. I was disappointed by the lack of tadpoles in my pond. Well I'll try again next year.
I also found out that the frogs favorite homes are under the fall leaves. I had raked them all up in my vain attempt to plant a lawn in the back yard and the frogs left. The leaves are back now. Luckily the tree had some left.
The dilemma of a yard is that you don't want it to look like an abandoned vacant lot and tall dry grass is a fire hazard as well. Another dilemma is finding someone who sells your native plants.
I went searching today and found a native plant nursery! My online search was disappointing. I guess pictures are difficult to afford and post on websites. I guess I'm off to the nursery next week when they open again.
Think about what you'd like to see in your yard. A picture perfect putting green is as desolate as a desert for wildlife, if you want to see some critters, be a great American and just say no to being like everyone else.
On my block my family is known as the 'trashy' neighbors. We are the only ones without the putting green lawn. Also, due to the wind patterns, most of the neighborhood trash and recycle ends up in our yard. No one has offered to come help pick their trash out of my yard, but they are happy to call me trashy.
Has anyone ever read the label on Weed N Feed? It says use only 2 times a year. 2 times. You know why 2 times? Because the stuff is incredibly poisonous and noxious when it enters the environment. The herbicides kill and poison the water and the fertilizers cause toxic algae blooms in the water.
Now I am a little confused here about the rush to have your lawn look like Martha Stewart's or at least like everyone elses on the block. I thought we lived in America where we were free to be ourselves, but I guess that doesn't apply to lawns.
I like to volunteer, none of neighbors do. They are too busy maintaining their lawns. Hour after hour, day after day. I don't know where they find the time. I barely have time to mow mine once and a while. Forget the weeding and primping.
Wouldn't the world be a better place if we found something to do with all that time spent all lawns? But then I guess everyone needs a hobby.
My hobby next spring is going to be finding native plants that I can grow in my yard that don't require all this poison, fertilizer and maintenance. Maybe a few days of back breaking labor can reduce all the rest of the labor involved the rest of the year. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going crazy about it. Just the back yard, which is just no fun to hang out in. Not to mention that we have lots of wild life that likes to hang out in the backyard and I'd like to encourage that wildlife to stay.
When we moved into our house there were butterflies, preying mantis, grasshoppers, frogs, huge dragonflies, hummingbirds and many other critters that went unseen this 4th summer after our house purchase. I had stalked croakers and kidnapped them from my brothers, only to find, only the male frogs croak. I created a wonderful froggy bachelor pad in my back yard. I was disappointed by the lack of tadpoles in my pond. Well I'll try again next year.
I also found out that the frogs favorite homes are under the fall leaves. I had raked them all up in my vain attempt to plant a lawn in the back yard and the frogs left. The leaves are back now. Luckily the tree had some left.
The dilemma of a yard is that you don't want it to look like an abandoned vacant lot and tall dry grass is a fire hazard as well. Another dilemma is finding someone who sells your native plants.
I went searching today and found a native plant nursery! My online search was disappointing. I guess pictures are difficult to afford and post on websites. I guess I'm off to the nursery next week when they open again.
Think about what you'd like to see in your yard. A picture perfect putting green is as desolate as a desert for wildlife, if you want to see some critters, be a great American and just say no to being like everyone else.
Dont Destroy the Public School System
We all have heard the cries for school reform. We all want to have good schools for our kids and we want accountability for our tax dollars.
What many of your may not be aware of as that some of the current attempts are not really to rectify our situation, it is an attempt to completely dismantle the public school system so private schooling can be put in place.
There are different reasons why this is the goal of different groups. Corporate businessmen feel that private business can always achieve better results cheaper than government run programs. Right wing religious groups want their religions taught in school and this is their way to make sure their child goes to a school focused on their religion without any outside influences. Other groups are just fed up with the seemingly waste of their tax dollars to underfunded poorly operating schools.
I was watching a program the other day and they said private business and the market economy is fantastic at efficiencies but inequities commonly abound. So do we really believe the destruction of the public school system will correct the existing inequities or create new ones?
The separation of religion and state was expressed at the founding of our country and I agree with it. I won't express more than that at this time.
As for poor spending of our money, the best way to rectify that is involvement. Parents who know what is going on in our schools, keep our schools from floundering. People who speak up and complain to politicians when big bonuses are paid to board members, consultants and fad teaching techniques, have better schools. People who routinely check on their child's progress and consult with their child's teacher, have more successful kids and better schools.
It's very hard these days. Our economy has shifted from 1 working parent to 2 working parents and time is precious. But lack of involvement, creates the ability for people to drain away our tax dollars. Look into text book prices and complain about those costs. Some text books are very over priced and the contracts go to the friends of board members or the CEO relative of the superintendent.
Some of the school improvement laws have me doubting that these laws were passed for any school improvement what-so-ever. Personally, I think schools are now being set up to fail so there will be valid reason to destroy them.
Imagine a world with no public schools. What ever social group, economic group, racial group, regional group that you live in, will be the exact same group your child goes to school with. The rich will attend schools with children of the rich, the religious only with those of their religion, the children of CEO's will attend pro-business schools that only teach the current corporate dogma. All extremists would now be able to send their kids to the school of their choice that accepts their extremism. Whites would go to schools with whites, blacks with blacks, etc... The poor will have to beat down doors to get 'scholarships' to good schools or settle for what ever they can afford or is closest. The same could be said for the middle class as good schools will be very expensive.
Where will diversity in our schools exist? Will your child have a new immigrant in their class, someone of another religion, or someone of a difference socioeconomic class? Or will everyone, look, dress and believe exactly the same things? How will anyone gain empathy or understand what the world is like for other people if they only ever know their own group?
Think of the events that shaped your school years. I'll share some of mine to give you some ideas. In 4th grade we had Vietnamese students who were war refuges. They were tormented by their past. All of us had great concern, we asked the teachers why they were so sad. The teacher told us about the war. We had great empathy for these poor kids and an understanding of why war was awful. My school had quite a few poor kids and I was one of them. The middle class kids gave us a very hard time. We weren't like them. We weren't enrolled in scouts, we didn't go to summer camp, we didn't have family vacations on school holidays, we frequently didn't play sports or instruments because our parents couldn't afford the expense or give us a ride home after school. But among these intolerant kids was a beautiful Asian girl named Susan. Susan had the most beautiful spirit out of any kid I had known in grade school.
Susan always gave a hand up to other kids and refused to join in the teasing. Would your child meet a Susan if all the schools were privatized? Would Susan had even developed her wonderful nature if she had been raised in an Asian only school and never sympathized with the downtrodden poor kids of a middle class school?
Do we really want a new school system to place emphasis on segregation by race, class, religion and political beliefs? I'm not saying it would be absolute, because it wouldn't. There would be a few schools that weren't the same, but I doubt there would be many. People wouldn't have time to drive their kids all across town to go to the school they want them to go to. How much choice would small town people have? Could you imagine being the only person of a different religion in a small town and they convert the only public school into a religious school different from your own? Do you go to that school or try to somehow home school your child?
And what about the really awful parents who would choose to 'home school' their kids and pocket the voucher money? What kind of an education would those kids get? How far behind would they be on standardized testing before they were forced into attending some other type of school and what type of school would they then be forced into attending? What about abusive parents? Will it be as easy for teachers to spot and prevent abuse if the school is based on some type of belief system where it's OK or parental pressure tells them to but out?
What are the possibilities? I don't think they have been well thought out and they should be well thought out before any more laws and systems are passed.
Also we need to remember that laws can't fix things. They can't make people care more about your child's education. Laws can't make people better teachers and laws can't be flexible and understanding like people can.
I think people are the key to our education reform, not more laws.
What many of your may not be aware of as that some of the current attempts are not really to rectify our situation, it is an attempt to completely dismantle the public school system so private schooling can be put in place.
There are different reasons why this is the goal of different groups. Corporate businessmen feel that private business can always achieve better results cheaper than government run programs. Right wing religious groups want their religions taught in school and this is their way to make sure their child goes to a school focused on their religion without any outside influences. Other groups are just fed up with the seemingly waste of their tax dollars to underfunded poorly operating schools.
I was watching a program the other day and they said private business and the market economy is fantastic at efficiencies but inequities commonly abound. So do we really believe the destruction of the public school system will correct the existing inequities or create new ones?
The separation of religion and state was expressed at the founding of our country and I agree with it. I won't express more than that at this time.
As for poor spending of our money, the best way to rectify that is involvement. Parents who know what is going on in our schools, keep our schools from floundering. People who speak up and complain to politicians when big bonuses are paid to board members, consultants and fad teaching techniques, have better schools. People who routinely check on their child's progress and consult with their child's teacher, have more successful kids and better schools.
It's very hard these days. Our economy has shifted from 1 working parent to 2 working parents and time is precious. But lack of involvement, creates the ability for people to drain away our tax dollars. Look into text book prices and complain about those costs. Some text books are very over priced and the contracts go to the friends of board members or the CEO relative of the superintendent.
Some of the school improvement laws have me doubting that these laws were passed for any school improvement what-so-ever. Personally, I think schools are now being set up to fail so there will be valid reason to destroy them.
Imagine a world with no public schools. What ever social group, economic group, racial group, regional group that you live in, will be the exact same group your child goes to school with. The rich will attend schools with children of the rich, the religious only with those of their religion, the children of CEO's will attend pro-business schools that only teach the current corporate dogma. All extremists would now be able to send their kids to the school of their choice that accepts their extremism. Whites would go to schools with whites, blacks with blacks, etc... The poor will have to beat down doors to get 'scholarships' to good schools or settle for what ever they can afford or is closest. The same could be said for the middle class as good schools will be very expensive.
Where will diversity in our schools exist? Will your child have a new immigrant in their class, someone of another religion, or someone of a difference socioeconomic class? Or will everyone, look, dress and believe exactly the same things? How will anyone gain empathy or understand what the world is like for other people if they only ever know their own group?
Think of the events that shaped your school years. I'll share some of mine to give you some ideas. In 4th grade we had Vietnamese students who were war refuges. They were tormented by their past. All of us had great concern, we asked the teachers why they were so sad. The teacher told us about the war. We had great empathy for these poor kids and an understanding of why war was awful. My school had quite a few poor kids and I was one of them. The middle class kids gave us a very hard time. We weren't like them. We weren't enrolled in scouts, we didn't go to summer camp, we didn't have family vacations on school holidays, we frequently didn't play sports or instruments because our parents couldn't afford the expense or give us a ride home after school. But among these intolerant kids was a beautiful Asian girl named Susan. Susan had the most beautiful spirit out of any kid I had known in grade school.
Susan always gave a hand up to other kids and refused to join in the teasing. Would your child meet a Susan if all the schools were privatized? Would Susan had even developed her wonderful nature if she had been raised in an Asian only school and never sympathized with the downtrodden poor kids of a middle class school?
Do we really want a new school system to place emphasis on segregation by race, class, religion and political beliefs? I'm not saying it would be absolute, because it wouldn't. There would be a few schools that weren't the same, but I doubt there would be many. People wouldn't have time to drive their kids all across town to go to the school they want them to go to. How much choice would small town people have? Could you imagine being the only person of a different religion in a small town and they convert the only public school into a religious school different from your own? Do you go to that school or try to somehow home school your child?
And what about the really awful parents who would choose to 'home school' their kids and pocket the voucher money? What kind of an education would those kids get? How far behind would they be on standardized testing before they were forced into attending some other type of school and what type of school would they then be forced into attending? What about abusive parents? Will it be as easy for teachers to spot and prevent abuse if the school is based on some type of belief system where it's OK or parental pressure tells them to but out?
What are the possibilities? I don't think they have been well thought out and they should be well thought out before any more laws and systems are passed.
Also we need to remember that laws can't fix things. They can't make people care more about your child's education. Laws can't make people better teachers and laws can't be flexible and understanding like people can.
I think people are the key to our education reform, not more laws.
Friday, November 10, 2006
I'm not sure what to say!
So here it is 9pm at night, I had all these wonderful thoughts racing around in my head and once I finally get a moments peace, i can no longer find them. I have terrible writers block. Wonderful thoughts will be organized and dancing in my brain and the minute I try to speak them or write them, they disapear like ghosts in front of a camera.
Maybe, just maybe, I can get this blog to work.
So now the dilema. Do I tell you about myself and let you get an image about me, or do I not so that you are not biased while reading my blog. Hmmm.....
I guess first and foremost, I'll apologize for my occasional weird word usage. Due to my previous writers block, I find that I often 'lose' the word I was about to say and my brain finds some slightly comparable word and insists I use even if I dont feel it really fits. Kind of like a forced and slightly misguided Thesaurus. The other thing to apologize for, is that my keyboard is a little messed up, so I apologize about any typos.
So I guess I wont say too much about myself right now, maybe I will let it out in little bits, or maybe I wont. Still not sure.
My first RANT will be about parents. I took my son to a food & play place today. I wont say which. My son loves the place, he usually has a great time. I used to have a great time with him, but it's getting very challenging.
Today there were lots of older kids running like mad knocking down little children and aunties left and right while they played tag with no parents in sight. Everyone was telling these kids to get down, be careful, stop hitting, etc... Never did find out whose kids these were in order to ask their parents help.
Second, this mother with 4 or 5 or 6 children, had a little little boy and a bunch of significantly older children. She kept wandering off with the older children and just leaving the little guy standing there wondering where she went. He finally went into hysterics and panicked because he couldn't find his Mommy. She finally came back to him and refused to pick him up or comfort him. His other siblings were a little upset by this and asked why, "because he's just fine," she said. Oh great, leave your child to panic and then give them no comfort. 2 year olds do not understand being left alone in a strange place no matter how much you tell them everything is OK. I kept an eye on the boy the rest of the day and smiled at him as often as possible.
When her son grows up and has absolutely no closeness or connection to her, I wonder if she will ever figure out why. And TRUST, trust is built on how you treat your child. I doubt this kid will ever trust his mom in entirety. What a shame.
Maybe, just maybe, I can get this blog to work.
So now the dilema. Do I tell you about myself and let you get an image about me, or do I not so that you are not biased while reading my blog. Hmmm.....
I guess first and foremost, I'll apologize for my occasional weird word usage. Due to my previous writers block, I find that I often 'lose' the word I was about to say and my brain finds some slightly comparable word and insists I use even if I dont feel it really fits. Kind of like a forced and slightly misguided Thesaurus. The other thing to apologize for, is that my keyboard is a little messed up, so I apologize about any typos.
So I guess I wont say too much about myself right now, maybe I will let it out in little bits, or maybe I wont. Still not sure.
My first RANT will be about parents. I took my son to a food & play place today. I wont say which. My son loves the place, he usually has a great time. I used to have a great time with him, but it's getting very challenging.
Today there were lots of older kids running like mad knocking down little children and aunties left and right while they played tag with no parents in sight. Everyone was telling these kids to get down, be careful, stop hitting, etc... Never did find out whose kids these were in order to ask their parents help.
Second, this mother with 4 or 5 or 6 children, had a little little boy and a bunch of significantly older children. She kept wandering off with the older children and just leaving the little guy standing there wondering where she went. He finally went into hysterics and panicked because he couldn't find his Mommy. She finally came back to him and refused to pick him up or comfort him. His other siblings were a little upset by this and asked why, "because he's just fine," she said. Oh great, leave your child to panic and then give them no comfort. 2 year olds do not understand being left alone in a strange place no matter how much you tell them everything is OK. I kept an eye on the boy the rest of the day and smiled at him as often as possible.
When her son grows up and has absolutely no closeness or connection to her, I wonder if she will ever figure out why. And TRUST, trust is built on how you treat your child. I doubt this kid will ever trust his mom in entirety. What a shame.
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