My definition of education continues to evolve and when I saw this great video from SkillShare on Amber Rae’s blog, it changed my view just a little bit more. Check out the awesome work SkillShare will be doing in your community and sign up to help them do it!

Cons of going back to school during a recession/economic crisis/whatever you’d like to call it

• It’s more difficult to get a loan, especially if you will have to take out private loans
• Interest rates are out of control
• If you’re collecting unemployment, the government has a great deal of control over how many classes you can take and what time you can go to class…if you don’t tell them about it, you might end with without your unemployment compensation benefits

Pros of going back to school

• Economic crisis is temporary…your education is not (EduDegree)
• It will give you a competitive edge when the job market does bounce back
• It may be the only time that you will have the time and/or motivation to pursue higher education

My Take

If you wouldn’t go back to school under normal circumstances, you shouldn’t do it now. Once you have your undergraduate degree, higher education should be something your pursue because you enjoy it, because you’re passionate about it and because you have a genuine desire to learn. It’s a waste of your time and money if you’re only there to try and advance your career. Having a competitive edge means more than just having a degree, it means having an understanding of an industry and a passion for it. Sooner or later the employer who hired you for your graduate degree will catch on.

In the end, the pros and the cons don’t matter. If you are passionate about an industry and excited about learning, then graduate school is for you, regardless of the economic situation. It’s a personal decision before it’s an economic decision.

You may notice, I’ve put an e-mail subscription option in the side bar. You can now subscribe to Chasing Education so you don’t miss any of my posts!

Regardless of whether I’m ambitious or just going through a quarter-life crisis, I’m frustrated. There is not enough time in the day to work, read, write, study, exercise, cook, clean. I have spent so much time trying to master the art of time management, but I fear that there are some things that time management simply cannot fix. Sometimes you just have to sit back and for just a few moments live like there is not a care in the world. I can’t even remember the days when there was not a care in the world. Luckily, my parents did get some photo documentation of these days.

Unfortunately, I spend no time at all climbing on couches anymore.  Most of my time, in fact, is spent doing this…

So this is my reality…

Working.…while I am certain the experience that I am gaining from my various odd jobs is invaluable and I do enjoy doing these jobs, I am certain I would have a lot more free time and a lot more money, if I could have just one job that paid well. (Oh Economy…I hate you.)
Studying…I can’t complain one bit here. I’m the one who filled out the application and enrolled in these classes and I want this degree (and possibly more degrees)!
Cooking…a necessary evil that I would enjoy so much more if it weren’t so time consuming
Cleaning…a necessary evil that I simply don’t enjoy
Exercising…the one hobby I won’t put on the back burner, because I will run a half marathon if it kills me. (Well, maybe not if it kills me.)
Debating…whether I want to take on more responsibility (e.g. become the Public Relations Chair of the UCF chapter of NSMH)

My fantasy…

Working…one job at the university where I can pop on over to class as necessary, while still making enough money to pay all of the bills and buy dresses, a MacBook Pro and PhotoShop. Or…maybe people could just start reading my blog and I could sell some advertising space or maybe trade some advertising space for a MacBook Pro and some dinner. I’m easier to please than I appear to be.
Free time…unlimited amount of it that I could spent reading books, doing art projects, being the Public Relations Chair for NSMH, taking up photography and photo editing, blogging and decorating my apartment and yoga lots and lots of yoga.
A clean apartment…where everything has a place and we live in organizational bliss. (Because I would be able to afford storage space with all of the money I’m making at my job at the university or blogging–ha!) I wouldn’t want to have to put a lot of effort into it either, so maybe I could afford a magic want or Merry Maids or something.
Studying…but more research and less chatting on discussion boards about unemployment number and sustainability in human resources management. I want to research the food revolution and make plans to change the world.

Am I being too ambitious here or am I just trying to find myself? I’d like to think that I have a pretty good grasp on what I want in life. After all, applying to graduate school is a pretty big investment (both in terms of effort and finances) for it to be some sort of experiment.

To address my spread-too-thin-lifestyle and simultaneous quarter-life crisis, I’ve decided to finally read In Praise of Slowness. It’s been on my to read list for quite some time and I think I need it now more than ever!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mindaugasdanys/3766009204/

I have just two more classes left before Summer semester comes to an end. I am amazed with how much I have learned in such a short amount of time. I have discussed the impact of educators on the lives of those they teach before. I had “one of those professors” this semester. Not only is he an educator, but he’s an entertainer and when you’re entertained you learn more. I learned so much, in fact, that I found myself applying the concept that I read about and discussed in class to my past and present experiences. I will spare you all a summary of the topics covered in class, but I would like to share with you a (hopefully mildly entertaining) application of that which I learned in class.

For most of my undergraduate career I worked as a customer service rep for a well-known mega-retailer. My job was to return and/or exchange products that were defective or unwanted. My job was also to ensure that these procedures were conducted according to company policy. That is, within 30 days, with a receipt, cannot be damaged, dvds, cds and computer software must be unopened and so on. Not surprisingly, customers who found themselves a week outside of the return policy or with an open dvd often became frustrated. I was not sympathetic to their frustrations. The policy is the policy, it’s written in English and Spanish on the back of the receipt and I’m not going to read it to you, because if you can’t read you probably shouldn’t be out shopping by yourself. (I may have actually said this to a customer or two…or more.) Also not surprising was that my sarcasm, passive aggressiveness and general disregard for the emotions of this company’s customers led the customers to become enraged.

Needless to say, customer rage was my favorite topic covered this semester. I saw the issue of customer rage through different (and more mature) eyes. It’s a problem that can easily be avoided when you prepare your employees who are in constant contact with your clients. A company must make it known to their contact employees that the company’s goal is happy customers. In my situation at the retailer that will remain unnamed, I was more concerned with upholding company return policies than I was about customer satisfaction. Had I been rewarded for creating happy and loyal customers, the company would have been better off and I would have been far less bitter.

Empowering employees to quickly resolve issues on their own is essential. The longer a client waits for conflict resolution, the more upset they become. The perpetuation of an unpleasant situation is what leads to rage. As a consumer, chances are you don’t get upset because of one mistake or one unpleasant employee. It’s a culmination of bad service and lack of resolution.

While learning about customer rage, what it is, how it happens and what can be done to prevent and resolve it, I read examples of exceptional companies who are making life easier for their clients and their employees. One company has allotted a $10/day budget for employees to spend on a customer who had an unpleasant situation. No need to get a manager to comp the wi-fi or send a fruit basket, the employees are empowered! Another company makes sure that none of their contact employees remain in contact with customer for more than 4 hours at a time. AMAZING! If someone had thought of that back when I was a customer service rep, I may have been a very different person today.

I’d love to hear your customer rage stories whether you were on the giving or receiving end!

a post-college Justin

This week’s wiser today Wednesday featured blogger is Justin from The Freshest Oat. So please pull up a chair, grab a [healthy] snack and enjoy the wisdom.

Academic lessons you learned in college

• When in doubt, or when having trouble, don’t beat your head against a wall, go and ask for help!
• Time management, I stopped procrastinating altogether Freshman year
• Never trust anyone – always double check your work and verify information on your own. Unfortunately a lot of people will lie and cheat to get ahead in class.
• How to study and retain the information

Lessons you wish you had learned in college

• Networking – the only contacts I made were intradepartmental. Not helpful when job hunting.
• As stupid as it may sound, how to write a basic computer program.
• I wish I had learned something more specific and more practical for the job market. My major prepared me for a lot, but not enough depth to have any expertise.

Important life lessons you learned during college

• Have time to study, but also have time to decompress or you will slowly erode to nothing
• The value of friendship
• Hard work doesn’t always yield good results, but persistence is essential to ever moving forward
• Get help when you need it. Not just text book help, but in the case of depression, etc. Because without help your work will suffer and you will slip through the cracks.

Important life lessons you wish you had learned during college

• Success is largely based on chance, not just hard work
• How to approach an interview and the interview process
• Sometimes we have a planned out course of what is supposed to happen when, sometimes that gets derailed and we have to accept the changes and move forward with a positive attitude

To me, college was a time when the greatest lessons learned were not from a textbook or a lecture, and more-so were not recognized until after college. It was a time when you could have many friends all in close proximity – meeting up wasn’t an ordeal; maintaining friendships was as easy as showing up to lunch. College was also a time when responsibilities were at a minimum. Where I went, most people lived in dorms all four years, so there were no bills to pay, just the semesterly waiver for your student loans.

It wasn’t until after I left graduate school that I realized it’s not easy meeting people. Not out in the suburbs. I also came to the sad realization that most of what I learned is now forgotten, I would really have to refresh my memory to be able to do some of the math I was capable of doing with my eyes closed before. But one thing I have fallen back on is maintaining contact with the professors who helped me through college, as now they often email me with questions based on my experience.

So now in these days of thousand dollar per month loan repayments, car payments, rent, utilities, upkeep, etc. I look back to see just how I got here, and think of the memories tied together with college and grad school. I tend to remember the good things, but I do remember some of the bad – the stress, the insomnia, the pressure. I don’t know if I could handle that intensity anymore – I now work in a different environment, with its own stress and pressure, but I feel prepared for it. I feel prepared because of what I learned how to do best in college, which is to be able to quickly and thoroughly learn something.

Thank you Justin!

my first day of college! (mum MADE me take this.)

Date of graduation: Hopefully 2011. eeeck that is too soon!

How to sing half diminished chords up and down in every inversion and every key. KILL ME ABOUT THIS. For my first two years of school, I had the craziest ear-training teacher. In fact, people started calling it fear-training.

World percussion! I’m a classical percussion major (meaning xylophones, timpani, snare drums, triangles, etc etc), but I am also exposed to so many different styles from around the world! Last week I came into my private lesson and said to my teacher, “teacher, I want to learn middle eastern drums.” And so I had a two hour lesson on the doumbek and riq. Then, today, I had conga class and learned about rhumba (did you know that rhumba and rumba are two completely different things?!) and mambo and bembé and salsa! Oh it was so fascinating. Also, a few months ago the cymbal player from the London Symphony gave a class, and I learned that London cymbal technique is about the polar opposite of American cymbal technique. I am totally dorking out right now, I’m really sorry.

Writing. I have to take one non music class per semester. My school doesn’t offer any math or science classes (I don’t know if that’s a bad thing or a good thing), but I’m in this AMAZING creative writing class. I love it. I feel sort of weird about having to write fiction, but that’s only because I’ve never done it, and it is getting more and more fun!

When in doubt, go to yoga. Self explanatory.

Things I want to learn before I graduate

How to be a girl in a male dominated field. I’m nice to the guys, they think I’m flirting. I’m mean to them, they think I’m a total bitch. I try to be one of them, I’m being too manly. WHAT GIVES?!

this is a picture of only some of the instruments used in that recital!

To play more pieces that use a lot of instruments. My sophomore year, I gave this recital that used probably around eighty different instruments- no joke! Oh, it was so much fun. I don’t know anywhere else where I could have pulled that off. Before I graduate, I really want to feel like I’ve taken full advantage of my school’s instruments and performance/rehearsal spaces.

The kicker: something I just recently learned, but am still working on sustaining- and this is one thing that I would like to pass on to everyone reading this…

No matter how much I feel liked I’ve failed in my work, or how much I feel I can to better, I will not let it affect my overall happiness. I used to really beat myself up about not doing well in auditions, or not playing my best in a concert… I would tell myself that I didn’t deserve to enjoy something because I didn’t do well in something else. And I would do silly things like reconsider my career plans because I didn’t play well in a class or something.  It was unfair and unproductive (maybe it was productive for my playing, but not productive for myself). A conversation with my friend Josh, and a Ben Folds song made me realize that if I’m always going to try to be the best at everything, I’ll never be happy with who I am or my accomplishments (that song, by the way, is called, “There’s always someone cooler than you.”). That’s not to say that I shouldn’t always try my best- but, it’s possible to do that and not let the outcomes affect my happiness.

Thank you Molly! This was absolutely enlightening, charming and entertaining. I hope to you have you back for more guest blogging soon!

-L

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ijames/ / CC BY 2.0

We’ve all have had them. Well…I hope that we all have had them.

memorable professors

The reasons that they were memorable differ. However, at various times throughout your life you’ll be reminded of the lessons you learned and the memorable professors you learned them from.

Some of my favorites include…

a high-energy, absolutely hilarious business law professor. His mission was for everyone to succeed in his class and to actually learn something while succeeding. He may have given away the occasional answer to a multiple choice question or two on test day. He made everyone laugh which, in turn, made everyone remember what they learned through laughter. Business law was the only college class for which I still have my notes!

a young PhD student who felt my pain. My last semester in college I has to take the infamous capstone class which required one long, stressful and complicated project. A few of my teammates abandoned ship when I needed them the most. I emailed my professor in a panic at nearly midnight on a week night. He called me within 5 minutes (despite the fact that he was home with his wife and children). He told me not to panic and that we would rectify the situation.  Maybe a caring professor (or boss) is not a “real world” experience, but the world would surely be a better place (at least for college students) if it had more caring educators and employers.

a young go-getter who pushed her students to find their inner creative genius and use it in combination with typical business skills (i.e. budgeting, planning, marketing, advertising). I did my best work in that class. In academics, there is no better feeling that taking a step back and admiring your work. A professor who pushes you to do the kind of work that your future employers will be impressed with, is a memorable professor.

Which professor do you remember or which professor will you remember?

]]> http://chasingeducation.com/2010/01/remember-them-every-so-often/feed/ 3 http://chasingeducation.com/2010/01/wiser-today/ http://chasingeducation.com/2010/01/wiser-today/#comments Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:00:08 +0000 L http://chasingeducation.com/?p=530

Christina at Lights. Camera. Drama.

(Holy. Blog. Envy.) (Love Christina’s blog like whoa!)

Year of college graduation: 2009

(Congrats on your graduation Christina!)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cleopold73/ / CC BY 2.0

I asked some of the great bloggers at 20-something-bloggers to help me with the brainstorming and Amie handed me a perfect title for this series of guest blogs. And so, it is with great excitement that I present to you:

Wiser Today

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ektogamat/ / CC BY 2.0

Stories of what you’ve learned and what you wish you would have learned sooner. Whether you’re a college graduate, a college student or you’re just learning your lessons from life, you’re wiser today than you were yesterday and you’ll be wiser tomorrow.

If you are interested in participating, contact me as chasingeducation@gmail.com.

If you have suggestions as to how to make this series more interesting, comment!

The first post should be up in the next day or two–get excited!

I don’t know if I will always remember you. Truth be told, you were relatively uneventful. (That is, except for the sweet handbags that accompanied you.)

I suppose that if I ever become a famous blogger, I will remember you for being the year I started blogging. You might also be remembered as the year I decided to go back to school [but then sort of wussed out temporarily].

Don’t feel bad, 2009, for if I ever do remember you, I’ll only have wonderful things to say.

In 2009…

Kenobi turned 1.

Eric and I turned 2, 23 and 27!

The Social Chameleon- early summer

My grandparents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary which brought the Diaz side of the family together for an intimate and absolutely lovely celebration.

Eric and I discovered our favorite restaurant The Social Chameleon.

Animal Kingdom- November '09

Arts and Crafts '09

I improved my culinary skills by making more unique dishes than I’ve ever made in an entire year.

I reunited with one of the most amazing friends I have, her husband and her beautiful baby girl. (Who is growing up way too fast, if I may add!)

I crafted and crafted and crafted! I made scrapbooks and headbands and apartment gardens.

We saw Authority Zero, Streetlight Manifesto, MC Chris, Gogol Bordello, and 311. (Side note: I saw the Rockettes with Grandma!)

I took out my nose ring and vowed to stop getting piercings. (I am clearly getting too old for this!)

I learned my lesson about handbag prices that are too good to be true. (Thanks JoJolie!)

Thank you for all the great times, 2009. And I’m sure you’re very sorry for the less pleasant moments!

Hopefully 2010 brings a more exciting farewell letter!

Love,

L