You know what? There was a time when I didn’t feel half as guilty for what I did (or didn’t do) this weekend. (There was also a time where the title “wasted” weekend would have meant…something else. I am super way too old for that time.)
The plan was to stay in all weekend. We hadn’t been home for a whole weekend since the weekend after Labor Day, with all our weekends broken up by social activities, rehearsals, family events, weddings, holidays, and the lot. It’s nice to have a great network of people that we are connected to, and I definitely have love for activity-filled days. But for semi-introverts like me and Ben, we need the occasional weekend off to recharge and regroup on life.
Things I thought I wanted to do this weekend:
Christmas cards and christmas shopping online.
Learn a little about mysql/php from a snippet of code my brother sent me that makes our family secret santa draws for us.
Make personalized holiday gifts for about 5 of my friends.
Get a few packages ready to be mailed.
Get invoices sent for a few jobs that finished up in early December.
What I actually got done this weekend:
At the last minute, my high school choir teacher invited me to come sing holiday carols at Christmas at Fenway, in about 15-degree weather, and about 10 feet away from the World Series trophies.
Christmas at Fenway, imminent snow storm, and Mr. Thomsen says, “come sing!” Get out of my PJs? Yes.
Much of the Christmas shopping online is actually done—and may not make it here before Christmas. Curse you Amazon Prime and Zappos…you have spoiled me into thinking that instant gratification is ubiquitous.
We gathered about 50+ gold bricks in Lego Marvel Superheroes, and unlocked a bunch of characters and vehicles.
This is what I stared at for most of the weekend. It was so bad I had to swap contacts for glasses, but I played through the pain. And played. And played.
I’m trying not to let the “didn’t-do-anything-useful” guilt wash over me and undo the hours of video game therapy I invested in this weekend. It was a mighty fine weekend. Especially since Ben is a little snow-obsessed, and thankfully went out about 10 times yesterday to check that things were shoveled and salted and melting—and therefore I didn’t have to.
I’m also trying to find this balance, of not having to feel apologetic to myself or to anyone when I take some time for myself. Time is also a luxury of the fortunate, and by letting the guilt play a part in defining the weekend, it seems both ungrateful for the blessings that we have and a waste of the gift that I have given to myself. So no feeling guilty. I did what I wanted because I could, and because I needed it on some level.
Onward to Monday—without guilt, and with a sense of recharge and go-get’em that I should capitalize on to get me to my next do-nothing weekend! Oh, and this week, I am making a to-do list.
As 2013 winds down to a close, I start in on the introspective hibernation period that naturally precedes any opportunity for “reboot”. I’ve been thinking a lot about the choices that got me through this past year, and what I need to be conscious of as I move into 2014, because as the saying goes, “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.”
I want to take a moment to fully admit that this introspection is the luxury of being in fortunate circumstances. Startup life is startup life, and in no way am I suggesting that I am living in poverty, or that there are life or death choices for me. However, it is fool to assume that people do not have to face quality-of-life issues at all levels of income, so this is just me trying to balance what I need for the short term vs. what I need for the long term.
Here are 3 pages that I landed on yesterday that seem to all come together to tell me what I should be thinking about in 2014.
I’m fairly sure that I don’t agree with a lot of things that Nicki Minaj stands for. But I came across this video through a series of circuitous clicks in my Facebook feed yesterday that really challenges my “don’t rock the boat” and my “accept and make-do” attitude. If I don’t start standing up for myself and what I want, then what I get is pickle juice. Check this quote out at 0:53.
“I put quality in what I do. I spend time and I spend energy and I spend effort and I spend everything I have, every fiber of my being, to give people quality… So if I turn up to a photo shoot and you got a $50 clothes budget and some sliced pickles on a motherfuckin’ board, you know what? No. I am gonna leave. Is that wrong? Wanting more for myself? Wanting people to treat me with respect? You know what? Next time, they know better. But had I accepted the pickle juice, I would be drinking pickle juice right now.”
2. Zero opportunity employers
I have spent a lot of 2013 getting paid in promises and hopes. And that is well and good, because to some extent, I accept that the connections I have made this year and the things that I have learned and the products that I have created have intrinsic value. I also understand that I am in a situation where I can afford to take promises as payment, and that is luxury. However, by accepting that I can be paid in promises at this time, am I implicitly agreeing that opportunity is only for the wealthy and fortunate? Am I supporting further employment injustice for all?
Again through circuitous Facebook clicks, I came across an opinion piece by Al Jazeera’s Sarah Kendzior called “Zero opportunity employers,” whose words hit really really close to home, even as she was talking about people in completely different circumstances:
During the recession, American companies found an effective new way to boost profits. It was called “not paying people”. “Not paying people” tends to be justified in two ways: a fake crisis (“Unfortunately, we can’t afford to pay you at this time…”) or a false promise (“Working for nearly nothing now will get you a good job later”).
Maybe in startup life, these crises are not fake, and these promises are not false. Lucky me, I am fortunate enough to be supported by family so that I can pursue these dreams. But it really highlights the fact that bootstrapping is noble for the rich and idealistic, and opportunity is nearly impossible for the poor and independent.
And then there’s this, more words about not asking for enough for myself:
Teaching, nursing, social work, childcare and other “pink collar” professions do not pay poorly because, as Slate’s Hanna Rosin argues, women “flock to less prestigious jobs”, but because jobs are considered less prestigious when they are worked by women. The jobs are not worth less – but the people who work them are supposed to be.
Although zero opportunity employers disproportionately hurt women and minorities, everyone suffers in an economy that does not value workers.
I do not want to be one that contributes to the suffering. Yet, I see no clear end to this inequity that I am perpetuating while waiting for promises to become fulfilled.
3. Crazy ants
This is by far the scariest and craziest story that I came upon yesterday, the hopeless plight of the Texans (and now other Southern states) against the Rasberry crazy ants that are plaguing the area. Piles and piles and piles of ants take over an area, drawn to sources of electricity, climbing over the dead bodies of other ants as a bridge over poison and traps that have been set up to take them out. I have never felt more afraid or helpless against something that isn’t directly affecting me…but could…one day…when these ants take over the world.
The whole piece is worth-reading, even for the bug phobic, and as I said to a friend on Facebook yesterday, this all seems like a microcosm of what is going on in our entire country, nay, the world at the present. How do we stop the massive undulating mess that we are all creating out of our inaction?
…what upsets us is “their pullulating squirming, their cohesion into a homogeneous teeming mass” and their “interminable, directionless sprouting and breeding.” That is, it’s the quantity of crazy ants that’s so destabilizing. As the American psychologist James Hillman argued, an endless swarm of bugs flattens your perception of yourself as precious and meaningful. It instantly reduces your individual consciousness to a “merely numerical or statistical level.”
This is what’s soul-crushing about crazy ants: What wafts off them is the same faintly nihilistic feeling that comes the moment you realize hammering the pound sign won’t connect you with a human being and only funnels you back to the same automated instructions.
2014. More standing up for myself and others. Less acceptance of status quo. More action. Less inaction. And fewer ants. MUCH FEWER ANTS.
It is already past noon as I am sitting here and writing this. I have already ventured out into the first mucky snow of the season, gone to a doctor’s appointment, actually asked all the questions that I had for the doctor, and refilled prescriptions. I have already returned home, researched and planned posts for EdTech Times, and edited articles that are pending. And now I am just munching chips and homemade nacho dip, and considering all my options. This is not as liberating as it sounds.
At some point, I had made the conscious decision to venture into this week with a burgeoning amount of tasks in my mind, and without a to-do list for the very first day.
WHY FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DID I THINK THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA?
I have never really been good at the to-do list. On paper, it always turned into a list of lofty aspirational goals that I had for the day, rather than a reasonable number of actionable items that would set me up for continued productivity. Every day, I would cross out one thing, and add 5 things, none of which were reasonable to complete in a day or two.
These days, I have turned to Asana to organize my life, and while I am *completely evangelical* about the institutional knowledge that it preserves for small organizations with large turnover, it has turned my life into a disjointed mess of lists that occasionally nag at me through reminders or the bright red “90 notifications” that highlights the corner of my Asana app. What does one do with 90 notifications?? I’ll tell you: you skip past the app and tell yourself, “I’ll check it later”.
So these chips are serving as the unhealthy catharsis for the paralyzing decisions I have to make about logistics, tasks, and deadlines for this week, which include such crazy questions as:
Do I haul bushels of oranges all around town today while I use my car? Will my sewing machine fit in with all those oranges? What if I need more oranges? (Long story about oranges short: I am the preventer of scurvy among all my office workspaces, and at the same time, a supporter of my high school music program. Expect oranges in December, those who work with me.)
Can I really sew 50 stuffed apples before Thursday? If so, do I bring my sewing to the office, or leave the sewing at home and sew like an elf in my free stolen evening minutes? Does the sewing count as tangible work, and is it career-advancing?
What DO I know about the Common Core? And can I articulate that by the end of next week in a post that is sure to get good traction and seem insightful and intelligent?
Do I leave my car at home tomorrow, or do I brave Cambridge parking and also pay another $20 to drive it to work? If I take the car tomorrow, can I bring oranges then?
Oh hell, it’s almost 2014 and I have invoices to write so that I can get paid. Should I do that here? Should I go to the office?
Macarons! Don’t forget to bring the macarons! And the banana pudding! Someone should eat that banana pudding. It better not be me.
Macarons, with foie gras buttercream, currently going to waste in my fridge.
Leftover banana pudding that made an appearance at the holiday party just as people were overly full.
How does one even put that into a to-do list?? This doesn’t even include the personal tasks like gift shopping and Christmas card writing and those friends who I agreed to get a drink with, but didn’t write it down in a calendar, so now I look like the ass who’s avoiding everyone. Actually, I MAY be avoiding everyone on purpose.
Church of the Advent, Boston. Photo courtesy of Facebook (Nicholas White)
The original goal was one post a week until the new year. But this week, it’s been hard to carve out a few minutes to throw down a post…yet I have had so much to say. It could be because I have been busy with projects and deadlines that fell on this week, but truthfully, this post and my entire week boils down to one thing: performance anxiety.
I have been re-doing the bulletin boards at a middle school this week, in preparation for their site inspection. This has taken me countless hours, because I feel responsible for boosting their visual culture at the school, and because frankly, that’s what I’m hired to do. In this role, my creativity and resourcefulness is on full-display, and I worry about making AWESOME boards to make the case for hiring me clearly apparent. I don’t want anyone to think: “well, I could have done better than that with that amount of time and money.”
Reading DOES rock. Also these books open up on the board, with descriptions inside. With more time, I wish I could have added a cutout for every book on the board.
Because of these bulletin boards, I haven’t been able to put in my best work at the other two places I work regularly at, therefore, I am imagining my co-workers thinking: “well, we could have written and researched these things better.”
My choir, The Boston Cecilia, has a concert this week, and I’ve been site and social media manager for the 2013 season. So “performances” scheduled for this week include a host of blog posts, Facebook posts, and emails, all of which I have not kept up with to my personal standards. All of these are public-facing tasks, and I definitely wouldn’t want anyone to think: “well, I could have done better than that to promote and publicize these concerts.”
In addition to the social promotion pieces, I have a small solo in the 2nd piece of the concert. Eeeeeeee. Small, as in, it is approximately 8 bars of music sung. Yet, it is colossally large to me, because I am starting the entire piece, unaccompanied, therefore I “set” the tempo and feel for the entire piece. It is glorious and extremely scary to fill a gigantic chapel with only my voice, and on top of performing my best for myself and for the group, I feel like I need to put forth my best sound in order to earn the solo, in a way, so that I and others will not think: “well, I don’t know why SHE got that part, because I certainly could have done it better.”
(Choir solos and auditions are the weirdest expression of ego and humility — offering your voice to the conductor for consideration, and struggling with the duality of portraying yourself as both a show-off and a team player at the same time. Not my comfort zone. Definitely something I will dig into more deeply in a different post.)
I know. I should care less about what others think of me. Isn’t that what we tell all of our middle-schoolers? But we live in an inherently public world, and my reputation for these too-many things that I am capable of is truly important to me. I want to be the person who will come through when people need me, and this week, I am suffering from performance anxiety about being able to live up to all these things that I want to accomplish. I can only hope that I will be present in the moment tonight to enjoy my solo and concert and put forth my best intentions in my music, but there is a small chance that part of my brain will be planning for our holiday party tomorrow, worrying about our guests who might think: “well, this party is just kinda boring and the food is meh and the house is super trashy.”
This morning, I was going to write a post about why Katy Perry’s Roar is the worst thing to happen to women’s empowerment music. But then I caught wind of the American Music Awards (see the post from Hannah at Afternoon Snooze Button if you missed it or don’t understand)…and I’ll have to save the Katy Perry critique for a different day…because apparently Roar is not the worst thing to happen to Katy Perry as of late.
So instead, I will regale you with my lesson on the power of the red lip.
The Red Lip, refreshed after 12 hours of wear.
The task was simple: go to Sephora and exchange a foundation. That is not as simple a task as it sounds…because Sephora is like an amusement park. Go at the wrong time, and dodge the throngs of people having a screamingly good time. But go in the morning, and it’s like having the amusement park all to yourself…
So, having quickly located what I needed, I thought to myself, why not take a look around? And right in front of me was MUFE’s Aqua Rouge, which promised “a smudge-proof result that will not transfer or fade.” Oooh! Shiny!
I’m not sure why it didn’t occur to me that the product was equally “smudge-proof” if you do not apply it perfectly and need to make corrections. I found myself in front of a magnifying mirror with smudge-proof lip color awkwardly stippled across my lips, clown-mouthed as if I never learned to color properly in elementary school. I may or may not have looked something like this:
from the movie, Airplane, which most of my current co-workers have never even heard of.
So after trying to fix it (oh no now it’s on my fingers too), and then trying to blot it (pluh pluh tissues taste terrible) then trying some alcohol (ow! tastes like burning!) then hiding my face while I slinked towards the normally-fun Fresh Sugar Lip Polish and then combined with makeup remover, I finally looked more like I had enthusiastically devoured a cherry popsicle.
Fortunately, Alexandra at Sephora this morning was in a great and helpful mood, and didn’t look at me (too) sideways when I asked if she could show me how to do a red lip. God (and everyone else) knows I needed the lesson, and besides, I needed to look like I could show up at work. So one lesson, one lipstick and one lip liner later, I was able to leave Sephora and move on with my day. (You win my wallet for today, Sephora.)
Once I got to work, one of my male coworkers said, completely serious, “hey, you look nice today. Why are you dressed up? What’s the occasion?” I look at my outfit, and I had thrown on a long sleeve ratty tee underneath a short sleeve henley tee, with afterthought dirty jeans and a pair of sneakers.
Wait.
All this money that I spend on clothing, and all I needed was a fantastic red lipstick and a lip liner?
Or is it because my standards of dress are so low that a smack of lipstick creates a whole new effect?
This reminds me of the time when my friend Jabali, who sometimes made ties out of paper when he forgot to bring his, described my work clothes as “chillin'”. Yeah, I had to bump up the wardrobe budget after that insightful gem.
I’m going to blissfully assume that it’s the former and not the latter.
And quietly go back to stepping up my wardrobe game.
My “business cards” have come in! Thanks to the flexibility of the design tools and the clarity of the proofs and layout at moo.com, I was able to incorporate a bunch of my favorite images that will hopefully cover any situation where I find myself needing a card. (I am really excited about moo right now. Not to mention that I like the word “moo” in general.)
A bit about each image (L to R, top to bottom). All images are taken by me, except where noted:
A picture of Copley Square in March, just before it begins to come alive with summer warmth.
A knit cuff bracelet that I made for a co-worker, without any particular pattern.
My first attempt at a picturesque ramen bowl.
A piece of a photo from our wedding pics taken by Enna Grazier (with the two of us artfully cut out) taken at the MIT sailing pavilion with their colorful set of team racing FJs. (Also, #13 is my number. It was my major at MIT, and has come up in a surprising number of lucky situations.)
The “back” of my card – the picture from the “front” of my site – a photograph of my porch in the middle of my picture frame to planter project (which currently has to be rebuilt for sturdiness. Damn you Pinterest.)
A photo of a vinyl wall installation that I did in my office space – this represents the old EdTech Market Map by New Schools Venture Fund. Not shockingly, since the edtech space is changing so quickly, it’s now a bit out of date.
A photo that Ben took of an interesting tree in Taipei. I was standing next to him. Maybe that counts as taking the picture.
A picture of a drawing of a still life in an art class I took at the BCAE this summer. I am apparently better at drawing folds in paper than I am at drawing still shapes. Also, people see this pic and say, “you’re talented!” The truth I learned from the class this summer is that with about 2+ hours for a drawing and an artist next to you helping you correct where you’re not seeing things correctly, almost ANYONE can learn to draw a few things. Drawing is all just interpreting perception. (whoa, deep thoughts tangent.)
The empty stage at MIT’s Kresge Auditorium right before a MITSPO rehearsal. I’ve played with MITSPO for about 12 years now.
Can’t wait until I have a chance to get one of these in your hands. That being said, if you’re already here on the site…you might not need one of these. Ah, the contradictions in the art of networking.
(Re: title…what typo, you’re asking?? Oh, just this one. NBD. AAAHHH!! Freak out and kill!)
Three words that define the new millenials‘ dilemma.
(Disclosure: I’m technically in the GenX/Y overlap, but I guess I’m introspectively immature, so I identify with millenial issues from time to time.)
I decided to call my blog “Squirrel!” because the most difficult task of my professionally ambiguous period of my life has been to answer the question “well, what do you WANT to do?” I’ve been asked that by nearly every former, current, and prospective employer, as well as well-meaning friends and family.
I never had an answer to this question growing up. In 4th grade I wrote that I was going to be a professional pianist…knowing full well that that was NOT what I wanted to do but it was what everyone expected me to write. Also, the boy I liked wrote “professional baseball player” so I figured you were just supposed to write what it was that you did outside school and add the word “professional” to it.
I seem to be perpetually stuck in an environment where people are defined by their profession. You meet people at a networking event and they inevitably ask you “oh, what do you do?” and you are forced to construct a persona that will either portray you as “of power” (oh I’m starting a company…I’m CEO/President/Minister of Magic at this new venure…) or “looking” (oh I just graduated with my MBA/grad degree…intern…getting into edtech…) or worse yet “ambiguous” (consultant…advisor…mentor…).
My identity is all of these things and at the same time, none of these things. My profession does not define me that well. I was never “just a teacher” (whatever that means) – I was everything that I could bring to my classroom. I also don’t need my profession to encompass all the things that ARE me. Maybe one day I will stumble into an opportunity where I can be my most authentic self while doing my job, but as of now, there is no job I can imagine where I would get to (or need to) do everything that I like all at once.
Just yesterday, I told a friend that I had considered calling my blog “Okay to Squirrel!” because I can’t focus on just one thing, and that was a pretty good way to describe what I might be writing about in the blogosphere. Then he asked, “but are you really ‘okay to squirrel’?” A fair question, considering that I have been fighting to focus for so long now, and really struggle with this lack of focus – implying that no, I’m not really ok to “Squirrel!”.
If authenticity is what I strive for, then I guess I need to be ok to squirrel. This does not mean that my profession is “Squirrel!” (because there are DEFINITELY family members who would NOT find that to be ok) but it means that I am consciously going to strive to build my identity on elements that are way more than what my profession is.
Or, according to my 4th grade self, I’m a “professional” unfocused mashup of creative, strategy, and execution.
In Taipei, they wear regular hats at the construction sites, but these signs are for real. Photo courtesy Omer Simkha, Wikimedia Commons.
I knew that finding a theme and a background image would be the hardest part of getting myself set up over here in blogland, but there is SO MUCH MORE TO DO. Of course, this means that I will do the type-A thing and make lists. (In reality, I’m more a type-B+)
Things that have happened:
Theme & background image – the picture is from my succulent “garden” from a picture frame. The frame was great…the succulents needed Ben’s love/inattention to make them grow.
Placeholders for all the info pages about me. I wish I could randomize them in some way, but maybe when this proof-of-concept stage is over, I will feel OK about investing in tools that will let me do that.
Porting of old posts from Tumblr.
Still to-do:
Filling more of the placeholders with cool info pages
A more blog-like blog instead of 3 articles and a lot of lists and weird things.
Fixing the images that ported over from Tumblr.
Decide whether old LiveJournal baggage comes with me or gets archived in my past.
Importing my ETT articles as cross-posts tagged ETT. EDIT: Done! Much easier than thought. Now to generate more blog content than ETT content.
The more that things change, the more they are the same. Wise words from Rush. (And Bon Jovi. And Cinderella. And other people that Google now tells me about. Bless you, Google.)
This article is cross-posted from edtechtimes.com, where I currently serve as editor-in-chief.
photo credit: quinn.anya // Flickr, appears in Kicker article.
This week was a tumultuous one for the nonprofit organization, Common App, which allows students to complete a single college application and apply to any number of partner colleges and universities in the organization. According to their site, the Common App serves over 1 million students and school officials annually, provides online First-Year and Transfer applications, and is connected to over 500 public and private colleges and universities in the US and overseas.
The basics:
On Monday afternoon, 10/14, the Common App website was either inaccessible or exceedingly slow for most of its users.
The website crashed in the days before the first round of Early Action and Early Decision deadlines hit — typically October 15.
2013-14 is the first year that the Common App has completely retired paper applications and moved the process entirely online
In addition to an inaccessible website, glitches included mis-formatted essays, payment processing, and lost applications.
As of 7:30AM October 15, the site was returned to full functionality. There are still reports of fixes being implemented, according to their Facebook page.
Some colleges have extended their deadlines to November 1, or made arrangements for alternate application pathways or students.
Now, the BUZZ:
Prior to the crash, the New York Times had already published an article citing the problems that the Common App had been battling since the beginning of this college application season, noting:
Colleges around the country have posted notices on their admissions Web sites, warning of potential problems in processing applications….For the nonprofit company…that creates the form, it has been a summer and fall of frantic repair work, cataloged on its Web site, and frequent mea culpas.
NPR spoke with a number of stakeholders in the college admissions process for their article, who had the following to say:
Irena Smith, a college admissions consultant based in the San Francisco area, says the problems are adding more stress for her student clients. “It’s starting to look like application Armageddon,” she says. And an official with the National Association for College Admission Counseling says, “There is a bit of panic in the community.”
For schools like St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn., which relies entirely on the Common App, the glitches have delayed the first wave of applicants and left admissions staffers “sitting on their hands,” said Jeff McLaughlin, dean of admissions. …“It’s an ongoing roller coaster,” McLaughlin said Wednesday. In September, the admissions office sent a test application to itself to see if it got through. It took a month, he said. But he insists he’s optimistic all will be fixed before St. Olaf hits its first deadline, Nov. 15, for applications for early admission.
Forbes was quick to link the Common App to other nationwide IT problems, asking:
Has the Common App caught the IT flu plaguing Obamacare?
Kicker, a news site whose goal is “to make news digestible, engaging, and empowering” through their reporting format, captures the angst of college-hopefuls bemoaning the failures of the system. Writer Susannah Griffee began her article with a picture of a Common App protest, and tweets from disgruntled high school seniors, including this one:
Not all last minute Common App victims were procrastinators. Senior year is action-packed and students and parents are scrambling to cover all of the bases. Still, the stressful circumstance was the same, and I suspect there were more than a few raised voices across America asking, “Why didn’t I/you do this last week?”
There might be an upside to this storm. It’s forcing parents and students to have a conversation about the pressure to get into the “right” college, and even the more basic pressure to get into college…
I’m secretly hoping for more delays with the Common App.
If kids can’t apply to college now, they can’t go next year. And that means they’ll be forced to take a gap year, which likely will be the best preparation for college of which anyone can dream.
From my own personal experiences as an Early Admission applicant, I suspect that students applying for Early Admission to colleges may not have the personality traits and emotional tools to re-evaluate this setback and use this moment to focus on the merits of a gap year. Let’s just hope that the Common App sorts itself out by the regular admissions cycle deadline—and that high school seniors will have learned the lesson that you might have to pay for your procrastination.
sheri•ann•cheng 