CLASSES & JOBS

Finding the right education for your desired career path is essential. An education is a means to an end, not the end itself. When I was deciding which college to attend, I simply looked at overall college rankings, not program specific rankings. Schools like Harvard and Stanford are great, but they do not always have the exact program to help you get to where you want in the future. If you know what you want to do, look for schools with programs that are tailored to your needs.

A lot of my friends wanted to be undergraduate business majors, but liberal arts schools often do not even have an undergraduate business program. All they have are economic degrees, assuming their students want to go on to get MBA’s. Also, large institutions may have big classrooms and are low on the rankings, but if you are looking for excellent scientific research opportunities you cannot go to a small private school. Every school has specific strengths and weaknesses that only an in depth analysis will produce. To really get exactly what you want out of your education you have to look deeper than general rankings.

Writing is not easy. There are thousands of little rules that can slip your memory. One thing that really helps me is to continually be reading. Reading good writing is the best thing you can do to improve your own writing. You would not be able to list all the rules of English simply from reading, but you would implicitly know what is good writing and what is not. Implicit memory plays a huge role in how we speak and write words. We simply know what works and what doesn’t.

However, it is still good to have a helpful desk reference for writing. You can purchase a book containing all the English rules you would ever need from a bookstore for less than twenty dollars. For instance, in that previous sentence I don’t really know if I should write out twenty dollars or simply put “$20.” When you keep a reference book handy, or just have an active Internet connection, you can generally figure something like that out quickly. Obviously no one is ever going to be a perfect writer, so we can all continue to work on that skill.

Contacts and glasses have come so far in the past ten years. You can now find contacts that fit comfortably for virtually any type of eye. Contacts used to be hard and require you to boil them from time to time to kill the bacteria. Now, our contacts are soft, so soft in fact you can sleep in them for days on end. Also, you can get great colored contacts for relatively affordable prices. Even colored contacts are comfortable now. At this point in my life, I have such great contacts that getting Lasik surgery seems kind of pointless.

Glasses have also come a long way. They now have designer glasses that are very expensive and cool. People who don’t need to wear glasses wear them just to make a fashion statement. One area they still need improvement on though is the glasses that go from sunglasses to normal glasses based on the lighting. They always seem to be in between dark and light and that would be extremely annoying after a while. They are a great idea, but I would just prefer them to either be completely dark or completely light at any given time, never in between.

None of us really understand what it is to be healthy or not. Most of us believe that not being fat is healthy, and therefore fat is unhealthy. But it is possible to be unhealthy and be skinny. For instance, people who smoke or have an eating disorder are not healthy, yet they are very skinny. Pop culture has us equating body appearance with health, when that is not always necessarily true. Male models that have ripped abs and huge arms could easily be taking steroids. Your appearance is not an indicator of your health.

We often get caught up in thinking that health and body image are directly correlated, when in reality so much more goes into it. If you are looking to shorten your life for the sake of losing a few pounds, than go ahead and start smoking, but we all should wonder if it is worth it. Hopefully you come to the same solution as me, in that it isn’t worth it at all. The only true way to be healthy is to eat right and exercise often. Then you will get the “healthy” look without having to sacrifice your true health. Unfortunately, there are no short cuts in nature unfortunately.

Giving gifts is a risky business. You never know what the other person will like, or maybe someone else already got them the same gift. You want to be considerate and get them something they really will use. For instance, buying clothes for anyone is risky. No matter how cool looking a shirt or dress may be, if it doesn’t fit right it is useless and they will never use it. This is where gift cards come in. They are not creative, they are not thoughtful, but they will be used and the person will find something they like with them.

Personally, I love getting gift certificates. It is fun to get out and “buy” something nice for yourself. I’d much rather have gift cards than a pair of gloves or shoes I will never use. If you do not know someone well, but want to get him or her something they can use, get a gift card to a store you know they’d like. Obviously a gift card doesn’t work for girlfriends/boyfriends or husbands/wives because it lacks creativity, but for a friend or relative, it may be your best option. You’ll never be remembered for giving great gifts, but at least you know your gifts are useful.

Learning a language can be very useful, but it also can be a waste of time. It is pointless to learn a language you will never use again, so don’t waste your time. However, if you do pick a second language, here are some things to consider. First, consider all your options and try to imagine which will be the most useful.

For instance, I live in Utah where there is a surprisingly large amount of Hispanics. Knowing Spanish is a great asset here because I can communicate with people I see daily.

If you cannot think which language would be most useful where you live, then consider what you could use this language for in the future. If you are looking to go into business, knowing a language like Mandarin Chinese or Japanese could be very useful. If you already know a language, use it to your advantage.

If you are applying for an international job and you speak French, mention you could help that company expand into France over time, or that you could help them with their current French operations. Knowing a language can be pointless if you do not use it actively, but you can find ways to leverage a second language for your own benefits.