#but i imagine being trained in such a competitive and perfectionist field since he was a little child would cause him issues | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

niofo · 5 months ago

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i was thinking again abt my thedas medical drama and i noticed i never wrote down some of the other details.

so obviously the thing happens in kirkwall, bcos where else would this bs took place, and so i have da2 gang show up.

merrill alongside jowan work in a blood bank at fiona's hospital, bcos of course they do. i think they would be good friends

merrill's gfs live close by: isabela is a programmer and a hacker while marian hawke works as a bouncer and eventually works up to owning a bar alongside varric (who is obviously also a writer, both published and also writes crack ships to his own books on ao3 under fake name)

aveline is obviously a local cop

fenris is a ballet dancer and trained to it since he was a little kid, under some very fucked up and toxic instructors - he managed to leave, but he's still messed up after it and danarius is after him to ruin his career as a petty little shit he is. fenris also treats his physical health really seriously considering it's his main source of income, so he'll be often arguing with doctors about best ways to treat his injuries

i admit i don't really know what to do with sebastian, he's not really a priest or any sort of preacher, but whatever his job is he's really involved with his local church, prob met wynne and leliana there

bcos i put all my mages as doctors i was wondering about nurses and other staff members, and i'm thinking chantry people? chancellor roderick would make a great nurse, lbr, i worked with some that are exactly like that. also i want mother giselle as a nurse, bcos i think she would enjoy working with ppl like that and also she would absolutely have a huge beef with idris (who seems to just like having beef with ppl). i'm not sure if giselle would be friends with wynne, them both bonding over having this kind and motherly disposition, or of they'll be rivals over who is motherliest of them all. either way idris is so completely done with it. and then i have leliana as a head nurse there, running a tight ship with all that bullshit and disaster personnel she has to work with. i once knew a nurse who was able to take her own blood, that's leliana, she'd be just like nurse kasia.

i also want to share a story of how idris accidentally become a cult leader, and it might show cassandra in a bad light, but tbf to her, most ppl would be completely baffled with the shit idris pulls of. so there was this (completely anders unrelated) explosion in which cass' mentor justinia died and cass was only mildly injured. obviously emergency staff from local hospital showed up and idris was just one of the doctors on scene, but cass remembered his red hair. then she was inquiring about justinia's death and who would have thunk that, idris was there as a forensic doctor as well. and then bcos obviously it was all very traumatic, cass went to a psychiatrist to get some sleeping meds, and well, you can guess who she found. she decided that thrice is way too much for a coincidence and it's a sign from andraste. idris wanted to protest that no, he just hates having free time, but no one listened to him.

#dragon age #thedas medical drama #ngl fenris as a ballet dancer really stuck with me i love this idea #like obviously it's not as traumatic as his canon backstory #but i imagine being trained in such a competitive and perfectionist field since he was a little child would cause him issues #oc: idris #long post #i also imagine what each of this nonsense people's tumblrs would look like

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96thdayofrage · 4 years ago

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Gifted and talented programs have been the target of criticism ever since the concept took hold in the 1970s as huge demographic changes were transforming urban school districts. White, middle-class families were fleeing to the suburbs. Like magnet schools, accelerated programs for gifted students were attractive to many of these families and provided a way to counteract this flight and maintain diversity in city school systems. The problem was that gifted programs tended to foster racial separation inside schools, undermining the very goal they were supposed to support.

Today, gifted programs still tend to separate students by race. New York City is a case in point. There, the education department has been struggling for years to change the demographic makeup of its gifted program—which is disproportionately white and Asian—and spread access to a more representative group of students. There are a handful of open-enrollment gifted schools in the city, but the district’s efforts at increasing diversity in the bulk of gifted and talented classrooms have largely backfired.

Back in 2006, a quarter of students in New York City gifted classrooms were white, although white students made up only 15 percent of the student population. The district attempted to level the playing field by eliminating a subjective system in which teachers and preschools played a major role in deciding which students were identified as gifted. From then on, students across the city would have to take the same two tests. Decisions about who made it in would be centralized. The hope was that using more objective measures would expand access and prevent in-the-know parents from gaming the system.

But relying on tests produced the opposite effect. Middle-class parents frantically prepped their four-year-olds for testing. This year, 70 percent of students identified as gifted in the city are white or Asian, up from 68 percent last year, while just over a quarter are black or Hispanic.

In 2006, before it changed the admissions system, New York City opened 15 new gifted and talented programs to serve more minority children, bringing the number of schools with the programs to more than 200, according to officials at the time. By 2009, many of those programs had been shuttered. There were only about 140 schools with gifted classrooms that year. This year, there are just 88. The neighborhoods that lost gifted and talented programs tended to be those with high concentrations of blacks and Hispanics: Bedford-Stuyvesant, East New York, Flatbush, Washington Heights.

Asked about the changes, department officials said they have actually increased the number of gifted and talented seats in recent years to meet growing demand. Given the decrease in the number of schools offering the program and the declining percentage of minorities in the program, it follows that the new seats are probably concentrated in just a few schools, many of them in affluent areas. So the question is, should they keep expanding the program? As a recent New York Times article noted, “The accelerated classrooms serve as pipelines to the city’s highest-achievement middle schools and high schools, creating a cycle in which students who start out ahead get even further advantages from the city’s schools.” In places like the D.C. suburbs, gifted and talented programs have the same dynamic.

Proponents of gifted education argue vigorously against doing away with it entirely. “There’s nothing worse than having a bright, talented child just sitting,” says Joan Franklin Smutny, director of the Center for Gifted, a nonprofit based in a Chicago suburb. “They need to be challenged. They need to be inspired.”

Joseph Renzulli, director of the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented at University of Connecticut, agrees with Smutny: “The biggest problem with bright kids in urban schools besides being picked on, is they are dying from boredom. The longer they stay in school, the lower their scores become.”

Supporting their argument is a 2011 study of high-achieving children by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative think tank. It found that many such students lose ground over time, prompting the researchers to worry that “closing achievement gaps and ‘leaving no child behind’ [are] coming at the expense of our ‘talented tenth’—and America’s future international competitiveness.”

The racial disparities are “a great shame, of course,” wrote Chester Finn, the president of Fordham, in a recent blog post, “but it’s not exactly a surprise that more affluent kids are likelier to end up in gifted programs. Their families don’t face the stress of poverty, and they tend to have two parents who read to their children, send them to preschool, etc.”

Determining whether a child is actually more intelligent than her peers or whether she’s just the product of more affluent, ambitious parents is a difficult task for school systems interested in breaking the cycle of privilege that gifted education tends to fuel. Experts caution against relying heavily on tests, as New York does, but there are no national or even state standards defining giftedness, according to the National Society for the Gifted and Talented, an advocacy group.

The society suggests that parents and teachers check a list of traits, including whether children are “perfectionist and idealistic,” “asynchronous,” meaning they develop unevenly, or “problem solvers.” Smutny says teachers should be trained to look for a different set of characteristics, such as creativity, well-developed imaginations, and curiosity, which she says are correlated with above-average intelligence. They must also be trained to “cut through” stereotypes, she says, so that talented children who are also poor or from a racial minority are not overlooked.

Is there a better way to provide education for gifted children without exacerbating racial inequities? Officials in the Washington, D.C. public schools believe they’ve found a possible answer. This year, for the first time in more than a decade, the D.C. schools have reintroduced gifted education. The decision comes as many city neighborhoods are experiencing a surge of new middle-class, white families, and one reason for the reintroduction of gifted classes is to entice more of them to choose public, not private, schools. The district opened one gifted program in a middle school near the affluent blocks around Georgetown University.

But it also opened one at Kelly Miller in Ward 7, a majority low-income, African-American middle school, and at West Education Campus, in the 16th Street Heights neighborhood, where there is a small but growing population of Hispanic immigrants mixing with the predominantly black population.

Unlike traditional gifted programs, which usually require a test to get in, the D.C. programs are open to any student who wants to enroll. D.C. is aiming the program both at students who are book smart and those who may struggle on traditional measures of achievement but have other extraordinary talents that are harder to measure with a test. The plan is to “build up the gifts they have rather than just focus on their weaknesses,” said Matthew Reif, the district’s director of advanced and enriched instruction.

The principal at Kelly Miller, Abdullah Zaki, explains that the idea is to expand the concept of giftedness. “If there’s a kid who is not reading at grade level but has the gift of gab and can argue you down in a heartbeat, they’re obviously interested in debate,” he says. “We can take their natural gift and talent and hone and polish it.” Working on the skill the student enjoys and is good at might improve other skills that don’t come as naturally—analysis, reading of complex texts, etc., adds Zaki.

Administrators want to reach students who have the potential to excel at school but who haven’t been given the chance to demonstrate their gifts. But there’s another goal, too. “One thing we have learned,” said Reif, is that relying exclusively on tests to identify gifted students “often disproportionately identifies white and Asian students, and that leads to equity issues.”

The open-door policy D.C. has embraced may offer a way around the dilemma of identifying gifted children. “The bias should be to let students who want to try these classes try them,” said Gary Orfield, a political scientist at UCLA who has advocated for more racial integration in schools. “There should be a very explicit commitment to race and class diversity and targeted recruitment to make it happen.”

But simply allowing all comers to participate in gifted education doesn’t erase its problems. When Kelly Miller Middle School in Ward 7 launched its gifted program last fall, principal Abdullah Zaki says he “thought it would be a big clamor throughout our community—parents rushing to get their kids into our building. That didn’t happen the way I wanted.”

Convincing the African-American families in Kelly Miller’s neighborhood to enroll their children has been a challenge, partly because for many the term “gifted and talented” was a foreign concept, Zaki says. He’s taken to using synonyms like “honors” to persuade parents to take an interest, even if it doesn’t quite capture what the school is trying to offer students.

In addition, placing students with a wide range of abilities together is a difficult undertaking for teachers. It takes tremendous skill to create lesson plans that will challenge high-achieving students while not leaving others behind—one reason gifted programs were created in the first place. D.C. has hired three specialized teachers to lead the gifted programs at each of the middle schools with the program. They spend time each week with small groups of students working on projects tailored to the group’s talents and interests. But the specialized teachers’ time is divided among all of the classrooms in the school. And Kelly Miller is also offering a more traditional version of gifted education, with a track of accelerated math and literacy courses for students who score well in those subjects.

The ”schoolwide enrichment model,” as it’s called, has had some success elsewhere, but there’s no data yet to show how the schools are doing. D.C. officials say they’re watching the experiment closely and will look at test scores and teacher, parent, and student responses, and other measures at the end of the year.

The D.C. model may end up being a watered-down version of gifted and talented education that can’t match the more exclusive programs found in New York and other places. But it’s also much fairer, and it may also be a more effective way to reach the students with true innate talent. The Fordham study’s other major finding was that a large number of children are “late bloomers,” whose abilities appear only later in their school careers. At Kelly Miller, Zaki says the whole point is to identify these students—the ones with potential and talent who have so far been overlooked, possibly because of their race or class. “That’s the excellent thing about it,” he said. “These kids exist.”

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ourmrmel · 6 years ago

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Mel Feller Looks at How You can Become the Best at What You do

Mel Feller Looks at How You can Become the Best at What You do

For most people, we tend to have a crazy inner voice in our head, always telling us how bad we are at something, basically, at anything that we do. I know that I am not the only one who it happens with because I speak with many people. Therefore, I have discovered that most of us are perfectionists. When we pick a career, we want to be best at it even though there would be many people in the world who will be far better than we in whatever we do will, at least we want to put our best efforts and shine. There are obstacles in our journey and one of the biggest might be a heavy competition.

Nevertheless, this thought must not stop us from trying to improve ourselves and being the best at whatever your goals are. After all, we want people to approach us and appreciate our work. So, how can we get rid of this mediocre feeling?

We begin systematically

We need to begin by knowing that we are not perfect and that we have just begun. Then, we will not lose hope and we would know that there are many opportunities waiting at our door. Every morning is a new beginning. Even when we feel we are not good at something, but we still like doing it, then we must be consistent. Do not give up only because you are not receiving the results that we all want. From my own experience, we must be humble to begin, as amateurs and one day, we all will wake up and find ourselves far from where we began.

We get education in our chosen field

You might have been born with the so-called natural skills but you still need a good coaching to be best at it. Get a mentor and become serious for what you do and where you want to see yourself. I know because it worked for me. If you end up wasting your days, working hard only in a figment of your imagination, you will never be able to succeed.

Do not live by other people’s rules

Rules are created by society to distract you or maybe they were those areas where you could have been successful if you were born in 1800, eh? Did you become an engineer only because all your elder siblings picked up engineering and got a mediocre job and a mediocre life? Well, if you do not take a risk and merely follow the footsteps, you might not be able to enhance your skill. Many people have claimed that others always thought their ideas to be “crazy” and later on, these very ideas turned out to be a hit.

Live your live by a schedule

The routine might be boring, but you must spare out a particular time of the day to work on your performance. Moreover, you need to indulge in more things that could help you be best at what you do. Every minute counts when you want to accomplish something. But don’t stop living your life. It is when you are distracted from your goal that real ideas come to you.

Your fears are to be embraced

Insecurities and fears are the worst things that can happen to us. Do they not only depress us, but also let us believe that we will not be able to do anything in life. It is true that everyone has a fear, but how you deal with it, is what matters. If you are scared of heights, you must go bungee jumping do not jump of a building without a parachute though as that’s how you are going to risk everything and win over your fears.

Mel Feller – Personal Development, Business, Execute, Internet and Real Estate Investments Coach/Mentor and Business Owner

Mel Feller was a senior staffer for over 5 years with both United States Senator Jake Garn and The Senate Banking and Finance Committee.

Mel Feller is a speaker at entrepreneurial forums training business professionals on marketing strategies and the “Secrets of Online Marketing”. He provides consulting services on all aspects of business including organizational performance, sales and marketing strategies, employee productivity and retention, successful solution implementation, technology leverage and customer service in all business and fields.

Mel Feller's areas of technology expertise include emails and social media, solution development discipline and methodology, business process leads and project management.

Mel Feller has twenty-five years’ experience with companies, nonprofits and individuals in the research and writing of both government and private grants.

In addition to his regular consulting and management responsibilities, Mel Feller was published in the Top 100 Mentors; he has published two books on "Creative Real Estate Financing" and “Multiple Secrets to Success”, and presented numerous executive lectures for Fortune 500 corporations on “leadership and business practices”.

Visit him at www.melfeller.com and www.melfellersuccessstories.com

Mel Feller’s dynamic presence, instinctive strategic vision, and creative thinking produce effective, sustainable bottom-line results for his clients. His “Can Do” attitude generates confidence in his executive coaching clients and strategic consulting corporate clients. Throughout Mel Feller’s career, he has increased the profitability of nearly every organization with which he has worked.

Mel Feller has a unique ability to relate to his clients because he came from The United States Senate, where Mel was the Chief of Staff for a United States Senator and was always meeting with prominent business people or politicians. His main love was dealing with constituents that were the grass root voters! Since founding Coaching For Success 360 In 1989, he has effectively translated that experience into results for his clients. He focuses on separating daily distractions from the real issues in order to put the executive and/or business on the right path to grow and prosper. Results are immediate, growth sustainable, and profitability long-term.

Dozens of Mel Feller’s clients have been on Inc.’s 500/5000 list and many have been named as a “Best Places To Work.

Using Mel Feller’s intuitive, systematic approach, and our proven strategic and tactical tools, we help you plan for profit.

Mel Feller believes that what gets measured is improved. Therefore, he is continually developing processes and systems that allow you to easily measure, manage and maintain a highly profitable business.

Mel Feller is ready to help you increase your sales, trim and manage your operating costs and see your profits soar and/or leverage your time for Business or Real Estate!

“Truth telling, honesty, and candor: I loved you Mel Feller! You have so much energy and knowledge! I truly hope I get another opportunity to be coached by you. I see myself a little clearer now, and it’s not so bad.”

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“Mel Feller the best education session that we have attended in many years! Thank you so much — I am very excited to put everything you have taught us into practice!”

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“Mr. Mel Feller, Thank you, thank you, thank you for giving a marvelous keynote at our Symposium! While we have not yet collected the official feedback, the unofficial feedback was that You Were a Hit! I heard nothing but compliments regarding your presentations. Thank you for making such a positive impact on our attendees! ”

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"Mel Feller uses his humor, compassion, and direct nature to help bring out the best in me. Mel Feller is committed to helping me live...I mean, really live, life to its fullest."

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Mel Feller Links

https://www.instagram.com/mel.feller

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https://twitter.com/melfeller

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https://www.slideshare.net/MelFeller

#motivation #be the best #mel feller #melfeller #mel #feller

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kim26chiu · 7 years ago

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St. Louis and the Consequences of Consolidation

Anheuser-Busch’s offices in New York.

Brian Feldman’s piece about how consolidation killed St. Louis got a lot of attention when it came out last year.�� He argues that a rollback of anti-trust regulations that allowed industrial consolidation was the silent killer of what were once key regional business capitals like St. Louis.

Interestingly, his focus was on something you may not know ever existed in St. Louis, major advertising agencies.

If there is a living embodiment of the St. Louis advertising industry, it’s Charles Claggett Jr. The former creative director at D’Arcy, long one of the city’s largest agencies, he retired in 2000, two years before the French firm Publicis acquired the agency. One of his many claims to fame is that in 1979, he and his team penned “This Bud’s for You”—the slogan widely credited for helping St. Louis-based brewing staple Anheuser-Busch eclipse Miller during the 1980s beer wars….Another claim to Claggett’s fame is his father, Charles Claggett Sr., who led the city’s oldest and largest agency, Gardner, in the late 1950s and the 1960s. During his tenure, the elder Claggett oversaw accounts such as John Deere, Ralston Purina, and Jack Daniel’s.

…

And it wasn’t just Gardner and D’Arcy—whose twelve offices now fanned out across North America, as far as Havana—that flourished in mid-century St. Louis. With its ample supply of locally owned businesses as potential clients, the city supported a vibrant start-up ad agency scene. These new firms trained up-and-coming talent, developed cutting-edge campaigns, and often grew to become regional or national in scope, enriching the metro area by bringing in revenue from outside of it.

…

By the 1960s, St. Louis’s advertising industry had effectively developed into what economists call an “industry cluster.” Though the city’s agencies competed with each other, their sheer number created citywide competitive advantages: a deep bench of talent that moved in and out of agencies, spreading ideas and transferring know-how; a network of experienced, low-cost suppliers (printers, recording studios); and a reputation for quality that attracted national and international clients. All of it was built on the foundation of locally owned companies. These firms provided a steady supply of commissions facilitated by personal connections: account executives at the agencies and the senior executives at the corporations knew each other—from charitable events, from rounds of golf, or from attending the same high school.

…

D’Arcy followed a similar trajectory. In 1985, it merged with NYC-based Benton & Bowles to become DMB&B, a deal that saw the headquarters and executive decision-making shift to New York. The St. Louis office still handled long-standing accounts like Mars/M&M and Anheuser-Busch, but NYC now made “above-the-rim” decisions. As Claggett put it, “The agency slowly became just a branch office competing for accounts.”

The turning point came one day in 1994, when, unbeknown to the St. Louis office, the agency’s NYC-based media-buying unit signed a $25 million deal with Anheuser-Busch’s archrival, Miller, then lied about it. Anheuser-Busch’s volatile owner, August Busch III, immediately cut ties with D’Arcy, costing the agency $422 million in billings. One D’Arcy copywriter quipped, “When you lose Bud, you’ve lost it all.” Two years later, the office lost its $140 million Blockbuster account to New York. The agency closed its St. Louis doors in 2002.

In the years since the St. Louis advertising cluster disintegrated, the entire industry has taken a major hit as the Internet has disrupted its traditional business model. U.S. ad agencies today have fewer employees than they did in 2000.

One of the companies that got bought out in St. Louis was Anheuser-Busch itself, a company so synonymous with the city that its name might as well be “Anheuser-Busch, St. Louis, Missouri.” The buyer was Belgium-based InBev, which was controlled (and still is I believe) by a group of Brazilian investors. Three years after the 2008 deal, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch looked back at the consequences for the company and the city.

They still make big decisions here, the kind of big-spending, imaginative deals that made this place so envied. But now executives in New York City sometimes sign off on them, too….Three years out, some things are clear. A-B is a diminished but still huge, powerful presence. The worst of the cost-cutting appears over. The brewery and some executive functions have remained in St. Louis. But the corporate culture of the old A-B — tradition-bound, perfectionist, focused more on dominating the beer market than making money — has given way to an aggressive austerity.

The extensive cost-cutting has squeezed more profits out of A-B, but questions remain over whether the company’s new bosses can grow brands and sell more beer. And St. Louis is no longer the center of the company universe. A-B is now the U.S. subsidiary of A-B InBev. With that, old assumptions — and wistful illusions — about the relationship between the company and the city have changed, too.

This is pretty well known, I believe. What’s less known, perhaps outside of St. Louis, is that in 2014 Anheuser-Busch announced it would be moving brand management and other functions from St. Louis to New York City, opening what it termed its “commercial strategy office.”

Today the A-B commercial strategy office employs about 400 people in a very cool modern office in Chelsea. While the firm is still technically based in St. Louis and employs a lot of people there, including a lot of management people such its supply chain leadership, this represents a significant loss of high talent positions for that city.

Why did A-B open an NYC? Well, InBev was already there. Chicago, the most logical place for a consumer business like A-B, had already landed the Miller-Coors HQ. I don’t have any insights on that, but would speculate it played a role in the choice of New York.

But what’s most troubling for St. Louis and many other similar cities is that A-B’s main reason for staffing up in New York was to be closer to its ad agency partners. In other words, we are seeing knock on effects from previous consolidations and the rise of global cities as key financial and producer services nodes.

First consolidation wiped out St. Louis’ national scale ad agencies. Then the loss of those agencies make it hard to keep ahold of corporate marketing and other functions.

This was one of the key things I honed in on back in 2008 when I first wrote about the trend of HQs moving back to the global city. Saskia Sassen’s work on the revival of the global city noted the growth in specialized financial and producer services (like advertising). The rebirth of the global city was not built on traditional corporate HQ growth.

But then down the road, corporations started to restructure their HQs into what I term “executive headquarters”, with only top executive functions – generally only 500 at most – now part of the HQ. And that the HQ was now being drawn back to the global city in order to take advantage of the services infrastructure there. I noted how Mead-Johnson Nutritionals (makers of Enfamil baby formula) had followed this formula when it moved from Evansville, Indiana to Chicago. Here’s what the media said at the time:

Working in a large city will make it easier to conduct business throughout the world. Mead Johnson makes Enfamil and similar products and about half of its sales come from overseas. Having offices near Chicago, for instance, will place executives in close proximity to global-business consultants, leaders in the field of nutrition and an international airport.

Today we see that proximity to services providers, international airports, and the ability to recruit top global talent are all drivers of this. To date I’ve mostly noticed that the losing locations were clearly subscale cities like Evansville or Peoria. Now with Connecticut losing GE, it’s affecting larger business markets as well.

A-B’s New York office isn’t technically an executive headquarters, but it has some of the same characteristics. This isn’t about anything nefarious. It’s about companies doing what they think they need to do to address market realities. Mass market beer brands like Bud Light are in decline industry-wide. These kinds of moves are part of trying to stay market relevant. (A-B also just changed CEOs in response).

This is definitely a trend to keep an eye on since it will have a big effect on whether or not legacy business cities like St. Louis in the 1-3 million metro area range will be able to continue conducting business as the same level they’ve been used to doing. I think there is a ton of risk here in many cities, especially in the Midwest.

from Aaron M. Renn http://www.urbanophile.com/2017/11/21/st-louis-and-the-consequences-of-consolidation/

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barb31clem · 7 years ago

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St. Louis and the Consequences of Consolidation

Anheuser-Busch’s offices in New York.

Brian Feldman’s piece about how consolidation killed St. Louis got a lot of attention when it came out last year. He argues that a rollback of anti-trust regulations that allowed industrial consolidation was the silent killer of what were once key regional business capitals like St. Louis.

Interestingly, his focus was on something you may not know ever existed in St. Louis, major advertising agencies.

…

First consolidation wiped out St. Louis’ national scale ad agencies. Then the loss of those agencies make it hard to keep ahold of corporate marketing and other functions.

from Aaron M. Renn http://www.urbanophile.com/2017/11/21/st-louis-and-the-consequences-of-consolidation/

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lazycock · 8 years ago

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Log 14

Why do I call them logs? I’m not a pirate lol. Log 13 was so lame. But I’m still lame. Did I worried that much about my singleness? My forever alone status? Anyways, that’s not what’s on my mind these days. Now that I’m older, I’m more worried about my status as an adult. I’m 23 and I’m still living with my parents with no car and no girlfriend. That’s what I’m worried about. I’m also worried about my professional life in the future. I feel like I’m at a crossroad. A long crossroad. I’m currently NOT a computer scientist as I thought I was going to be. In fact, computer “scientist” isn’t really a thing, is it? It’s called system administrator or programmer or level 1 IT support help desk monkey which is what I am right now. And I’m getting tired of it. I don’t know how my senpais (you still know what that word means, right? Don’t act you weren’t a fucking weeb before lol. I’m less of a weeb now though, but just a little less) I don’t know how my senpais can keep the same job for 2-5 years. Like how is that not driving them nuts. Then there’s a guy that my colleague told me about this morning who has been doing help desk support for 3 years and is NOW trying to become a system administrator. Do I want to be a system administrator? I don’t know. Less than a year ago, I would say yes because of the money and “prestige,” but now? I don’t think so. That means going through boring ass Cisco certifications that needs to be renew every few years. I don’t know if the IT world is really for me anymore and it’s been less than a year I’ve been working in that field. How pathetic. How about programming? I don’t know to be honest. It’s not too bad, but it’s not something I care too much for. The one thing that seem to interest me at all is technical writing. Why? Because it’s more “hipster” as I told one of my friends from the DEP. I was half-serious though. It is less known of a job. I mean, I’ve never heard of this job about a year ago and I like to think of myself as a well-rounded guy. Since it’s less known, that means less competition when studying for it and when looking for a job, but that also means that there’s less jobs for it, it seems. I take a quick look on indeed.ca for technical writing jobs both in French and English, and they always ask for 3-5 years of experience and a bachelor’s degree with knowledge in a bunch of different softwares. Now, getting a bachelor’s degree doesn’t bother me too much I guess if I think it’s worth it. Even if that means 3-4 more years of living with mommy and daddy, but I don’t know if I want to do that. Ok so first, why do I want to become a technical writer? Because it’s more “hipster,” okay. What else? There’s less of a chance for the job to get automated by robots. It’s minimalist. IS IT THOUGH? Well, it’s a job that mainly deals with words. It’s a job that only requires a computer. It’s a job that I could do remotely. It’s a job that’s all about simplifying complex concepts for the lay man. Me, being someone that always like to type out documents and take the time to make sure it’s perfect. The perfectionist in me that always pays attention to the smallest details. Makes this job seem more fitting for me even though I’m good with computers. But so what’s holding me back from going into that field whether by doing a certificate for a year or a bachelor’s degree for 3-4 years? I’m worried about not liking it after all. I’m that I won’t find a job and just drift around like I did after cegep. I don’t want to go back to that dark period of my life. I’m too old for that. At my age, I should know better. I am terrified of living that period of my life again. Absolutely terrified. Should I be afraid, though? Should I take that leap of faith? Should I switch career once again? Would that be the last time that I make a switch? Will I ever move out of my parents’ place? Will I ever grow up?

I could end my log there, but I don’t want to. I want answers. I want to imagine what would future me would say. What would he answer to these questions? Are you in a better place than I am now? I fucking hope so. You better have already move out of your parents’ place. Got a girlfriend now? Please please please stop reading if you’re still a child. Fucking hell. I’m scratching my damn fucking head for your well being right now. What happened to the girl you met at your IT job? Are you dating her? Did you finally grew some balls? Please don’t tell me you’re forever alone. Ok that’s enough. I need answers. Ok so right now, the truth of the matter is that I’m NOT satisfied with my current job. I am interested in technical writing. I want to try it, but I don’t want to fail and end up a loser. I have lost interest in the IT world. Programming is MAYBE something that I could end up doing, but I’m not sure. God why did I have to grow up around fucking losers. Is this what growing up in a ghetto is like? No model of success around you, just failures and losers and depressed motherfuckers. 2016 was shit for so many people apparently. It’s 2017 now, the year of the rooster. Let’s hope things will get better. But apparently, this year is a bad year for roosters like me. When it’s the year of your sign, it’s a bad thing. I have no idea why. Fucking Chinese people I swear. I guess we’ll see if they were right. It’s either make or break I feel. Ok so I just did some reading on the year of the rooster and I don’t know what to make of it. I guess Chinese zodiac like all horoscopes are bullshit. One thing I did enjoy though was finding about a the Trump rooster in China. IT’S FUCKING GLORIOUS LOL I want to visit it. I think I lost my train of thoughts here. Cause now I’m hungry and I want some cookies.

I just went back and read all my previous logs. God damn I haven’t changed much in FOUR FUCKING YEARS WHAT THE FUCK. Is life really that SLOW? Or am I the slow one (aka retarded). FUCK. I love how much I hated school back then and now I’m seriously thinking of going back again. Well, I was right in that one log when I said that I don’t hate school, I just hate homework and that is very true. I thoroughly enjoyed my time during my DEP partly because of the great classmates I had and partly because I had NO HOMEWORK. It was great! Too great though. I was basically extending my childhood. I mean shit I was going to school from 8-3 like I did during before Cegep. So okay, I think I need to figure the fuck out of something here. Like I can’t just keep on NOT improving myself. This is fucking nuts. What should I do? Well, let’s focus on my career. Career is right now the most important part of my life. It’s what will dictate every other aspects of my life. And RIGHT NOW I don’t like my career. I don’t like IT very much. Though, I wouldn’t say I hate it. I’m just bored by it. Not like technical writing will be so much more exciting. But maybe just more satisfying? That is if I actually will like it, if I get a job, if I go into it. Ok so if I want to move out, get a car, get a gf, etc. as soon as possible, then the best way to achieve all of those things would be to stay in the field of IT and try to move up the latter as fast as I can. That would mean working on Cisco certifications and what not. But I don’t know, I have a bad vibe from the IT world. I have a pretty pessimistic and negative impression of the IT world. Thanks to my colleagues, people on the internet complaining about job hunting sifting through hoards of shitty job ads asking for a high amount of knowledge, skills, and experiences while offering a low salary. Then there’s the whole exporting jobs to other companies or Indians.

I feel like I want to move and become independent just to get a girlfriend. Would I be so hungry for independence if I had a loving girlfriend? Maybe not. Maybe I’d be more okay to stay at my parents’ place longer while being in uni.

If I do go back to uni, I think it’s best that I go for a bachelor’s degree. 1) So I can make my mom proud. 2) So that I have a better chance of getting a job in this barely known field. 3) So that I would have more time to socialize with classmates because networking is very important.

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