My gardener has not only won my business, but my friendship. It surprises me, because I thought we were from different worlds. Instead, over the past year, he has taught me many valuable lessons about doing business and about relationships.
1) Making a Good First Impression is About Being Sensitive to Your Customers' Needs and Developing Trust:
Ernesto was the gardener for the home next door and the one across the street, yet we had never spoken until I took a walk with my new collie puppy. He was wielding an ear-deafening blower and my dog shrank away from him as we passed. Ernesto turned off the blower, set it down, crouched down, and called my dog to him. He petted him, smiled at me, and called my dog "Lassie". In that instant, a connection was made not only between Ernesto and my dog, but between the two of us. I was in between gardeners, and I needed one my dog wouldn't be afraid of. I hired him on the spot.
2) Communication is About Understanding, not Language
It is true that Ernesto speaks very little English and understands not much more, and that my Spanish is based on my world of classroom teacher, not gardening. But we somehow manage to hold conversations about rather complex topics, such as why I need a new sprinkler valve or what schedule the timer is on, and whether or not he should prune back the roses so they will be "more beautiful" in the spring, and the best type of grass seed for my lawn. He relies on eye contact, pantomime, and lots of "I show you", and somehow, as I listen, my Spanish elevates to a level where I'm not translating in my head but actually comprehending.
3) Don't Judge People. Period.
Ernesto drives a beat up 20-year-old pickup, speaks very limited English, and is a gardener who thinks nothing of killing a gopher, picking it up and tossing it in the trash and then shaking my hand!
But he knows the LATIN words for my privet hedge (Ligustrum) and plays the guitar professionally on the weekends at various clubs all over the county. He also likes my dog.
4) Small Extras Cement a Relationship.
Ernesto usually gardens for me on Saturday, unless he is playing the guitar at a club, in which case he comes on Thursday. Regardless, he knows my day for trash pick up is Friday, so he always comes on Thursday to take to the curb not only the grass clippings from Saturday but also my household trash and recycling cans.
5) Be Clear in Your Agreements.
Ernesto explains (see #2) any extra work he feels my garden needs, and whether or not he will do it a little bit each week ("despues y despues y despues, entiendes?") or if it will cost "extra" and also, if that will be his hourly rate or a contract flat price. If he purchases an item, he provides the receipt. He is a gardener, but he is a professional.
6) Take Pride in Your Work.
Ernesto is the first one to beam with happiness when my lawn is green, my beds mulched and my sprinklers working properly. He smiles and tells me "I am intelligent", and I agree.
Sunday, November 2, 2014
Sunday, September 14, 2014
12 Steps to a Great College Essay
12 Steps to A Great College Essay
©2014 Laura Rader, Wise
Ambitions College Consulting
1. Give yourself plenty of time. Common Application Essay prompts are released
August 1. Open, read and save the
prompts August 1.
2. Print out all the prompts in August. Think about them. Gather your memories. Scroll through your Facebook postings,
iPhotos and Instagrams to jog your memory.
Next to each prompt, write a sentence or two of an idea or ideas that
might work. You can pull people and
ideas from any stage of your life as long as the memory is clear in your mind and
focused as follows:
Snapshots in time.
Choose brief, memorable moments of a larger picture. You only have about 500 words. Two pages, tops.
Symbolism. People
and events that represent your values, personality, goals, dreams and life
lessons learned.
Significant. What
you write about needs to be important and memorable to you, so that you can
convey that passion to the reader.
Additional information.
If you choose to write about a talent or activity you’ve already
included in other parts of your application, the essay must elaborate, expand
and add additional insight into that.
This is not a resume.
Personal. The
essay needs to be fully about you, honest, and with a positive spin even if
it’s a sad topic. You can write about
death and divorce if you grew from that experience. Do not write about your drug use, sex life or
any crimes committed.
3. In September, work on expanding all your
ideas into an outline of your essay.
Three or four sentences should do it - Beginning, Middle, End, the Point. Save them.
4. Settle on two or three essay ideas that spark
your creativity the most and that will be the most interesting to you to write.
5. Start with a hook. Grab your reader’s attention with action,
humor, catastrophe or dialog and keep that going for the first paragraph. Then back off and explain. Save what you’ve written and then let those
first paragraphs sit for a day or so.
6. Reread your first paragraphs. Think about where your essay is going. Look for a theme you can carry throughout,
and pieces you can weave together into a whole.
Then keep writing. Save often.
7. If one of your essays isn’t getting off the
ground, discard it. Focus on the one
that is beginning to take on a life of its own.
That’s your story. Commit to it. Write your two pages.
8. Finish.
Be sure your ending is as powerful as your beginning. Walk away for a week and do something else,
like study and homework and your extra curricular activities.
9. Reread it.
Cut out cliché’s, redundancies, ramblings. Be sure your sentences are varied in length
and complexity. Check your word choice
and be sure your nouns and verbs are specific.
Your writing should create a movie in your head and arouse strong
feelings. If it doesn’t, revise, revise,
revise.
10. Have a trusted person read it. This can be someone who knows your very well
(family, best friend, teacher) or someone who is a good writer. Preferably both. Ask them for their honest opinions on whether
or not it seems focused, interesting, insightful and authentic. Listen to their advice. Make changes if you agree with them. Then share it again with one or two more
people.
11. Finish your final revisions. Check your grammar. Run it through spell check and grammar check
and read it again, word by word, looking for homonyms, possessives and errors
in tense.
12. Type a clean copy, 12-point font, double-spaced. Save it.
Copy and paste it into your application.
Reread one more time to be sure nothing was lost or changed in the process. Press Submit.
Breathe.
Sunday, July 6, 2014
College Classrooms or MOOCs?
College Classrooms or MOOCs?
I can almost
hear my father turning over in his grave.
“Replace
college classrooms with online courses?
That’s just ridiculous!” he would say.
Dad was a
tenured, full time, PhD professor of History at San Diego State University, one
of the “middle tier” universities that is in danger of being replaced by MOOCs
(Massive Open Online Courses), according to a recent article in Business Insider; “Three Trends Are
About to Create a Higher Education Earthquake”, June 29, 2014. Although my grasp of technology and social
media far exceeds any my father ever possessed - a brilliant man who never
remembered to charge his Nokia cell phone and never owned a computer – I agree
whole heartedly that replacing college classrooms with online courses is
ridiculous.
Like many
people, I have experience with real and virtual classrooms. I attended San Diego State University in the
1980s, when the computer science department was teaching Pascal as an innovative
programming language. I have taught 3rd,
4th and 5th grade for 27 years in public schools. I am now taking online courses through a
public university.
My online courses are
convenient, cost effective and enjoyable.
My online professors are intelligent, thoughtful, and capable, and my
online classmates equally so. Yet, the
limitation of technology, its very nature, puts up invisible walls between
teacher and students. Power point presentations,
videos, forums, WIKIs and emails only allow for formal, edited discourse. Each lesson is carefully crafted; forum posts
follow a list of proscribed netiquette rules; feedback is thoughtfully worded
to remain almost 100% positive; and debate is politely restrained. I’m learning a lot, but I miss the classroom.
A classroom is a living
thing, made up of human beings. As my father taught and as I
teach, I improvise, and I engage with my students. I use humor to keep their attention and
energy levels up. I pull examples from
my personal life to draw an analogy, and I draw pictures on the whiteboard to
graphically illustrate a point. Finally,
I offer ongoing help and guidance as they work, to an individual or a group, as much or as little as
needed.
My students are part of the process. They don’t post to a forum. They ask questions that change
the course of my lesson, sometimes taking the class off on tangents to topics of
much more value than what I had planned.
Students debate with each other over their interpretations of what we
are learning, and not in a carefully worded and edited post, but spontaneously
and emotionally. Students befriend each
other over group projects and then carry that friendship out the door to the
playground. There are no walls.
I don’t recall a single
lecture from my San Diego State classes, but I do remember my French professor
bought me coffee and asked me why my grade had slipped from A to C and on
hearing my answer, told me that I shouldn’t tank her class over a breakup with
my boyfriend. I do remember my
Physiological Psych professor evacuated us calmly and quickly when there was a
bomb scare in our building, and then continued our lesson on the lawn. I do remember the handwritten note praising
my essay on the artist Alexander Calder.
I do remember that my Social Psychology professor became genuinely
excited about the results of my experiment on social interaction. There were no walls.
But in my online class, the
invisible barriers go up. Improvisation
ceases to exist. Even if the class were conducted
by Skype, or Chat, technology allows for a pause and replay that real life does
not. A teacher’s humor is there, but not
the sound of laughter. A teacher’s
personal life is a brief sentence in the introduction to the course. And a teacher’s feedback is delivered
equitably and consistently, whether or not it is asked for.
Even more dramatically,
students in an online course don’t interrupt.
They don’t ask questions that change the scope of the lesson, nor debate
spontaneously and emotionally. The rules
of netiquette (made necessary by the invisible walls which silence tone of voice,
and blind us to facial expressions and body language) constrain debate. And friendships? We make offers to add each other to our
Linked in networks, but not offers to go outside the walls and play.
Those relationships,
discussions, experiences and mistakes simply can’t happen in an online
class. The invisible barriers of
technology prevent them. And so no, I do
not think that online courses, no matter how cost effective or efficient, can
or should ever replace, even on a small scale, the traditional classroom. Or the traditional teacher; like me, or my
Dad.
I can almost see my father
smiling.
Copyright 2014 by Laura
Rader, Wise Ambitions College Consulting
Monday, June 30, 2014
Preparing for College or Living A Life?
A father of two elementary school aged children stopped by my Wise Ambitions College Consulting table at the San Diego County Fair last week. He was interested in what a
college consultant does, said his friend had hired one and that he planned to, but not for "at least eight more years". Then he asked me
about the value of summer programs and activities, and if colleges care about
those, and shouldn't he start now by having his kids in Girl and Boy scouts,
because in eight years, wouldn't it be too late?
I realized as I listened that there were no simple answers to
his questions, so I said something reassuring and handed him my business card.
But I want to share the answers now, because they're important, and too
complex for a county fair conversation.
Parents, preparing for college is really preparing for adult
life. College, for those who choose to attend, is the last sanctuary for
mentored practice at living. At its best, college opens doors and
windows, widens horizons, inspires and educates, broadens perspectives and
eliminates prejudice. As almost an after thought, most colleges also help
students find and pursue their passions, with a focus on turning those into
meaningful, gainful employment.
The question isn't, "Should my children participate in
summer activities or scouts and will colleges care?" but, "What
activities will be best for my children to enrich their adult lives?"
Life is not a dress rehearsal, and your children aren't auditioning for a
play. Colleges, like parents, want students to have what's best for them.
So, if your daughter is curious about plants and animals, go
hiking and camping together, buy her pets, take her to aquariums, zoos and
botanical gardens. Don't do it so that she can ace AP Biology or become
an engineer, do it because it is her passion at the moment and you have the
power to gift those experiences. If your son loves to draw pictures and
cartoons, buy him reams of blank paper, pencils, crayons, paint. Take him
to art museums and buy him a camera. Show him how to use a ruler and graph
paper to draw an image to scale. Art is under appreciated by society, and
he may not be able to make money doing it, but life is not a race to nowhere,
it is a journey, and if art makes his life richer, what parent wouldn't want
that?
Life is the cumulative total of all our experiences and
passions. College is just one more place where those can be nourished and
explored. Don't give college admissions counselors the power to decide
how your child should live their life. Just let your child be, and find a
college that appreciates them for the person they are becoming.
And sure, joining Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts is a great idea.
Saturday, April 12, 2014
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Wise Ambitions: Giving them wings....If I could give only one bit...
Wise Ambitions: Giving them wings....
If I could give only one bit...: Giving them wings.... If I could give only one bit of advice to parents regarding their children's future success, it would be this; ...
If I could give only one bit...: Giving them wings.... If I could give only one bit of advice to parents regarding their children's future success, it would be this; ...
If I could give only one bit of advice to parents regarding their children's future success, it would be this; start early. Not with pressure to get straight A's or be the swim team captain. Not with admonitions to study more or choose a major. No. Start early with a loving bond and belief in their dreams. Support that with college savings and college options. You brought them into the world and raised them with unconditional love. Now it's time to teach them to fly, but still be the wind beneath their wings. Don't turn the entire college search process over to them. They are 18, not 81. They are young, not wise. Don't be afraid to ease them out into the world just as you eased them into it. Listen to their hopes and fears. Please let me know if I can help you as you prepare to teach your child to fly.
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Your Final College Decision
The first day of spring! You know what that means....colleges have only 10 more days to keep you in suspense, and final acceptance or, sadly, non-acceptance letters will arrive. If you applied Early Action or Early Decision, this is old news. If you are accepted to your dream school, congratulations! But what if your dream school didn't take you, yet you are accepted to several schools and can't decide? First of all, take pride in knowing that you are now in a "buyer's" position...the cards are in your hands - finally. Remember that you have until April 30 to choose where you will attend. Take your time. If possible, revisit (and definitely, visit if you haven't yet) the schools that want you. If that isn't possible, revisit their websites and sites such as College Prowler and College Confidential that go straight to student opinions, and read about your schools in The Fiske Guide to Colleges (just hang out in Barnes and Noble for 30 minutes). If you applied for financial aid (and you should have!) carefully compare your financial aid offers on a site such as www.finaid.org/calculators to see which offer is really the best. Think about which college is REALLY where you want to go....set aside it's name and selectivity and think about LIVING there for FOUR YEARS.....once everything feels right, make your final decision, and be sure to send in your enrollment deposit before May 1st!!! You can actually accept at more than one school (unless you applied Early Decision) but you can only attend one, so plan on losing the deposit at the school you don't attend.
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Irish, Gaelic and Celtic Studies in US Colleges
In honor of St. Patrick's Day, here is a list and links of colleges and universities in the United States offering Gaelic, Celtic or Irish studies programs in addition to the usual college parties!
Boston College, Irish
Studies Program
Fordham U, Institute
of IrishStudies www.fordham.edu/academics/programs_at_fordham_/institute_of_irish_s/
Iona College Gaelic Society
St. Francis Xavier
University, Department of Celtic Studies http://www.stfx.ca/faculties/arts/celtic_studies/
University of Notre
Dame, Keough Institute of Irish Studies www.nd.edu/~irishstu/
Photo
by Matt Cashore/University of Notre Dame
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)