1. Read
 
There are several apps available for reading, and if you don’t have a kindle, your smartphone will work just as well for very little money. There are apps that cost a few dollars a month that will give you access to hundreds, if not thousands, of titles. Find an app that works for you, and start reading on your down time without having to haul a book or kindle around.
 
2. Research how to do something you’ve never tried but want to 

If you’ve always wanted to learn to do something but never have the time and you find yourself with nothing to do but entertain yourself with your phone, use the time to do some research. If you want to play piano, learn to skateboard, take up knitting, or anything else that you just don’t have any experience with, look up the motions you should go through. Start with the basics, and the more time you have alone with your phone, the more you can learn about whatever it is that you want to know how to do.
 
3. Pocket.com 

Pocket is a way to save articles, videos, web pages, and pretty much anything published online so that you can view them later. If, for example, you’re doing research on how to do a new skateboarding trick and want to go back to a video later, you can save it to Pocket until you’re ready to put the video to use. It’s a convenient way to store information without any chaos or extra features. It’s basically a personal database of information that you know you want to refer to again later, and you just have to sign up using your email.
 
4. Write

Open your notes app and just write something. It doesn’t matter much what you’re writing, but it makes sense that you’ll always have something to write about. We’re continuously thinking about something, so why not write about it? As someone who loves writing and does it almost constantly, I’ve always been one to write down random thoughts and go back to them later to expand on them. I know people who write poetry or the beginnings of stories they might write more of later, notes about apps they’d like to create, music lyrics, reflections, and countless other short spurts of writing inspired by what they’re experiencing and thinking every day.

5. Work on learning a new language or advancing in a language you might already be studying

You can find apps created to help you learn a new language or even just brush up on your foreign language skills, many of which are very cheap. You should find an app that works best for you based on your level of experience with a language, and keep in mind that the languages available in each app will vary and be limited.

6. Read or watch the news 

As a journalism major, I try to get as many people as possible to keep up with news in any way they can. I know a ton of people who use Facebook pages for their sources of news, the news stand app on iPhones, or read news online. It’s something that you can access anywhere and from so many sources that there’s no reason not to. It’s always better to be informed and up to date on what’s going on if only so that you have something to talk about when you have no idea what to say to someone.

7. Podcasts 

Podcasts are a great way to learn something new, and all you have to do is listen. There are countless series of podcasts to listen to on so many platforms, all of which cover varied topics and use different methods to cover them from one-person story-telling to conversations between several people. You can listen to a podcast to learn about just about anything, so if you have a hobby, an interest in a topic, or you want to catch up on news, search through some podcasts.

8. Install a flashcard app to study for tests anytime, anywhere 

This might be your least favorite option, but it’s also probably the most productive thing you could do on your phone. If you have a test or quiz coming up and you’re someone who uses flashcards to review, having a flashcard app will be invaluable to you. You can study at any time regardless of whether you’re at home with all of your notes or class materials, and if you find yourself somewhere and feel like you’re wasting time that you could be using to study (as I often do), pick up your phone and start!

9. Play games to improve your memory 

You’ve probably heard of sites like Lumosity that are meant to help you improve your memory, and you might have even tried them out. If you haven’t tried these memory games, the next time you go to play Candy Crush, try finding an app or website and start playing games that will improve your memory instead.

10. Put it away 

If you’re still at a loss as to what to do on your phone, try putting it away. It’s great to have a few minutes to just be alone with your thoughts, and you never know what you might hear or see that is so much more interesting or entertaining than whatever you’d be doing on your phone. 

-Hope Swedeen

What productive uses have you found for your smartphone? How can you motivate yourself to be more productive?

If you’re preparing to take the SAT this year, or if you’ve already taken it, you’ll know that, as of March, 2016, the test changed rather dramatically. Students and teachers must now adjust to the new test, and if your school offer test prep for the SAT, they’re probably trying to implement and understand the changes as well as they can. If you haven’t been exposed to these changes yet, or if you’re confused about what they’ll mean for you as a test-taker, I’ve listed six changes that I feel are most important and that sum up the basics of what you’ll need to know about the SAT before you take it.

The information can be found on several sites, including the Princeton Review, College Board, and Veritas Prep, but I’ve consolidated and combined that information so that, hopefully, you’ll be able to understand the changes without having to flip between sources, as I did. College Board also provides a page that explains why changes were made and what exactly they will entail, so if you’re looking for some information on that, visit the “Key Content Changes” page.

1. No penalty for wrong answers 

In my opinion, this is one of the most important changes to the SAT. On the old SAT, test-takers were penalized 1/4 of a point for every answer they got wrong. This never sat quite right with me because it not only penalized those who didn’t have the knowledge base to figure out the right answer, it penalized those who are serial second-guessers. I know so many people who, myself included, sometimes, second-guess themselves on every answer because there’s so much at stake. On the SAT, it’s easy to view the test as a gateway to college or financial aid, so it’s already stressful enough. But when you’re also told that you’ll do worse if you guess than if you don’t, it makes it so much more difficult to be confident when you aren’t guessing. Now, though, the test is made to be much easier for second-guessers or even just guessers, taking off no points for wrong answers.
 
2. Each question offers 4 multiple-choice answers rather than 5 

This isn’t a huge change, but, hopefully, this will mean that it will make it easier to find the correct answer and you’ll have an easier time guessing if you need to.
 
3. Total score range: 400-1600 for 2 scored sections 

The total score possible used to range from 600-2400, which included a 200-to 800-point score in each of the three sections. Now, however, there are only two sections, but they are still scored between 200 and 800 points.
 
4. Two sections: Evidence-based reading & writing, and math with new standards 

Whereas the SAT used to be composed of three scored sections: Math, reading, and writing, plus a required essay, it is now only two sections. However, these two are broken down into two subsections each.
 
The evidence-based reading and writing section is broken down into one reading test and one writing and language test. With this change comes several changes to the theory behind what types of questions should be asked and what test-takers are expected to know.

• There will be no questions that ask test-takers to complete sentences using “SAT words.” Instead of the test focusing on whether you know what one word means, it will expect you to have a grasp on a more widely-used “professional” or “collegiate” vocabulary (much more basic than the SAT words that no one actually uses) and the ability to understand words with multiple meanings that can be applied to different sentences depending on those meanings.
• Reading passages will draw from “founding documents,” or significant historical, literary, or scientific documents that test-takers are expected to understand whether they have studied them extensively or not (The United States Constitution, for example, is not something that everyone has studied super closely, but it is something that everyone is expected to be able to understand if they ever need to). This means that reading passages will not only be less arbitrary, they might even be texts that you’ve read before.
• The SAT now includes some questions that will be prompted using graphs, tables, and infographics, whereas, before, there were zero graphs throughout the entire reading and writing sections. This is a spectacular change for me because, as a visual learner, graphs make everything so much easier to understand. While they will likely be complex graphs, I would still prefer to look at data rather than read it in paragraphs and try to lay it out in my head to give it context. If you’re a visual learner like me, I have no doubt that this change will be beneficial for you.
• You might have to “show your work” on some reading and writing questions, and this is where the idea of “critical thinking” comes into play. While before you could answer questions without sharing how you reached your answer, when you’re completing the reading section, you might face some questions that ask you how you found the answer to previous questions. This will ask you to either choose the logical reason that would have led to a previous conclusion or will ask you to specify which part of the passage you used in determining your answer. While this won’t be complicated if you know how you got your answer, if you were a little fuzzy on what the right answer was to the first question, the second might be nearly impossible. Luckily, you won’t be penalized for guessing, so just try to connect the dots as best as you can.

 
The math section is broken down into one subsection that can be taken using a calculator and one that cannot. The math section will be more difficult than before, in all likelihood, because the level of high school math that is expected to be understood by test-takers is higher than before.

• The section focuses on algebra, geometry, and some fundamental and advanced math like trigonometry, so be prepared to meet some difficult questions that you might struggle with. Trigonometry was difficult for me in high school, but I know several people to whom it came easy. Just make sure that you spend extra time studying for the elements of the test that you know will be most difficult for you.
• The math section has never been easy, but now most, if not all, questions will require you to go through several steps to solve them. This means that you’ll need to be able to find the right answer after going through several steps that you might mess up, and these questions will likely take more time because there are multiple steps.
• Fundamental or foundational math skills are more important than having extensive knowledge in one type of math or another. If you have a deep understanding of basic concepts that are seen throughout or used as the basis for a specific type of math (like angles in geometry), then you are in decent shape for a large portion of the test, but there will still be questions that ask about harder concepts that are specifically designed to differentiate students who have a higher level of understanding of mathematics and those with a more basic understanding.

 
5. The test is now 3 hours long rather and 3 hours and 45 minutes – with more questions per section and more time to complete each section 

This does come with a few caveats, as the test writers didn’t simply decide that the test was too long for students to handle. Now, there will be a break between the reading and writing subsections and again between the two math subsections (with and without calculators). There will be no break between the end of the evidence-based reading and writing section and the math section, which may prove difficult for some test-takers when trying to switch gears from English to math. The test might also be longer if students choose to stay for the essay section of the test, which lasts 50 minutes. The SAT will provide varied amounts of time for each section, and each will include a set number of questions to be answered. Overall, test-takers will have 180 minutes (3 hours) to answer 154 questions. I’ll lay out the time limits for each section, but if you want a comparison to the old SAT, go to collegeboard.org and check out an article in the Time Magazine.

Reading: 65 minutes for 52 questions
Short break
Writing and language: 35 minutes for 44 questions
No break
Math (without calculator): 25 minutes for 20 questions
Short break
Math (with calculator for higher-level problems): 55 minutes for 38 questions
Short break 
Essay: 50 minutes for one essay question

6. Optional Essay (scored separately) – 50 minutes instead of 25 

The new SAT offers an optional essay at the end of the test (while the previous test's essay was required), and test-takers have to pay an additional fee to take this portion of the test. You may be asking yourself “why in the world would I pay more money to write an optional essay?” Excellent question. You wouldn’t. Unless the colleges you’re applying to require it. Make sure that you know before signing up for the SAT whether the schools you’re applying to suggest or require that you write an essay on the SAT, and if they do, be sure to sign up for it or your application probably won’t be considered.
 
You can find a list of which colleges and their essay requirements on collegeboard.org. If your school isn’t on their list for some reason, contact the admissions office directly or look online. It might be a good idea to check anyway just in case the website’s list isn’t up to date for some reason. If you’re not sure which schools you’ll be applying to, spend the extra money on the essay portion just in case. If you end up not needing it, it’s about $10 wasted, but if you do end up needing it, you’ll save yourself from having to spend money to take the entire SAT again just to write an essay. You can also add the essay portion onto your account later if you don’t do it when you first register for the SAT, so if you’ll know whether you need the essay before your test date, feel free to leave the essay off until then.
 
The essay has changed in that it has become substantially more complex and thought-provoking. While there used to be a single, short prompt, which would ask you to agree or disagree with a particular quote or statement, now, the essay asks test-takers to read a 600-to 700-word passage and evaluate how an argument is organized and built, essentially analyzing what literary techniques make a passage persuasive. To learn more about the essay portion and what has changed, go to College Board’s “SAT Essay” website page.
 
If you’re looking for resources to help you prepare for the new SAT, there are the typical courses and tutor packages that you can purchase from any SAT prep website, but there are also some free online resources that you should take advantage of, especially if you’re not looking to spend hundreds of dollars on test prep. Khan Academy offers articles with tips for preparing for the SAT from time management to study habits to what to expect on the test day, and it also offers videos that demonstrate how to complete problems in each section. There are currently only four practice tests out for the new SAT, but because it is so new, they are all free and readily available to everyone on collegeboard.org along with several other resources for SAT prep.

-Hope Swedeen

What are some concerns you have about taking the SAT? How are you preparing?

      In a previous post, we talked about the do’s and don’ts of interviews from how to dress to what to say, but we didn’t go into too much detail about what you should do after an interview. The steps you take after an interview can actually be as important as, if not more important than the interview itself. Once you’ve gotten through your interview, employers will expect you to know which steps to follow, and if you don’t, any chances you had of getting a job might disappear entirely.
 
Step 1: Think about what went well and what didn’t, and keep applying and interviewing

Was there a question in particular that you weren’t prepared for and could have had a better answer for? Think about what your answer could have been and how you could make that work in the future. Think about what your weaknesses were in the interview – were you jittery and fidgeting? Were you talking too fast? Did you ask enough questions? Don’t forget to think about what you did well so that you can replicate it the next time you have an interview – did you have a really good answer to a question that you think might come up in other interviews? Write all of this down so that you know for future interviews what you need to improve and what you can count on yourself to do well. It will also come in handy for the second step of your post-interview process.

Step 2: Send a thank-you note to each interviewer

You should make sure that you send thank-you notes within 24 hours of having an interview, but don’t send them too soon after. If you wait a few hours, it shows that you’ve processed your interview, evaluated it, and considered which parts were most important to you. Be sure that you get your interviewers’ contact information and preferred method of contact so that you know whether you should send an email, a printed letter, or even a hand-written note, and where to send it. If you’re unsure of how to ask for contact information and they don’t bring it up, simply let them know that you’d like to follow up, and ask, “I appreciate your taking the time to meet with me. How should I send a thank-you note?”

When you start writing your thank-you note, think carefully about what you should include. You should be sure to reference things specifically talked about in the interview so that they know you were invested in the conversation, and you might consider adding a few talking points that you didn’t get to in the interview and wanted to. This shows that you know more than you had time or opportunity to talk about in your first conversation, and it might prompt them to give you a second interview to talk with you about the points you bring up.

If there was a question that you weren’t satisfied with your answer to, answer it again and stress why you feel it’s an important question. Or, if there’s a question that you found particularly interesting but might not have had time to think carefully about during the interview, answer it again with added analysis. This shows that you valued the conversation in your interview and that you have the ability and desire to delve deeper into topics in which your interviewer is interested. Also, if you blank on a question during your interview, the follow-up is a great time to give an answer. People understand that it’s difficult to think on the spot, and if you already missed one opportunity to answer a question, why miss another great one?

Consider attaching one or two work samples that you didn’t have a chance to talk about or share to stress your ability to do well in a field. If you don’t have work samples, talk about something related to whatever job you’re applying for – a book you read, an article, an event, etc. The goal is to show them that you’re a candidate who will be able to do the job well and that you’re not just interested in the job – you’re dedicated to it.

All of this said, at no point in your thank-you letter or in any form of follow-up should you act like you already have the job. Confidence in your abilities is encouraged, but if you’re cocky about your eligibility for and entitlement to a position, your interviewer is probably going to be more annoyed than impressed. So even if you think you landed the job, be gracious and humble rather than cocky and overly assertive.

Step 3: Tell references that they might be contacted

If you haven’t already told your references that a perspective employer might be contacting them soon, do so after the interview so that they know to be on the lookout for a phone call. Even if they aren’t contacted, it’s better to keep in touch with your references so that they can stay aware of what you’re doing and remember why they agreed to be your references. Even though they might be your only references, they very well could be references for a number of people, so make sure that you are someone they can remember and will want to continue being a reference for.

Step 4: Use your network

Starting out, you might not have many people in your professional network, but if you know someone who knows your interviewer or someone high up in the company, or if you know someone who works for the company, ask them to put in a good word for you. LinkedIn is a great place to start, as you can reach out to employees at companies to which you plan to apply to ask them questions in advance, building a relationship with them before you apply, get an interview, or go to an interview. If you know someone at a company with whom you keep in regular contact, you might have a better chance of getting a job there. So look up a company that you hope to work for on LinkedIn, find an employee with a job title that interests you, and strike up a conversation about what they do, what their company does, and what they like about their work place. You might find that they’re just as interested in getting you hired as you are in being hired.

Step 5: Follow the timeline your interviewer gives you for following up

If they tell you they’ll let you know in a week, wait a week before sending any questions about the status of your application. If you don’t know how long you should be waiting because you forgot to ask in the interview, ask when you should expect to hear back in the thank you email you send.
If you do call them once your waiting time is up and they haven’t called you, don’t be too persistent. Call once or twice afterward and leave messages with whomever answers, but after that, if they’re not calling you back, they’re probably not interested.

Step 6: If you get a second interview, bring new information and conversation to the table

Don’t go into the second interview expecting interviewers to ask the same questions or even to be interviewed by the same people as the first time. Think of new conversation topics or ways to expand on things you already talked about. Do more research into the company so that you have specific questions to ask and talking points to address to show that you’ve done more homework between your two interviews and are still 100 percent invested in getting the job.

Step 7: If you get turned down, don’t take it too hard

If you got every job you interviewed for, the work place wouldn’t exactly be competitive, so you should expect to be told “no” at least a few times in your interviewing process. When you are turned down for a position, it’s important to remain gracious, thanking the interviewer for the opportunity and highlighting things you liked about the prospect of working for their company. You never know when they might need someone like you for a different job, and they just might be calling you next time.

Step 8: Stay in contact

If the employer does have another opening in the future, they’ll be more likely to offer you another interview if you’ve maintained interest and kept in contact. The more dedicated they see you are to working with their company, the more likely they are to think you should be working there. So, while you’re applying to other jobs and keeping your options open, don’t lose hope that you might, one day, end up where you want to be even if it didn’t work out the first time. That said, don’t try to connect on LinkedIn right away. Wait until you’ve found out whether you’ve been given the position, and if you haven’t, then add the interviewer(s) on LinkedIn. If you do it before you find out, it might make an interviewer uncomfortable when reviewing your application because you’re already in their “network” but aren’t getting the job.
 
- Hope Swedeen
 
What are some things that you’ve found go over well in an interview? Have you used social media to keep in touch or make connections with employees at a company at which you’re interested in working?

         Last week’s post, “What Do You Do When You Realize ‘Life Isn't Fair?’” looked at two items on the list of “Rules Kids Won’t Learn In School,” written by Charles Sykes. This week, I want to talk about another item on that list because it’s something that gets discussed almost constantly but about which many people have mixed feelings.

“Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.”

         This point is, from some angles, correct. It’s true, for example, that there are still “winners” and “losers” in life. It’s true that your teachers and schools do try to give each student ample opportunity to succeed despite the number of times they fail an assignment. Often, if you’re doing poorly enough in a class, you can probably talk your way into extra credit work, re-writes and re-do assignments, and maybe even just arguing for a higher grade. Most of the time, teachers also take participation into account when determining grades, so it’s, theoretically, easy for students to pass a class if they participate and do just enough work to get by.
         If we take this quote to heart, we would have to believe, as many people actually do, that school is 100 percent easier than “real life” because school requires little to no effort and has no consequences for poor work. Is this really true, though? How many times have you struggled to pass a class because it’s just not a class that plays to your strengths? How many times have you been behind and tried to catch up and simply failed? Whether people believe it or not, the school system does have the potential to leave students behind, and, unfortunately, it does it all the time. School is as much a part of “real life” as is the job you’ll get when you graduate. You might not have the same responsibilities, but students are struggling with far less specific challenges than those that people face in the work place.
       
         If you’ve ever wondered why your school expects everyone to be good at math or science or English, you’re not alone. Does it really make sense that everyone could be good at everything that the state standards say is important? Does it make sense that if you struggle with Trigonometry, it’s automatically your fault for not applying yourself? I would argue no. Not entirely. Sure, there are students who simply don’t apply themselves. But there are also students who do and fail constantly. There are also students who apply themselves, fail once, and stop trying. Defeat is a discouraging prospect, and once you’ve encountered it once, it’s difficult to believe in yourself – especially when everyone tells you it’s your fault you’re failing. So if you’re one of these students who tries and fails because something is genuinely challenging for you, you’re not alone. I was there in high school, and I still am sometimes. There are things in life (and school) that we simply don’t have a natural aptitude for. Whether it be because we haven’t encountered anything like it before or we can’t quite wrap our heads around how something works, there are things that feel simply impossible to conquer. But have you ever thought about why you’re expected to be good at all of these school standards?
         It’s always math and sciences, and history - classes that require memorization - and English reading and writing, which require constant practice and at least some natural talent, that we're required to take and pass. But, in the back of everyone’s mind, or maybe more toward the front, is the question “When will I ever need to know this beyond high school?” When you find yourself asking this question, a lot of times, you won’t be needing it. I can’t say for sure, and no one can, but there are some things that just won’t be useful to you – and by the time it is, you won’t remember it anyway. So why, if I’m graduating with a journalism degree and never took a math or science class in college, would I have needed to excel in math and science when I was in high school? To be perfectly honest, I might not have needed to. I can’t remember one thing from my high school math or science classes, and there hasn’t come a time yet when I’ve needed to. Yes, it’s good to be well-rounded and immersed into a variety of subjects to make sure that every student has a chance to pursue his or her passions, but, at the end of the day, if someone spends their entire high school career failing math, are they likely to ever pursue a career remotely related to math? Absolutely not. People like what they’re good at, and they pursue what they like.

         On the flip side, how many people do you know who are bad at art – just awful – can’t even draw a decent-looking house? I can name quite a few (myself included). But were we ever told in high school that we were inadequate or that we were going to fail a class because of our ineptitude in the arts? As a matter of fact, how long do we actually have to take arts classes? I elected to take band and choir, and even an art class because I thought I’d give it a try, but I was only required to take choir until ninth grade and art only one year in eighth grade. Band was taken entirely by choice and never required. So what does this tell us? Personally, it tells me that the school system values the sciences, math, and reading and writing much more than it does other subjects that fall in the “arts” category. Even language classes were electives after taking a language for about three years. This tells me that whether students are good or bad at the arts, it doesn’t matter, but having an aptitude (or lack thereof) in “required” classes will make or break them. Does this seem fair to you?
         I could argue all day that schools put too much stock in a broad curriculum compared to the curriculum of life. Because, honestly, when do you need to know how to identify rock types unless that’s the profession you choose? However, you can’t figure out what you want and love to do if you don’t experience as many options as possible before choosing a college or career path or both. So this central curriculum that we all hate so much – while overstated – is necessary. The way that students are graded in these classes, though, is another story. In art classes, almost entire grades are based on participation and attempts to complete projects. So why are math and science different? What if, instead of docking points for every wrong answer, students were just shown why their method of solving a problem was wrong and how they might improve for next time? If real effort is there – if students take the time to complete assignments and just don’t get the answers right because of a failure to understand a concept – should people be penalized for their ineptitudes? Unfortunately, they are, and students will probably continue to be penalized for wrong answers regardless of how hard they worked to get them right. To students, this means that you need to try as hard as possible to get the grades you deserve. Just because you’re not good at something doesn’t mean you can’t get an “A.” Ask teachers for help, try memorization strategies, study as long as it takes, and do all of the homework twice, if necessary. This is a tall order, and it’s not something that will happen easily, but if you want to succeed in a system that isn’t working for you, you need to do the work yourself.

​         So to Sykes, and anyone else who believes that school is easy compared to “real life” because of the opportunities students are given to succeed, I say no; no, it is not easy. Sure, there are easy aspects. There are classes that people are good at and do well in, but there are also classes that make it impossible for students to keep their grades up. I do agree, though, that school “doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance” to “real life.” In “real life,” we have the opportunity to only do something we love for the rest of our lives and avoid everything we’re bad at. We have the chance to spend our professional lives doing math if that’s what we’re good at. If we want to write and avoid math and science as much as possible, we really can – not one person in a job interview or on the job has ever asked me to solve a math problem. If we want to be musicians and never write another MLA style essay again, we can. The fact of the matter is in “real life,” we don’t get graded for doing poorly on something we don’t understand. We get paid for doing something we chose to do. So the next time you find yourself failing and losing hope, just remember: if you can make it through high school, you stand a great chance of making it through life. Because “real life” can be so much easier just because of the control you’ll have over your own path.
         In the same breath, though, I have to say that this control comes with much more responsibility. Yes, you have the opportunity to only do what you want to do, professionally, and so it is easier to succeed in “real life” in this respect. But keep in mind that making it through high school and knowing what you want to do won’t be enough. It’s going to take so much more to succeed than determination and talent. As I said in my previous post, life isn’t fair, and it’s up to you to keep pursuing your goals despite that fact. You’ll face financial hardships, challenges in the work place, difficulties actually getting a job, and so many more obstacles after leaving high school, so, in many ways, real life is so much more difficult than school. But what I think can sometimes be forgotten is that these challenges are meant to be age-appropriate.
         When we graduate high school, we’re supposed to be ready for professional life, but we’re spending our days being graded on things that we just aren’t good at and won’t need to be good at rather than learning actual life skills or just being exposed to what our futures might hold. For me, it’s difficult to think of high school as easy simply because we face so many challenges that we might not be able to completely overcome because of our skills. We might not be ready to make the decisions that will shape our futures, but we’re required to make them nonetheless with only high school as a measuring stick against which to judge our academic abilities and our professional options. So, for me, high school was exceedingly difficult at times. When trying to get through classes that were particularly challenging and that I couldn’t get an “A” in no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t wait for “real life” to start. But then again, once I started making decisions that would determine what that life would look like, it became apparent that I wasn’t ready to make those decisions; that’s when high school got so much harder. Instead of worrying about just school or just my career, I had to focus on both, and there are only a few times in life when we’re required to do that and even fewer when we’re actually prepared to do it. It’s a challenge that high school students may or may not be prepared to face, but they have to face it regardless. And this – this challenge to determine what your future will hold when all you have to base it on are your successes and failures in high school, which gives little indication of your potential for success – is what can make “real life” easier than school.

-Hope Swedeen
 
What are your thoughts on the expectations schools have for students? Are students prepared to face the challenge of determining what they want for their futures? Is an emphasis on math and sciences good for all students?

      There is a list floating around the internet called “Rules Kids Won’t Learn In School,” which was originally from a book by Charles Sykes called “Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why America's Children Feel Good about Themselves But Can't Read, Write, Or Add.” While many people attribute it to Bill Gates, it’s actually all the work of a man most people have probably never heard of and whose credit for his work has been inadvertently given to someone else. The list includes 14 of what you might call “hard truths,” or things that are true about life but are pretty hard to swallow for most of us. We’d all like to believe that life is easy and that we will have successful futures simply because we want to. But, unfortunately, life isn’t easy, and, according to Sykes (or Gates, depending on whom you ask), it will be even harder if we don’t accept that we need to put in the work necessary to ensure we have the futures we want. Two of the 11 items on the list stuck out to me most because they seem the most obvious to me – and yet are the most difficult for me to accept.

“The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself.”

      It’s true that, most of the time, you’ll feel like you’re completely on your own in the professional world. There won’t be someone looking out for you, helping you figure yourself out and paying you to do it. It won’t matter whether you are confident in who you are or not. No one is going to give you a job just because you can’t figure out what else to do. You are the only one who is going to care about or for you. But even if you don’t quite know who you are or how to feel about yourself now, you should feel good about who you’re trying to become and what you’re trying to accomplish. You should be working to become a person of whom you can be proud. You don’t need to wait to accomplish something to feel good about yourself as long as you know that you’re trying to accomplish it.

​      It’s important to remember that wherever you end up, as long as you’re working toward something better, you’ll keep moving. And that’s what’s important – that you keep moving toward something you can feel good about. Because if you keep moving and keep trying to be whatever you’re driven enough to work to become, you’ll know that you were the one who got yourself ahead at every turn. You can have the satisfaction of knowing that, despite what people may have told you about who you could be, you helped yourself get closer and closer to where you wanted to go without the help of anyone who told you that you couldn’t.
     
      So Sykes is right. You can’t wait around soul-searching and waiting for someone to come along and tell you you’re worthy of pursuing your dreams. Whether you believe it or not, being human makes us worthy of pursuing nearly anything we want to achieve. The question is whether, in the face of failure and obstacles thrown in our paths, we will choose to take these challenges as signs of defeat or use them to learn and to shape our futures into something new with or without the help or encouragement of others.

“Life isn’t fair – get used to it!”

      It’s true, honestly. Life isn’t fair. The little time we have in life is spent in constant competition with ourselves and with others. At every point in our lives, we are met with hardships that we couldn’t see coming, we’re met with people who refuse to believe in us or who willfully tear others down, and we’re constantly taken aback by how unfair everything seems to be. It feels unfair because it is. There’s no way to escape or outrun the fact that no matter what we do and no matter how much we want to believe that we’ll get something because we deserve it, life is unpredictable, and we’re not the only ones who can influence our futures.
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      We aren’t all blessed with the same opportunities from the get-go. We aren’t all able to afford the same luxuries that others can like shoes and phones and college degrees. Life is not set up in a way that promises anything to anyone, and it’s most unkind to those who, despite knowing that they’re not, realistically, going to receive any breaks, still believe that they should and, somehow, will. If you’re someone who’s hoping that someone will hand you a job when you graduate high school or set you up with an opportunity that will change your whole life, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. You’re going to see that, just as the world doesn’t care about your self-esteem, it doesn’t care about giving you what you need or deserve. Your future is in your own hands, and it’s coming so much faster than you think. It might seem like tomorrow, or it might seem like months or years or a lifetime away, but I can promise you that your future is already happening. It might as well already be gone. Because, before you know it, tomorrow will be years ago, and that future that seemed like a lifetime away will have passed you by without a second glance.

      So if you find yourself thinking, “Life isn’t fair,” don’t just think it means you should accept defeat. Life certainly wasn’t fair for Sykes, who wrote this book and whose work was wrongfully attributed to Gates so often that Snopes.com had to get in on the rumor mill and post the list itself with correct attribution. This list is telling no one to accept defeat. It’s putting you on your guard, warning you that, at every turn, obstacles in life will try to defeat you, and it’s how you handle these situations – whether you are able to build a future despite the unfairness that you face and whether you are able, at the end of the day, to say that you knew life would be challenging and you still chose to pursue your dreams anyway – that will define your life.
 
-Hope Swedeen
 
 When have you faced challenges that have made you think “life’s not fair?” How have you found the motivation to pursue your goals despite the obstacles life has thrown your way?