Shrink Back In Terror

This classic never gets old.

Pumpkinhead

He Taught the Boy Right

The world still struggles with this concept, but Herman Munster had it all those years ago.

Alert readers will know that I normally do a blog Advent Calendar after Thanksgiving and before Christmas, so this year I'm going to give you three days of Halloween.

I Used to Know a Guy

All these years later, I still think about a man who became a friend of mine from graduate school, and then pretty much vanished from my life.

Ali came from the United Arab Emirate. He was paid to come over, study at IU, and return home to teach them about the American education system. He was in a class of mine--I can't even remember what the class was--and his English was a little bit fractured. We were put into a group for a project.

On the night we had to give our group presentation, Ali insisted on taking us all out for dinner to celebrate. One by one, the the members of our group came up with excuses not to go with Ali. Admittedly, I didn't really want to go either. But when I saw Ali's face with each excuse, I couldn't say no.

While we were sitting there at dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Bloomington, Ali said to me, "You are the only one who wanted to come." I told him that everyone was just having a busy week. He smiled politely, but didn't seem convinced. I think he had wanted to treat everyone because he was kind of lonely. He told me that night that he had a wife and baby back home in the UAE.

I remember I tried to pay at the end of the meal, and we waved it off. He pulled out a wallet packed with hundred dollar bills. Evidently, not only did their government compensate him well, but they also should have warned him not to carry all of that around with him. I did, just to make sure he would stay safe.

He told me he liked it when I would talk in class, because I spoke loudly and slowly enough that he could understand me. I took that as a compliment.

I saw Ali one time after that class was over. It was just before I was done in Bloomington, and we ran into each other in one of the libraries. Other than that one night, we never actually hung out. And honestly, I can't even remember his last name. But somehow, I still wonder what ever became of him all these years later.

No Destination In Mind

"Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don't." --Bill Nye

There is one thing about this summer that was brand new for me. I had to figure out how to network. When I went up to Purdue for their career day, that's one thing they really drilled into me. I sat down that afternoon and wrote out a plan, kind of a brainstorming page, of the people I knew who could help me get plugged in.

An early meet-up with my old friend and former 5-1 parent, John, sent me in the right direction. He told me I needed to start calling people and setting up meetings. He said not to set these meetings up as a "job search meeting", but just to sit people down and have them tell me about what they do. This was one of the smartest things I was told all summer.

This led me to meeting up with people like Lacy, Eric, Jim, Kristin, Doug, Libby, Amy, three different people from Purdue's Career Center, Kyle from Butler, Carrie, Julie, Steve, Cynthia, Brian, Susan, Karen, Bret, Karen Carter, Davey, Laura, Jenny, Nick, and Amy. I didn't realize I had met with so many people until the end of the summer. These people were from all kinds of worlds--finance, training, medical research, educational financial planning, publishing, IT, academia, educational software, online education for business, elementary education, and nonprofit work.

As someone who had been pretty limited to the worlds of public education, karate, and camping, this four month investigation broadened my life and worldview considerably. I learned how important it is to learn from everyone. And the best part of it was that everyone I talked to gave me anywhere from three to ten people to contact next. I didn't even count the people I only spoke to on the phone or exchanged emails.

People are extremely helpful, and even more so if they don't see you as begging them for a job.

Break Free

How cool it was to see Mr. Colton Brown on the news the other night! Last week, he was responsible for Fox 59's "Play of the Week". He shook loose from a player who was trying to bring him down and ran 65 yards for a touchdown against Sheridan.

Colton is a former 5-1 student, and in fact, he was a rare "repeat-offender", having been in my class for two years, counting one year of math. He used to push-ups while doing a hand stand.

Congratulations, Colton! You deserve it.

This Is What a Boilermaker Looks Like

Unless you live in a cave on the moon with your eyes closed, I'm sure you know that Purdue beat Ohio State last night. That was beyond awesome in the first place.

But this morning, the thing that keeps popping back into my mind was the College Gameday feature on ESPN about Tyler Trent. If you are in Carmel, then you are familiar with this young man, and no introduction is needed. If you don't know, click the video above.

Yesterday was a big win. From the "Cancer Sucks" shout to seeing so much support even from Ohio State fans for a Purdue win last night for Tyler.

I also like the way the overall movement from "you can beat cancer!" to the acknowledgement that, no, cancer just sucks. This takes it away from being an implied failure for those who aren't as fortunate in the battle.

But I digress. Boiler Up.

Signs You Can Recognize

This video comes from this post (click here) from the Behavioral Health Team at Community Health Network. For obvious reasons, the world of behavioral health is exploding right now, and the best part of that is that it is bringing mental health issues to the forefront. 

Find Your Way

About four weeks ago, I sat in a huge orientation for work. It was my first day.

After a small group discussion, we were all going around and sharing whatever small group discussion we were supposed to share about. I seriously don't remember what we were supposed to talk about in my small group.

There was one group, however, in which the spokesperson shared something that saw things in a whole new way. She had announced that she had worked two jobs for the longest time. She told us that we would need to live up to the high expectations of this new job because we were really lucky to have it. In fact, she told us that we were the best of the best, because there were many people who had applied, and we were chosen. This group was full of doctors and nurses, and us I.T. people were in the minority by a long shot.

Then, she revealed that this wasn't replacing her two jobs...this was her third job.

I found this to be incredibly humbling. It illustrates that you will either find an excuse or you will find a way.

I hope you all are finding your way right now.

Walk of Respect

I love this.

Happy fall break, everyone.

The Black Casebook

I'm going to post about a few things I learned during the stretch between 
when I resigned from teachingand I started work at the new job. This is 
pure self-indulgence on my part, but maybe it will either help someone else 
or someone will find something to relate to. If not, then just ignore.

The first thing I learned was patience.

I tried to work at all times to be finding a job. What I discovered, however, 
is that when you do that, you often just find yourself checking the same 
things over and over. If you’re working hard, you just have to let things 
happen. And it’s normally not on your time. Your time is not everybody 
else’s time. Everyone has their own problems to deal with, and 
you are not anyone’s top priority.

That said, unless you’re expecting them to think of you all the time, 
people will actually think of you more often than you’d expect. It was 
always a happy surprise when I would get an email or a text from 
someone who had a new possibility for me, or someone who had 
thought of me when they heard about an opportunity. This is the payoff 
of networking, which I’ll talk about on another day.

While I was interviewing, I had all kinds of them. One very early 
interview I had was with a marketing company, and everyone in 
there was in their 20’s. They were really eager to hire me, but it became 
apparent that I was being hired to be a dad figure. I would have had 
fun doing that job, but I didn’t really want to be constantly reeling 
everyone back in. I had spent enough time doing that for the past 18 
years.

Another interview was with an online learning university. The wanted 
to do a virtual interview, so we set up the time, I got all prepared, 
studied up on them, and everything. I sat down at my laptop at my 
dining room table, and...nothing. I gave it ten minutes, then I tried 
calling them, and I was told that they had tried to get through to me 
but that I ignored them. In my opinion, I felt like they were being kind of
rude. Of course it was a little disappointing, but it also told me that 
I did not want to work for this university in the capacity.

It took a number of interviews before the just right one came along. 
The one that I think of as baby bear’s porridge. The people seemed 
happy, the atmosphere was a positive one, and everyone seemed 
to get along. They asked me questions, and while they did it, they 
smiled. I felt very comfortable asking them questions. I had found 
a company that wasn’t looking for someone with all the skills already 
in place; they were looking for a personality that was willing to learn 
and that could get along with the other people in the office.

As a fifth grade teacher, every year when it came time for the kids’ 
BizTown interviews, I always gave the kids some tips on interviewing. 
I told them that if anyone asked them if they thought they would be 
the right person for a job, always say yes. Even if they don’t think they 
will be the best person for the job, they should always say yes. I tell 
them that best case scenario, they succeed, finding that they had the 
ability all along.

Worst case scenario, they fail. But at least then they would know more 
about the position than they did going in. Experience is experience.

Lastly, do your best to enjoy the process. That is an ambitious thing for 
me to say, because there were days I definitely did not enjoy myself. I 
did learn, however, to enjoy the little things--the entirety of baseball 
games, the strings of TV shows I had never watched as I sat at my 
laptop, and doing some cooking. I had days where I would have 
absolutely nothing planned for the whole day, which was a first. 

The fact is, if you keep at it and keep working hard, you never know 
when everything is going to work out just right.

Obsolete

The other day, during a training, the lesson was about filling out the vitals on a patient. There is a spot to put in the patient's status as a smoker. This comes from questioning the patient, and there is a place in the file where you can enter in if they use smokeless tobacco.

At first, a nurse asked what smokeless tobacco was, and the response was either chewing tobacco or snuff (these were actually the pre-recorded options). Most of the nurses were younger than thirty, I'd say, and many of them had no idea what snuff was.

One of them asked, "Is that a new thing? Like vaping?"

It's so weird to think about younger generations' points of view. I'm actually glad they had never heard of snuff. But then, I wish they hadn't heard of vaping, either.

Our World and Welcome to It

I'm tired again tonight. But I still wanted to post this.

I think this is an alarming view of our world population. But even if you aren't taken aback by this, you have to at least admit that it's really interesting.

Moonshot

I had a lot to write about tonight, but I'm exhausted. Watch this--it's a cool one from the makers of the solar system video I posted the other day.