Category Archives: Personal Empowerment

Perhaps youre seeking answers to deep life questions. Maybe you want advice about a new crush or an old flame or you just want to have a little fun delving into the mysteries of the universe. There are many reasons to visit a psychic or spiritual adviser and no shame in doing so, but how do you find a good one? When baring your soul to a stranger, youre putting yourself in a uniquely vulnerable place, so you want to be smart about it. Just this summer, a group of Las Vegans were indicted for using the pretext of psychic readings to scam a California lawyer out of $1 million. To help readers safely navigate the psychic realms, we offer this beginners guide:

Palmistry/palm reading

Astrology

Tarot

Hypnotherapy

Reiki

Past-life regressions

Shamanic healing

Crystal healing or gazing

Mediumship

Divination

How to find a credible reader

Seek word-of-mouth recommendations. If you don't know someone who uses psychic services, look for reviews on sites such as Yelp and Google. Yes, psychics get reviews, too.

Research everything. There are a ton of options for both services and practitioners, and the internet makes it easy to figure out exactly what is right for you. Do your homework, do your due diligence, advises Melissa Akiima Eggstaff, co-founder and director of Haven Craft, an interfaith organization and church.

Check their license. The City of Las Vegas requires a person or establishment to obtain a license to practice the psychic arts.

Dont be afraid to ask questions. Whether youre quizzing your friends about their experiences or asking the practitioner themselves, its OK to ask about the process, payment, expectations and more. In fact, if a practitioner refuses to answer your questions and/or makes you feel uncomfortable, thats a sign that you may need to find somebody else.

It's OK to believe what you believe.

Positive things to look for

In-person psychic readings ($20-$50 for 15-60 minutes)

Telephone psychic readings ($25-$55 for 15-60 minutes)

Reiki sessions ($45-$125 for 30-90 minutes)

An adviser should help you restore your sense of agency and empowerment, Eggstaff says. They should be helping you find a path that guides you to make gradual and sustainable improvements to your life.

Most issues in peoples lives arent resolved with a shuffling of a tarot deck, a crystal ball or snapping your fingers, Eggstaff says. Theyre resolved one step at a time in a direction you feel comfortable walking in. If somebody else picks the direction, it doesnt work.

Eggstaff says a good counselorwhether theyre working with a tarot deck, via secular counseling or in a churchshould help you on the journey you choose, and they should never imply that they can do the work for you.

An adviser should be upfront and honest about the scope of their practice, Eggstaff says.

Red flags to avoid

Outrageous prices. You dont always get what you pay for. Sometimes expensive prices are a sign that youre being taken advantage of.

Any person holding a position of authority or expertise can use their power to manipulate the vulnerable, Eggstaff says. She adds that predators can exploit members of every community, whether its religious, cultural, spiritual or secular. Many of the tips for avoiding being exploited can be applied to situations beyond the psychic arts.

Curses. If a person tells you that youre cursed or haunted by an evil presence and they want you to pay to remove the curse, theyre likely hucksters.

Unrealistic promises. Its a clich, but if theyre promising you something that sounds too good to be true, it probably is. For example, Eggstaff says, the opportunity for closure with a deceased relative is possible in the psychic arts, but if that closure comes with the promise of inheriting a fortune as long as you pay a fee right now that should ring an alarm, she adds.

Money scams. Eggstaff says scams involving money are common in many fields. Anything where theyre asking you to withdraw a large sum of money should raise some red flags.

Violations of confidentiality. It's a bad sign if an adviser shares the details or stories of other clients, Eggstaff says.

Asks for too much personal information. While an adviser will need some amount of information in order to give good counsel, Eggstaff says to watch out for someone who is just trying to extract financial and personal information from you.

Claims to control the uncontrollable. A psychic (or anybody else, for that matter) cant make your crush love you, cant convince a company to hire you, cant make you famous, etc. Nobody has the power to control someone elses free will.

Threats. Like curses, threats are a warning sign to leave immediately. Eggstaff says to watch out for very grand threatening statements that something terrible awaits unless you take certain steps now. The threats can come in the form of looming disaster or evil, injury, demons or even the wrath of God.

Cults of personality. Beware of echo chambers and yes-men, Eggstaff advises. A lot of these professional spiritual personswhether youre talking about a psychic or a priestbuild themselves little pyramids of power and place themselves up on top, she says. These power structures can lead to abuse of vulnerable people.

Local resources

Crystal Alley Emporium. Self-described largest metaphysical store in the Las Vegas Valley, with a variety of offerings, such as books, jewelry, incense, crystals, tarot cards and psychic readings. 2841 N. Green Valley Parkway, 702-434-7626, crystalalleyemporium.com

Psychic Eye Book Shops. With two shops in Southern California and three in Southern Nevada, the store has been offering mystical supplies and services since 1985. Multiple locations, pebooks.com

Enchanted Forest Reiki Center. Offers reiki sessions, psychic services, classes, yoga, meditation and a gift shop. 2280 S. Jones Blvd., 702-948-4999, enchantedforestreiki.com

Haven Craft. A nonprofit interfaith organization and church that offers education, counseling and advocacy. It recently relocated to North Carolina but is using online programs to continue serving the Las Vegas community.havencraft.org

This story appeared in Las VegasWeekly.

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How to experience the psychic arts without getting scammed - Las Vegas Sun

For the last two years there have been ominous political signs bolstered by political grandstanding and finger-wagging directed against the NRM and President Yoweri Museveni, which make it appear that the revolution is riding under rain before a violent storm descends towards the much hyped 2021 general elections.

Unprincipled rivalry, intrigue, lack of seriousness of purpose, laxity or failure to implement programs as agreed, negligence and abdication of duty, glaring greed and corruption are all sores that NRM leaders at all level must deal with firmly because they are causing public disaffection. In addition, NRM leaders must return to pro-active and constructive engagement especially with the young educated population yearning to meet their expectations raised by the ongoing changes in Uganda. The good news is that much of the drenching has been self-inflicted, and can be corrected in time to give the opposition a thorough political beating.

There is also need for the NRM to support, rather than become contemptuous towards those NRM MPs and leaders who appear either unprincipled or spineless, and trembling in their trousers in the face of opposition adversities and harassment as we have seen in some parts of the country.

The entire opposition all seem settled on the strategy to directly attack Museveni personally over his long stay and the alleged accompanied failures. If the question over the past two years is whether Museveni still has got stamina, then the answer is a clear yes. And short of staging a violent riot as in Sudan or asking for foreign direct help via military intervention like in Libya as some opposition quislings have been seeking, then probably Museveni is home and dry. Of course seeking change through foreign intervention would be a fools rendezvous with destiny.

As much as we may loathe the opposition leaning political media, they nevertheless raise issues that affect peoples lives, and expose much of the opposition as mere charlatans. NRM would do better now to challenge opposition leaders to a series of public debates with President Museveni to test who has a better grasp on economic, health, education, agriculture, security, law enforcement, women and youth transformative empowerment, and international issues. Museveni could be tested on literally every subject.

Many believe that some of the opposition leaders who have recently had good media time could have done so perhaps because they were granted attention than their public support warrants. However, the main takeaways from these debates and media exposures apart from being healthy in a democracy have proved that they cannot make any giant policy revelations.

UPC and DP both led respectively by eloquent grandstanders, Jimmy Akena and Norbert Mao, are in terminal decline. FDC currently led by Eng. Patrick Oboi Amuriat and Nandala Mafabi as president and Secretary General, respectively is incapable of solving the lack of policy and intellectual vision, vitality and consistency, and is simply continuing the downward trend.

And with Besigye who has returned to re-assert himself as king, any compromise either with NRM or other opposition groups is considered cowardly and an unconditional surrender. The mould of Amuriat, Mafabi, Erias Lukwago, Semujju Nganda, Salaamu Musumba and Ingrid Turinawe all presumed powerful in the Besigye project, it is very unlikely that FDC will be toning down belligerence.

Apparently, they dont believe that the same stubbornness and determination that has kept the Besigye project going for this long is the one stopping it from becoming flexible in times of political fluidity. But the challenges now confronting that project are formidable as the last two years have shown threatening to consign Besigye to the fringes, yet he had made opposition hothouse his lifeline and hoping to make the coming election an existential one.

Already as the Besigye alliance hurtles towards 2021, information from the grapevine indicates that split is emerging with Mafabi, in addition to an array of senior FDC MPs who are furiously talking of not returning to the partys fold in 2021. They complain that ultra-Besigyeists are planting surrogates in their respective constituencies such as Serere, Soroti and Kasese districts seen as their enclaves. Betty Aol Ochan, the LoP is considered an inevitable inconvenience. The operation appears blindsided by Bobi Wines yet to be confirmed rise as some weak-knee opposition figures sit uneasily hoping they can cash on the gale cutting through their ranks before it settles. Amidst the angst, there are signs that FDCs agenda risks being defined in this election by internal opposition.

With a mass mobilization of support countrywide, NRM continues to clearly offer realistic routes for national stability and socio-economic transformation to the broad majority of Ugandans. As the 2016 election showed, the more we get to the goal, the more NRM and Museveni are liked. And also as Museveni gets challenged to his limits is also as he gets his element. But as the ongoing political rumblings perhaps show, party loyalties have been eroded significantly and replaced by soft money and immediate personal calculations leading fluidity. Any confident prediction of the coming contest emerges either from naivety or delusion.

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NRM and Opposition Troubles Before the Storm - Uganda Media Centre

LONDON Call it an act of homage, authorial daring or simply a playwright having a bit of fun, but Laura Wades The Watsons is one of this years smartest plays so far, and also among the sweetest. Picking up where Jane Austen left her unfinished novel of the same name, Ms. Wade brings these Regency-era characters to the stage accompanied by her modern-day self.

The giddy result was first seen last year at the Chichester Festival Theater, in southeast England, and has since transferred to the Menier Chocolate Factory through Nov. 16. I wouldnt be at all surprised if this play, like Ms. Wades previous works Posh and the Olivier Award-winning Home, Im Darling, finds a longer life still, not least among playgoers who like a bit of spice in their period pieces.

Ms. Wades conceit, clever without ever turning arch, allows her an onstage surrogate in the form of the bristling, quick-witted Laura (a terrific Louise Ford). Entering the action in contemporary street clothes that stand out from the bonnets and breeches around her, Laura reflects upon the act of writing while attempting to finish what Austen started early in the 19th century. (To this day, scholars are unsure why this particular Austen narrative never made it to the final sentence; the book was first published posthumously in 1871.)

Laura, of course, is a playwright, not a novelist, an important distinction that she addresses head-on: I like it when they clap, she says of the appeal of live performance. At the same time, existing in the here and now gives Laura access to a discourse about writing that would have been alien to Austen and the gentry she brought to the page. We hear about characters emerging from the unconscious, a psychological term Mrs. Bennet wouldnt have known to employ, and theres a Brexit-era quip about having to respect the result that surely would have received blank stares from Austen and her contemporaries.

One obvious forerunner of Ms. Wades frolics here is Luigi Pirandellos genre-bending Six Characters in Search of an Author, the 1921 classic in which a dramatist and his characters come to an uneasy face-off. The Watsons builds upon the themes of its iconic predecessor in offering an assemblage of Austen characters the young Emma Watson (a piquant Grace Molony) chief among them who clamor for something to do and, in at least one instance, resist being fictionalized at all. The onstage Laura admits to being in conversation with Pirandello, but the primary connection made by The Watsons is to its audience, who at a recent matinee seemed to be all smiles as events went their merrily unexpected way.

The production is robustly directed by Samuel West, who also happens to be Ms. Wades partner and the father of their two daughters (who are referred to in passing). Almost as remarkable as the sustained sleight-of-hand of the writing is the fact that the play boasts a cast of 18, the sort of scale youd usually expect from a musical. Might a song-and-dance extravaganza be yet another method of bringing closure to Austens novel? Were Ms. Wade moved in that direction, very little would appear to be off limits. You have to feel pulled toward your desk, were told of the primal need to write, as expressed by a writer for whom anything increasingly seems possible.

The Watsons is one of a clutch of London plays this season that either engage with dramatic shape-shifting or put unpredictable women center stage. Less accomplished, though on paper no less intriguing, is Two Ladies, at the Bridge Theater through Oct. 26. Across 100 minutes without an intermission, the Irish playwright Nancy Harris imagines a meeting between the wives of two world leaders who are brought together to commiserate, and more, while their (unseen) husbands talk realpolitik in a room not far away as revolution stirs in the streets outside.

The obvious prototypes for Helen (a peppery Zo Wanamaker) and Sophia (Zrinka Cvitesic) are Brigitte Macron, the wife of President Emmanuel Macron of France, and Melania Trump, the first lady of the United States. At the same time, enough is different about Ms. Harriss characters to individuate them from their inspirations: Helen is English, not French, and was once a journalist (although she is much older than her husband, as is the case with the Macrons); the excellent Ms. Cvitesic, an Olivier Award winner for the musical Once, plays an aggrieved spouse who is from her native Croatia, not Slovenia, and who speaks in the play of the child she never had; the Trumps, of course, have a young son.

As it happens, Two Ladies needs as many real-life parallels as it can muster once the plot has derailed into absurdity and melodrama. Its easy to see the appeal of this material to Ms. Harris as an exercise in female empowerment and agency Sophia, in particular, becomes emboldened as the play progresses but theres no escaping the sense that Nicholas Hytners production is working with an attenuated script that feels a draft or two away from its full potential. Two Ladies feels like a pitch for a play, not the finished product.

Thats not the case across town at the Royal Court, the capitals leading address for new writing, which in recent weeks has passed a provocative baton between two generations of female writers. A History of Water in the Middle East, at the Courts intimate Theater Upstairs through Nov. 16, goes one better than The Watsons in placing its British-Egyptian writer, Sabrina Mahfouz, among its cast of four in what turns out to be less a play than an illustrated lecture with music, played live by the composer, Kareem Samara.

Ms. Mahfouz traverses locations, as well as epochs past and future, to chronicle the saga of Britains engagement in the Middle East alongside the authors personal account of her flirtation with a career as a spy. If the hourlong evening feels a tad slight, Stef ODriscolls production exists cleverly perched between a lecture and a concert, which in turn flavors the instruction with a hipster vibe.

And theres no one more momentous, albeit unaffectedly so, in her playwriting finesse than Caryl Churchill, age 81, whose quartet of new plays finished an acclaimed, too-brief run on the Court main stage on Oct. 12. Fusing a deep sense of foreboding alongside an abiding playfulness, the various one-acts Imp, especially confirmed a masterful ability to experiment with both subject matter and form that remains without peer. Ms. Churchills 1982 play, Top Girls, was revived at the National Theater this year, and in her ninth decade, shes still at the top.

The Watsons. Directed by Samuel West. Menier Chocolate Factory, through Nov. 16.

Two Ladies. Directed by Nicholas Hytner. Bridge Theater, through Oct. 26.

A History of Water in the Middle East. Directed by Stef ODriscoll. Royal Court Theater Upstairs, through Nov. 16.

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Female Playwrights Are on Form (for the Most Part) - The New York Times

Personal empowerment safety program radKids of Lake Norman has been equipping youth in the area with hands-on training to help enhance their quality of life for years.

Husband and wife duo David and Karen Fisher started the program in 2013 and are nationally certified instructors.

See all the photos at the bottom of this article

I became a mom in 2009 and 2010 and I realized that as my children became older that they needed situational awareness skills as much as adults do, Karen said. So I started looking around for specific programs and found radKIDS. It is a national child safety program. They go to schools or they bring in community initiatives like police departments or school districts to nationally certify instructors.

This program sparked Karens interest. She not only wanted her kids to be a part of this experience, but herself as well.

I actually became very interested in becoming an instructor, so I contacted the executive director about becoming an instructor and being an independent person like myself and like my husband, we are not in a police department, we are not in a school, we are just independent on our own, Karen said.

After months of persistence, the Fishers were able to take an instructor class and become certified.

Karen Fisher talks with her class about what behaviors they do not have to tolerate from others.

In November 2013 we were off and running but we started it at our house with a little preschool program with like six kids preschoolers and from there we kind of just ramped up the program, Karen said.

From humble beginnings the program has continued to grow through word of mouth.

Long story short we have empowered over 2,500 children in our community at this point, Karen said.

It is a 10-hour, drill-based program including role playing that puts the kids in certain scenarios that they might face in their real life, Karen said.

The scenarios give the kids options and plans on how to keep themselves safe, creating a memory base for reactions.

Procedural memory is what we all need children through senior citizens to (have to) react instinctively to danger, violence or harm kids deserve that just as much as adults, Karen said.

When the Fishers start a new class, one of the first questions they ask the children in attendance is Who is in charge of your safety?. That gets them thinking.

Ninety-nine percent of them, if not 100 percent, will say my mom or my dad, Karen said. Then I will look around and say, Where is your mom or dad now? They are not with you so who is in charge of your safety and that really gets them thinking, Wait, wait my mom and dad arent with me so if they arent with me who is going to keep me safe?

Natalie Duncan, Skylar Stone and Elizabeth Casiday work on learning protective moves.

After they answer, the Fishers will then explain that the children themselves are in charge of their own safety.

That is when the empowerment begins that is the seed and within those 10 hours it grows abundantly into a full awareness program for them, Karen said.

Throughout the program there are three things all radKIDS know, she said.

First, no one has the right to hurt them because they are special. I ask the kids on the first day of class to close their eyes and point to the most important person in the room they point to me or him or if their parent is in the room they will point to their parent and very rarely they will point to themselves so we change that mindset.

Second, they dont have the right to hurt anyone either, including a conversation about drugs, alcohol, smoking, self-harm things like that but if someone is trying to hurt you, you have the right to stop them.

Third, if anyone does try to hurt, trick or make them feel bad, its not their fault.

These three things are addressed in drills to include defense against bullying, gun safety, fire safety, home safety, outside safety, bike safety, vehicle safety, school safety, internet safety, strangers, 911 and good, bad, unwanted touch.

They are able number one to recognize any type of danger, violence or harm and if they can recognize it quickly they can avoid it and stay safe, Karen said. And if they cant avoid it we teach them how to respond and escape if necessary.

The radKIDS program also helps the children differentiate when a person might be a threat to them based on their behaviors.

The funniest thing I like to inform them of is if you cant talk to strangers how can you make new friends, Karen said. As adults, all of our parents taught us dont talk to strangers, dont talk to strangers which makes us think that strangers are bad.

Not all strangers are bad in fact most strangers are actually good strangers, Karen said.

So instead of talking about the dangers of strangers we start trying to give them hints or clues to the differences between good people and bad people, Karen said.

They also teach physical resistance skills, which Karen calls realistic fight skills.

The program is available for children from Pre-K to the age of 12. There are multiple locations in Iredell County area as well as an after-school program and a summer camp.

Its not martial arts, it is save-myself skills, do whatever you have to do to get yourself out of that situation and get safe so on top of all the drills that we do and the talks that we have they learn the skills, Karen said.

The children get to work with pads and a punching dummy to practice physical resistance. They then use those skills in a simulated realistic environment at the end of the program.

David simulates an attack on a child in a padded aggressor suit, picking up the child. The children can fight back without injuring him while keeping everyone safe.

They get worried and afraid and scared of the situation, but not in a bad way because it is controlled and I am right beside of them, Karen said.

They do get that feeling of if this were real this is what it would look like and feel like and sound like and smell like and all of that so that becomes embedded in their brain you have to pepper, you have to hammer fist in the nose, you have to kick him in the groin, you have to elbow them, you have to do all of this. And Im allowing you to do this because you are not going to do it unless you are allowed to do it.

So its really empowering; it can be a life changer. We have had multiple saves meaning disclosures from children who have been sexually abused or physically abused, she said.

The Fishers have previously reached out to child protective services or law enforcement to help some children who were able to recognize the signs that were taught to them through radKIDS.

Every time I get choked up when a child I have bonded with says I need to talk to you in private and I know what is coming, Karen said. I feel like I am put here for this to save them. If I never taught this class again after one of those disclosures I would be OK because I saved that one child and thats what it means to me.

Those are challenging things to face, but also the driving force behind the program.

It (radKIDS) takes you from Help me, help me to How dare you try to hurt me, David said. Besides raising my own children, this is the second best thing I have done in my life.

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Mooresville couple teaches children to defend themselves - and so much more - Mooresville Tribune

Steve Jobs, John Sculley, and Steve Wozniak, 1984. Steve Jobs, John Sculley, and Steve Wozniak, 1984.

One of Apple cofounder Steve Jobss most audacious marketing triumphs is rarely mentioned in the paeans to his genius that remain a staple of business content farms. In 1982, Jobs offered to donate a computer to every K12 school in America, provided Congress pass a bill giving Apple substantial tax write-offs for the donations. When he arrived in Washington, DC, to lobby for what became known as the Apple Bill, the 28-year-old CEO looked more like a summer intern than the head of a $600-million-a-year corporation, according to The Washington Post, but he already showed signs of his famous arrogance. He barraged the legislators with white papers and proclaimed that they would be crazy not to take us up on this. Jobs knew the strength of his hand: A mania for computer literacy was sweeping the nation as an answer to the competitive threats of globalization and the reescalation of the Cold Wars technology and space races. Yet even as preparing students for the Information Age became a national priority, the Reagan eras budget cuts meant that few schools could afford a brand-new $2,400 Apple II computer.Ad Policy Books in Review

The Apple Bill passed the House overwhelmingly but then died in the Senate after a bureaucratic snafu for which Jobs forever blamed Republican Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, then chair of the Finance Committee. Yet all was not lost: A similar bill passed in California, and Apple flooded its home state with almost 10,000 computers. Apples success in California gave it a leg up in the lucrative education market as states around the country began to computerize their classrooms. But education was not radically transformed, unless you count a spike in The Oregon Trailrelated deaths from dysentery. If anything, those who have studied the rapid introduction of computers into classrooms in the 1980s and 90s tend to conclude that it exacerbated inequities. Elite students and schools zoomed smoothly into cyberspace, while poorer schools fell further behind, bogged down by a lack of training and resources.

A young, charismatic geek hawks his wares using bold promises of social progress but actually makes things worse and gets extremely rich in the processtoday it is easy to see the story of the Apple Bill as a stand-in for the history of the digital revolution as a whole. The growing concern about the role that technology plays in our lives and society is fueled in no small part by a growing realization that we have been duped. We were told that computerizing everything would lead to greater prosperity, personal empowerment, collective understanding, even the ability to transcend the limits of the physical realm and create a big, beautiful global brain made out of electrons. Instead, our extreme dependence on technology seems to have mainly enriched and empowered a handful of tech companies at the expense of everyone else. The panic over Facebooks impact on democracy sparked by Donald Trumps election in a haze of fake news and Russian bots felt like the national version of the personal anxiety that seizes many of us when we find ourselves snapping away from our phone for what seems like the 1,000th time in an hour and contemplating how our lives are being stolen by a screen. We are stuck in a really bad system.

This realization has led to a justifiable anger and derision aimed at the architects of this system. Silicon Valley executives and engineers are taken to task every week in the op-ed pages of our largest newspapers. We are told that their irresponsibility and greed have undermined our freedom and degraded our democratic institutions. While it is gratifying to see tech billionaires get a (very small) portion of their comeuppance, we often forget that until very recently, Silicon Valley was hailed by almost everyone as creating the path toward a brilliant future. Perhaps we should pause and contemplate how this situation came to be, lest we make the same mistakes again. The story of how Silicon Valley ended up at the center of the American dream in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, as well as the ambiguous reality behind its own techno-utopian dreams, is the subject of Margaret OMaras sweeping new history, The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America. In it, she puts Silicon Valley into the context of a larger story about postwar Americas economic and social transformations, highlighting its connections with the mainstream rather than the cultural quirks and business practices that set it apart. The Code urges us to consider Silicon Valleys shortcomings as Americas shortcomings, even if it fails to interrogate them as deeply as our current crisisand the role that technology played in bringing it aboutseems to warrant.

Silicon Valley entered the public consciousness in the 1970s as something of a charmed place. The first recorded mention of Silicon Valley was in a 1971 article by a writer for a technology newspaper reporting on the regions semiconductor industry, which was booming despite the economic doldrums that had descended on most of the country. As the Rust Belt foundered and Detroit crumbled, Silicon Valley soared to heights barely conveyed by the metrics that OMara rattles off in the opening pages of The Code: Three billion smartphones. Two billion social media users. Two trillion-dollar companies and the richest people in the history of humanity. Many people have attempted to divine the secret of Silicon Valleys success. The consensus became that the Valley had pioneered a form of quicksilver entrepreneurialism perfectly suited to the Information Age. It was fast, flexible, meritocratic, and open to new ways of doing things. It allowed brilliant young people to turn crazy ideas into world-changing companies practically overnight. Silicon Valley came to represent the innovative power of capitalism freed from the clutches of uptight men in midcentury business suits, bestowed upon the masses by a new, appealing folk hero: the cherub-faced start-up founder hacking away in his dorm room.

The Code both bolsters and revises this story. On the one hand, OMara, a historian at the University of Washington, is clearly enamored with tales of entrepreneurial derring-do. From the traitorous eight who broke dramatically from the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in 1957 to start Fairchild Semiconductor and create the modern silicon transistor to the well-documented story of Facebooks founding, the major milestones of Silicon Valley history are told in heroic terms that can seem gratingly out of touch, given what we know about how it all turned out. In her portrayal of Silicon Valleys tech titans, OMara emphasizes virtuous qualities like determination, ingenuity, and humanistic concern, while hints of darker motives are studiously ignored. We learn that a visionary and relentless Jeff Bezos continued to drive a beat-up Honda Accord even as he became a billionaire, but his reported remark to an Amazon sales team that they ought to treat small publishers the way a lion treats a sickly gazelle is apparently not deemed worthy of the historical record. But at the same time, OMara helps us understand why Silicon Valleys economic dominance cant be chalked up solely to the grit and smarts of entrepreneurs battling it out in the free market. At every stage of its development, she shows how the booming tech industry was aided and abetted by a wide swath of American society both inside and outside the Valley. Marketing gurus shaped the tech companies images, educators evangelized for technology in schools, best-selling futurists preached personalized tech as a means toward personal liberation. What emerges in The Code is less the story of a tribe of misfits working against the grain than the simultaneous alignment of the countrys political, cultural, and technical elites around the view that Silicon Valley held the key to the future.

Above all, OMara highlights the profound role that the US government played in Silicon Valleys rise. At the end of World War II, the region was still the sleepy, sun-drenched Santa Clara Valley, home to farms and orchards, an upstart Stanford University, and a scattering of small electronics and aerospace firms. Then came the space and arms races, given new urgency in 1957 with the launch of Sputnik, which suggested a serious Soviet advantage. Millions of dollars in government funding flooded technology companies and universities around the country. An outsize portion went to Northern Californias burgeoning tech industry, thanks in large part to Stanfords far-sighted provost Frederick Terman, who reshaped the university into a hub for engineering and the applied sciences.Current Issue

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Stanford and the surrounding area became a hive of government R&D during these years, as IBM and Lockheed Martin opened local outposts and the first native start-ups hit the ground. While these early companies relied on what OMara calls the Valleys ecosystem of fresh-faced engineers seeking freedom and sunshine in California, venture capitalists sniffing out a profitable new industry, and lawyers, construction companies, and real estate agents jumping to serve their somewhat quirky ways, she makes it clear that the lifeblood pumping through it all was government money. Fairchild Semiconductors biggest clients for its new silicon chips were NASA, which put them in the Apollo rockets, and the Defense Department, which stuck them in Minuteman nuclear missiles. The brains of all of todays devices have their origin in the United States drive to defeat the Soviet Union in the Cold War.

But the role of public funding in the creation of Silicon Valley is not the big government success story a good liberal might be tempted to consider it. As OMara points out, during the Cold War American leaders deliberately pushed public funds to private industry rather than government programs because they thought the market was the best way to spur technological progress while avoiding the specter of centralized planning, which had come to smack of communist tyranny. In the years that followed, this belief in the market as the means to achieve the goals of liberal democracy spread to nearly every aspect of life and society, from public education and health care to social justice, solidifying into the creed we now call neoliberalism. As the role of the state was eclipsed by the market, Silicon Valleyfull of brilliant entrepreneurs devising technologies that promised to revolutionize everything they touchedwas well positioned to step into the void.

The earliest start-up founders hardly seemed eager to assume the mantle of social visionary that their successors, todays flashy celebrity technologists, happily take up. They were buttoned-down engineers who reflected the cool practicality of their major government and corporate clients. As the 1960s wore on, they were increasingly out of touch. Amid the tumult of the civil rights movement and the protests against the Vietnam War, the major concern in Silicon Valleys manicured technology parks was a Johnson-era drop in military spending. The relatively few techies who were political at the time were conservative.

Things started to change in the 1970s. The 60s made a belated arrival in the Valley as a younger generation of geeks steeped in countercultural values began to apply them to the development of computer technology. The weight of Silicon Valleys culture shifted from the conservative suits to long-haired techno-utopians with dreams of radically reorganizing society through technology. This shift was perhaps best embodied by Lee Felsenstein, a former self-described child radical who cut his teeth running communications operations for anti-war and civil rights protests before going on to develop the Tom Swift Terminal, one of the earliest personal computers. Felsenstein believed that giving everyday people access to computers could liberate them from the crushing hierarchy of modern industrial society by breaking the monopoly on information held by corporations and government bureaucracies. To change the rules, change the tools, he liked to say. Whereas Silicon Valley had traditionally developed tools for the Man, these techies wanted to make tools to undermine him. They created a loose-knit network of hobbyist groups, drop-in computer centers, and DIY publications to share knowledge and work toward the ideal of personal liberation through technology. Their dreams seemed increasingly achievable as computers shrank from massive, room-filling mainframes to the smaller-room-filling minicomputers to, finally, in 1975, the first commercially viable personal computer, the Altair.

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Yet as OMara shows, the techno-utopians did not ultimately constitute such a radical break from the past. While their calls to democratize computing may have echoed Marxist cries to seize the means of production, most were capitalists at heart. To advance the personal computer revolution, they founded start-ups, trade magazines, and business forums, relying on funding from venture capital funds often with roots in the old money elite. Jobs became the most celebrated entrepreneur of the era by embodying the discordant figures of both the cowboy capitalist and the touchy-feely hippie, an image crafted in large part by the marketing guru Regis McKenna. Silicon Valley soon became an industry that looked a lot like those that had come before. It was nearly as white and male as they were. Its engineers worked soul-crushing hours and blew off steam with boozy pool parties. And its most successful company, Microsoft, clawed its way to the top through ruthless monopolistic tactics.

Perhaps the strongest case against the supposed subversiveness of the personal computer pioneers is how quickly they were embraced by those in power. As profits rose and spectacular IPOs seized headlines throughout the 1980s, Silicon Valley was championed by the rising stars of supply-side economics, who hitched their drive for tax cuts and deregulation to techs venture-capital-fueled rocket ship. The groundwork was laid in 1978, when the Valleys venture capitalists formed an alliance with the Republicans to kill then-President Jimmy Carters proposed increase in the capital gains tax. They beta-tested Reaganomics by advancing the dubious argument that millionaires making slightly less money on their investments might stifle technological innovation by limiting the supply of capital available to start-ups. And they carried the day.

As president, Ronald Reagan doubled down with tax cuts and wild technophilia. In a truly trippy speech to students at Moscow State University in 1988, he hailed the transcendent possibilities of the new economy epitomized by Silicon Valley, predicting a future in which human innovation increasingly makes physical resources obsolete. Meanwhile, the market-friendly New Democrats embraced the tech industry so enthusiastically that they became known, to their chagrin, as Atari Democrats. The media turned Silicon Valley entrepreneurs into international celebrities with flattering profiles and cover storiesliving proof that the mix of technological innovation, risk taking, corporate social responsibility, and lack of regulation that defined Silicon Valley in the popular imagination was the template for unending growth and prosperity, even in an era of deindustrialization and globalization.

The near-universal celebration of Silicon Valley as an avatar of free-market capitalism in the 1980s helped ensure that the market would guide the Internets development in the 1990s, as it became the cutting-edge technology that promised to change everything. The Internet began as an academic resource, first as ARPANET, funded and overseen by the Department of Defense, and later as the National Science Foundations NSFNET. And while Al Gore didnt invent the Internet, he did spearhead the push to privatize it: As the Clinton administrations technology czar, he helped develop its landmark National Information Infrastructure (NII) plan, which emphasized the role of private industry and the importance of telecommunications deregulation in constructing Americas information superhighway. Not surprisingly, Gore would later do a little-known turn as a venture capitalist with the prestigious Valley firm Kleiner Perkins, becoming very wealthy in the process. In response to his NII plan, the advocacy group Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility warned of a possible corporate takeover of the Internet. An imaginative view of the risks of an NII designed without sufficient attention to public-interest needs can be found in the modern genre of dystopian fiction known as cyberpunk, they wrote. Cyberpunk novelists depict a world in which a handful of multinational corporations have seized control, not only of the physical world, but of the virtual world of cyberspace. Who can deny that todays commercial Internet has largely fulfilled this cyberpunk nightmare? Someone should ask Gore what he thinks.

Despite offering evidence to the contrary, OMara narrates her tale of Silicon Valleys rise as, ultimately, a success story. At the end of the book, we see it as the envy of other states around the country and other countries around the world, an exuberantly capitalist, slightly anarchic tech ecosystem that had evolved over several generations. Throughout the book, she highlights the many issues that have sparked increasing public consternation with Big Tech of late, from its lack of diversity to its stupendous concentration of wealth, but these are framed in the end as unfortunate side effects of the headlong rush to create a new and brilliant future. She hardly mentions the revelations by the National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden of the US governments chilling capacity to siphon users most intimate information from Silicon Valleys platforms and the voraciousness with which it has done so. Nor does she grapple with Uber, which built its multibillion-dollar leviathan on the backs of meagerly paid drivers. The fact that in order to carry out almost anything online we must subject ourselves to a hypercommodified hellscape of targeted advertising and algorithmic sorting does not appear to be a huge cause for concern. But these and many other aspects of our digital landscape have made me wonder if a technical complex born out of Cold War militarism and mainstreamed in a free-market frenzy might not be fundamentally always at odds with human flourishing. OMara suggests at the end of her book that Silicon Valleys flaws might be redeemed by a new, more enlightened, and more diverse generation of techies. But havent we heard this story before?

If there is a larger lesson to learn from The Code, it is that technology cannot be separated from the social and political contexts in which it is created. The major currents in society shape and guide the creation of a system that appears to spring from the minds of its inventors alone. Militarism and unbridled capitalism remain among the most powerful forces in the United States, and to my mind, there is no reason to believe that a new generation of techies might resist them any more effectively than the previous ones. The question of fixing Silicon Valley is inseparable from the question of fixing the system of postwar American capitalism, of which it is perhaps the purest expression. Some believe that the problems we see are bugs that might be fixed with a patch. Others think the code is so bad at its core that a radical rewrite is the only answer. Although The Code was written for people in the first group, it offers an important lesson for those of us in the second: Silicon Valley is as much a symptom as it is a cause of our current crisis. Resisting its bad influence on society will ultimately prove meaningless if we cannot also formulate a vision of a better worldone with a more humane relationship to technologyto counteract it. And, alas, there is no app for that.

Read more from the original source:

How Silicon Valley Broke the Economy - The Nation

I havebeen engaged in international relief and development fundraising for many years,and I have learned a lot about humanitarian aid and sustainability. Over theyears, several program interventions have touched both the emotional andlogical sides of my thinking and personal giving.

Two ofmy favorite programs are girls education and livelihood development. Knowledgeis a lifelong skill that brings empowerment, and education for girls results inhealthier families, less early-life pregnancies and increases in householdincomes. Progress in the last 20 years has been significant for girlsenrollment rates although there are still huge barriers caused by poverty,cultural norms and practices, limited infrastructure and safety issues.

Livelihoodprograms help families by teaching them new ways to support themselves andgenerate income by earning and saving money. One breakthrough practice is groupsavings which has helped poor people, particularly poor women, in thedeveloping world access safe places to keep their savings. What is amazing isthat the loan repayment rate for micro-loans in some of the poorest communitiesaround the world is over 90%.

Everyimportant social issue is impacted by literacy how to read and write, how todo basic math. Ensuring that girls and women have access to education andfinancial tools has broken the poverty cycle for millions of people. However,the international community has recently recognized that if mens attitudestowards women arent changed, then programs which focus on women will bemarginally successful in generating change.

That iswhy I am worried about boys. They dont seem to get as much development attentionas girls. And not just boys in poor communities, but boys around the world.

Below isa short list of things for parents and caregivers to do when raising boys,recognizing that boys are developmentally different from girls. Boys tend to bemore physical, boys are less communicative or verbal than girls, and boys tendto be more impulsive than girls. Helpingyour child understand and manage their feelings is a skill that will allow themto enjoy long-term happiness in life, regardless of their gender.

As amom, I believe that change starts at home. Please help your boys respect thefemales in their lives and develop the emotional intelligence needed for themto thrive.

Link:

Lets Not Forget the Boys - Thrive Global

The EY STEM Tribe platform engages girls on their mobile devices with an entertaining and gamified STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) experience and was developed working with Tribal Planet, a Silicon Valley-based company that develops innovative platforms and ecosystems to engage global citizens around social impact priorities. The app is available for free on Android and iOS platforms in Delhiand will be available inAtlantaandSeattlein the future.

The EY STEM Tribe platform features modules focused on science, such as climate change or space exploration; technology, such as artificial intelligence, 3D printing or blockchain; the future of work and skills that may be required for future, yet-to-be-defined jobs; and inspirational stories of women in STEM.

Rajiv Memani, Chairman and EY India Regional Managing Partner, says:As technology continues to shape the future, it has become imperative to provide equal opportunity for girls to pursue high-growth STEM careers. We are pleased to launch this global initiative inIndiathat will enable STEM learning for 6,000 girls across 45 private and government schools in the Delhi National Capital Region, which has the potential to scale rapidly, empowering young girls to learn STEM in a pragmatic and contemporary manner.

Girls choose topics based on their interests. To help incentivise learning, they earn points as they complete an activity, such as reading an article, interviewing members of their community, completing an experiment or watching a video.

As girls build their rewards wallet and see points accumulate, they redeem points in three ways: fun rewards include STEM-related products; important rewards include work shadowing opportunities or virtual mentoring sessions on topics such as building a CV, honing interviewing skills or understanding how millennials engage in the workplace; or lasting rewards, where they choose to donate their points to a non-profit cause of their choice related to empowerment of girls and women. The point donations are converted into a monetary donation by Tribal Planet to the non-profit. Girls parents and their schools teachers also have access to the platform.

Dan Higgins, EY Global Advisory Technology Consulting Leader, says:The EY STEM Tribe digital platform forms a part of the EY Women in Technology movement across the globe, aimed at supporting gender parity in the technology space and reinforcing the EY commitment to building a better working world. This platform will help girls to build a passion for STEM, learn new concepts and apply them in real life, and most importantly, will inspire even more girls across the world to embark on STEM careers. We purposely chose the themes and designed the platform to trigger real-life actions, where girls can reach out to their communities, individually or collectively, and make a greater impact on society.

The EY Women in Technology Program was formed to create an inclusive culture to successfully harness technologys potential to truly transform society. By educating women and girls, incubating their leadership potential and innovating new ways to empower a diverse workforce, the EY organisation supports the closing of the gender gap and nurturing an environment where everyone can become an architect of the transformative age. EY teams support women in tech through education by investing in educational products and programs that drive awareness and participation that encourage girls and women to enter and remain in STEM fields of study and careers.

Amanda Gethin, EY Global Talent Leader, Advisory, says:Technology jobs are increasing but so is the gender gap. As a result, we need to change the talent pipeline and address this gap, lighting the spark to help ensure that women have equal chances to enter, remain and thrive in the technology industry.

STEM activities on the platform are developed with leading educational institutions around the world. The EY STEM Tribe platform is fully aligned with theUN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) GoalsandOrganization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) framework for transferable skills, such as analytical thinking or problem-solving.

In addition to earning rewards points, girls earn digital badges aligned with the UN SDGs to help them better understand the goals and empower them to have a personal impact related to the SDGs they care about the most. As they participate in SDG-related activities, their badge levels increase.

Visit link:

New app supporting the future women of STEM - SciTech Europa

Did you know that one out of five Egyptians is a girl below the age of 17? Today, the country comprises around 19 million girls and this number is expected to grow to 21 million Egyptian girls by 2030.

Why does this matter? Because in Egypt, girls are more vulnerable to illiteracy, more likely than their brothers to never attend school, to leave school early, or to skip school. And that matters for the future of Egypt.

Egypt has successfully prioritized gender equality within its Sustainable Development Strategy 2030 and the National Women Empowerment Strategy is paving the way for a more equitable society. There are some clear positive trends in terms of reducing inequalities between boys and girls, such as the educational attainment levels for males and females in the 15-19-year-old age group, which are much closer than they used to be for older generations. In fact, for the 15 to 19 age group, the proportion of girls who had completed secondary education in 2015 was higher than that of boys (10.7% and 9.2%, respectively).

There is ample evidence that points to one thing: sustained, targeted investments in adolescent girls not only improve the lives of the young girls, it also yields returns across generations, boosting economic growth and improving the wellbeing of children, families and communities.

Investing in girls today can accelerate economic growth and increase the skilled labor force of tomorrow: if young women were given the chance to be as economically active as young men, annual GDPs could grow up to 4.4 per cent faster. In Egypt, it is estimated that raising female employment rates to match those of males will result in a direct positive impact on GDP of 34%. And that is not all. Investing in girls also results in a more equitable society where the acceptance of violence will be reduced and the opportunities for stability and development will be increased.

Still, it is not an easy problem to fix and there are many challenges ahead of us.

Young girls are 5 times more likely than boys to be found simultaneously outside education and not in employment or training. They are less likely to use information communication technology. Almost 61% of girls aged 15-17 years have undergone circumcision and 11% of girls 15-19 years are either currently married or were married before, which is hampering their access to education, then their access to a job and ultimately, their contribution to the national wealth.

These injustices are not only a detriment to the lives of millions of girls and to the economy. It also harms the families and children of today and tomorrow and undermine development progress across the board, perpetuating cycles of poverty and disadvantage from one generation to the other.UNICEF, along with other actors, believes that gender equality is key to human development. In practice, this means that boys and girls need support to overcome the barriers they face because of their age and gender.

The goal for UNICEF is to support governments and other partners to address the vulnerabilities of every boy and girl so that they play on an equal field and get the targeted support they need to be empowered to fulfill their own potential. However, empowerment is not a service that can be provided to a person. Empowerment is a personal journey of transformation. Yet, this journey takes place in the context of families, communities and social institutions which facilitate or hinder the journey.

Thanks to the generous support of multiple donors including USAID and the European Union, UNICEF supports the journey of millions of Egyptian girls and boys through cross sectorial interventions targeting individuals, communities and social institutions.

Technical support is provided to the National Girls Empowerment Initiative, Dawwie, led by the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM), to facilitate access to services, skills and opportunities to be heard.

UNICEF is supporting the Government of Egypt to strengthen child protection systems and national capacities to protect and respond to girls at risk and/or survivors of gender-based violence, including supporting the Child Help Line 16000, and the National Committee for the Eradication of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), co-chaired by the National Council for Women and the NCCM.

Because education is so important, UNICEF has also worked with the Ministry of Education and Technical Education on the Education 2.0 reform porgramme which builds on life skills and focuses on personal empowerment and respect for diversity for girls and boys.

UNICEF also support the inclusive education model which improves the access of disadvantaged children to quality education services. As well as implementing the community-based education model that is particularly useful for girls, who are more likely to never attend school because of the schools remoteness.

However, having a diploma is not always sufficient for satisfactory employment outcomes. Hence, UNICEF supports the Meshwary project, providing disadvantaged youth, especially girls with the employment and life skills and opportunities through training and internships. An initiative taking place with the Ministry of Youth and Sports (MoYS) and several private sector companies who are willing to support young girls in Egypt in securing a better future.

For girls living in ultra-poor families, empowerment includes an additional element of social protection. In that context, the Ministry of Social Solidaritys (MoSS) National Social Protection Programme, Takaful and Karama (TKP), has a positive impact on women and girls. MoSS receives UNICEF technical support on designing and implementing an integrated social protection program, which includes health and education conditionalities and a positive parenting programme to promote behaviors favoring equality and positive gender approach among TKP beneficiaries.

I strongly believe that with a population that includes over 19 million girls, Egypt has a unique opportunity to take to achieve its 2030 vision. UNICEF stands behind the government of Egypt, civil society, boys and girls with the ambition to positively contribute in making the opportunity a reality.

*The writer is UNICEF Representative in Egypt

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Invest in girls and you empower an entire nation - Opinion - Ahram Online

Mitchel Tigon. Photo courtesy of APACE.

Civic engagement is perhaps one of the last frontiers in the social landscape today that remains largely untouched by APIS. A certain number of groups around Seattle are working hard to change that. This summer, I had the pleasure to volunteer with APACE (Asian and Pacific Islanders Americans for Civic Empowerment) and truly dive into what it means to help a community become engaged and represented. To truly understand why encouraging political engagement from the API community is important to me, however, it is important to understand a little bit about my grandfather.

Born and raised in Seoul, South Korea, Eui Chung was lucky enough to receive admission to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor to pursue a degree in economics. In order to fit in to his new country he picked up a smoking habit it would give him permanent respiratory issues later in his life. But this story isnt about him smoking to be American. This story is about examining what it truly means to be American. My grandfather never truly felt comfortable in America. Would the situation have been different if he was white? Quite possibly.

In 2019, it befuddles me to believe that our nation still divides its citizens into categories based on what they look like and where theyre ancestors are from. Akemi Matsumoto, a member of APACEvotes board of directors observed this on a personal level, stating that even as a third generation Asian American she was still told her English was very good.

This same bias has been observed not just in the daily lives of many API folks, such as Akemi, but at the state level as well. In fact, there are many other problems that the API community faces on a statewide level that must also be addressed. Without political representation at the state level, these issues can often be shot down or overlooked as non-important pieces of the agenda.

Needless to say, I am under the impression that civic engagement and empowerment changes lives. It enables folks to speak up about the issues that affect them on a personal level. Civic engagement is much more than that though, its about changing peoples lives and making America more inclusive than it was yesterday so that everyone can find a home here. Its about leaving the world changed for the better and after all, isnt that what it means to be American?

Read more from the original source:

Civic engagement and empowerment changes lives - The International Examiner

A Professional Reckoning

Im a workplace people-pleaser. I say that mostly with pride, as I can pretty much get along with anyone, and that has proven advantageous to my career, since I am often given opportunities to engage in collaborative endeavors that encourage my own creativity and contribute to my professional fulfillment. However, being a workplace people-pleaser also means that Ive sometimes had to learn the hard way when it comes to setting boundaries in my professional roles--particularly boundaries that are protective of my personal life. And Im not the only one. Recently, an article was released that noted that workers are miserable because the professional keeps creeping into the sanctity of the personal--specifically, Sunday night has become the new Monday morning. Ive experienced the drawbacks of this creep myself, and as such, Im here to offer two strategies for integrating nope and never again into a purposeful professional practice. Further, Ill show how employing these approaches in my own career has helped me to create a successful balance between the personal and professional, and even more explicitly, helped me see the benefit of encouraging their separation.

Protecting Personal and Professional Boundaries with the Power of Nope

After I graduated from my masters program in English, I accepted a position as an academic advisor within an engineering student services office. I know--this may seem like a strange segue. Maybe it was just having finished my thesis--a trial by fire that while rewarding, completely (even if only temporarily) annihilated my ability to analyze one more piece of literature (and thus prevented me from moving into a PhD program). Or maybe it was just time to try something else. I tend to be someone who (at least thus far) is good for about five years or so before I need to move on to the next creative challenge. In either case, my experience is further proof that we English majors are going to be a-okay , especially because we have diverse career options, and sometimes in unexpected fields.

Back then, I embraced my professional transition enthusiastically. And by embraced enthusiastically, I mean I made it annoyingly intense. I was always early to the office, checked my emails in the off-hours, and volunteered for extra activities and duties that might keep me away on the weekends or evenings. I made myself anxious about performance and productivity, and started to base my personal worth on my professional performance. Thus, it may come as no surprise to you, readers, that I burned out after a few years in this position, too. Dont get me wrong--because Im a type-A gal with high functioning anxiety, I still did well, and kept excelling (even finding enjoyment) while I was in the role, but I did so by prioritizing the professional through personal deprivation, continuously conflating two worlds that, at least for me, necessarily required some separation to ensure success (and my sanity!) in either.

As it always goes with hindsight, it was only because of this experience that I was finally able to gain some essential self-awareness about the positive potential of placing barriers between my professional and personal worlds. According to Rebecca Knight, saying no is not always a natural response for employees. Indeed, saying no is still a little scary to me, since I do take a lot of pride in my professional productivity, but Ive found a comfortable way to turn down, or even turn off, workplace overload. By engaging a little English major syntax-switch, and tapping into my Midwest roots, I have learned to make nope a part of my professional practice. I say nope to checking email after hours, I say nope to working on vacation or sick days, and I say nope to prioritizing the professional above the personal. I even workout on some of my lunch hours at our campus gym, a strategic physical redirection which requires me to walk away from my computer for an entire hour! Nope has thus become an enabling mantra for me; when I say nope, I am executing my professional empowerment.

Saying Never Again to Roles that Dont Recognize or Reward

Im the primary earner in my marriage. For some reason I cant stand the term breadwinner, but if we think about this in terms of winning the bread (lets not spend too much time parsing that out, as I think the metaphor will lose its effect), I would be confident in claiming I bring home at least four to five loaves a day, in comparison to my husband's single loaf. In this way, we are a modern couple, with him operating as the primary caretaker, and me operating as the primary professional. Though, because we are also the most modern of modern, even maybe the postmodern, he also works part-time remotely from home, and I do a large amount of the caretaking, too (second shift, anyone?). But, I digress. This article isn't about the dynamics of my marriage. Thats my next publication.

As the aforementioned breadwinner, I engage in a lot of part-time remote positions, and Im always on the lookout for the next best gig--both because Im someone who would rather be busy than bored, but also because Im still solidifying my ideal professional path. Not to worry--this doesnt negate the entire first part of this article; I schedule these part-time positions into my day in the same way that I do my full-time work. With them, Im still saying nope productively--just in a different capacity. Wait. Am I digressing again? Anyways, sometimes in my seemingly never-ending scramble for side-hustles that might lead me somewhere important, it can be all too easy to forget to factor in my own worth and value as part of the job-hunting process. In the rush to secure the next stable income, I can get too caught up in the act of acquiring, neglecting the importance of self-alignment when it comes to position fit and function. In addition, as someone who is continually haunted by an economically insecure childhood, the spectre of financial disaster--one that can feel impending, even when it is not at all inclement--can cloud my professional judgment. I get money for that? Of course I need to do it!

This spectre may explain why, recently, I found myself accepting a part-time remote teaching job that I had strong reservations about. A good majority of these reservations centered on the energy-output to fiscal-input ratios. Like many adjuncts, I would be drastically underpaid for eight weeks of rather intensive writing teaching. For this reason, I decided fairly early on that I would not be renewing my contract (or reserving my energy) for this endeavor. This was the first time in my entire professional career that I willingly turned down reliable remote work. Even as I type this out, I am feeling a small smattering of anxiety--did I just make a big mistake? Isnt some pay better than no pay? What if this was an essential stepping stone to my next big professional thing? What if we suddenly implode financially? But that anxiety soon dissipates into a feeling of accomplishment and positive professional self-actualization. I am worth more. I am valuable and deserve to be compensated for my skills and education. I am in control of my employment experiences, and if they are not empowering, they are not worth engaging. It is my goal to never again allow myself to forget these facts. Neither should you, reader-friends.

Acknowledging Boundaries and Remaining Aware of Workplace Worth

I realize that these might be considered the ramblings of a pretty privileged professional--you have had stable, reliable employment in higher ed and now you have too many jobs to choose from? Poor you! Let me be clear: there have been many times in my life where working was not an option (I started helping support my single-mother and younger brother when I was 15 and got my workers permit), and choice was a luxury I couldnt afford (living with my single-mother, I experienced eviction, homelessness, and continued financial distress), literally. But--I would argue that even when the stakes are dire, or maybe especially in those instances, acknowledging boundaries and maintaining an awareness of workplace worth are both key to professional self-advocacy and actualization. We are in charge of building the environment we want to engage as employees. Saying nope to unrealistic expectations and waving goodbye to positions that negate our potential, or purposefully take advantage of it, is an empowering move that will only enhance our future career endeavors. You can wield this power, readers. You should.

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Integrating Nope and Never Again | University of Venus - Inside Higher Ed