Obesity and discrimination

Someone sent me a link about obesity by Theodore Dalrymple. There was a paywall, so I didn't read it, but wondered--was she telling me something? Bob and I are both 30 pounds heavier than when we met in 1959.

So I did a search, "Dalrymple obesity" and see there are over a decade of articles by him, each just as alarming as the previous. It seems one is no longer "obese" but "has obesity." That's an important language change. It's a disease in the new medical speak, he says (he doesn't seem to agree with that language). Now it's a pandemic larger than the one we're in right now and accounts for a high death rate. And over 2 billion (in 2014) globally have this disease. It used to be a disease of the rich, but now it's a disease of the poor.

 
Dalrymple, a physician, admits he's prejudiced toward personal responsibility. He's balanced enough to point out evidence going a different direction, like a study on antibiotics which is so much more common in the last 50 years, particularly given to children. Something similar has often occurred to me--we consume an alarming amount of medicines, supplements, toxins, and chemicals that produce a stew that probably isn't fit for human consumption--the fluoride in water for tooth decay to zinc oxide for skin protection to antibiotics in the meat. And there must be hundreds of examples. I take 2 prescriptions for my heart and one for my bones, then I toss down non-prescription fish oil for my bursitis (it works), calcium for my bones, and Vit. B complex for my brain health (not sure that's working). Your mileage will vary.

However, whether obesity is a "have" or an "is", overweight people of every ethnic group, sex, age, and race face serious discrimination and bullying everyday. I believe it is far worse than racial discrimination and because it affects both health and careers, existing or new laws and regulations don't stop it. There have been advocates, support groups and ad campaigns, urging the non-obese who are now the minority to just be kind, nice, and non-prejudiced, but so far I don't see it working.

 
So while the jury is out on the cause of 73.6% of Americans being either overweight or obese, it's everyone's responsibility to be kinder and stop the discrimination. No rioting or culture cancelling necessary.

Happiness is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iK9PLdVXK4

The General Social Survey (GSS) of the University of Chicago NORC  has been monitoring societal change and studying the growing complexity of American society since 1972. In his book “Coming Apart” (2012) Charles Murray uses its data on self-reported happiness.

For U.S. whites (which is the group to which he limits this discussion) between 30-49 from 1990-2008 31% described themselves as “very happy,” 59% “pretty happy,” and only 10% as “not too happy.” However, when it comes to our closest relationships, family, the currently married report the highest level of happiness—40%. Separated, 16%; divorced 17%; widowed 22%; and never married 9%.

Ladies, ready for this?  The happiest, most satisfied work/vocation category is homemakers at 57%, with paid employment at 44%. For attendance at religious services, those who attend more than weekly are at 49%, with weekly at 41%; those who attend once a year or less are at 26% and 25% (I call them Creasters if they attend at Christmas and Easter and then eat a holiday meal together). Also Murray reports that your involvement in your community contributes to your sense of happiness whether that is in a group, as a volunteer, in politics or even informal social interactions.

All of these relationships and activities add up to what Murray calls “social capital”—satisfying work, happy marriage, strong social relationships and strong religion. You can add to your capital and invest in your future and the future of your country.

And isn’t it interesting the very things that make us happy are those most maligned by media, Hollywood, pop culture and internet memes—it’s almost as though someone/something wants us to be miserable.

About that pay inequity?

Mr. President,

the 60s called Tuesday night. They are upset that you don't know your history, employment law or what JFK did. The law about equal pay for equal work was passed in 1963. Employers are not allowed to discriminate based on gender. If they are not obeying the law, why didn't you do something? If they are not obeying that law, why will another one help? Also, women have earned 9 million more college degrees than men since 1982. They haven't been earning the same kind of degrees nor working the same number of hours, however. Last I checked, a mining engineer earned more than an art museum curator. Also for over 5 years, young, single college educated women have been earning more than young, single college educated men--in some cities like Atlanta and Memphis it's as much as 20%. Black women are so outpacing black men in college degrees, it is alarming. I think they get about 71% of the masters awarded to blacks students. What will you do about those gaps? Demand more laws?

Georgetown University did a study in 2011 of differences in gender and race in selecting a major. The study found that white men are concentrated in the highest-earning majors, including engineering and pharmaceutical sciences, while women gravitate toward the lowest-earning majors like education, art and social work.  The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education noted that educated white women were less likely to work full time than educated black women, accounting for the difference in their pay (educated black women earn more).

https://georgetown.app.box.com/s/omooxnult5yvuctf0ftl

http://content.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274,00.html

http://www.jbhe.com/news_views/47_four-year_collegedegrees.html

http://www.jbhe.com/news_views/64_degrees.html

Employers can't discriminate by law, but I’m sure they can read resumes.  And HR reps can talk among themselves and note absences, difficulties with co-workers, willingness to travel, etc.

The real income gap—the occupation, not the gender

According to ColumbusCEO magazine, May 2014, there is a considerable income gap—among professions. Salary averages for a range of executive and professional occupations:

Annual Mean Wages—BLS, May 2012, Wage estimates (it doesn’t say if this is a national or local mean)

$40,970  real estate agents

$60,829  HR specialists

$67,080,  accountants

$71,500  architects and engineers

$82,600 software application developers

$122,,810  lawyers

$169,920 CEOs

$247,240 surgeons

The BLS figures are quite removed from occupational surveys (it is much lower).  Maybe the professions are promoting a rosier picture? Or different information?  For instance the Information Architectural Institute posts the salaries closer to the high nineties and includes the age ranges, benefits, geographic spread, education level, etc.

“For example the median expected annual pay for a typical Human Resources Manager in the United States is $89,406 so 50% of the people who perform the job of Accountant I in the United Sates are expected to make less than $89,406,” reports Salary.com .

The nationwide mean for CEOs is $176,840, but in Columbus it is $176,230, Indianapolis $189,100, and Cleveland $188.320, but the BLS figures are $169,920. Quite a gap between Columbus and Indianapolis, both state capitals and home of many businesses and industries.

Anyway, there is a big differences between a female real estate agent and a female surgeon, a male accountant and a male CEO.

EO Employer only wants. . . a

very creative, broad-based researcher who interacts well with others and who will utilize the extensive resources the museum has to offer in the way of collections, instrumentation, teaching and mentoring, and exhibition.

The American Museum of Natural History (NY, NY) is an Equal Opportunity/ Affirmative Action Employer. The Museum encourages Women, Minorities, Persons with Disabilities, Vietnam Era and Disabled Veterans to apply. The Museum does not discriminate due to age, sex, religion, race, color, national origin, disability, marital status, veteran status, sexual orientation, or any other factor prohibited by law.

However, in order to be considered for this job. . .

Candidates need to be outstanding, and interested in almost any facet of Invertebrate Paleontology, including (but not limited to) systematics, paleobiology, evolutionary development, and environmental change. Oh yes, and exemplary research is required. And s/he is expected to conduct field work.

The successful candidate will use paleontological methods in combination with other approaches (for example isotopics, ct imaging and molecular techniques) to study the evolution of life in relation to earth history.

Can’t just be an egghead, either.  Must be able to play well with others---communicate effectively within the scholarly community and to a larger public is important.  No sluggards either. The appointed person is expected to maintain a high level of productivity in original research, to provide curatorial oversight of relevant collections.  Writing grant proposals that bring money home to papa institution is also critical, i.e.  seeking extramural funding.

And don’t forget the scut work--serving on committees and participating in Museum-sponsored exhibits and educational programs, and in the Comparative Biology Ph.D. program at the Richard Gilder Graduate School. Right out of grad school, you could expect to pay your dues.

No salary was mentioned in the ad (I suspect they have in mind a candidate from their graduate school), but when I checked a general site for this type of degree (nothing specific for museum work), it was respectably high—like between $80,000-$100,000, however, that would include in the mix those paleontologists who work in industry, especially fossil fuels. So I checked that and found for 2011:

“In universities the starting salaries for beginning assistant professors straight out of graduate school with a Ph.D. in hand range from $40,000 to $60,000 for an academic year of nine months. In industry and government, holders of doctorates can expect to earn $50,000 to $80,000 over a 12-month period. http://www.fallsoftheohio.org/ACareerinPaleontology.html

Wonder where the women went?

For 40 years, women have been getting special help in the sciences, math, engineering and computing fields. Summer camps, workshops, girly places on the internet to talk techy, special scholarships--collectively the government and foundations must have spent billions. There's been some headway--women now outnumber men in some of these fields (called STEM, science technology engineering math) as college grads, but they don't continue on to excel in graduate school. I suspect it's the "fun factor." How many nights can you spend on a problem eating cold pizza before it gets old? For guys, they think that's a blast. Not so much, gals. A high school science teacher told me that when she teaches physics to boys, it confirms what they already know. Not so with the girls, who have no intuitive or learned sense of the field.

So today I was browsing Crunch Gear and saw in its "About Us" there are no women. I clicked over to the job search and wondered how many women are even applying for these positions, let alone landing them and then advancing.

Florence van Erb Left Wall Street for a Non-Profit Career with Making Mothers Matter

It's easier to make an impact resolving societal injustices if you skip the social work or education degree, do something to create wealth, then switch careers or retire, and put your money and your business experience to work. Florence von Erb has an MBA and a successful Wall Street career and now saves women involved in international prostitution. Yesterday on our local NPR station I heard a program about prostitution in Franklin County and a program to redirect their lives. Also the man said they expect a large increase in prostitution when the new casino opens. See what we get when we want easy money?

Florence van Erb Left Wall Street for a Non-Profit Career with Making Mothers Matter - WSJ. Magazine - WSJ

Everyone Shouldn’t Go To College

About four years ago I blogged about the cost of a college education, private vs. public, and whether some college bound young people might be financially better off not to attend college. I followed up that link today looking at a 2008 update of the information. It contained information not in that first report (if you invest the money you would have spent on a child's education, the life time (40 years) average of earnings is higher than attending college, and a public school education is a better deal in life time earnings that a private school).

REEF » Everyone Shouldn’t Go To College

What the recession has done to this mix, I have no idea. The REEF website doesn't appear to be current.

Update: I found Michael Robertson who authored REEF material at another website. Robertson knows a bit about education and making money--he invented the MP3 player.

Career Management Inventory

Do you keep books in the bathroom? The other day my husband suggested I needed to change the books in my bathroom (which he occasionally uses). Books that sit on the toilet tank are seen more by men than by women, if you get my drift. I thought it was funny. But I did take a look at the titles again, and decided to keep them all. One title is "No more blue Mondays; four keys to finding fulfillment at work" by Robin A. Sheerer. I don't know how long I've had it or why I bought it (used book for $1.00) because I'm retired. As I leafed through it, though, I found an interesting survey to help someone unhappy at work. So I took it--based on what I remembered of my last position ca. 1999-2000. Interestingly, it didn't cover anything I didn't like about those last two years--planning a new library for the veterinary college. I guess I didn't see those interminable hours of looking at electrical and plumbing sheets, choosing furniture and shelving, and attending endless meetings seeing my space cut as part of "my job." Questions 47-59 were on personal appearance, which sort of surprised me (I didn't copy the last page but it was teeth, weight, exercise, etc.) I gave myself a green star for true, lime green for mostly true, and red for needed a lot of work (hate to set goals). I'm a bit obsessive about time, so I gave myself 2 stars for being on time. In fact, when I was the chair of a committee, we didn't wait for the slug-a-beds.

Click to enlarge so you can read the print (pages were gray).

Great legs

No one has ever suggested I have them. I had short, stubby legs as a kid, and still do. Fat does shift around. My waist is now larger than my right thigh, but that wasn't the case for many years. I've even tried standing on my head, but nothing worked.

Small waists and pear shape are definitely the healthy plan, but that's not how you get attention. Here's what one of those waist to hip calculators says:

Your shape puts you at reduced risk of coronary heart disease, diabetes and stroke. Frequently referred to as pear shape, you tend to keep fat off your midsection and more on your hips. Your body does not convert this lower body fat as readily as midsection fat, which keeps cholesterol down.

Recently I've seen a stunning blonde at the coffee shop. Don't know her age, but if she's not 40, she's at least close (either side). She has long, long legs; high high heels; short short skirts. I'm not usually a leg watcher, but I tell you, she is something else and turns a lot of heads.

I don't know her career track, but it's somewhere at the bottom (or else she's the boss of a small company) because they send her to pick up the morning snacks. Yesterday it was bagels; today it was 8-10 cups of orange juice. I may not have great legs but I gave up being a go-fer when I was 21 and the secretary in an Indianapolis tool and die company.

Come to think of it, if she were the owner treating the staff or clients, she'd buy a gallon of OJ at the grocery store instead of purchasing individually filled cups.

What not to put in a cover letter

is the topic of Poet with a Day Job post. Good stuff. Stop and read her poetry. The Wall St. Journal today had an advice column for retirees going back to work. I noticed this one: "Hide your resentment." How you feel about the economy and your financial situation. A positive attitude goes a long way in a job interview and some of the casual questions are there to draw out your personal characteristics (that's me commenting, not WSJ, because I was on a lot of search committees).

I know people my age "laid off" at 68 or 69 who are quite bitter. Now the Obama-Biden way would be to be patriotic and spread the wealth and opportunity to the younger, poorer, less experienced person looking for work. Right?

Whatever your reason--choice or cut back--don't sit around letting your unemployment checks become a habit. When I worked for JTPA in a jobs program we told people they needed to spend 8 hours a day looking for work, updating their skills (like learning to drive or read the bus route), mailing out resumes, and networking.

The government can't do everything--yet.

Bookstore clerk

A magazine, a Father's Day card, and a cute new notebook with pink paper for blogging were all I placed on the counter this morning. The store wasn't busy and there were two clerks. The pleasant, well-dressed young man had a pony-tail.

"Have you ever thought about working in a library?" I asked.
"Actually, I do. I work part-time at Columbus Public," he said.
"Will that give you access to a full-time position when something opens up?"
He sighed. "Yes, that's my dream, me and all the other part-timers who want it, but it doesn't happen often."
I wondered if he heard me gasp.
"Are you a paraprofessional?"
"I work in the circulation department and don't need an MLS," he explained.
I told him I'd been a librarian.
"You just always wanted to work in a library?" I said as I collected my purchases.
"I watched the job postings for months to get this. There's just something so comforting working around books," he said with a smile.

If he enjoys books, he should probably stay with the bookstore job I said to myself. Every day I learn something new--there are young people who dream of having a full time clerical job in a library. People who love books. Could the cure for the common cold be next?

And you think I'm harsh?

Annoyed Librarian has a word for new graduates hunting for those elusive shortages they heard about when they signed on for more college debt. Don't blame the boomers for not retiring.

Since I have been drawing attention to this issue for a couple of years, I feel comfortable pointing out some uncomfortable truths to complaining job seekers. The most uncomfortable truth is that nobody owes you a job. If you went to library school because you were told jobs were plentiful, then you were duped. That's too bad, but it wasn't the libraries that aren't hiring you now that duped you. Library schools benefited from your tuition. The ALA probably benefited from some dues money. Libraries seem to benefit by not having to pay much because there are plenty of suckers lined up to take sucky jobs. You're the only one that didn't benefit. Three out of four's not bad.

Actually, it's probably not a good idea to believe anything you hear about shortages--nurses, lawyers, cruise directors, computer programmers--because those come from the press releases of college recruiting offices, and they have an obligation to fill the classrooms. What I remember from the days I was on search committee duty is that there were usually one or possibly two really outstanding candidates in a pile of 25 resumes, and by the time we'd work our way through our own red tape and diversity rules, someone else had snatched them. There really are excellent jobs and excellent candidates, and somehow, they often find each other. Matthew says he knows of good jobs in Florida (I think); he's also single, a devout Roman Catholic and has been a nurse. Someone ought to snatch him up.

It's EMS Week

It used to be (in the old days of the 1970s or 1980s) that if you did a good job, you got something called a paycheck. If not, a pink slip. Then came the merit raises, and the occasional departmental party hosted by the boss or pot-luck which were supposed to cover it. But today's gen-x and gen-y workers need so many hugs and warm fuzzies, that entire businesses have grown up to create appreciation gifts and events. I noticed this item in the OSU Medical College newsletter.

"May 18-24 is National Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Week. OSUMC will provide refreshments and information to EMS crews at both emergency departments, deliver gifts to fire departments and provide educational seminars throughout the week. Look for our "Thank you, EMS" billboards around town and join us in thanking EMS for the lifesaving work they provide."

When I retired in 2000, I had FIVE retirement parties, one in the vet library, one in the main library, two in restaurants and one at the faculty club. The university must have either been very happy to see me go, or very sad.

Thursday Thirteen--13 Employment Strategies

Although I'm retired, there was a time in my life 25 years ago when I worked in the employment field. Yes, I was unemployed, couldn't find a job in my own field (libraries), so I went to work for the state government of Ohio, using federal funds (JTPA), helping other laid off or unemployed people find jobs. A sweet deal for me, although my colleagues and I in the program may be the only unemployed people who actually benefited. I loved my co-workers and the tasks--I did research, wrote publications, put on workshops, travelled, wrote speeches for bureaucrats, learned a lot about government, and was on a steep learning curve, something that has always been the joy of working in libraries. Your tax dollars and mine hard at work.

So when I saw this in today's Wall St. Journal in Sue Shellenbarger's column, I just couldn't resist. A recent graduate with an MA in Art History can't find a job in the Memphis art community. I immediately attacked the problem with my own on-the-job training of 25 years ago, plus my 23 years in the library field, and 18 years of hands-on parenting skills dumping loads of unheeded advice on my own 2 children.

1. Although it's too late now, don't pursue a degree in art history. And you certainly shouldn't have gone on for a master's. Do your parents have a money tree in the back yard? This degree is for rich kids who just want to say they went to college or average income, scholarship students who get bumped from their first choice when it's time to declare a major. This field employs no one except the faculty who teach it.

2. Move away from Memphis. If there ARE any jobs in art history, you have to go where the jobs are. They don't come to you. This also applies to librarians, lawyers and linguists. Just don't come to Columbus. We have a terrific art college here (CCAD), plus OSU, Franklin, Otterbein, Capital, and Columbus State, and their graduates are looking for work, too.

3. Whatever computer classes or skills you have now, get more. If you're lucky, the left and right sides of your brain are on speaking terms. If they're not, get used to hating this aspect of your career because it isn't going away. Deal with it. No one said life is fair.

4. Spend 40 hours a week looking for a job. That was the primary take-away I learned from my own JTPA contract in the employment field. Your job today is getting a job. If you can't bear the thought of one more interview or sending out one more resume, you're sunk. (Keep in mind, however, that most people get jobs through people they know who know people. So make part of that 40 hours telling everyone you know that you're looking.)

5. Research each place you apply to, and that includes the "culture," especially (if you're female) what they wear to work. Sounds trivial, but if you show up looking like a bank executive and the boss is in a t-shirt and ball cap, you won't put on your best performance, even though he probably won't notice your outfit. Green or purple hair and tongue studs almost never work on an interview. Drool is so tacky. Wouldn't hurt to know what they do to please their board of directors and donors, either.

The next suggestions are from the WSJ column, but I have to tell you, if these worked, no one would be getting the tougher degrees, they'd all have art history degrees. Shellenbarger suggests expanding the job search into these fields--

6. marketing and advertising
7. design
8. photography
9. web-site architecture

(these are all art related, but look what CCAD expects of high school graduates to have in their portfolio)

10. publishing
11. teaching
12. writing

and then

13. hiring a job coach to work on your interviewing skills.

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Librarian's call

His North Carolina National Guard unit will be called up in January, and he's relieved to finally have something concrete rather than rumors. "Please note that I don't mean that in a "gung-ho" or false bravado sense. I'm fully aware of the risks and have no wish to be killed or maimed. I will be the last one to complain if this turns out to be a thoroughly boring and uneventful tour. However, the cause of defeating both al Qaeda and Iran and its surrogates, while helping the Iraqi people build a country that can become a decent, pluralist model for the rest of the region, is important enough that I'm willing to take the risk. We have to win this fight, and I'm ready to do my part to help us do so."

He also says librarianship is a job; the Guard is a calling. David Durant

Is your profession a calling?

Several years ago I read an op-ed type column in the WSJ (it's hard to tell in a liberal newspaper if you're reading news or an editorial) that I've never forgotten. A journalist wrote about a friend from college who chose a career in business. The writer chose journalism because "he wanted to make a difference in people's lives," or something like that. By age 50, the writer had had several reverses in his career and was struggling to even make ends meet. His friend by then had retired from a successful business career--don't remember if he invented something, or sold something, but he'd made a bundle. Now he was living his dream--he'd created a foundation and was using his money to help people.

I think juniors or seniors in high school should be told the realities of life, handed a fistful of play/monopoly money, the classifieds from any major city with ads for grocery stores, restaurants, plays, housing, cars, etc. and a book of charts, graphs and stats on salaries. After they've figured out how they would live in Chicago, LA or Peoria, let them look through the college catalog. They may still want to be a librarian, a social worker, an architect or a journalist, but it might cut down on the whining 10 years later about college loans, cost of living, and how this generation won't live as well as its parents or grand parents.

Annoyed Librarian writes: "I always assumed that librarians working the really crappy jobs were doing it because they were lazy or stupid, or had no marketable skills, or had previously worked in an even more annoying profession, or were uncompetitive in some way they couldn't help (unable to move from the area, for example), or just not very good at their jobs. But now I know that it's possibly because they view librarianship as a calling, like being a priest or a rock musician. Those librarians are just living the dream, serving the public faithfully, saving the world one library card at a time."

Yesterday the WSJ featured the gift to NY School of Social Work of $50 million from Constance and Martin Silver. Mrs. Silver got a bachelor and Master's in Social Work there in the late 70s, but reading through the bio, she must have gotten it after she married Martin, because it says they met right after she finished high school and came to NY to get a job. He was already a graduate of NYU when they met (it's also possible she isn't wife #1 and younger). They became wealthy because of his blood-plasma business, Life Resources, Inc. which was sold to the British government for $110 Million in 2002 when they were still in their 60s. She says the gifts (this one and others to NYU) are to fight poverty because "they had struggled to overcome poverty." [Reading the story I don't think they were any poorer than the rest of us growing up in the 1950s--we all had a lower standard of living than today.]

I think the gift from the Silvers might better serve needy college students by offering scholarships to the business school or even trade schools for youngsters who don't have a "calling" but want a better life for themselves and their families. Only a growing government needs more social workers, and that's not how they met their dream.

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Welcome to libraryland, lawyers

For years, library graduate schools have been churning out more librarians than there are jobs. The best jobs are usually in the larger cities with a few amenities. If you're willing to take a job with a low salary and all the turnips you can eat, you might get an interview or two. Annoyed Librarian blogs about this, and she has a good job which she loves, but the periodic news stories about shortages (so they can keep the faculty busy) don't fool her (or him--AL is a pseudonym).

Today's WSJ reports the same thing is happening to newly minted lawyers, the only difference being they have much larger college debts than librarians usually ring up.

"The majority of law school graduates are suffering from a supply and demand imbalance that's suppressing pay and job growth. The result: Graduates who don't score at the top of their class are struggling to find well-paying jobs to make payments on law school debts that can exceed $100,000. Some are taking contract work reviewing documents for as little as $20 an hour without benefits. And many are blaming their law schools for failing to warn them about the dark side of the job market. . . Schools bright salary figures only report a small percentage--maybe top 25%. Possibly half of the graduates don't respond to the surveys.

Un- or under-employment is essentially a college enrollment problem. They might have been left-wing, tenured-radicals left over from the war protests of the 1970s, but the faculty of our colleges, universities and professional schools have had to fill their programs year after year or lose their funding, privileges or rank--not unlike the managers at Wal-Mart--especially the PhD programs, in order to travel to conferences to give presentations and to have access to publishers for their papers.

William Pannapacker of Hope College suggests that you absolutely avoid any career field that is reporting a shortage. It's a scam, pure and simple. And if you're getting a PhD because you think teaching at the college level might be cool, do something patriotic and become a plumber or go take a job away from an illegal. Better yet: Go to a library and get some real research help on careers. They'll be thrilled to see you.

Aside, non-lawyer stuff: Check out some of these comments on the glut of librarians. Found out it is all Bush's fault--I kid you not. Just read through some of the deranged-Bush-syndrome anonymous comments.

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Annoyed Librarian's Blog

I hope s/he doesn't become so popular that there is a reveal or outing. I'm sure s/he loves the job. AL has passed the 100,000 viewers site meter mark and always garners many comments. AL has become a sounding board for many frustrated, unemployed librarians who were lured into expensive graduate programs with tales of shortages in librarianship. Librarianship is a very liberal profession, 223 to 1 liberal to conservative, but even libs need to eat and pay rent. Today s/he is skewering the Librarian 2.0 Manifesto published in the August issue of American Libraries, line by line, which is itself a take-off on Library 2.0.

"I will create open websites that allow users to join with librarians to contribute content in order to enhance their learning experience and provide assistance to their peers."

I don't want anyone contributing any content in order to enhance their "learning experience." If they want to contribute content, they can get their own website. Or better yet, a blog. Any moron can start a blog. (No wisecracks!)

Anti-2.0 manifesto

Thursday Thirteen

13 things to check for that important job interview
Yes, I'm retired from academe, but I remember a few things about being on a "search committee." Maybe things have changed since 2000, but this was my experience.

1) Check your personal appearance. Some will groan, others will say, doh! I can still remember interviewing women in the late 1980s and early 1990s (think shoulder pads and big hair) who looked like a time warp from Woodstock--sandals, peasant blouse, flouncy, ethnic skirt, and long, straight stringy hair. For the committee the message, even if incorrect, is that you haven't had a new idea in years. Maybe update the frames for your glasses or toss the t-shirts. Take out the nose ring and cover your tattoo; get a real haircut. If you're too proud or haughty to snip off the pony tail, maybe this isn't the time for a job change.

2) Check your resume's appearance and content. These days you've sent it in a digital format, but it still needs to be grammatically correct, attractive when printed out for the committee, accurate, and not too wordy. It's a job, not a biography. I remember reading a resume that had a sentence with more than 100 words.

3) Check your network. This is on-going whether you're job hunting or not. Don't burn any bridges. Someone at the new location/ job will know someone from your past. . . someone you dissed in the cafeteria or meeting, someone you flirted or slept with, someone who thinks you're not a team player, someone who's heard all your excuses for being late.

4) Check your references. Talk to them personally. What has changed? If it's been a few years and you're both in other jobs, maybe it's time to freshen the list, or it will look a little odd.

5) Check the geographic location. Unless the candidate grew up in Bucyrus, or had a parent living in Indiana, we all knew we have no oceans or mountains in central Ohio, but occasionally the candidate seemed surprised by acres of corn and soybeans and wanted more than we could offer. It was a waste of everyone's time.

Check your oral presentation

6) How's your English? Not your accent, but your grammar and slang. Do you mumble? Stare at your feet? Do you start every sentence with "like," or "now" or "yeah?" Work with a coach if need be. Videotape yourself if you need to give a presentation and have someone you trust critique.

7) How are your teeth? If you are 40 or younger, you've probably had them straightened, capped, bonded or whitened. If you are older, at least have them whitened if you smoke, drink coffee or tea. If this seems odd, just take a look at the smile of a Gen-Y friend (18-29). You'll be doing a lot of smiling (I hope) at this interview.

8) Talk too much? It's hard to break this habit--but for a job interview, you may have to bite your tongue. Do you chatter, leap from topic to topic, wear out even your spouse? Women particularly give out more personal information than anyone wants to know. Keep quiet about your children, your pets, in-laws, etc. Be prepared to answer a few probing questions with even fewer words.

9) Know something about the company, product, campus, etc., but also prepare some questions for others. People will like you better if you aren't a know-it-all. There's a fine line between sounding stupid and interested.

Check these at the door.

10) Evangelism. Whether it is religion, politics or your carbon footprint, you won't know who on the committee or in the personnel office thinks Al Gore is a nut, or who is a libertarian, or who hates Baptists, Mormons, Muslims, Unitarians, etc.

11) Your cell phone, BlackBerry. This should be self-explanatory, but a lot of people forget to turn them off, or think it is OK to check their e-mail at lunch. Leave it in the motel or the car! A blast of your your favorite rock ringtone wouldn't be good if you're sitting in the CEO's office. If you can't unplug long enough to complete an interview or resist text messaging your best friend, perhaps you need to stay where you are.

12) Your blog or social networking site on the internet. Unless you've been writing about a product line or an information service, dump these. Quick. Someone will always know, no matter how anonymous you think you are. I know I've seen conflicting advice on this, but not everyone in the company is up on blather and gossip as a networking tool and may think you just have a trash mouth on a back-stabbing body.

13) Your music. You wouldn't list your age on your resume, so why do it by talking about what's on your i-pod? You may be a fan of Led Zeppelin because the group was big in your teens, but that's "classics" or dad's music for the younger set.