Wed 23 Sep 2009 – 11.04
Many twentysomethings will try their hand at online dating. Whether an alternative to the bar scene, or the result of a super-busy schedule, most of us have at least filled out a profile for an online dating site. But the site OKCupid.com has enlightened the Internet community by highlighting, through data analysis, what terms and trends lead to success in first-contact emails through their dating site.
What’s striking is how certain words and phrases are overwhelmingly repelling, while others seem to invite. Some of these results would seem counterintuitive, but hey, you can’t argue with statistics, right?
Have a look at the results over on OKTrends
The puzzling part of this all is to what degree we should try to socially engineer ourselves the chance at dating. Isn’t there more alchemy involved? More gut instincts and first impressions? Is it “fair” that only the most careful copywriters and persuasive debaters will land even a response?
I, for one, would be interested to see statistics relating to photography. Should we include a full-body photo? A bathing suit/shirtless photo? Colour of black-and-white for the main headshot? Professional studio shots? And how many is too many? Personally, I can testify that I get so fucking annoyed when a girl will place a photo of her dog, or the Eiffel Tower, in her online dating profile. Cmon, what are you trying to hide!
posted by Scott in relationships.
Mon 14 Sep 2009 – 14.11
Yesterday, my friend Rashan and I sat down and recorded nearly an hour-long chat which will quickly turn into an episode of twentyhood. I’m hoping to sit down and edit the show today, and post it shortly thereafter, so stay tuned, stay subscribed, and pay the fuck attention. Get ready for some shenanigans.
posted by Scott in podcasts.
In Puerto Rico. Contribute Your Thoughts.
Fri 31 Jul 2009 – 14.50
Yesterday’s post wasn’t entire a whisper thought of the season, it’s timed to my vacation to Puerto Rico. Those who know me will note the irony that I, who has been famously out-of-work for the better part of 3.5 years in running this blog, is taking time “off” from whatever it is I do.
I’m heading to visit my family, and to see my parents who live there during summers. Also, this will be the first time in 5 years that both my sisters and I will all be on the island at the same time. We’re also hoping to stay in a hotel at least for a little while, which will serve as a sort of vacation from our vacation. (trust me, after a few days at my parents house, you begin to miss the comforts of home … like hot water, reliable electricity, internet, and not having roosters crowing ALL FRIGGIN DAY right in my ear.)
But I’m also hoping to sit down with my laptop for a while. Not to surf the web, as usual, and poke around with podcasts, but to write out the first draft of an e-book I’ve been planning to a while. I’m going to write a sort of manifest for the 21st century workforce — things to be aware of, things to be angry about, ways to improve your work life, etc. etc., but I could use your help.
If you have any opinions on work — the good, the bad, or the ugly, please shout it out. If you work in a remote office, or you’re crammed into a cubicle just like your father and his father, let me know. Is your job awesome? Is it terrible outdated and backwards? Do you hate big stupid corporations or do you love how often you’re allowed to use the word “synergy” on a typical day? Let me know your thoughts.
Write your opinions and thoughts in the comments. Tell me what you’d like to see addressed, what tips you wish you had, what tone and manner you’d most enjoy reading. If you don’t want your comments to be public, send it over to twentyhood@gmail.com
Thanks in advance for the input.
posted by Scott in careers, life.
Thu 30 Jul 2009 – 14.50
It’s a fair assumption that as twentysomethings, we still remember our school days. We may still be friends with our school chums, we may still have our old school clothes, and chances are, we miss our summer holidays.
Obviously, summer is a good time to be outdoors. We love the sun, the heat, wearing shorts, running around, playing with dogs and children (since those lucky bastards are off from school). There’s outdoor movies and concerts, you can sit at sidewalk cafes, and the sunlight lasts all night. Too bad you’re stuck inside.
There is a dreadful cycle of guilt and pleasure that comes from skipping out on work duties to go outside, only to return and realise how much work you’ve got to do. Generally speaking, the two are mutually exclusive — you can’t bring your office to the park, and even with a laptop, you’re only half working. If only I could knock down the entire wall of my office and work at my desk, while enjoying the outdoors.
Working holidays are tempting, but somehow end up as a fiction. When you arrive at your summer destination, the last thing you want to think about is work. And then somehow you suffer the same summer guilt for not getting things done while you’re still on vacation. Not exactly relaxing.
Plus there’s that whole unspoken competition of who has a better tan. When did that become a measure of one’s worth?
We’re hard-wired from all those years of education to view summer as play time. This is especially troubling for freelancers and those who are less-than-traditionally-employed, who are forced to be their own time-managers. Looking for work, following up with clients, managing projects, and otherwise not slacking off can be Herculean labours when placed into the arena of a July heatwave. Plus when friends start calling planning trips and weekends, it’s all the more tempting to shove work aside.
So how do we break the cycle? How do we enjoy the summers while still fulfilling the duties of our life and careers? Is summer simply a lost season, where we should expect to get nothing done, or is it an opportunity to take the lead over the other slackers who are off sunning and prancing?
posted by Scott in careers, education, health & fitness, life.
Ten Interview Tricks to Get the Job
Wed 29 Jul 2009 – 9.40
Ok, we’ve heard this all before — tips like “be on time”, and “iron your clothes” are standard for any advice listing for the would-be job seeker. But today I’ve uncovered a list of slightly more candid and subliminal tips on how to get the job. Maybe a bit of social engineering is just the trick to put you over the top.
- Wear glasses
- Lose 10 pounds
- Cover the tattoos
- Get tall
- Try a little sweet talk
- Get a conservative-looking watch
- Mirror, mirror
- Shut up
- Lose the shoes
- Answer the illegal question
Check out the full article from The Huffington Post »
I’ve been on several interviews recently and have to testify that I often screw it up by talking too much. (#8) Does anyone else have this problem? Not that I get too touchy-feely about my past jobs, or reveal something inappropriate, but I do try to express my passion and professionalism, even if it means I’ll raise a point of controversy or some hot-button issue.
Incidentally, this is the same ill-tactic that screws up many a first date. Maybe I should keep my love of Shakespeare and Pokémon to myself, at least for the first few hours.
posted by Scott in careers.
Mon 27 Jul 2009 – 20.48
via Pictures for Sad Children »
posted by Scott in life.
Congress Offers Relief to Student Debtors
Mon 06 Jul 2009 – 20.10
If you’re like me, and the millions of others who are burdened with many thousands of dollars of student debt, then here is a bit of good news: the US government will take action to make loan repayments proportional to earned income, and will forgive loans after 25 years of faithful repayments.
The terms are highlighted in an article from The New York Times dated last week.
… the interest rate on new federal Stafford loans, the most widely used federally guaranteed student loan, will drop to 5.6 percent, from 6 percent. By 2012, the rate will fall to 3.4 percent, under a schedule mandated by Congress.
… The extended payment program, called “income-based repayment,” limits what borrowers have to pay to 15 percent of the difference between their gross income and 150 percent of federal poverty guidelines. After borrowers make payments on loans for 25 years, the balance is forgiven. (The Education Department already offered an “income-contingent” repayment plan, which was similar, but less generous.)
There’s a ton of charts and numbers to comb through, so if you’re interested, definitely check out the Times article, and poke around the links.
This scheme appears to be similar to one that is offered in Britain, where students aren’t obliged to repay loans until they are earning at least £10,000 per year. That isn’t a great sum, about $18,000, but it implies that if you’re properly unemployed, or only working part-time at the local pub, you aren’t going to be burdened with a monthly payment for that expensive education you’re not “using.” Then again, in Britain tuition fees top out around £2500 per year for UK students, so I don’t feel too sorry for them.
Is this finally a chink in the armour of the American college capitalist system? Is the government inching slowly toward the European-style socialism that our population so desperately craves (whether we know it or not)? Will this new plan help prevent education from being the next bubble to burst?
Your thoughts:
posted by Scott in education, personal finance.
Is Higher Education the Next Bubble to Burst?
Wed 01 Jul 2009 – 10.33
It’s almost a taboo to speak of colleges and universities as businesses. The decisions they makes aren’t based on profits, they’re based on academics, right? Well, sort of. Higher education is a business, where the “products” are the graduates, and the effort is to sell those graduates to the world with the goal of getting more raw materials, students. And money. And prestige. It’s tricky.
But in America, as well as other nations, higher education carries with it a massive pricetag; attending is a sure-fire way to start your young adult life in debt. While most parents and economists alike will tell us that it’s an “investment” in our future — one that will increase the earning potential over our lives as a whole — the upfront costs are painful enough to warrant some evaluation. After all, the most basic laws of capitalism show us that if the the price of goods and services gets too high, people will stop buying! This even applies to supposéd critical purchases like gasoline, clothing, food, and now education.
I read recently, for the first time, the notion of higher education as a bubble that will soon burst. An over-inflated industry taking risks on its own future, which is now less-than-certain. The main point here is about the ever-rising costs of tuition and fees, making education unaffordable for all but the super-rich. Here’s a sobering statistic:
According to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, over the past 25 years, average college tuition and fees have risen by 440 percent — more than four times the rate of inflation and almost twice the rate of medical care.
posted by Scott in careers, education, personal finance.
Thu 18 Jun 2009 – 11.54
When it rains, it pours. The old cliché has nothing to do with weather, although this June finds that metaphor especially apt. Things are busy lately.
After many months, if not years, of suffering through the various gradients of employment, I find myself once again working a regular schedule. I hadn’t worked a 40-hour week between mid-January and early June. Add to that two commutes and the general exhaustion that comes from starting a new routine and it’s become predictably exhausting.
In addition, and with timing most strange, I’m getting a lot of clients calling to do some work with me outside of my daytime gig. So I’m doing what designers do from time to time, and going home for a night shift in an effort to fill the creative, if not financial, holes in their day-to-day.
So yes, I’m busy. And while busy-ness is generally a good thing, it has obvious drawbacks.
posted by Scott in careers, coffee, health & fitness, life, relationships.
Wed 17 Jun 2009 – 11.48
Would you believe that teenagers these days send an average of 2,772 text messages a month?! That’s an average of 80 per day! This shocking statistic comes from Nielson, via a New York Times article. I caught wind of it via Spark.
I read that and feel thoroughly old. This statistic in and of itself is bizarre, but it raises a more profound question about what are the most effective methods of communication with friends, relatives, colleagues, lovers, and anyone else.
Email is old-fashioned, they say. Ok, that’s going overboard, methinks, especially when our work days revolve around sending email. Facebook messages? That’s the same thing as email, just tied into a closed platform a la Prodigy and Compuserve back in 1993. While we may check our iPhones and Blackberries on the go, email is still a non-instant form of communication — etiquette dictates you give 24 hours before a follow-up message.
There are a number of quasi-instant forms of communication, such as Twitter, which allow us to keep in touch, but aren’t predictable enough to use for urgent correspondences. For that a good old phone call may suffice.
And of course there’s instant messenger, which is supposed to be instant. But if the party on the other end doesn’t answer, or if they are away from the keyboard, the whole endeavor is moot.
What happens when you run into those folks who simply “don’t answer calls and don’t check voicemail?” Yes, I’m serious, I know people like that. I call them, and if they don’t pick up, I email. Or text. It’s annoying.
We as twentysomethings have the dubious honour of being in-between the generations as far as communication goes. We are masters of email, texting, twitter, IM, and yes, even phone conversations. (not so much with the snail mail.) But the trouble really starts when we have to manage different people, older, younger, and similarly-aged, who communicate in all sorts of ways and can’t comprehend other methods of keeping in touch.
Wasn’t it all just easier when we would knock on your neighbor’s door?
So, how do you keep in touch. Which tools do you use, or not use?
Here’s another question to make you feel old — for how many of your close friends/family do you have their phone number memorised? Probably not many.
posted by Scott in careers, life, relationships.