Showing posts with label Commentary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Commentary. Show all posts

Sunday, May 11, 2008

BYU Idaho's Version of Rebellion

Student dissent has been a long standing tradition in the US as well as the world over. In America it's become somewhat of a sociological paradox. Why would a privileged group of young adults, keep in mind less than half of Idaho High School graduates attend College, choose to fight the system that'll give them success later in life?

Student activism has had many hardcore groups that did less than intelligent things, some bordered terrorism (Google Weather Underground), and protested everything beneath the sun (Google 1968). BYU-I now has it's own group of rebels who, taking the cue from their predecessors, have begun their dissent... in a neat little newspaper.

These privileged mormon kids aren't worried about insignificant crap like the environment, civil rights or any of that boring stuff you see on CNN, they have bigger fish to fry. Take for instance the on going battle over the honor code. Who cares about our energy crisis when you can't wear flip-flop sandals to class. I agree with them, however, having to shave before class is a pain but is it worth printing a newspaper about? I think we're pretty lucky if our biggest concern is having to wear pants during the summer.

Monday, January 21, 2008

Do Not Watch States of Grace

MAN! I was looking for an uplifting movie that rocked and Richard Dutcher did not come through. I guess it makes sense that he tagged it as God's Army 2 even though it shouldn't be considered a sequel at all. The truth of the matter is that he probably added the God's Army 2 tag so we as a consumer would be like "Oh, just another crappy sequel," when in reality, it was a horrible original that just happened to have LDS missionaries in it.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Why It's Hard to Find a Job.

My wife and I have just returned from a church workshop on careers and employment. The missionaries that were giving this workshop did an excellent job and it really provided me with some incite on how to effectively find a job.

In the LDS Employment Resource book entitled "The Career Workshop" there is a section on the importance of networking. Previously to our discussion on this section I felt that the phrase "it's all a matter of who you know" was reserved for rappers and actors, boy was I wrong. The book cites a survey by J. Michael Farr, from www.jistworks.com/jstips.htm. Of all the people who were surveyed, 14% of them found jobs through the Want Ads; which could be due to the idea that those jobs are filled by the time they reach the press. Who takes those jobs before they reach the papers? Most likely by those who share the same practice as the 30% of people who found their jobs through direct employer contact.

Going back to rappers and actors, they are right. It is all who you know. According to the survey 36%, the highest percentage, of people gained their employment through networking. I can testify that this is true, because every job that I've ever hopped through hoops for, after finding it through the classifieds, has turned me down; where as, all the jobs that I have had in my life were found using my six degrees of separation.

Go figure, all that talk of setting a good example and having a good reputation does pay off. Tally that one up as another token of knowledge that I wish I had as a teenager.