The Similarities Between Education and Faith: From GOOD Magazine

Michael Roth, the president of Weslyan University, penned a poignant essay on The Huffington Post last Friday in response to a Washington Post Op-Ed on liberal condescension, written by University of Virginia political science professor and American Enterprise Institute scholar Gerard Alexander.

In the essay, he argues that education and faith should lead to a similar end: a realization of how little we understand and thus an openness to other points of view/belief systems. Condescension, as he sees it, is an unfortunate byproduct of both extensive learning and a full grounding in a particular faith.

Read more: http://www.good.is/post/the-similarities-between-education-and-faith//r:t#ixzz0fw6K4LY5

Super Sunday

It started with at 7am with our Garage Sale. We made $98!! It was like getting paid to play Words with Friends on our iPhones (Lana, Ally and Me) for 4 hours.

This gem of a gal (?) tried on our bikinis, thought about it for about 25 minutes, then peeled them off and threw them back in a box. Gah.


Then it was off to Orange County for a little Superbowl action with Ally's family. Crazy, crazy party with 40 adults and $4,000 placed in bets.

But where do you think we hung out? The kids' room, obviously.

Look at that face!
And the before/after of my "brilliant" plan for Hide and Go Seek.


All in all, a great day.

Hey Studmuffin

Thanks for hanging out with me all day, Mr. Ira Glass.

Adults.

This morning, Ally and I realized we could determine how long we've been enslaved by corporate culture by seeing the holes from our abandoned nose rings slowly fading away into oblivion ...

Mis-adventures in Professionalism: Round 2

Telling my boss my email is bernadettematthews420@gmail.com

Mis-adventures in Professionalism

And thus begins a new series of my mis-adventures in corporate culture.

#1. I told a coworker I wasn't feeling well the other day and she was very kindly concerned. Later in the day, I went by her desk, and she told me she was looking up Walk-In clinics. "Oh!" I said. "I'm totally fine, but that is so sweet of you!" And she looked up and said, "Actually, I just needed to get a prescription filled."

Gah.

#2. I made a really bad joke and a coworker said "That's so dry it hurts." And I said "That's what she said."

Silence.

Ughhhhh.

This is my reality.

Bern: Do you like bear claws?
Ally: No.
Bern: Why did you write a song about bear claws then?
Ally: I needed a two-syllable donut.

Quoteable

The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the "rat race" - the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.

- Excerpt from David Foster Wallace's speech at Kenyon College in 2005; read the whole thing here: http://bit.ly/sUCD8

I feel like I owe everyone a big, fat explanation.

It's been a period of extended transition for me, as Lana puts it.

I think that's a nice way of saying: "You keep getting and quitting jobs because you have no idea what you're doing with your life."

Let me refresh your memory: May - quit Causecast. Unemployed May - September. Started AmeriCorps in September. Quit AmeriCorps in October. Started working at Homegirl Cafe and Free People in November. Quit both in December.

Sigh.

I was beyond thrilled to start working at Homegirl Cafe, but since it was only part-time, I had to pick up another part-time job working retail at Free People in Manhattan Beach (in addition to babysitting!) in order to pay the bills. I was driving all over LA, spending a ton on gas, working crazy hours between all three, and only loving one - Homegirl. Two weeks ago, I was offered a position at Direct Partners, a cool marketing firm/ad agency (I keep telling myself it will be like Mad Men) as part of the 4-person team working on the Playstation account. It was a chance to actually use what I studied in college - graphic design, journalism, marketing - and gain experience at a pretty prestigious company.

So I took the job. (It wasn't that simple. It was at least a week of being completely depressed over "selling out" at 23.) Now, this meant quitting two jobs I had started only three weeks before. That was pretty rough. I mean, that Free People discount to Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie was pretty rad, but making little money + spending it all on clothes = disaster. Leaving Homegirl was a little more hard. I felt like I was really letting everyone down. But now, I can be refreshed enough to volunteer each Saturday (really!) and spend some evenings doing design work for them.

I'm excited about Direct Partners. I feel like I'm going to learn a ton and it's going to be harder than I thought, so it will nice to be intellectually challenged once again. So it's a new phase, again.

PS: I found this tidbit on Wikipedia today as I was researching Playstation:

"Soon after its release in Japan, the PS3 was released in North America on November 17, 2006. Reports of violence surrounding the release of the PS3 include a customer shot, campers robbed at gunpoint, customers shot in a drive-by shooting with BB guns, and 60 campers fighting over 10 systems."

Dang.

Interviews gone bad.

So I had this interview today. It was going well.

until ....

I had printed out my resume at home and one of the guys was flipping through it and all of a sudden goes "What is ... this?"

He turns one page of my resume over.

And I see, in 72 point font, in bright blue:

THIS IS A BIG FUCKING TEST.

Because, Ally had been testing my printer to make sure it was working. Little did I know, she is suddenly into saving the planet and recycling said test sheets.

thanxx ally.