Every once in a while I get asked by friends (or friends of friends) if I have any advice to give to young people about to start university. Some points below:
Be honest with yourself in deciding what you want to study. If you don’t like it, don’t sacrifice 4-5 years on it.
Even then, understand what is the labour market like for your chosen field.
A diploma might be a requirement, but extra-curricular activities, other skills or even social connections migth very well be what opens the door for when you get a job.
Keep a good relationship with your teachers if you can. If you earn their trust, they might help you later on in your career.
Be aware that as corny as it might sound we do live in a globalised economy. Your competitors (and your partners ) might not be in/from the same city, country or continent as you.
With that in mind, evaluate whether you need to have a good understanding of languages, cultures and physical challenges (such as timezones). Studying abroad (as an exchange or full degree student) will give you first-hand experience in all those things, but if you do not have the chance, try to engage with the exchange students at your university and sign in to foreign-language courses.
Understand that globalisation doesn’t mean Americanization. While the US is still very important, so are Europe, China, India, Latin America, Africa…
Regarding your career choice, be assured that in many cases it won’t last forever. Market and workplace conditions change really fast. According to some studies, the average graduate will have 5 different careers before he retires. I can tell you I have already had 3 very distinct phases in my working life (from engineering to sales to marketing) and I’m not yet 30. Furthermore, my current professional field didn’t even exist 7 years ago when I finished my bachelors degree.
As such, the most important ability you will graduate with is that to unlearn and relearn. Never lose that flexibility.
Be open, be brave, try new things (even if they’re not related to each other or your current field). You never know when that knowledge of space exploration, basketball or Latin American rock might help you (those are real examples from my career).
Mientras en México se preocupan por que no exportamos ni siquiera nopales y tunas que crecen de a gratis en el campo, me encontré los “higos de cactus” (como los llaman acá) arriba de 140 pesos por kilo como se ve en la foto.
¿Cuándo nos vamos a dar cuenta que hay más mercados que el estadounidense en este mundo para conquistar, y más productos que el petróleo y la maquila con los cuales hacer dinero?
I love watching movies, especially at home. I have a Sony full-HD TV & home theatre system at home and am planning to get a compatible Blu-Ray player of the same brand at some point. My efforts to go HD with my movie collection have hit a snag, however: I don’t buy all my movies in Europe so I need multi-region players. Sony doesn’t seem to sell multi-region Blu-Ray players, only DVD players.
Why wouldn’t I get all my stuff here? Simple, they don’t sell many Mexican or Asian movies here, and for Disney movies especially I like Mexican dubbing, just as for anime I prefer Finnish dubbing instead. I don’t download movies nor buy pirated goods, so am especially annoyed by all the warnings in the movies I buy every time I play them.
Why would the movie industry punish me by treating me like a delinquent instead of a customer? Why can’t enjoy media I pay for? Don’t they understand I’m a paying customer asking for a product, if they would only provide it to me?
Chocolate caramel colour. Bouquet of blueberry toffee. Creamy but not mushy head. Intial taste of bitter trappist, later becomes softer, gitst of saaristoleipä initially, then notes of blueberry, cream and honey. Awesome experience, great beer. No wonder it is regarded as the best beer in Belgium and probably the world.
Robert J. Sawyer, one of my favourite sci-fi authors (moderately famous now that his novel Flashforward has been adapted as a TV series of the same name) scored another coup with his latest novel. I won’t spoil it for you, but it touches upon how it is to live with blindness, Chinese censorship of the WWW and emerging consciousness. The good news is that it’s the first of a trilogy to be completed in the next couple of years, so I’ll be gladly waiting for more.
Chances are if you were born after1980 like countless others (including yours truly) you are marveled, intrigued and annoyed by the way older people see you, your habits and your value systems. You understand (but don’t always sympathize with) the way your elders understand technology and the web… or don’t. You are used to have the TV on at the same time as your music player while you read a book, browse the web and have friends coming over. For you video games are as much a social experience as a way to relax and pass away time, and there is no way you would look at them as “The Big Satan”. If you’re already working, you might have a hard time adjusting to hierarchies, but are a diligent team worker and require honesty from the company that employs you.
If you want to get a broader perspective of why these characteristics set you apart from your elder peers, or if on the other hand you are looking inside these brats’ fenced garden see how it all came to this 😉 this is the book you want to read.
Finally had a chance to start watching Battlestar Galactica after having only seen the miniseries and I have to say it is some of the best TV and Sci-fi I have ever seen. The character depth, the plot and the number and seriousness of the issues tackled are simply astounding, and production is also very glossy and visually appealing.
Without spoiling much of the plot, one of the many themes tackled throughout the series is the desire of artificial constructs to become human (and acting “more Catholic than the Pope” in the process) so they can assimilate into human communities. There’s a link to the relationship between immigrants and their host societies there somewhere… 😉
You’ve probably seen the ads if you watch the Beeb or CNN: a dreary-postindustrialised world in CGI that is thoroughly transformed into a tree-hugger paradise when Sean Connery pronounces the magic words “Back to common sense, it’s time for green banking” in that lovely Scottish accent of his.
I’m terribly sorry to say this but if you don’t explain to me properly why would I believe you as a bank stand for sustainable development and a reduced carbon footprint, even if I have no chance of becoming your retail customer I’d say you’re full of it (and quite some people agree). These are the kinds of campaigns that give marketing a bad name, really.
