5 Positive Things About Tonight’s Republican Debate

I watched  tonight’s GOP Candidate debate– and while I enjoyed watching it and thought there were some (somewhat disparate) good points made, I thought that there were a few things that could have made it better. I was originally going  for 10 positive things, but I quickly realized that would take me  too long.

1. Trump makes everyone around him immediately become 150% more likable. Everyone is quite the convivial personality next to Trump. Shoot, you could put him next to Omar Al-Bashir, and it’d take the ICC a few seconds to decide who to slap handcuffs on first– because Trump is just that annoying and incendiary.

For that reason, I will not honor Trump with more than one positive point in my blog– though him getting booed repeatedly for his obscene comments certainly deserves commendation.

2. The two-hour debate went by far quicker than I anticipated. As I just recently was in the ER for a good 6 hours, I can safely say that the debate seemed to take only half the time I consumed waiting for a harried hospital doctor to see me.

In all seriousness, it was an interesting debate with a scattered performance across the board. I wished that it would have been focused on fewer aspects of policy– the way the topics jumped around, the candidates could do little more than give soundbites on their plans for presidency.

3. Ben Carson is a man of his word– i.e. not a politician. This is exemplified in his apparent inability to speak quickly enough in said soundbites to offer anything but broad statements and pleas to visit his website. I would have loved to see a stronger showing from him this evening, but it didn’t happen. However, I will say this– he didn’t rise to the bait from Trump (or any others), avoided any ad hominem derailings,  and stayed decidedly on-topic– but, again, regrettably spoke too slow to speak on much of anything.

4. There was a varied response on how to deal with the current Middle East crisis. Not only that, but there was no talk about placing wide-spread prohibitions of people groups being granted asylum in the US. This is a positive thing because the response needed to squelch ISIS and restore some sort of peace in the Middle East is going to need a very studied hand. There is no easy answer to the myriad problems that are running rampant and unfortunately US involvement is needed. Sitting this one out is not really an option, and while opinions varied on how to become involved, there was consensus that a more proactive approach is needed.

5. None of the Republican presidential candidates currently have an FBI investigation with 100+ agents involved centered around their illegal activities. That in and of itself I’m sorry to say gives us an edge. Democrats, please. I’m pretty ashamed to say that I belong to a country that lauds such politicians who forestall security and their country’s welfare for the personal “idylls” of convenience and arrogant indifference to the obligations of public office.  Hillary Clinton: you are a scoundrel– and a really bad liar. I wouldn’t vote for you if it were a toss-up between you and Donald Trump (and that’s saying something).

American Ninja Warrior and Job Hunts: A Venn Comparison

American Ninja Warrior (ANW) has become a recent obsession. It’s thrilling (and hilarious) to see these well-muscled, fit-beyond-belief contestants take to the course, and fail miserably– or– thrillingly– traverse the course and climb the Wall at the end, to press that red button. It occurred to me that those who travel through the course experience much the same things that a job seeker does. Don’t see the similarities? Well.  Look no further. Below is a Venn Diagram of the similarities in job searching and ANW. It is, a bit crude, but I think it gets the general idea across.

As you can see in my highly-detailed Paint drawing, a stick figure is plummeting from the obstacle hanging over the tank of water and is about to receive a swift soaking in the waters of failure.

While the above diagram shows a general intersection of ANW and Job hunting, I’ve drawn a few specific data points from the shared characteristics pool and display them below for your perusal.

Data Point 1: One takes many months, and even years training in Special Places [Gym, College] for the Special Event [The ANW Course, Interview for a Desirable Job]. There is an extensive vetting and thinning out process that occurs before the event takes place.

Data Point 2: You tell yourself, if you do even get to the Event, you should feel a certain degree of success, simply because you beat out so many other candidates. When/if you fail the Special Event, this previouspep talk does nothing to stem the raging tide of disappointment that floods in.

Data Point 3:When the Special Event arrives, you wear a Special Outfit [Business Suit, Sporting Clothes]. This Special Outfit  displays your fierce skillfulness that you put on display during said Special Event. It also does some minor thing to assert your personality in some (superficial) way: accessories and clothing labels. You might even be wearing a Special Pair of Shoes [Stuart Weitzman stilettos, Nike Fly-word Shoes]:

Note that each contestant wears similar attire on their faces– A smile– in order to appear inviting and totally bad a-s at the same time.

4: At some point, you realize that it is your turn at the Special Event. You prepare yourself, quelling the panicked voice that is starting to shriek in your head, taking a few deep breaths, and taking survey of the challenges ahead. You anticipate Special Challenges [Swiveling Monkey Bars, Explaining Why You Left Your Old Job] within the Special Event, and  try to develop a game plan for dealing with it. Of course, chances are that when the Special Event [The Course, The Dream Job] Interview actually begins, adrenaline and panic will set in completely, keeping your mind from coherence.

5: There will be Moderators [Commentators, Interviewee] who will be watching your every move, and providing feedback to a Third Party [The Crowd, Management]. Chances are that unless you are a Star, and probably too good for this job anyway, the feedback will be either ambivalent or negative in some way– not necessarily because of your individual importance, but because the Moderator has seen variations on your performance hundreds of times before and really just wants to go home.

6: Chances are you will biff it– and maybe not even on the Special Challenges. You infinitely analyze and wrack your brain afterwards to discern what went wrong. Was it that your foot slipped? Or maybe that it slipped out that you don’t have positive things to say about your previous management? Let’s be honest; chances are you won’t even know what happened to make you fail the Special Event. It could even be something that passed under your radar, like the fact you don’t have enough experience to handle the Final Event [Final ANW Course, Actual Dream Job]. Either way, you walk away feeling embarrassed and certain that you could have done better.

7:Afterwards, you give yourself a pep talk, and like a dodo bird that survives falling off one cliff, gets up, dusts yourself off, shaves a few words off your cover letter, and you begin the search anew, with a bizarre hope based on the bold fact that if one keeps trying, one’s probabilistic chances of finding a job in finding a job [it’s just “a job” now;  dreaminess are no longer a necessary trait] must increase until the likelihood of not getting a job are slim.

10 Things You Do When You’re An Adult in your early 20’s

From Personal Experiences; may not apply to the General Public:

1. Instead of staying up late watching Netflix, you get up early and look forward to (an unapproved) naptime.
2. You sniff the milk and instead of saying, “EW! I think this is spoiled, I am NOT going to drink it!” You think “Hmm, well if it were totally spoiled I don’t think I could even stand sniffing it.”
3. Starbucks morphs from your coffee stop of choice to last resort.
4. You start giving benefits and 401(k)’s equal weight with the potential “adventure” factor of any job you apply to.
5. You stop telling yourself, “I can do anything!” and start asking yourself “Can I do something?”
6. You start a blog that discusses said experiences as a twenty-year-old just out of college.
7. You start appreciating that friend or coworker who, instead of being the loud life of the party, is the quieter, subdued, and (as you gradually discover) far more thoughtful person who is far less prone to doing crazy, concerning, or hurtful things.
8. You realize that the literature label “Young Adult” isn’t meant to apply to you at your current age anymore—but you read books from this category anyway.
9. You use and re-use dishes and utensils in ways that are not optimal to save the trouble of washing them later (Example: Last night I used a huge soup ladle to scoop ice cream, and proceeded to use said huge soup ladle to scoop the ice cream from my bowl into my mouth).
10. Coffee still doesn’t keep you awake at night like “old fogies”, but if you drink it in the morning without eating first it makes you all jittery.

And an eleventh as a bonus:
11. You realize that you’re an adult but you have no idea what you’re doing—and, by extension, conclude that most adults are in the same boat and don’t know what they’re doing either. You also realize that this realization does nothing for relieving your own stress about having no idea what you’re doing in life.

I’m an Entitled Generation Y Dream-Baby

I’m not a baby boomer, I’m a babied dreamer, according to Tim Urban’s Generation Y(uppie) article. And I’m pretty sure he’s right.

The article explains why I feel entitled to a chance at breaking into the writing world. I quit my low-level job in the fast-food industry and for the next two months I’ll be cutting my teeth on the freelance writing business, an even lower paying job industry, where websites like Elance and Odesk will pay you .5 cents a word to write the next New York Times front-line article. And no, I don’t mean .05, as in five cents a word– I mean half a cent, as in .005 dollars a word.

As a recent college graduate (big surprise there), I knew that choosing to major in what I loved (non-fiction writing, Linguistics, and Arabic) was not the safest route– But it’s what I loved to do. And it’s what I felt would fulfill me the most. But, as Urban so indelicately points out, green grass isn’t enough for Generation Y GYPSYS (Gen Y Protagonists and Special Yuppies). A grass-eating, rainbow-spitting unicorn must fertilize our verdant lawns.
I deserve a job is the mentality—and not just any job, but one that fulfills me on a spiritual, emotional, and magical level.

The grass under my feet isn’t looking very green currently, however. So, I’m thinking of going back for more school, more “enlightenment,” and a Ph.D in a field (academics) that has a depressingly static employment field. In case you haven’t heard, they don’t’ offer job security or tenure to  much of anybody anymore.

But hey! I won’t be happy until I get that unicorn. And I’ve worked hard, so I deserve what I want, right?
Urban gives some good advice to yuppies like me: 1) Stay Wildly Ambitious, 2) Stop Thinking That You’re Special, and 3) Ignore Everyone Else.

But, as we all know, it’s quite easy to give advice, and not so much to take it. But I’m going to try. I’ve got the ambitious part covered, and I’m coming to the realization that I’m not a special little snowflake. But ignoring everyone else? That’s a bit more difficult, especially when you can’t help but perceive (the falsified reality) that everyone else is doing Just a Bit Better than you are.

Maybe Generation Y’s problems stem from the mentality that what we have is never enough. If there is one iota of our dreams that have gone unfulfilled, this spoils the joy that comes out of any success that we have been able to achieve. I think that my generation, despite all the talk of green grass and unicorns, are very pessimistic: which is the attitude you accrue when you expect life to go completely your way, all the time, and make no allowances for differentiation.

This doesn’t sound like a new problem for the most recent generation to deal with– this is a problem that goes deeper than contemporary ideologies. It’s a human nature problem, one that humanity has struggled with, I daresay, for generations.

So, while I don’t think my Yuppie generation will win the “Best Lawn” award, I doubt we’ll do much worse than our predecessors, either. I think we’re neither Stupendously Awesome nor Horrendously Awful.

Or who knows, maybe we are Special Little Snowflakes. But as we know, no two snowflakes are alike; so if Generation Y is special, Generation X was pretty special, too.

Generation Y is just more Specialer.
But I will leave a discussion of disintegrating grammar and morphology for another post.