Month: November 2013

college, Jobs, Work

Chapter 10 Work

-If you do what you love, you’ll never have to work a day in your life” -Ruth

    1. Why work?
    2. Internships
      1. Where
      2. How much
      3. How to work
      4. How to quit
    3. Money issues
    4. Lab work
      1. How to get one
      2. Where to work
      3. How to quit
      4. What to work on
    5. Menial Jobs



There are very few kids lucky enough to go through college without having to pay tuition and/or having to work for a living. I knew a lot of kids who worked on campus, off campus, in labs, in bars. That is fine and to each their own. Whatever you choose to do, whether you need money or not, I advise that you do what you like and make sure that it goes along with your life plan. If you work retail and you’re studying biology, you’re wasting your time. On the other hand if you’re studying business, retail may be valuable place of experience.
I fell into my profession by accident. I was at a party and a friend of family happened to be a Professor of Electrical Engineering at my University and invited to come to his lab. I showed up at Shaya Fainman’s small office on the fourth floor of a spaceship-looking building. It was neat and with a bookcase full of books. He didn’t say much, just that I should go to the lab in the basement and talk to his PhD student Wataru Nakagawa. Wataru spoke with me for about five minutes. He asked which classes I’ve taken (pretty much none at the time, I was a freshman) but I did have some graphics experienced having had my own magazine. Wataru told me to come back next day to help with some posters.
I put together presentations and posters for the lab that lined the halls. As I took more classes, I was given more projects, my jobs expanded to working with fiber optic cables, learning about optical-components and eventually to working on things no one had ever worked on before at the time. 
I had a tough time showing up to that first meeting. I felt guilty getting this chance through family. Lucky for me, I talked it over with friends first, my best friend told me to take the opportunity and go with it. This one little decision made me change my major and led me to start clubs, meet people across the world and work on some amazing projects. You will have a lot of decisions in your life. Pick three people who know you and whose opinion you trust, they will make your life.
The lesson is always get advice and always take opportunities that present themselves. Each one opens new doors so don’t worry about a bigger opportunity to come, you have to take the small ones to get the big ones.


At one point I quit college. I’ll go into that in another chapter, but while I was out of college, I worked several odd jobs. Unlike the nice University job where I was paid well and had good hours, and an easy going boss-those jobs were tough, they were menial, the bosses were not great and I learned about what I wanted and what I didn’t want. I learned I did not want to work for minimum wage, that I wanted to get a degree and have a better life than what life without education offered. I learned that real world outside of college is tough and making little money meant a lot more work, it meant struggling, it meant less free time.


Things I learned at jobs:
Be dependable.
One of the jobs during my time off was at a photoshop. I got the job off the street, no interview no application. I told the owner that I used to work as a photographer at a magazine I founded and that was enough for her. I was late the first day, and the third day and on the fifth day I was late again and she fired me. What I learned was that people count on you and when you make a promise, you have to keep it. The work at a small shop relies on customer service and it relied on me be there  and me being late meant that she couldn’t rely on me. All of my good work with photoshop and machines counted for little if she couldn’t count on me.


Know which fights to pick.
After I got fired, I had a tough time finding another job. It was the 2001 recession after 9/11 and I was overqualified. I finally found one for minimum wage at a local deli. I had to be there at 7:30 answering the phone, washing dishes and making lettuce. It was humiliating and humbling to go from lasers to dishes.
But I saw myself being more and more valuable to the business. One day the owner came up to me to ask me to make deliveries since delivery driver was leaving for vacation. I said yes and later thought that he should reimburse me more than tips. Instead of saying that at the time, I told him as he was about to send me on a delivery. He fired me. 
Lucky for me, the owner’s wife had more sense to talk to him and me or else I really would have been fired. Although, he would have been right, I should have been fired for picking a fight at such a moment.


Tip the poor guys,
At that time I was able to get a second job as a parking lot attendant. I was working a parking lot in the gay area of San Diego and until the business owners of the shops near by realized that I was straight, they were giving me a lot of attention. The look of disappointment upon learning I was straight was classic.

I sat in my little booth for hours on end taking people’s tickets and asking them for money back. It was boring work and I spent a lot of time just reading books and studying for fall when I would be going back to school. For me, the best part of the day after working both jobs was getting 15-20 dollars in tips. It made a difference and I recommend everyone that if you go out there, give the poor people a little extra. It may not mean a lot monetarily for you but it meant a lot to lift the spirit to go home with a little bit of cash in the pocket.

Your work position does not define you, your goals and work ethic do.
It doesn’t matter today that I was a delivery boy or that I had worked at a grocery store when I was young. It doesn’t even matter that I put up Christmas lights when I was thirty because what mattered were my goals. When I worked at a grocery store, I was really just earning money, but I was working on going to college. When I was working on roof tops stringing lights, I was earning money, but I was working on a book. But when I am working as an engineer, I am working on a career, I am working on a product and the work ethic at every job was the same, do your best and that pays off because that is what gets one to the goals.


Work at work hard, but work at school harder.
A lot of people when working at school, will skip classes because they care more about money than classes. But each class you skip counts for ten work days you skip because the money you earn during college is pennies compared to how much you will earn after college. The job you will have after college will give you healthcare, nice hours, kind boss and vacation time in addition to the good pay.
My roommate Masha was once fired from a waitressing job because to her, waitressing was a dead end but school had no limits. She found a tutoring job with better hours and bosses who cared more about her well-being than their paychecks. It worked out for both but that attitude allowed her to get straight As which gave her far more than extra 20 dollars she would have made if she had skipped a class.


So work hard, pick your jobs carefully and never forget why you are working: to afford education to later work less, earn more and have a better life; not to have better things at the expense of education.

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Chapter 9 Living Situation


Who you live with and where you live will determine your success.

    1. The Fun
    2. Conflict Resolution
    3. Cleanliness
    4. Respect


Philip Andrew Sidney Bliss: “At one point I spent all of my money on beer, and just ate junk food occasionally. After a few weeks, I noticed my gums bleeding and some cuts I had were not healing. I gave myself scurvy!”


There were several choices facing me when I was submitting my college housing form in May of High School senior year: live in dorms on campus, live off campus with other students or stay at home. My parents lied to me saying they would get me my own place so I chose home. Although it was a lot cheaper than moving out, I don’t know if that was the best choice. At home I didn’t worry about money as much but because I did not live close enough to the school, I was at a severe disadvantage; especially because I had early morning classes, had to drive through traffic and I was not especially disciplined.


My first year was spent getting to the bus station early morning and then taking about an hour to get to my 8am class to fall asleep promptly as I sat down in class. This was a very poor return on investment as saving money on living expenses and then getting C’s in classes is a net looser.


My best semesters as far as grades were when I was living with my girlfriend ten minutes from school by bike. It was great except when the relation ship hit rough patches, my schoolwork suffered as well. Fights untill four am can really eat into study time. So with careful planning, these hick-ups can be easily avoided.


Conflicts and Conflict Resolution:
I had a lot of roommates over the years and eventually, there was almost always some kind of conflict. Not serious, but enough to where they negatively impacted the relationship flow. To keep from problems sneaking up on you and make sure first that you can get along, spend at least a few hours a week bonding with each other. Doing that will ensure that you hash out problems before they get out of hand. Like with any relationship; it’s all about the communication.


However, if there is a problem, follow these three steps: 

  1. Smile.
  2. Tell your roommate that you like them and are not trying to do harm. 
  3. Ask how the issues can be resolved. 

This happened to me when I was living with a couple of Korean guys near campus. One of them flipped out because I was living in the living room at the time and blocked off the whole room to myself without asking when my girlfriend was visiting me. I know it was disrespectful on my part, but totally fixable. He just needed to talk to me but didn’t. We resolved things amicably later because I followed the steps I outlined above.


Two of the biggest issues that creep in between roommates is laziness and girlfriends. Don’t let your or your roommates’ girlfriends change the dynamic. It will throw everyone off, so make sure to keep your time split between her and your place and communicate with your roomies. Living problems can spill into your love life and then you will have to deal with triple stress as your schoolwork will start to suffer as well.
  Relationships with roommates, friends and girlfriends are all founded on the same principles and all of them can go smoother with empathy. So try to walk in their shoes and do unto them as they would onto you. Even if you have tests and stress, do your best to be compassionate so that they understand that you understand why they do what they do and they will be more likely to help you  ie. not play loud music while you are studying, or putting a towel under the door while they are having sex.


Big No Nos:

  • Never sleep with your roommates boy/girlfriend. Unless he/she asks you to join.


If you’re going to have a party, I recommend that you invite only friends and hide the important stuff behind lock and key. This will save you the anguish of someone stealing your old iMac with all of your art projects on it as happened to my friend Julie. However, if that happens to you, get over it; if you’re not Picasso, your art projects are crap anyway and if you are, then you probably were more careful about storing your important work than leaving it on an old computer in a garage during a rager.


Beer and Food:
If you eat it, replace it! And not with the lesser quality crap and not with less quantity. Ie, replace organic with organic food and a twelve-pack with a twelve-pack, not a couple of left over cans. In fact, if you plan to be lazy and eat your roommates food, replace it with more than you ate so as to not make them resent even buying food because they know that they will have to buy it again just to have you eat it again. Because when your food is eaten, it always seem like more was taken than there really was. It’s our nature to lament the lost so be considerate and return laziness with quantity plus interest.


Here are some basic Roommate Rules, feel free to copy this page and place it on your refrigerator:


House Rules:
  • Be considerate
  • Be Clean
  • Don’t be anal/OCD
  • Put a towel under the door if you have “someone” over.
  • Replace food with more than you took.
  • Do bills together.
  • Do not sleep with the partner of a roommate. (Unless asked to join)
  • Do not use their stuff if you tend to break stuff.
  • If you break it, replace it.
  • Watch out for each-other.
  • See each other once a day
  • Hang out once a week.



If you are living with a boy/girl friend same rules as above except:


  • Don’t cheat
  • Don’t live together, (it’s not worth it and it usually doesn’t work out.)
  • Don’t be a little bitch: do everything they ask and then resent it.
  • Chill out if you’re angry (it’s probably not worth getting too angry over anyway.)
  • Do not keep things bottled-up inside either, (that’s probably why you’re yelling at eachother now)
  • If you’re paying for everything, something’s wrong, don’t be an idiot.


These rules might seem self explanatory but trust me, even the best of us have difficulties once we stop using our brains and anyone who has ever dated or had a big fight with a roommate knows exactly what you’re arguing.


   Finally, if you do decide to live at home, good luck getting a date although if your mom cooks, you may be able to get her or him enticed with a home cooked meal.

In the end, if you’re fun, respectful and clean and ask for the same in a respectful way and find those that can live with and ask for the same within reason, living with others should not be a problem and in fact will leave you with lifelong friends and memories.
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Chapter 8: Studying

Why you study will determine how you study.

    1. Why study?
    2. Prep before
    3. Review after
    4. Notes during
    5. Homework
    6. Tests
    7. Groups and distractions
    8. Place of study
    9. Asking for Help


There was this time that I was at an upscale bar, listening to music and watching women dance on tables. That’s when it hit me, if I didn’t have a degree, I probably wouldn’t be able to afford this and neither would most other people at the bar. Almost everyone in the bar, no matter what they did for a living, had gone to college. At the very least, education gets you ability to afford a pretty fun life.


You got through high school and now you’re on college; so long as you pass you’re good right?
WRONG!
Remember why you worked so hard through high school? Do you remember why you participated in ten clubs, three sports and practically killed yourself for the grades? Do you remember why you worked harder than the slackers to get into college?
I’ll remind you, you wanted a good job. You wanted to be able to live comfortably and not struggle for minimum wage. You didn’t want to sweep floors. You wanted money and career and etc… So many of us loose sight of that once we get into college, get freedom, and start to have fun.
But once in college it is not over. To get the job, you may need grad school and to keep the job or to get through grad school you will definitely need the good work ethic and solid knowledge foundation to succeed and do well in school.
So before you say, “After high school I can relax, there’s no homework in college,” or “I’ll study right before the test,” buckle up and get ready to study, it may save you some bad grades, some study time, some good play time and it may mean the difference between a dead end job and open doors.



Hitting the books:
If there is one thing you take away from this book, it is that everyday you have to wake with realization that you are at school to get your degree. You are there to do your best, to learn the most, to open your doors to have that piece of paper to show to employers and to yourself that you can do four years of intensive and hard studying and that you can do it. However there are easy ways and there are hard way to go about it.
A lot of intelligent people (like me) who whiz through high school and get into college do not realize what is expected of them until their midterms or even finals or sometimes ever. Old habits die hard and old thought patterns even harder. Many times after coming home to a bad grade I thought: “That sucked, I’m going to study hard for the next one, I’m not going to waste time next quarter only to have the same thing happen again.” But because I never thought why I studied, I would later just slack off because I would forget to take it seriously. I lost sight of the goal.


Studying is hard and unless you have a battle plan, a schedule of what and when and how you’re going to study and create the environment for success, you will not reach that success. You have to know what you are working towards, why you are working towards it and work every day to work towards achieving your goal. You may be an 18 year old, you may want to focus on the “four best years of your life” and feel that it’s all about fun but you have to remember, that will get you nowhere, college will go by and you will just have loans and debt. Instead, focus during college, study by yourself, study with a focused group, remember that you must earn that fun and when you earn it, it feels so much better. Plus, that four years crap is a lie, if you do it right, your twenties will be amazing. In my twenties I traveled the world, and partied with friends all over United States. I went on road trips and weekend getaways and all with cash I earned by working hard in college.



How to do it.
Everyone has their own system, but I will tell you first the systems that do not work, no matter how much you fool yourself into thinking they do.

 First failed system is studying with your friends. Unless that group is quiet, without internet or social networks, without chatter and with books out in front and with a solid goal of how long and how much to study, you are not going to be productive but will only waste valuable study and play time. Avoid those groups.


Second path to fail is studying with TV or Internet and most kinds of music. They are distractions, coffee shops are distractions, especially ones which are not the ones selected by people to study. There you will hear other people, be constantly hungry and your focus constantly interrupted by gossip, phones and conversations around you.


If you are studying a difficult subject, find a quiet place or a place with a noise that is irregular, where you can have at least fifteen minutes of zero interruptions so that you can get into the study mode. After that, you will be able to study for a good while even in spite of small interruptions.

 That’s all you need, fifteen minutes of willpower and momentum will carry you through the rest.


Don’t spend time “reading the chapter.”
A for sure no go is studying without a goal. If you have homework, don’t spend time “reading the chapter.” I spent so much wasted time reading a paragraph over and over, with the homework sitting by the side until finally there was no more time and I just had to start answering the homework questions. At that point I would often go through the texts and quickly find the answers I needed. 
This desperation at the end led me to the path that was most efficient which was to scan the text before class, scan the notes after, and scan the text before starting the homework. This way you get the understanding of where to go in the textbook or notes to find the answers to the homework and then you will have the time to let your creativity take you on tangents to learn more about the subjects. 
Sometimes, we just don’t have enough time to learn everything and often, we don’t actually need to. We need to learn the concepts that the teacher wants us to learn and then we need to take in that which will help us in our future interests. It’s not about learning everything, but about learning enough to know where to go back later and learning such that you can use the information in the future. What often happens as a result is that you learn to find information and that leads to a life of no stress. And life without stress is so much more enjoyable during that last week at the end of class.

Sometimes, you have to cram.

There are tests you can cram for and there are tests you can’t. For conceptual classes it is better to do problems and get your needed sleep to be fresh and awake when you see a problem you haven’t seen before on the test. That way instead of freaking out, you can try to figure it out starting with the basics and working backwards.
For classes like history on the other hand, if you fell behind for some reason and you now have to fit three months of information then by all means: cram, cram cram… 
My favorite way to study for those tests was to compile a list of words and concepts and find those in the book. You will end up getting a decent understanding of what happened.


Don’t be a chump.

Ask for help; even if it feels too late. It might mean an extra five percent in the end and an extra concept that you will learn. I know, it feels awkward and scary to look the professor in the eye and feel that look of judgement because you feel clueless and irresponsible. But hey, you probably won’t see them again and he/she may have no idea that you are clueless just from one question. Maybe phrase it in such a way that makes you feel better such as “I feel silly asking this but I keep hearing this term and I’m embarrassed to ask what it means because I still don’t get it.”
What may actually happen is that the question may not be stupid after all and it may prompt a not so stupid discussion. Imagine my surprise when I found out that electrons are still an unknown substance, it has never been officially seen. So if something like an electron isn’t trivial, your question is probably not so trivial either.


Also, remember, you’re in college, that means you’re not an idiot.. Unless, you put yourself there by not asking for help.

A personal story how I’ve done that: I took this computational physics class. I got a D in a class before I withdrew from it twice. Every time I took it, I would come to class with a smug look at the beginning of the semester expecting to ace it only to fall into the same routine at the end by assuming I could do it without help. It was a hard class and by the third time I realized that I needed help. On the third time, finally, I broke down and admitted that this was not possible for me to do on my own. I went to office hours, I got a tutor and studied with other smart kids. In the end, I did better. I was able to catch Professor’s mistakes during lecture and at the end of the quarter, I got a B. This is to show that it does not matter how the professor “looks” at you, because in the end, the only thing of importance is that you want to learn, your grade on home-works and tests, and those are the ultimate judges.