Monthly Archives: February 2022

Deciding on a career when you a high school student can be a tough ask. How are you supposed to know what you want to do with the rest of your life at this stage? Finding a career that suits you is a process. If you approach it in bite-sized steps, you’ll make great progress in identifying your career aspirations and goals.

As a high school student, you get asked the same question many times: ‘what career do you want to do?’ If you don’t know what you want to do, this can be a stressful question. It’s also true that many people spend a bit of time having different work experiences before understanding what they really want to do. And a lot of people nowadays have more than one career in their lifetime too.

If you’re stuck for ideas, it’s probably beneficial for you to go through a process of refining your thoughts and ideas about suitable careers. This will help you focus on something you have interests or strengths in, enabling you to pursue a college education that builds on this. Even if you go on to do a career that is slightly different from the one you originally anticipated, identifying your strengths and interests will hopefully send you in a direction that will be useful to your future overall.

Here are four steps you need to take to find your ideal future career.

1. Identify Your Interests

Not everyone will end up doing a career they love, and it can be misleading for teachers, advisors and parents to tell youngsters to pursue their passions. It’s important to be realistic and understand that relatively few people end up doing a dream career. Despite this, it’s important to begin your career journey by honing in on all the things you are interested in. This will shepherd you in certain directions that might be suitable for you in terms of your career.

Remember that your interests can be topics and hobbies, but they can also be types of things you enjoy doing. For example, you might love singing and cooking, and these can be areas to start thinking about in terms of careers. But you may also feel really happy when you’re problem solving with your parents while trying to put a piece of flat-packed furniture together! These can all be things that might give you clues about career directions.

2. Find Your Strengths

Identifying your strengths is different from finding your interests. While your interests are things you like doing, your strengths are things you are already good at doing. Your strengths might be math, creative writing and giving your friends advice when they have a problem. Mapping these strengths out alongside your interests might start to give you some ideas of careers you might be good at.

For example, if you like cooking and you’re good at creative writing, a career in recipe development for a food corporation might be something you want to pursue. Equally, you might want to keep your hobbies as just hobbies – as everyone needs something they enjoy doing to relax. You might simply pursue something you know you’ll be good at and which has plenty of job opportunities, such as a career in coding or machine learning if you have a strength in math.

3. Speak to a College Counselor

College counseling is a great way to build on your ideas, interests and strengths in relation to possible careers. Not only does a college counselor have a lot of insight and experience in giving career advice, they are able to advise on possible directions you can take your career in, and the colleges that might be suitable for you. They know a lot about the academic standards, culture and costs of different colleges, and they can help you hone your admission strategies and applications.

4. Browse Careers

Working on your interests, strengths and college wish lists will all help to bring you closer to your future career goals. To get to the college application stage, you will likely have considered multiple different careers, to ensure you apply for a college program that will fit with your possible future career. It is most likely that you have whittled it down to a general career area, but you will want to continue working on your ideas to find some ideas of exact careers.

For example, if you have decided you would like to work in healthcare, you will want to start looking into which areas appeal to you. You could explore everything from being a doctor or nurse, to more specialized areas such as physical therapists or ultrasound technicians. Read lots of different career descriptions and job descriptions, and see what you might be able to get some work experience in. Nothing beats working alongside actual professionals for a while to get an idea of whether this is a career for you.

Standardised tests. We’ve all fretted about them at some time or another, whether it be as young tots nervous about our parents’ reaction to a sub-par report card, or as undergraduate hopefuls awaiting the results of their university entrance exam.

For many of us, testing (whether it be preparing for the test, taking the test, or nervously awaiting the final results of the test) is an uncertain, nerve-wracking event that is nonetheless accepted as necessary and inevitable in our skills-based world. After all, how else would the testers know exactly how much one has learned up to this point? How else would one know their own strengths and weaknesses? By what other method would the school system, college, or company know whether the testee is of good enough proficiency to pass the course, acquire certification, or be accepted into a certain role?

However, did you know that this norm was not always the norm throughout history? That there are many detractors now and then who criticise the very idea that we need standardised testing at all (or at least as often as we do now)?

Setting the Terms Straight

But before we delve into the arguments about it, let us first define what exactly we mean when we say “standardised tests”. Standardised tests are a form of test in which the same test is given to all takers, in the same manner, with the same limits, and with the final results being graded in the same way. A standardised test can be a written test, oral test, or a practical demonstration of skills (for example, a test to obtain a driver’s licence). Whatever the format, the most important aspect is the standardisation, which ensures that those who pass meet a certain minimum standard.

Case #1: It Encourages Tedium Over Genuine Interest

So what problems might people find with this system? Well, one frequently trotted out argument is that doing well at a standardised test has almost nothing to do with actual knowledge and skill in the subject. Instead, teachers fall into the habit of what is called “Teaching to the Test”, which involves teaching how to best get the top grade rather than teaching to ensure a holistic understanding of the subject matter. This involves the teacher focusing unhealthily on rote drills and memorisation, rather than trying to ignite genuine interest in the subject from their students. This is a very valid point, and teaching in this manner does drain enthusiasm for the subject matter from both student and teacher.

However, counter-critics contend that it is only below-average teachers who engage in it, and teachers who are competent can both instil a well-rounded understanding of a subject, as well as prepare students to take a test in that same subject. Thus, “Teaching to the Test” is not an inevitable outcome. Plus, studies have shown that students that are taught using rote methods actually perform more poorly in real standardised tests. If such a factoid were more widely known, it’s likely that rote learning would decrease, as such methods would be shown to be ineffective at its sole goal (to make students pass tests).

Case #2: It Can Intensify the Plight of the Disadvantaged

Another argument is that students from disadvantaged communities (e.g. lower-income families, marginalised ethic and religious groups) are also inherently disadvantaged in a standardised test environment because the test does not take place in a vacuum. The success of a student in a standardised test isn’t determined just by how much a student listens to lessons, but also whether their home lives are conducive to studying, how supportive their parents and wider community is to academic learning, the availability of resources such as libraries and the internet, the presence of physical and mental disabilities, and well as stress, nutrition and well-restedness. All of these factors vary wildly between student to student, with better results coming from students from higher-income and less marginalised homes due to influence of these factors alone.

However, such an argument assumes that schools are rigid institutions that do not give allowances for less-abled students, and that there are no efforts to even the playing field by teachers, educational institutions, and the government alike. For example, many schools and private institutions offer scholarships and financial aid schemes, aimed at alleviating the structural disadvantages of circumstances such as coming from a lower-income family. Likewise, while the dictionary definition of a standardised test is that the test is administered in exactly the same way for each testee, in practice many schools give students with physical or mental impairments (e.g. injured hands, dyslexia) extra time to complete their tests, thus offsetting the extra time they need to write out their answers or comprehend the questions.

Conclusion

Despite all this, we should still listen to criticism about the current system, as that is one of the quickest ways to see the system from another perspective, and realise where we might be going wrong and unnecessarily making things harder for students. For example, we should have tests that actually reward true understanding of the subject, and not just rote memorisation (e.g. phrase questions in novel ways, and tell students to explain in their own words). Similarly, we should aim for our education systems to equalise student opportunity for learning as much as possible, both outside and within the confines of the test (e.g. do not word questions in such a way that it requires a specific cultural context to understand, unless learning that context is the point of the test, etc.).

In the end, the standardised test is a tool, and so it can be tremendously effective. However, one can only maximise its effectiveness when used with clear knowledge of its limitations and all the ways it can go wrong.

Consumer confidence is notoriously difficult to build but astonishingly easy to lose. Over the last century, the United States government has been enacting legislation to protect consumers from disreputable and fraudulent business practices. At the same time, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) has been actively promoting honest industry principles in the private sector.

History of the BBB

The Better Business Bureau can be said to have stemmed from a wave of false advertising scandals and court cases that occurred in the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century.

As large populations of people moved from rural areas into the city, food producers were faced with the challenge of transporting food from remote farms to urban markets. They turned to unscrupulous means to keep their food looking fresh, including using hazardous preservatives such as formaldehyde.

Animals were slaughtered in revolting conditions and meat processing plants were exceptionally filthy and unsanitary. At the same time, quack medicine was widespread. Charlatan doctors sold unvetted concoctions laced with drugs and alcohol that showed little therapeutic results while causing numerous addictive and detrimental effects.

In 1906, the U.S. government enacted the Pure Food and Drug Act, a groundbreaking consumer protection law that would later lead to the establishment of the Food and Drug Administration. The Pure Food and Drug Act aimed to prevent adulterated or mislabeled food and drug products from being manufactured, transported, or sold.

In 1911, the case of the United States vs. Forty Barrels and Twenty Kegs of Coca-Cola was filed under the Pure Food and Drug Act to pressure the company to remove potentially harmful amounts of caffeine from the Coca-Cola formula. Although Coca-Cola won the judgment, the company voluntarily reduced the amount of caffeine in its products.

At this time, the advertising industry was moved to denounce dishonest business practices and embrace truth in advertising. Samuel Dobbs, the President of Associated Advertising Clubs of America, advocated for an honest advertising industry. He was responsible for the adoption of one of the first codes of advertising in the country.

In the succeeding decades to come, several other organizations such as the National Vigilance Committee (1912) and the National Better Business Bureau of the Associated Advertising Clubs of the World (1921) would continue to guide and elevate advertising efforts across the U.S.

These organizations would go through mergers and name changes to finally form the Council of Better Business Bureaus in 1970. This umbrella entity encompasses hundreds of national corporations, over a hundred local BBB offices, and hundreds of thousands of small local businesses throughout the country.

How the BBB Works

The Better Business Bureau is a nonprofit organization that is not affiliated with any government agency. The main bulk of the work of the organization is to gather information on local businesses or charities and publish unbiased reviews. By doing so, the Bureau hopes to assist consumers in making educated choices.

To remain unbiased, the BBB does not recommend or endorse specific businesses. Consumers seeking more information about a business can check how it rates on the BBB website. The BBB rating system has an A+ to F letter-grade scale which is calculated based on 17 factors including incident reports that go through objective verification by BBB experts.

The rating score represents the level of confidence that the BBB has that the business will behave in a trustworthy and responsive manner. Consumers can find out which businesses have given satisfactory responses to customer complaints and which businesses have a history of poor customer service or inferior product quality.

BBB offices also help to handle consumer complaints. If a person is unhappy with the service that they received from a particular business, they can contact their local BBB and file a complaint. The BBB will then contact the business and attempt to achieve an acceptable resolution. According to the Bureau, they resolve 70 percent of consumer complaints.

BBB Accreditation

Although BBBs are non-biased, businesses can apply to be accredited by BBB. A significant 70 percent of consumers feel that they are more likely to choose an accredited business that displays the Better Business Bureau seal. However, there are stringent rules that businesses have to meet to qualify for accreditation.

First of all, the business must have the proper licenses and certifications, a proven record of ethical operation, and no pending government action. They must also receive a minimum of a B rating. In addition, the business must commit to working with the BBB to continuously improve its marketing standards and practices.

The business must ensure that all advertising is honest and transparent. They must accurately represent the costs and limitations of their products or services and have their terms, conditions, and policies clearly displayed. Even if there is a mistake in promotional material, the business must be willing to honor its promises.

After upholding truth in advertising for over a hundred years, the Better Business Bureau has become a trusted consumer resource. Because the BBB is fundamentally neutral, consumers can receive independent and objective information, and make their purchase choices with confidence.

It’s not uncommon these days for people who want to build a website for the first time to use WordPress. The platform has been growing in popularity over the past few years. It’s not just that it’s a safe platform, but you can use it for just about any website be it a personal blog or an eCommerce website. If you are into arts and crafts and want to sell your products, WordPress makes it easy to handle financial transactions and track orders. Even big corporation websites are built on top of this robust platform.

WordPress also comes with many great features that make it easy for anyone to start a website within a matter of minutes. The platform is easy to use, manage, and keep it updated. Additionally, there are tons of plugins and extensions that you can install on the website to improve security, productivity, and allow you to reach a larger audience. Many of these plugins are available for free or for a small subscription as well. And because of its overwhelming popularity, many of the top web hosting providers recommend it as the platform of choice for websites large and small. Which brings up the question on everyone’s mind: how to go about setting up WordPress from scratch? Read on to get a detailed description of how to set up WordPress without the help of a developer.

Before Installing

As with everything technical, you’ll need to be prepared before you can start the process of installing WordPress. Any website needs two things: a domain name and a server. The domain name is a unique name that identifies your website and makes it easier for people to visit it. The domain name also allows you to install your website anywhere and transfer it to a new service provider at any time. Most web hosting providers also let you register a domain with them.

Then you need a server that hosts your website and all the files you upload to it. That’s where web hosting providers come in. You can rent a server for an annual fee and renew your subscription every year or every couple of years according to your budget and needs. Sometimes, you can register the domain with the hosting company and save yourself the trouble of domain registration and renewals.

Setting up WordPress

Now that you have both a registered domain and a server, you’re ready to start installing WordPress and get your website ready. If you’re lucky, you’ll find WordPress already pre-installed on the server you rented. Then you can start using it right away to customize your website and add new features to it. But in case you need to set it up yourself then keep reading to find out how to do it the easy way.

Some servers come with cPanel, which is a dashboard to help you install the software packages you need. One of those packages would be WordPress. You’ll need to log into your cPanel and scroll down to the auto-installers section. Find the WordPress icon and click it. Then follow these steps:

1. The first page explains what WordPress is all about. Scroll down to the bottom, where you’ll find “Install Now”. Click it.
2. The next page lets you enter the domain you just registered and the nameservers. You’ll need to copy and paste the nameservers exactly as they appear on the domain registration website.
3. For security purposes, you should choose HTTPS over HTTP protocols. However, you’d need to purchase an SSL certificate separately to use HTTPS.
4. Next, you’ll need to set the directory for the website. You should leave this one blank. Below it, you’ll need to enter the website name. You can change it later if you don’t have a name now.
5. While on the same screen, you need to create your login details for the website. Create a username and a strong password. Make the password hard to guess and write it down. You’ll need it to log in to the admin panel. Enter your email address as an admin.
6. That’s it. You’re done.

You’ve now successfully installed WordPress and you can log in to the admin panel to customize your website, install plugins and extensions and add content.

Finishing The Set Up

As you might have noticed, installing WordPress wasn’t that complicated. The platform streamlines the process so efficiently that practically anyone can go through it without issues. Now it’s time to finish up your installation and customize your website by adding a new design. First, you’ll need to log in to the admin panel of your website using the username and password you just created when installing WordPress. From the admin panel, you have full control over how your website looks, what content you can add, and how it behaves.

You can start with the themes to change the design of the website and give it a unique look. Themes are a combination of visual elements such as menus, images, styles, and colors, that distinguish your website from the millions of sites on the internet. The good news is that just like WordPress itself is free, there are thousands of free themes you can choose from and install. It won’t cost you a thing and you can even customize them to reflect the niche or business you’re in.

WordPress is currently the most popular platform that hosts millions of websites. Whether you want to start a simple blog, sell some products, or launch a full-fledged website for your business, WordPress allows you to scale your website up or down as you see fit.