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The Acceptance Letter

Last night, I reminded my ACT prep class students that this is THE time of year. I teach an eight week course on test-taking strategies to help improve scores, mostly to high school juniors.  I took a minute to step away from studying trigonometry, punctuation errors, author’s purpose, and scientific experimental design to point out that a year from now, they will decide where they’re going to college. Their eyes widened at the thought and there was a lot of nervous laughter. These juniors are in what seems like the 20th mile of a marathon. They can’t see the end in sight yet, despite thinking about it for years and working so hard right now on grades, tests, and applications. This is what seniors in high school – and seniors in college – are doing in the next 4-6 weeks. Many have Acceptance Letters in hand and are deciding where to start the next big journey.

Acceptance letters change lives. If you went to college, you probably remember yours, “Congratulations, future Gopher/Bear/Banana Slug/Spartan! We are pleased to announce that you have been accepted into….”  Some of us also still remember the Ding letters: “…unfortunately, we receive so many applications from worthy candidates….”

Why go to college?

Even though costs have skyrocketed, the earnings potential for a college degree still far outweighs that of no degree. As of 2014, according to a Pew Research study published in the New York Times¸ the cost of not having a degree was about $500,000 over an earnings lifetime, even factoring in today’s high cost. People seeking jobs know that it is a huge barrier to a job, to a better job, to higher pay or a better title in their current job. Continue reading “The Acceptance Letter”

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Our Days Are Numbered

Midweek since the time change, I’m still not sleeping properly, waking in the middle of the night and dozing until suddenly it’s later than I should be up, and I drag out of bed, logy and bleary-eyed. Yesterday was 3-14, a calendar quirk that’s labelled Pi Day on our Gregorian-driven pages, a day of no significance but a fun day for the mathematically-amused.
20170315 calendar

In movies, clocks show time passing, calendar pages falling, seasons changing with sped-up elapsed time. Why don’t we see other metaphors—for example, how often are rulers used or tape measures? We move through time and space, but we seem to take no notice of space. We are comfortable with granting the importance of spatial distances, but when it comes to time, we want to see it measured.  By instinct, we feel time all around us, whether we are forever noting the digital clock readout of our phones all day, feeling the seasons pass, or obsessing about our age, it’s as if time sits like a bird on our shoulder.

If we are saving daylight, when do we get to spend it?
Many of us grew up with Daylight Savings Time, so it’s hard to imagine that the practice is relatively recent and didn’t catch hold in the mid-1970s U.S. Energy Crisis. Even then, some places like Arizona still choose not to participate, and the starting dates have shifted around nationally, moving to a different day in the year just a decade ago. While the extra hour of daylight in the evening favor those who work inside all day, farmers and those who put on evening entertainment oppose the process. For example, dairy farmers know that the cows don’t want to be milked an hour earlier just because that’s what the clock says. Continue reading “Our Days Are Numbered”

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Moving to Healthy

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Combined map of Healthiest cities, Kaj courtesy of Easy Map Maker

I want to be healthier. I should probably move to Gunbarrel, Colorado. Or Portland Oregon; Rochester, Minnesota; or Highlands Ranch, Colorado. These are all the healthiest places in America, according to multiple ranking studies published within the last year. Being healthier is good, but whenever you look at these Healthy Places studies, you come to some quick conclusions. The studies seem to have issues with their methodology of places or factors, come to very different conclusions, or intermix causal reasons with results. Beyond a slightly interesting headline, most of the rankings as individual places to live aren’t interesting except as a curiosity. But there are conclusions to draw, if you look past the rankings themselves.

I almost feel nervous doing data analysis in this column TWO WEEKS IN A ROW, after the analysis of the Best Actresses last week. But a ValuePenguin study came out over the weekend, and I couldn’t help it. I had to peek at it and got irritated, went digging at the data, and voila! Fodder for an argument!  When I started looking at other similar studies, the need to quarrel with the information got even bigger, and the need to vent even greater. Let’s consider it a public service. Continue reading “Moving to Healthy”