Empowerment

Tips for New Grads and Anyone Looking for a Job

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope those of you in the United States had a very happy Fourth of July yesterday. It is very quiet on my campus this morning as a lot of people took a vacation day to have a long weekend. One has to love summer for the more relaxed pace and time to breathe. Today I just want to share a few articles that I think will be useful for new grads and others looking for jobs this summer.

Even with the economy picking up, it is still a very tough job market in many fields, including libraries and archives. So I think that Lifehacker’s article on 6 of the most common resume flaws and how to fix them is rather timely. A good resume or CV is still one of the best ways to convey your experience, skills, and knowledge to potential employers. A good cover letter never hurts either. As I’ve served on multiple hiring committees, I can definitely say that a readable resume that is tailored to the position is very useful to the committee. No one wants to search through a poorly constructed resume and many won’t take the time. Lifehacker’s article also gives good advice on how to make your resume as positive as possible, which I think is always a good thing.

Although not strictly about job seeking, I think Lifehacker’s article on break the ice in any situation is useful for those going on job interviews, too. Being able to connect and talk easily with people on a job interview can be difficult, but having some ideas of good conversation starters can be helpful. I think this is especially useful for those who have all-day interviews as there will always be an awkward silence or two that you might feel the need to break during the day.

Also, for those looking for jobs (especially in the library and archives fields), don’t give up hope, do try to continue to build your skills, and do try to remain positive. Don’t be afraid to ask others in your field who have more experience than you to look over your resume and cover letter. Having an extra pair of eyes, especially someone who has hired people before, look over your application materials is very valuable. Also, always get the names of the members of the hiring committee correct. Do your homework and come prepared to interviews with questions. Practice your answers to interview questions. Do send a thank you card or thank you email after an interview. And, once you get a job, give back. Offer to read resumes, talk with people who want informational interviews with you, and share your skills and knowledge.

And, just for fun, take a look at this chart explaining the difference between a geek and a nerd. I quite enjoyed it.

Have a wonderful weekend and I’ll be back soon with more. Allons-y!

Happy Friday! Stop the Work Madness!

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope you had a great week. It was the last week of classes before final exams week on my campus, so it has been a busy week and I have a stack of final papers to grade. Today, I want to just take a few minutes to share some great resources about happiness and stopping the busyness cycle at work so we can both enjoy our work and be productive.

This TEDx Talk by Shawn Achor is in my top 5 all time greatest list of TED Talks. Every time I watch it I laugh and his book, The Happiness Advantage is just as insightful and funny. I highly recommend taking about 12 minutes out of your day to watch his talk and be inspired to make the small changes needed in your life to become more happy, which leads to more success (really!).

While happiness may lead to more success and productivity, we still need to have boundaries to stop work overload and obsessive busyness. This blog post over at HBR is quite good: Stop Work Overload by Setting These Boundaries. This is a great post to share with your colleagues and remember, it is healthy not to work every hour of every day.

If you are also feeling in a rut, the Daily Muse has a good post on How to Break Out of a Career Rut in a Month.

Also, because it is Friday, check out Penguin Classics Wallpaper. If I ever get a separate room for a library in my (future) house, I think I will need to get some of this wallpaper.

Finally, those who have read The Waki Librarian for a while know I love design and typography. Last weekend in fact I went to the Open House and Type Sale at M & H Foundry over in the Presidio. (It was fantastic and great to pick up some type and talk with others who are into letterpress printing.) So, it will come as no surprise that I absolute adore the Typographic Carousel workshop that was shared on I Love Typography blog. Fantastic stuff and something nice to end with for this week.

Have a lovely weekend and I’ll be back next week with more. Allons-y!

Some Talks That Inspire Me

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope your week went well. It seems like at my university everyone is getting over a cold this week. Since we are coming into the weekend I just wanted to share some talks I’ve watched recently that have inspired me. These three talks, well one is actually a poem, demonstrate to me how powerful good speakers can be and why the binary we keep hearing in higher education of “sage on the stage” versus the now popular “guide on the side” is not as binary an issue as some would make it out to be. Great speakers can inspire us still, if we just take the time to listen. Enjoy!

This first video I just watched this week and is Angela Lee Duckworth talking about how grit is the key to success.

This video is another TED Talk (don’t you just love TED Talks?). I had my students watch this talk by Amy Cuddy about the power of body language (power posing). Most of my students found Dr. Cuddy’s talk very inspiring and I hope you do, too.

I adore Taylor Mali’s, “What Teachers Make,” and I love this version with multiple teachers performing the poem.

I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and weekend. I’ll be back soon with more. Allons-y!

Meetings

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope your week has gone well. I’ve had a very busy week of teaching. I’m very much looking forward to some relaxation this weekend. But before we get into the weekend, let’s talk about meetings.

No one seems to like meetings and it isn’t hard to understand why. Lots of meetings are poorly run, have no clear agendas, and no clear steps for follow-up after they finally are finished. But although books like The Org can tell us why meetings are a necessity of modern organizations, that doesn’t really help when you are stuck in a meeting that just keeps going and going. Instead, what does help is when you can run a meeting and do it well.

To that end, check out Lifehacker’s article on the simple equation to run great meetings. Then get out there and run great meeting.

As, in a meeting related vein, check out the article, again from Lifehacker, on what if you could truly be yourself at work? I am just in awe of this kind of community in a work environment and think it would be wonderful to implement. What are your thoughts?

Finally, I want to leave you with this lovely video that I finally watched and am so glad I did:

Have a wonderful weekend! Allons-y!

Tips on a Monday

/ dwakimoto

Hello, dear readers! I hope your Monday is going well. I just thought I’d share some quick tips and information that have come across my feeds that may be of interest today.

First, if you are like me (or most people, I’d imagine), Mondays can be stressful as you try to get back into the flow at work and organize yourself for the coming week. All of that can lead to stress and as we know, too much stress is a bad thing. Luckily for us Lifehacker has a lovely post on the top 10 instant stress busters. A good, quick read packed with usable tips.

If you need a bit of quirky fun and a short break, check out the lovely round-up of Doctor Who crafts over on the Make: Craft blog.

Finally, to share with all the geeks in your life, this lovely art piece via Gizmodo on old world translation for modern day social networks. It’s good for a laugh, or at least a smile.

Hope you have a fantastic week! Allons-y!

Advice and Randomness for Friday

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers! This quarter has been super-busy and I can hardly believe we are already in March. I think someone must be speeding up time. Anyway, I wanted to share with you some of the articles and resources that have recently come across my screen that I think may be useful to you and to those you serve at your libraries.

We’ve been talking about UX (user experience) more at my library, thank goodness, and so I thought this infographic on How to test your landing pages was especially timely. I even like that the infographic is well-designed and easy-to-use. I’m looking forward to some usability testing and UX re-design happening on our library pages hopefully in the near-ish future.

Because I seem to be constantly running up against the clock this quarter, the Lifehacker article on Simple secret to time management: Jedi time tricks was a good reminder on how to prioritize what needs to get done. Plus, who doesn’t want to be more like a Jedi?

As we are nearing graduation time (seriously, it will be here before we know it), I thought this article on advice I wish someone had given me for my first job was timely. It is also a good reminder to those of us who have been working at our organizations for a while to help those who are adjusting to org culture and to also keep on the look for burnout in ourselves.

On to some timely practical tech advice: How can I stop losing and breaking my headphones? This is a great article for everyone to read and hopefully will save you time and frustration in using your headphones.

Also, do take the time to watch this amazing TED Talk by Amy Cuddy on how your body language shapes who you are. I found her talk incredibly insightful and moving, especially at the end. And Dr. Cuddy reminds us to not fake it ’til we make it, but “fake it ’til we become it.”

For your Friday fun, check out this post on how to repurpose some old hardcover books:how-t: hardcover book lamp. Then check out this lovely video talking about Neil Gaiman’s Calendar of Tales project:

I hope you have a wonderful weekend. I’ll be back soon with more. Allons-y!

Life, Work, Change, and Art

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope your week has been lovely and you have a wonderful weekend planned. Today I just want to share some thoughts on various articles I’ve been reading, mostly having to do with work-life balance, in various forms.

I thought it was interesting that Lifehacker published these two articles very close together: why you should embrace work-life imbalance and don’t forget to live. I’d love to hear your thoughts on work-life (im)balance. I believe that we should all do work we love and have careers we enjoy because then the hours do go by more rapidly and are more fulfilling. However, I’m not for being a workaholic. I believe in working very intensely and with great focus in order to accomplish as much as possible, but not having career as the only facet of my life. Having time for friends and family, reading for pleasure (and not for research), baking, and simply being are important, too. Time might be wibbly, wobbly, but we have a finite amount and it seems like a shame not to enjoy life outside of our careers, however fulfilling and enjoyable we find them to be.

Also in the vein of work and life articles, Lifehacker published one on why you are afraid of change and what you can do about it. I think this is useful no matter where the change is occurring in your life. Life is change and it is nice to have some tips on making the most of it.

And since it’s that time of year when people in the United States are doing their taxes and cleaning up their records, I thought tips on what documents to shred and what to keep would be useful.

Finally, on to some beautiful fun. Check out the 2012 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge winners. Art in science is a truly wonderful thing to behold.

Also, I wanted to share the ongoing lettering versus calligraphy competition. Gorgeous, gorgeous lettering and calligraphy. Take a break and just enjoy how expressive lettering and writing can be.

I hope you have a wonderful, relaxing weekend. I’ll be back soon with more. Allons-y!

Some Tips and Fun for Friday

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers! I hope that your day is going well and that you have a wonderful weekend planned. Apparently the Super Bowl is happening on Sunday, so if you are excited about that, I hope your favorite team wins. For myself, I’m looking forward to a sunny weekend of catching up on reading and having a potluck with friends. Before we get to the weekend, I want to share a few things that have come across my digital dashboard that I think might be of interest to you and your patrons.

This quarter has been absolutely crazy busy. Between teaching, committee work, interns, and reference hours, I barely have a minute to pause during the week. It has made for very long days and less reflection time than I would normally like, but hopefully I’ll make it through the quarter without anything falling through the cracks. Therefore it is unsurprising that I found this post by Lifehacker on why you need more margin in your life particularly timely. I really do need to create more margins in my life, and I suspect that you do too, dear reader.

For those looking for ways to get ahead in the career department, I suggest taking a look at Lifehacker’s futureproof your job with a career insurance policy. Just don’t forget about building in some margins as you are building up your career.

Also, an article that would be good to share with all your colleagues, friends, and patrons: top 10 good tech habits everyone should have. I plan on sharing this with my students when we talk more about technology, security, and privacy in class.

Now, on to some fun, this Gizmodo article on 19 adorable animals using technology adorably is sure to make you smile. But if it doesn’t, perhaps you’ll have to break out some chocolate and make Joy the Baker’s chocolate and peanut butter pudding.

Finally, I leave you with this lovely photograph from Beautiful Portals Tumblr, which reminds me that I should really go get a cup of tea (and perhaps you should, too).

Teapots by Gloomtreehouse via Beautiful Portals Tumblr

Teapots by Gloomtreehouse via Beautiful Portals Tumblr

I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and a relaxing weekend, dear readers. I’ll be back soon with more musings and useful links. Allons-y!

Friday's Post of Tips

/ dwakimoto

Happy Friday, dear readers. I can’t believe how busy this quarter has been and we are only in the second week! Today’s post is the usual assortment of things I’ve read that I think are helpful as well as some fun stuff to get you ready for your weekend. So let’s get into it.

I have various friends and family members who are currently looking for work, so I thought this Lifehacker article on 10 tips for acing your next job interview was particularly timely and useful.

I am also a fan of this article on 9 strategies successful people use to overcome stress. Having a less stressful new year is something I think everyone can get behind as a resolution and I hope this article is useful for you, too.

Also, I know we are just past the holidays, but I love planning travel and thought you all might be interested in Lifehacker’s planning cheap travel guide, too. Let’s hear it for planning summer vacations!

This article was really interesting and I’m thinking of sharing it with my information literacy class: how websites vary prices based on your information and what you can do about it.

Finally, on to the fun. This video of 3D projections on a building is amazing. Watch this when you need a break and need to get inspired.

Also, in craft news, I love this One Ring Scarf over on the Make: Craft blog. It is awesome. So if you have friends that knit and love LOTR, do share this with them.

Have a wonderful weekend. I’ll be back with more next week and perhaps even some thoughts on teaching this quarter. Allons-y!

Happy New Year (yes, I know I'm a few days late, please move along…)

/ dwakimoto

Hello, dear readers. I can hardly believe we are 8 days or so into the new year already. It is the first week of classes here at my campus so things are hopping. I just wanted to share a few fun links today and will hopefully be back later in the week with a longer post on some of the things that I’ve been thinking about over the holiday break.

First, I wanted to share this post via Stephen’s Lighthouse and BuzzFeed: 26 moments that restored our faith in humanity. Read it when you are feeling a bit down and want to feel a bit better about the world.

And, as always, I just love xkcd comics and had to share, especially after hearing on the radio how many new year’s resolutions have already been broken:

"resolution" by xkcd

“resolution” by xkcd

Also, Lifehacker has a nice roundup of their Most Popular Long Form Features of 2012. Star it and read when you have a chance.

From Gizmodo, check out a video of a person putting out a boat fire with “sheer awesomeness” (It made both me and my partner laugh when we watched it. It really is quite awesome).

I hope that your year is going well and that you have a lovely day. (Wish me luck for my first day of class today.) And I’ll be back soon with more on libraries, archives, and various other things. Allons-y!