Stem Career Quotes

All writing problems are psychological problems. Blocks usually stem from the fear of being judged. If you imagine the world listening, you'll never write a line. That's why privacy is so important. You should write first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone.

Presenting leadership as a list of carefully defined qualities (like strategic, analytical, and performance-oriented) no longer holds. Instead, true leadership stems from individuality that is honestly and sometimes imperfectly expressed.... Leaders should strive for authenticity over perfection.

And speaking of options ,these kids [the ones who attend elite universities] have all been told that theirs are limitless. Once you commit to something, though, that ceases to be true. A former student sent me an essay he wrote, a few years after college, called "The Paradox of Potential." Yale students, he said, are like stem cells. They can be anything in the world, so they try to delay for as long as possible the moment when they have to become just one thing in particular. Possibility, paradoxically, becomes limitation.

Exhibit A: I’m guessing you’re no fan of socialism, which was a founding principle of the Nazi movement. The name “Nazi” is an acronym for the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, which most of today’s Democrat socialists conveniently forget. Actually, that’s an understatement. These people don’t just overlook this truth, they’ve totally rewritten history on the matter. These days, Nazism gets associated with conservatism at the drop of a hat, but historically it stems from the left. Adolf Hitler? An art-loving vegetarian who seized power by wooing voters away from Germany’s Social Democrat and communist parties. Italy’s Benito Mussolini? Raised on Karl Marx’s Das Kapital before starting his career as a left-wing journalist and, later, implementing a deadly fascist regime.

The first dysfunction is an absence of trust among team members. Essentially, this stems from their unwillingness to be vulnerable within the group. Team members who are not genuinely open with one another about their mistakes and weaknesses make it impossible to build a foundation for trust. This failure to build trust is damaging because it sets the tone for the second dysfunction: fear of conflict. Teams that lack trust are incapable of engaging in unfiltered and passionate debate of ideas. Instead, they resort to veiled discussions and guarded comments. A lack of healthy conflict is a problem because it ensures the third dysfunction of a team: lack of commitment. Without having aired their opinions in the course of passionate and open debate, team members rarely, if ever, buy in and commit to decisions, though they may feign agreement during meetings. Because of this lack of real commitment and buy-in, team members develop an avoidance of accountability, the fourth dysfunction. Without committing to a clear plan of action, even the most focused and driven people often hesitate to call their peers on actions and behaviors that seem counterproductive to the good of the team. Failure to hold one another accountable creates an environment where the fifth dysfunction can thrive. Inattention to results occurs when team members put their individual needs (such as ego, career development, or recognition) or even the needs of their divisions above the collective goals of the team.

Women have another option. They can aspire to be wise, not merely nice; to be competent, not merely helpful; to be strong, not merely graceful; to be ambitious for themselves, not merely for themselves in relation to men and children. They can let themselves age naturally and without embarrassment, actively protesting and disobeying the conventions that stem from this society's double standard about aging. Instead of being girls, girls as long as possible who then age humiliatingly into middle-aged women and then obscenely into old women, they can become women much earlier -- and remain active adults, enjoying the long, erotic career of which women are capable, far longer. Women should allow their faces to show the lives they have lived. Women should tell the truth.

If Marx had no time for the state, it was partly because he viewed it as a kind of alienated power. It was as though this august entity had confiscated the abilities of men and women to determine their own existence, and was now doing so on their behalf. It also had the impudence to call this process ‘‘democracy.’’ Marx himself began his career as a radical democrat and ended up as a revolutionary one, as he came to realize just how much transformation genuine democracy would entail; and it is as a democrat that he challenges the state’s sublime authority. He is too wholehearted a believer in popular sovereignty to rest content with the pale shadow of it known as parliamentary democracy. He is not in principle opposed to parliaments, any more than was Lenin. But he saw democracy as too precious to be entrusted to parliaments alone. It had to be local, popular and spread across all the institutions of civil society. It had to extend to economic as well as political life. It had to mean actual self-government, not government entrusted to a political elite. The state Marx approved of was the rule of citizens over themselves, not of a minority over a majority. The state, Marx considered, had come adrift from civil society. There was a blatant contradiction between the two. We were, for example, abstractly equal as citizens within the state, but dramatically unequal in everyday social existence. That social existence was riven with conflicts, but the state projected an image of it as seamlessly whole. The state saw itself as shaping society from above, but was in fact a product of it. Society did not stem from the state; instead, the state was a parasite on society. The whole setup was topsy-turvy. As one commentator puts it, ‘‘Democracy and capitalism have been turned upside down’’—meaning that instead of political institutions regulating capitalism, capitalism regulated them. The speaker is Robert Reich, a former U.S. labour secretary, who is not generally suspected of being a Marxist. Marx’s aim was to close this gap between state and society, politics and everyday life, by dissolving the former into the latter. And this is what he called democracy. Men and women had to reclaim in their daily lives the powers that the state had appropriated from them. Socialism is the completion of democracy, not the negation of it. It is hard to see why so many defenders of democracy should find this vision objectionable.

By 2018, roughly 35 percent of the STEM workforce will be composed of those with sub-baccalaureate training, including 1 million associate degrees, 745,000 certificates, and 760,000 industry-based certifications.

She was almost monosyllabic among the buckets of mimosa and lilies a quarter of an hour later. The florist fussed and fiddled, holding blooms against Robin’s hair and accidentally letting drops of cold, greenish water fall from the long stem of a rose onto her cream sweater.

I wish you were going home with me tomorrow.” “I know.” She nearly added Me too, then realized she didn’t. Where would that leave the children? Stephen turned her hand over and ran his thumb across the ring. The wind tugged her hair. A lone seagull cried overhead, floating on the wind, almost stationary. “There was a part of me that hoped you would,” he said. “You know I can’t.” Hadn’t they been through this before? “It won’t be much longer. School will be out in a little over a month. And if the Goldmans buy the property, that’ll expedite things.” “And then what?” “The property would close thirty days from the signing. Maybe you could come for another visit between now and then.” “That’s not what I mean, Meridith.” She knew he referred to the children coming home with her, to their being a family, and she wished so desperately the day had gone better. “Today was a bad day. They’re not normally so quarrelsome, and Ben’s vomiting . . .” The memory was such a horrific end to the day, it was almost funny. She felt a laugh bubbling up inside. “Well, you have to keep your sense of humor around here, that’s for sure.” “I don’t find it funny in the least.” The bubble of laughter burst, unfulfilled. “I appreciate that you want to give them a chance. I’m just trying to say it isn’t always like this.” He looked at her, his eyes intent with purpose. “I didn’t come to bond with the kids, Meridith. I came to remind you what we have together.” He pressed another kiss to her palm. “I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” Her breath caught, but not because he’d repeated the words he’d spoken when he’d proposed. The other words made a far stronger impression. I didn’t come to bond with the kids. She’d misread the reason for his visit. She’d taken her own wish and transferred it onto him. “We have plans, good ones,” he said. “Save for a home in Lindenwood Park while we focus on our careers for three to five years. By then we’ll have enough to buy that dream home and start a family.” Meridith knotted the quilt material in her fist with the daffodil, clutching the stem against her chest. “I already have a family, Stephen.” His face fell. “They’re not your kids, Meridith. And they’re not mine.” “They’re my siblings. And they have no one else.” “That wasn’t our plan when I asked you to marry me. When you said yes.” “Life doesn’t always go according to plan, Stephen. Things happen. Change happens. I didn’t ask for this.” “I didn’t either. And I’m asking you to put me first. To put us first.” His grip tightened on her hand. “I love you. The future I want for us doesn’t include someone else’s children.” Meridith eased away from him, pulled her hand from his, and stood, even as he tightened his grip. If Stephen’s future didn’t include her siblings, then it didn’t include her either. She

I wish you were going home with me tomorrow.” “I know.” She nearly added Me too, then realized she didn’t. Where would that leave the children? Stephen turned her hand over and ran his thumb across the ring. The wind tugged her hair. A lone seagull cried overhead, floating on the wind, almost stationary. “There was a part of me that hoped you would,” he said. “You know I can’t.” Hadn’t they been through this before? “It won’t be much longer. School will be out in a little over a month. And if the Goldmans buy the property, that’ll expedite things.” “And then what?” “The property would close thirty days from the signing. Maybe you could come for another visit between now and then.” “That’s not what I mean, Meridith.” She knew he referred to the children coming home with her, to their being a family, and she wished so desperately the day had gone better. “Today was a bad day. They’re not normally so quarrelsome, and Ben’s vomiting . . .” The memory was such a horrific end to the day, it was almost funny. She felt a laugh bubbling up inside. “Well, you have to keep your sense of humor around here, that’s for sure.” “I don’t find it funny in the least.” The bubble of laughter burst, unfulfilled. “I appreciate that you want to give them a chance. I’m just trying to say it isn’t always like this.” He looked at her, his eyes intent with purpose. “I didn’t come to bond with the kids, Meridith. I came to remind you what we have together.” He pressed another kiss to her palm. “I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” Her breath caught, but not because he’d repeated the words he’d spoken when he’d proposed. The other words made a far stronger impression. I didn’t come to bond with the kids. She’d misread the reason for his visit. She’d taken her own wish and transferred it onto him. “We have plans, good ones,” he said. “Save for a home in Lindenwood Park while we focus on our careers for three to five years. By then we’ll have enough to buy that dream home and start a family.” Meridith knotted the quilt material in her fist with the daffodil, clutching the stem against her chest. “I already have a family, Stephen.” His face fell. “They’re not your kids, Meridith. And they’re not mine.” “They’re my siblings. And they have no one else.” “That wasn’t our plan when I asked you to marry me. When you said yes.” “Life doesn’t always go according to plan, Stephen. Things happen. Change happens. I didn’t ask for this.” “I didn’t either. And I’m asking you to put me first. To put us first.” His grip tightened on her hand. “I love you. The future I want for us doesn’t include someone else’s children.” Meridith

I didn’t come to bond with the kids, Meridith. I came to remind you what we have together.” He pressed another kiss to her palm. “I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” Her breath caught, but not because he’d repeated the words he’d spoken when he’d proposed. The other words made a far stronger impression. I didn’t come to bond with the kids. She’d misread the reason for his visit. She’d taken her own wish and transferred it onto him. “We have plans, good ones,” he said. “Save for a home in Lindenwood Park while we focus on our careers for three to five years. By then we’ll have enough to buy that dream home and start a family.” Meridith knotted the quilt material in her fist with the daffodil, clutching the stem against her chest. “I already have a family, Stephen.” His face fell. “They’re not your kids, Meridith. And they’re not mine.” “They’re my siblings. And they have no one else.” “That wasn’t our plan when I asked you to marry me. When you said yes.” “Life doesn’t always go according to plan, Stephen. Things happen. Change happens. I didn’t ask for this.” “I didn’t either. And I’m asking you to put me first. To put us first.” His grip tightened on her hand. “I love you. The future I want for us doesn’t include someone else’s children.” Meridith eased away from him, pulled her hand from his, and stood, even as he tightened his grip. If Stephen’s future didn’t include her siblings, then it didn’t include her either. She

I didn’t come to bond with the kids, Meridith. I came to remind you what we have together.” He pressed another kiss to her palm. “I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” Her breath caught, but not because he’d repeated the words he’d spoken when he’d proposed. The other words made a far stronger impression. I didn’t come to bond with the kids. She’d misread the reason for his visit. She’d taken her own wish and transferred it onto him. “We have plans, good ones,” he said. “Save for a home in Lindenwood Park while we focus on our careers for three to five years. By then we’ll have enough to buy that dream home and start a family.” Meridith knotted the quilt material in her fist with the daffodil, clutching the stem against her chest. “I already have a family, Stephen.” His face fell. “They’re not your kids, Meridith. And they’re not mine.” “They’re my siblings. And they have no one else.” “That wasn’t our plan when I asked you to marry me. When you said yes.” “Life doesn’t always go according to plan, Stephen. Things happen. Change happens. I didn’t ask for this.” “I didn’t either. And I’m asking you to put me first. To put us first.” His grip tightened on her hand. “I love you. The future I want for us doesn’t include someone else’s children.” Meridith

FROM JACKSON TO HILLARY The full story, however, is told in Steve Inskeep’s recent book Jacksonland, which I will rely on for my subsequent account. “Jackson managed national security affairs in a way that matched his interest in land development,” Inskeep notes. “He shaped his real estate investments to complement his official duties, and performed his official duties in a way that benefited his real estate interests.”16 As Inskeep shows, typically Jackson would set his eye on a large tract of Indian territory. Then, even before chasing the Indians off that territory, Jackson would send surveyors in to assess the land in terms of its real estate value. Jackson would then alert his cronies, and together they would make a bid to purchase that real estate. In this way Jackson became a Tennessee plantation magnate and one of the largest slave owners in his home state. Jackson was a ruthless con artist who became fabulously wealthy by trading on his political office. Sound familiar? His career illustrates the familiar Democratic story of leaders making sure that when there are spoils to be distributed, the lion’s share goes to them. Obviously not all Democrats use their political positions to get rich, but a number of them, from Jackson himself to Lyndon Johnson to Bill Clinton, certainly did. Jackson’s true modern counterpart—as you have probably figured out by now—is Hillary Clinton. Their stories are closely parallel. If Hillary started out “dead broke,” as she claims she did, after her husband’s presidency, so did Jackson begin with nothing as an orphan. Neither of them became successful through starting and running a successful business. Rather, they cashed in on their political influence. Just as Jackson made money on land deals stemming from his success as a general, Hillary too figured out ways to enrich herself through her government positions, becoming fabulously wealthy in just a few years.

When I asked May how long she had been feeling disengaged, her first answer was “I’m going through this now.” Before I could get out my next question, she choked off a wry laugh and said, “Looking back, I think it’s been going on all seven years here, stemming from soulless work.” She actually felt a sense of unease dating back to her first day on the job when she went home that night and told herself, “This work just isn’t my passion.” Tamping down those feelings, and giving in to her fears, May stayed—hopefully for only a limited time—but just for the money she desperately needed. It wasn’t the work that caused these feelings of disengagement per se, but more the feeling that she was not where she was supposed to be. While she went about doing her job with a smile on her face, her inner voice kept saying, “This isn’t right.” May felt like she had developed Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) in her current role because her body needed, in fact craved, movement. She couldn’t seem to focus. For May, the underlying cause of disengagement was a strong feeling that her job didn’t align with her core values—the essence of who she is. As she searched to name her feelings and how to deal with the overwhelming sadness across the years, she talked to friends, hired coaches, learned new skills, and most importantly built an escape route. But she still felt angst and isolation. Finally, she approached her boss and indicated she was about to blow like a volcano. That was the catalyst for change. May knew it was time to listen to her inner voice and leave this job when the right opportunity presented itself. Although she hasn’t left yet, the fact that she has an escape plan has made the waiting so much easier, just knowing there is an out. May’s message to others struggling with this disease is to know you are not alone, don’t give up on your dream, keep the faith, and it will eventually lead you to a sunnier side of the street.

> In the 21st century, intellectual capital is what will matter in the job market and will help a country grow its economy. Investments in biosciences, computers and electronics, engineering, and other growing high-tech industries have been the major differentiator in recent decades. More careers than ever now require technical skills so in order to be competitive in those fields, a nation must invest in STEM studies. Economic growth has slowed and unemployment rates have spiked, making employers much pickier about qualifications to hire. There is now an overabundance of liberal arts majors. A study from Georgetown University lists the five college majors with the highest unemployment rates (crossed against popularity): clinical psychology, 19.5 percent; miscellaneous fine arts, 16.2 percent; U.S. history, 15.1 percent; library science, 15 percent; and (tied for No. 5) military technologies and educational psychology, 10.9 percent each. Unemployment rates for STEM subjects hovered around 0 to 3 percent: astrophysics/astronomy, around 0 percent; geological and geophysics engineering, 0 percent; physical science, 2.5 percent; geosciences, 3.2 percent; and math/computer science, 3.5 percent. 

A lot of the psychological insights [in Parabellum] stemmed from my personal experiences. For example, I was a college athlete, so I could imagine what the ex-athlete was going through when her sports career ended. I'm a little emotionally detached (which helps in a field like forensics where I can see some unpleasant things), so I could identify with the detachment of the programmer. I tried to take my experiences and push them a little farther to develop characters with more serious psychological issues. And I read several memoirs to get a sense of what it feels like to live with depression, PTSD, brain trauma, etc.

Does this mean that in order to be happy in a relationship we need to be joined with our partner at the hip or give up other aspects of our life such as our careers or friends? Paradoxically, the opposite is true! It turns out that the ability to step into the world on our own often stems from the knowledge that there is someone beside us whom we can count on—this is the “dependency paradox.” The logic of this paradox is hard to follow at first. How can we act more independent by being thoroughly dependent on someone else? If we had to describe the basic premise of adult attachment in one sentence, it would be: If you want to take the road to independence and happiness, find the right person to depend on and travel down it with that person. Once you understand this, you’ve grasped the essence of attachment theory.

It is said that the situation is considerably better in early infancy, and that in the first six months of life an extensive injury to the dominant hemisphere may compel the normally secondary hemisphere to take its place; so that the patient appears far more nearly normal than he would be had the injury occurred at a later stage. This is quite in accordance with the general great flexibility shown by the nervous system in the early weeks of life, and the great rigidity which it rapidly develops later. It is possible that, short of such serious injuries, handedness is reasonably flexible in the very young child. However, long before the child is of school age, the natural handedness and cerebral dominance are established for life. It used to be thought that left-handedness was a serious social disadvantage. With most tools, school desks, and sports equipment primarily made for the right-handed, it certainly is to some extent. In the past, moreover, it was viewed with some of the superstitious disapproval that has attached to so many minor variations from the human norm, such as birthmarks or red hair. From a combination of motives, many people have attempted and even succeeded, in changing the external handedness of their children by education, though of course they could not change its physiological basis in hemispheric dominance. It was then found that in very many cases these hemispheric changelings suffered from stuttering and other defects of speech, reading, and writing, to the extent of seriously wounding their prospects in life and their hopes for a normal career. We now see at least one possible explanation for the phenomenon. With the education of the secondary hand, there has been a partial education of that part of the secondary hemisphere which deals with skilled motions, such as writing. Since, however, these motions are carried out in the closest possible association with reading, speech, and other activities which are inseparably connected with the dominant hemisphere, the neuron chains involved in processes of the sort must cross over from hemisphere to hemisphere and back; and in a process of any complication, they must do this again and again. Now, the direct connectors between the hemispheres—the cerebral commissures—in a brain as large as that of man are so few in number that they are of very little use, and the interhemispheric traffic must go by roundabout routes through the brain stem, which we know very imperfectly but which are certainly long, scanty, and subject to interruption. As a consequence, the processes associated with speech and writing are very likely to be involved in a traffic jam, and stuttering is the most natural thing in the world.

In the end, value is all that matters to every participant in any speaker-audience interaction. Either a story delivers value or it doesn’t; everything else stems from that simple equation.

To the skeptics, perhaps the events that are to follow were just a coincidence and nothing more than a series of random accidents that led me to where I am today. But to the lovers and poets and dreamers, perhaps you might agree that the story about to unfold is something more. You might even agree that there are times when coincidences are so powerful that they don’t really seem like coincidences anymore. Times when you come across events that seem too strange, or too strong, to be anything other than Fate—a grand design that incorporates everything from the career paths we take, the friends we meet along the way, and the partners we choose to spend our lives with. Times like these make you question that maybe nothing in this world happens by accident. Maybe everything really does happen for a reason, as some prewritten destiny slowly takes shape and shoves you down a path—or in my case, a mountain side.

Meet Brian Hynes, a skilled Sr Process Manager based in Nashua, NH. He is a specialist in economics and finance, with a deep understanding of market dynamics and financial analysis. Brian's chosen career path in finance stems from his interest in leveraging economic principles to make informed investment decisions. His goal is to build a successful career in the finance industry, utilizing his expertise to optimize financial strategies and drive business growth.

I define that the tech industry switches in all directions contrary to what people believe as the norm for the new Metaverse. Why spend trillions of dollars on big data when it is becoming more useless? We need dynamic content to create a boom in the tech industry for the next millennium. Why hire someone with a 4 year college degree for a career in database administration when companies can't afford to pay 100k a year? We can manage information stores perfectly fine with google sheets or microsoft excel. I thought that utilizing AI would completely switch off problematics in relationship to Data As A Service when programs are dynamically building hash tables for objects in random access memory, storing them as blockchains Inna virtualized file container ;)." - Jonathan Roy Mckinney

José Martí is recognized as the George Washington of Cuba or perhaps better yet, as the Simon Bolivar, the liberator of South America. He was born in Havana on January 28, 1853, to Spanish parents. His mother, Leonor Pérez Cabrera, was a native of the Canary Islands and his father, Mariano Martí Navarro, came from Valencia. Families were big then, and it was not long before José had seven sisters. While still very young his parents took him to Spain, but it was just two years later that they returned to Santa Clara where his father worked as a prison guard. His parents enrolled José at a local public school. In September of 1867, Martí signed up at the Escuela Profesional de Pintura y Escultura de La Habana, an art school for painting and sculpture in Havana. Instead of pursuing art as a career, Martí felt that his real talents were as a writer and poet. By the early age of 16, he had already contributed poems and articles to the local newspapers. In 1865 after hearing the news of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, he was inspired to seek freedom for the slaves in his country, and to achieve Cuban independence from Spain. In 1868, Cuban landowners started fighting in what came to be known as the Ten Years’ War. Even at this early age, Martí had definite opinions regarding political affairs, and wrote papers and editorials in support of the rebels. His good intentions backfired and he was convicted of treason. After confessing, he was sentenced to serve six years at hard labor. His parents did what they could to have their son freed but failed, even though at the age of sixteen he was still considered a minor. In prison, Martí’s legs were tightly shackled causing him to become sick with severe lacerations on his ankles. Two years later at the age of eighteen, he was released and sent to Spain where he continued his studies. Because of complications stemming from his time in prison, he had to undergo two surgical operations to correct the damage done to his legs by the shackles. End of part 1.

He had practically made a career out of reading parenting books, even though they all seemed to give conflicting advice. One thing they agreed on was that rebellion stemmed from a need to escape parental control, running up against a need for boundaries and limits. Not that it made dealing with a thirteen-year-old any easier.

When their partners, especially those with strong Fe expressiveness, come to them with an urgent need for support or reassurance, INTPs may find themselves feeling angry or spiteful rather than compassionate. This response is not intentional, but is more of a knee-jerk reaction stemming from feelings of powerlessness and ineptitude. This problem also ties into the fact that INTPs fail to experience empathy to the degree that Feeling types do. INTPs do not want to feign empathy, as it feels awkward and inauthentic. So all they feel capable of doing is proffering potential solutions in a Ti-Ne fashion, which may leave their support-seeking partner feeling frustrated and unsatisfied. This dissatisfaction may, in turn, further fuel INTPs’ sense of spite and anger, since they feel they are being asked to function inauthentically and “out of their element.

In the fringes of our yard, daffodils await their triumphant chorus. The golden bells have just opened on our forsythia, and clusters of hyacinth flowers await flourish in purple blooms. By aesthetic standards, any of these blossoms would have outshone the fistful of yellow spikes my little boy offered. In the coming months, dozens of its cousins, cast away as weeds, will meet an untimely end beneath the blades of a lawnmower. Their brazen head will be lopped off, their awkward petals demolished and scattered. They will be declared a nuisance, expendable. Yet when gripped within Pip's fingers, how perfect, how precious became this paltry bloom. He had put aside the torrent of irritability and overwhelm that trouble him hourly, and found grace in a spiral of petals. Through a humble weed, love had broken through. God works this way. He does great things with the meager, and beautiful things with the misshapen. He chooses the smallest, the humblest, the most broken as his servants. (1 Sam 16:10-12, Numbers 12:3, 1 Tim 1:15) He works for good through the greatest calamity. (Gen 50:20) With his most beloved broken and crushed, he reaches through the firmament, and in love makes things new. (Rev 21:5) Where we see weakness, he offers grace. (2 Cor 12:9) He shatters pride, so new blossoms can burst forth. I've spent the past few months wrestling with God. After Pip's evaluation, as we clumsily felt out life with special needs, the questions of why wrapped around my heart, infusing me with daily bitterness. Resentment broiled to the surface. I'd left medicine to follow God's call, but a large part of me, in shocking arrogance, wanted to comply on my terms. Over the past two years, God has compelled me to confront my idols. I thrived on productivity. But now I inevitably find grime in corners I have just cleaned. I prized efficiency. But it now takes 30 minutes of wrangling over potty... I'm an introvert, who needs alone time to rejuvenate. But is anyone less alone than a mom with young kids? A "save the world" mentality drives me. But my daily life fodder is now the mundane. I relish instant gratification. But this business of shepherding hearts is long, with few immediate rewards. I relished accolades... I consider God's graciousness to us, and in the stillness of a springtime morning, I struggle for breath. His mercy toward us in this season -- in the face of my arrogance, despite the brokenness to which I've so stalwartly clung -- is stunning. During all the years of my training and career, homeschooling was never the plan. God inexplicably placed the idea in my heart, like a shadow that deepened daily. But now, I see how perfect were his methods. I shudder to think of how our family would struggle if I was still barreling ahead at the hospital, subsumed with my own self importance, while Pip fought daily to deal with every crowd... Homeschooling was never the plan. . . but oh, what a plan! That he called us this way, was mercy manifest. That he has equipped us to continue, is the greatest gift. Even on the hard days, I count it all joy. On the days when Pip, after a week of handling things so well, has a meltdown in the grocery store, complete with screaming and a blow to my chin -- there is joy there. God can work even with our ugliness. Through Christ, God redeems even the most corrupt. He assembles the stray petals, the unseemly stems, and makes things new. He strips away the idolatry of a surgeon desperate to prove her own worth, and points her toward the fount of all worth -- Christ Jesus. There is a deep well of peace in serving God where he has placed you. There is a refining grace, in realizing his work even in the hard moments. There is a profound beauty in redemption -- in the love that breaks forth through brokenness -- if we can only put away our preoccupations, and embrace his will. "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." -- 2 Cor 12:9

One popular trend in education is to emphasize “STEM” subjects to such a degree that science, technology, engineering, and math dominate a child’s school career. There is nothing wrong with those studies, but if a child has no time to read poetry and stories, to experience art and music, to delve into history and learn to appreciate the heritage of the past, we have violated the principle that education is the science of relations. A person wants to know about many things and a child needs broad exposure to all kinds of knowledge, especially in the younger years. That wide exposure lays a good foundation for specializing later--in a STEM subject or anything else.

Pierre Hermé. Variously coined "The Picasso of Pastry," "The King of Modern Pâtisserie," "The Pastry Provocateur," and "The Magician with Tastes," he's the rock star of the French pastry world. In a country that takes desserts as seriously as Americans take Hollywood relationships (that is to say, very), he has the respect and admiration of Paul Newman. At the age of fourteen, in fact, Gaston Lenôtre of the famed Lenôtre Pâtisserie asked Pierre's father if he could apprentice Pierre. So at about the same age that I started whipping up Oreo blizzards for my illustrious career at Dairy Queen, Pierre began his in the French pastry world. After five years at Lenôtre, at the spry age of nineteen, he became the head pastry chef. If you've ever seen the billowy white gâteaux or structurally perfect strawberry tarts from this Parisian landmark, you know how impressive this is. Later, he moved on to Fauchon, another top marque in the French pastry world, where he caught the world's attention with his Cherry on the Cake, a towering creation of hazelnut dacquoise, milk chocolate ganache, milk chocolate Chantilly cream, milk chocolate shavings, crushed wafers, and a bright red candied cherry- phew! complete with stem- on top. This was an important revelation for two reasons: its artistry and the unexpected flavors. Unveiling this cake is a ritual, and if there's one thing I'd learned, it's that the French like their rituals. The more dramatic, the better. Untying the satin bow at the top of the cake's tall, triangular box allows the sides to fall away, revealing the gleaming cherry and six gold-leaf markings down the side, which indicate where to slice to serve the six perfect portions. With this cake, Pierre proved he was wildly creative, yet precise and thoughtful; a hedonist, but a hedonist with a little restraint and a lot of skill. Just as with its design, the flavor of the Cherry on the Cake left the French gasping. While they're typically dark and bittersweet chocolate devotees, this cake is all milk chocolate. Pierre took a risk that his budding fan base would fall for the milk chocolate and not think him sacrilegious for eschewing the dark. Same thing with flavors like lychee, rose, and salted caramel, which are common these days, but were out there when Pierre introduced them to his macarons and cakes in the early days.

Aside from the waste, fraud has a terribly demoralising effect on scientists. As we’ve seen, one reason that so many frauds manage to infiltrate the literature is that, in general, scientists are open-minded and trusting. The norm for peer reviewers is to be sceptical of how results are interpreted, but the thought that the data are fake usually couldn’t be further from their minds. The sheer prevalence of fraud, though, means that we all need to add a depressing option to our repertoire of reactions to questionable-looking papers: someone might be lying to us. Nor is it just other people’s papers that require this extra vigilance: fraud can happen on any scientist’s own doorstep. Because papers are rarely authored by lone researchers, a fraudulent co-author can sometimes tarnish the reputation of entire teams of innocent colleagues. In many cases the perpetrator is a junior lab member who drags their senior co-authors’ names through the mud, as in the case of Michael LaCour’s fake gay-marriage canvassing study. Sometimes it goes the other way, with established scientists recklessly jeopardising the careers of their subordinates (the report into Diederik Stapel’s fraud noted, for example, that no fewer than ten of his students’ PhD theses were reliant on his faked data). And we already saw the ultimate cost of reputational damage in the case of Yoshiki Sasai, who took his own life after finding himself involved in the STAP stem-cell scandal.

2 Personal Year Number Relationships, Balance, Emotions Self-love and your relationship with yourself is your first priority this year as you work on building your confidence and healing whatever needs to be healed. This is a year to achieve mental and emotional balance by addressing any unresolved emotions or limiting beliefs that are preventing you from living a happy, harmonious life. This is also a year to create harmony in your life by balancing your intuition with logic, your home life with your career, giving with receiving, and others’ needs with your own. This is also a year where relationship issues that have been brewing with work colleagues, family, friends, or partners will come to the surface in order to be resolved. Therefore, it pays to be cooperative, tolerant, understanding, and diplomatic at all times. Because 2 represents partnership and meaningful connections with others, this is a wonderful year to solidify the relationships in your life. It’s also a very favorable year for singles to find love—bearing in mind that healthy relationships with others can only stem from a healthy relationship with oneself. This year can bring about exaggerated emotions and extrasensory experiences, so you may feel hypersensitive to criticism and overreact at times. Your intuition is heightened, so follow your inner guidance and you’ll automatically be led where you need to be. This is a time to create a harmonious environment, take up meditation, create or listen to beautiful music, enhance your psychic abilities, spend time in nature, and eat healthy food. This is a slow and steady year of adaptability that requires patience. When you let go and go with the flow, it can be a very rewarding time. Number 2 is governed by the moon, so work closely with the lunar cycles throughout the year to assist in manifesting your dreams. (See “Moon Cyles” in the “Manifestation with Numbers” section in Part III.)

The continuous transformation of a school into an elite Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) institution prepares students to become 21st century-ready. STEM embeds college-, career-, and citizen-ready skills into the curriculum. For our nation, we must succeed. Yet we cannot step into this new world without inspiration and commitment. So we cobble together ideas and actions to create our own recipe for success.

What we can take away from this data is that most STEM training will get students a good income at the starting gate and a decent career. But powerful earners—the people running the show, breaking through the glass ceilings, and changing the world—tend to have liberal arts degrees. This

what strikes me most about their stories of missed opportunities and derailed careers is this: The source of their anxiety and frustration is rarely a shortfall in technical or professional expertise. Instead, it invariably stems from a shortcoming in their soft skills repertoire—the nontechnical traits and behaviors needed for successful career navigation.

The world needs more women in STEM” “That’s true. But that means making sure they have opportunities and encouraging the ones who want to pursue those careers, not forcing women into the field to make other people happy.

In The Highly Sensitive Person, Elaine N. Aron, PhD, writes that finding the right vocation for the HSP is the hottest topic in her seminars. This makes perfect sense since a large group of chronic pain sufferers are either unemployed, working part time, hate their jobs, or have recently been forced to leave their jobs, or retired. They don’t know how to move forward—in career-coma—feeling unproductive and empty. Aron explains that HSPs “don’t thrive on long hours, stress, and overstimulating work environments.” Their difficulty in finding a satisfying endeavor stems from “their not appreciating their role, style, and potential contribution.” These people are often gifted artists or writers, teachers, consultants, counselors—people of great intuitive talents stuck in mundane and externally draining environments. They only find true satisfaction when matched with the right career—only truly happy when they are “liberated” from the first half of their lives and finally begin listening to their own voices. Aron continues, “Being so eager to please, we’re not easy to liberate. We’re too aware of what others need…. Often their intuition gives them a clearer picture of what needs to be done. Thus, many HSPs choose vocations of service.