4 Ideas You Weren't Taught in School

          4 Ideas you weren’t taught in School.

                                                                           By Zane Smith

                This won’t be another attack on our academic system. This WILL be a crash course on painfully practical topics you and I weren’t offered in class. Through the past few decades the system has absorbed some streetwise curriculum that are, at times, even required. Life Management Skills, Sex Ed, Critical Thinking , etc… [Even with] the additions in curriculum, a star pupil will still feel like some gold mine of information was left out when he/she finally enters the grown-up arena.

                Here are four simple lessons that would have opened our eyes years sooner. This list is not the end all be all, I’m sure there are buckets of street-smarts we could all have benefited from.

Lesson 1

Free thinking

                Almost nothing you ever read or hear from another person will be entirely factual.

Opinions aside, nearly all information we spew at each other is dripping with bias and miscommunications. Sprinkle some emotional attachment on that, and you’ve got a good old fashion soap-box-sandwich.

                You read an article in the news stating a local political official is being accused of embezzlement and fraud. GASP! My precious tax dollars! Another entry just beside it says local high-dollar lawyers have been roaming around throwing important people’s names in the dirt with no evidence to back up the allegations. GREAT SCOT! THE POLITICAL GUY IS INOCCENT!

Get the point? This is where the saying “two sides to every story” spawns from. People may be telling you the truth, but leave out the parts they don’t like, and capitalize on the items they do, giving a lopsided spin. Not even your expensive text books or crusty grandmother are 100% real.

This might dismay you into believing there is just so much bullshit the truth is not worth digging for. But Lo! The facts are present! We usually just need to clean off the glup and grime of human interjection to harness them.

Keep an OPEN MIND , be a POSITIVE SKEPTIC , don’t believe all the niose.

Lesson 2

Mistakes are good

                Mistakes show you what doesn’t work so you can develop as a person. Live and learn.

                Getting an F on an important test sure doesn’t seem like a good thing. But the positivity comes from the way you respond to the mistake. Remain the same, or change your behavior to make sure the flub doesn’t recur. Those are essentially our options.

                A laser guided missile uses a computer to constantly calculate where its current trajectory will take it. If the predicted destination is off, it makes the slight adjustments to ensure success. The projectile runs this program loop thousands of times before it decimates the bullseye; victory. The human brain operates on the same principles: “Ouch, that stove is hot. In the future, I’ll refrain from setting my hand on a stove.” Pain>>Learn>>Grow.

Now if you’ll all turn to chapter 2, you’ll read that all failures are opportunities to grow. Next time there is a test, try cracking the book open for a couple of minutes the night before. Then maybe your F will turn to a C, and you would’ve gain a little bit o’ book learnin.

Lesson 3

Entrepreneurship          

                You don’t have to work for your money, you can make your money work for you. Working for somebody else is not your only option. You live in a country that is powered by, and promotes Free Enterprise. Business owners (and investors) are the wealthiest people in the world.

Tell me if this sounds familiar: get good grades in high school; go to a good university; get a good job; 401K your way to retirement at 65. Life succeeded! Right?

Wrong. I’m not saying this is a bad route to travel, but understand that people you see with million dollar homes and Ferraris didn’t get those things by following the formula above. Maybe 1% of them did, all of them CEOs at top corporations. But you know what those CEOs don’t have? Time to enjoy their mansions and supercars.

People fall into 4 sectors of money making, according to market guru Robert Kyosaki: Employment, Self-employment, Investing, and Big Business. The first two eat up your clock, the last two make you wealthy, if you play your cards right.

But we don’t hear this in school do we? We are asked “what do you want to be?”, when we should be hearing “how do you want to live?”

Lesson 4

Shit Gets Real  (Ladies, pardon the French)

                Life is not a T.V. show. Sometimes the girl gets away, the main character loses, or the ending isn’t happily ever after. This is OK because life goes on. It’s all good.

Most of us who have walked the Earth for more than 15 years already learn this intuitively, but in modern western civilization we can be coddled all throughout high school and college. We feel safe inside our warm cocoon of student-ness.

But eventually metamorphosis leaves the egg. The cosmos snaps back and shows it’s seemingly chaotic side. As a wise man once said: “in life, there is suffering”. This may seem very stoic and negative, however undeniable. There’s also a lot of happiness and rainbows, but that isn’t the problem, is it?

The point is to recognize the universe is not necessarily always on your side, and when it shows you this, you will probably not enjoy it. “Things don’t always work out”, “life isn’t fair”, “dog eat dog”, “box of chocolates”….the list goes on. But in the end it’s all good.

                This Lesson list is incomplete, I’m sure. I hope that what I did provide gave you some insight and practical knowledge for the days ahead. And if not: shit happens.

Yours Truly

Zane Smith

Gen Y in Space

                                                                                      By Simon S.

                Apart from sounding like a low budget Sci-Fi Original, this topic is going to be more relevant as time unravels, possibly making George Lucas look like Nostradamus.

                                                       MARS ONE

"Large living quarters are over-rated"

                In 2011, a team of people devised a plan of Inter-stellar proportions to make Mars a new home. According to the mandate, humans will be living (permanently) on the Red Planet by 2023, after which new groups of four will be sent every two years.

 The people who will be sent are most likely to be from Gen Y. Because of our age now, we will be seasoned enough to offer valuable experience, but still spry to manage the frights of space travel.

               This is the part where we all say “then what?” We’ve successfully colonized our neighboring rock with a few dozen souls. Why are we doing this and how will it benefit the Human race?



*Virgin Galactic™ is not liable for any

cosmic Radiation you may absorb.



               I don’t know! All I know is your children may be taking an internship on Mars before you know it. YOU might even mozy on over to the planet for a job or vacation. When you see those commercials for a luxury stay at the Martian Marriot, you’ll know I wasn’t just blowing cosmic smoke up your Astral Disc.

               

 

BEYOND THE SOLAR SYSTEM

                There are Planets we’ve been eyeing for over a hundred years that could potentially harbor and sustain Human life. It is very likely that the generations directly proceeding us will be born on other celestial bodies. Mankind may call quite a few planets home by that time; maybe Earth no longer one of them.

Most of these planets look cozy on the outside, but it takes only one small factor for them to be uninhabitable.

Planet: Gliese 667Cc! Perfect we’ll take it! Oh what’s that? It’s 4 times the size of the Earth? Hmmm… that would make the effect of gravity on this planet equal to giving a 400lb ape a piggy back ride on Earth.

Each "fiber" represents a string of hundreds of millions of Galaxies. The bright spots are Super Clusters.
Where's Waldo?

                So the search continues, but soon enough we will discover a Terrestrial-like planet, and the means to beam over to it.

                The days of “the whole World” being confined to our pale blue dot are numbered. We are headed out to the cosmos at warp-speed, and expanding the grasp of Human-kind to unknown worlds.

~Simon S.

Don't Be a Rebel, You Conformist!

                                                                        By Tony Y.
                                                                                 

It leaves a tart flavor in my mouth to bear a title so crass, but you know it’s true.

People want to be unique. We all understand that scientifically speaking no two human beings are exactly the same (even identical twins), but somehow that isn’t enough for a majority of us, and we push for grander, more apparent differences.

We are attracted to renegades because they’re hip and romantic. Not soap opera romantic, but Charlie-Sheen-in-Ferris-Bueller’s-day-off romantic. (See below)

Are we mavericks because we dress glitzy or disrespect authority? Colored hair? Gauged ears? Black coffee? Tight pants? “Underground” music?

 

No!

 

I have nothing against any of these lifestyles, except when we trick ourselves into believing these actions and veneers turn us rebel.

This style of “fighting the system, man” is a trend. The clothes, attitude, and demeanor all morph over time, but every generation has its counter-culture of choice.

BEING A TRUE MOLD-BREAKER

What follows is a quote from SLC Punk, another movie with confused young people and innocence lost, but with tremendous heart and wisdom.

 

Brandy: “Wouldn't it be more of an act of rebellion…if you didn't spend so much 

time buying blue hair dye…and going out to get punky clothes? It seems so petty.” ”…You wanna be an individual, right? You look like you're wearing a uniform. You look like a punk. That's not rebellion. That's fashion.”

Steve-O: “Then what's rebellion?”

Brandy: “Rebellion happens in the mind. You can't create it. You just are that way.”

IT’S IN THE MIND

Spoiler Alert: do things because you want to.

Chasing a movement of flair and fashion is not wrong. But assuming that assimilating with that crowd will make you untraditional is right out. Having loud jackets and kaleidoscopic locks makes you something, but not rebellious. Wear those holey jeans because you like to. Dye your hair red because it’s your favorite color. Drink black coffee because cream and sugar isn’t your fancy. Do things because you want to.

Another pertinent quotation from the movie-box:

 

Troy: “Let me ask you something. People have been clowning me about this jacket since I got here. But if I take it off to make them happy, I’m weak, right?”

Jeff :(shrug) “Troy, what’s it matter. You lose the jacket to please them, you keep it to piss them off...either way, it’s for them, that’s what’s weak.”

 

SIDE NOTE

This has the potential to fold back on itself, when we ask “what if I want to be a conformist?”

            My answer: Go for it. If you are at peace with your intentions, then who is anyone (especially me) to tell you off?

            Moral of the story?  Be yourself. Cliché as a love poem about the Moon, I know. But as wise man George Watsky once said “...stereotypes start with a grain of truth, clichés begin with a boulder”

Yours Truly,

Tony Y.