Disenchanted

There will probably be nothing novel stated in this post, but it's getting to the point where I have to put something down on paper.

There is something fundamentally wrong with the political system in this country.  It's not the Republicans and the Democrats or the conservatives and the liberals, or even the rancor that has, in fact, existed in American politics since day one.  In truth, I'm not sure that I can articulate exactly what is wrong with our system today.  I believe it is some combination of apathy, acceptance of a deteriorating status quo, and a desire to "win" the debate and to control the process even at the expense of the welfare of the nation.  When the political discussion becomes about winning, the quality of the national debate will suffer.  Facts become a means to an end, to be manipulated to shape the nature of the debate in the optimal way as opposed to letting the facts speak for themselves.  Distortions, half-truths, campaign promises, hyperbole.  All of these come about as the result of a "control the process" frame of mind.

Now, the obvious question here is, "Well, who is to say what the facts are?  Is it not reasonable to expect there to be disagreements with regards to the facts?"  I would agree with that.  Debate is caused by disagreements of fact.  However, the nature of the disagreement has changed.  As I mentioned earlier, the goal of nearly everybody is to win the debate.  Socrates famously declared that he was not the smartest man in the world and that he was seeking out a man smarter than he.  His debates were fueled by a search for truth.  Winning for him, presumably, was learning something or expanding his mind.  Demolishing somebody and making his opponent look stupid wouldn't be an accomplishment, it would be self-congratulatory.  It would be empty, and nobody would benefit.  Socrates isn't known and studied today because he won every debate, he's studied because his debates furthered our understanding of a variety of topics.  Bringing this back to the modern day, debates today are about defeating your opponent as to furthering the public knowledge and exposing new perspectives.

I think that there are two reasons for this.  The first is pride, or hubris.  Nobody likes to lose a debate.  It's thought by many that if you lose a debate you're somehow less intelligent or knowledgable than your opponent.  This really isn't the case.  Perhaps your opponent just, by chance, happened to have been exposed to some knowledge that you, by chance, were not.  It is the height of intellectual maturity to be able to accept that your opponent has a better understanding of a given topic than you do, and to be able to implement some of their knowledge and perspective into your own beliefs.  The immature person is more likely to belittle the opponent and neglect the information at the expense of the furthering of the development of the debate, because of their own pride and misguided sense of what debate is.

The second reason is just as important.  The attention span of the national audience has shrunk.  We no longer have time to study and absorb nuanced debate.  Ad hominems and oversimplifications are easier to digest than a peer-reviewed study or an elegantly articulated thesis.  I believe that this point, the shrinking of the national attention span is what gave rise to the proliferation of a desire to "win" debates, as I discussed in the previous paragraph.  If the public demanded a higher form of debate and discussion, and was willing to think in greater depth about the extraordinarily important topics facing this nation, pundits that go for the easy win as opposed to a well-articulated argument would fall by the wayside, surpassed by deeper thinkers.  The Lincoln-Douglass debates of 1860 followed a format where the first speaker spoke for an hour, the other spoke for 90 minutes, and then the original speaker got a 30 minute rebuttal.  This was considered to be, by many, the pinnacle of debate in the United States.  Why?  A clear, uninterrupted delineation of views, policies and beliefs could be given to the audience without interruption.  The shrinking attention span and academic diligence of America is the real crux of the issue.  Education and intellectual discipline are the solutions.

I'm going to publish this now and review it tomorrow.  It is by all means a work in progress.  I hope that in the next couple of days I will be able to clarify my opinions on some of the more important political issues of today.

Update

I was writing a letter to a professor today with regards to my job search.  He'd asked me how the search was going.  I told him that I'd had a few interviews and had a few more upcoming.  Another thing occurred to me: job hunting can be fun with the right mindset.

What do I mean by this?  Obviously un(der)employment is a stressful thing.  However, it can also be a time of tremendous growth and learning.  Personally, I'm interested in working in several fields, including entrepreneurship and finance.  For the purposes of this post, I'll talk about entrepreneurship. 

Let's start at the beginning of the process: finding a job to which you wish to apply.  In my case, I'm searching for small, entrepreneurial startups with business development openings.  These types of jobs are a little harder to find than, for instance, a job as a financial analyst.  Therefore some more in-depth searching is required.  I started off by identifying some of the more prominent Venture Capitalists and Angel Investors, the people who are likely to know about startups.  Identifying them required me to read various blogs and listen to an assortment of podcasts.  Identifying the "players" required met to sift through, and learn, a great deal of information that I otherwise may not have been exposed to.  Once I identified the "players" I followed them on Twitter, read their blogs, etc.  I read the articles they wrote and read the links they posted on twitter.  Again, learning more and preparing myself for the interviews that will come as a result of my work. 

Once I identify a job to which I would like to apply, I focus my research onto that particular business.  How does it monetize?  How does it grow?  What is the business model?  How do they differentiate from their competitors?  A good interviewer will expect you to be able to contribute something original in the interview.  So, rather than just absorbing a bunch of information off of the website's About Us page, I typically find myself researching successful businesses that were in a similar situation as an early stage startup.  The amount of research, organization and analysis required to prepare for an interview is tremendous.  Nevertheless, it can be fun if you actually enjoy the research.  (In fact, if you find yourself bored by the research or actively dislike it..there's a good chance that the job or industry isn't for you.  You should be excited by the opportunity.)  This research will eventually make you a better employee for whomever you work.

So, to give you the brief answer to the question posed by my professor at the beginning- the job search continues, and that's not such a bad thing. 

Motivation

A colleague recently asked me "What do you say to yourself to get yourself to keep going when you're hurting during a workout?"

I didn't have an answer.  It seemed like kind of an odd question to me to be honest.  

He continued on, "It's important to have that thing to tell yourself to keep going when it gets hard."

I still didn't know what to say.  I sat there in silence for a moment and asked if I could have a few minutes to think about it.  (He was surveying the staff for answers which he was to put in a blog post of his own.)

I never got back to him.

I've been thinking about my answer for the last few days.  What does motivate me?  Is it to try to find the limits of my endurance, physically and mentally?  That would be the easy answer but its lacking substance.  I don't really care where my limits are. I don't time my efforts or train with a power meter, and therefore have no way to "know" what my limit is in any objective sense.  In other words, I don't know that I can hold X watts for Y time, or do X mile repeats on Y interval.  So I think that the "finding my limits" rationale isn't good enough, although its close.

Is it for health or for that runners high?  To non-athletes I'm sure the concept of endurance sports is bizarre.  Why subject oneself to the pains and frustrations of endurance sport, especially when so many of us get injured?  Clearly it can't be about health as most of us could lead healthy lives on less training volume.  Perhaps many of us would be healthier on less volume.  Besides, in my mind I'm young and invincible.  I don't train for my health.

Masochism?  No.  I don't do it for the pain.  I don't like the pain.  Getting past the pain and ending a workout and escaping the pain is rewarding and gratifying, but only in the sense that I survived and beat the pain.  Pain is a necessary byproduct, but it isn't something I enjoy, celebrate or embrace.

 

In the end I found out that my motivation is simple.  I like swimming.  I like biking.  I like running.  It carries over to the academic and professional world as well.  I love the competition, and I love the training and the practice.  What do I say to push myself to continue when I'm tired?  I don't know.  I'm usually having too much fun to think about it.  

The Job Search

In case you couldn't tell from my previous post, I am currently looking for a job.  I'm in the middle of putting out a few applications today, but I wanted to take a break to write a quick post about searching for jobs in general.

The job search process is absolutely terrible.  Most are poorly designed and overly complicated.  There are some better ones, but the better ones generally either charge a subscription fee or have relatively few openings posted. 

I've had some luck with Branchout as I think that it has the potential to be the best as it allows the end user to customize their search experience, and to save the most recent search strings, making the whole experience less tedious and aggravating.

That said, it still strikes as odd how in the 21st century we're still relying on a model of matching prospective employees with employers that hasn't changed much in the last hundred years.  The medium has changed but not the method.  Odd.  Maybe Branchout will be the company to bring HR into the 21st century by making the exchange of information more personal.  

Social Networking or: How I Stopped Worrying and Love the Blog

I Googled my name (James Robichaud) the other day out of curiosity.  It turns out that there’s a convicted sex offender that shares my name.  He dominates the first few pages of Google results.  I then Googled “Jim Robichaud”, which is the name I go by.  The page was dominated by an old country singer from Florida who goes by the name Jim “The Fisherman” Robichaud.  The reason I mention this is because people - employers, strangers with whom you come into contact, blind dates, whatever - will use the internet to try to find out who you are.  I heard over and over in school that you don’t want scandalous pictures of yourself online where important people may find them.  It was mostly older people that were telling me this.  Isn’t it just as important to establish a positive digital presence as it is to avoid a negative digital presence?  Isn’t this the obvious corollary?  Why is this side of the very same coin ignored in schools?

I do not know exactly why the creation of a digital presence isn’t taught alongside with how to write a cover letter and resume, but I believe that in these times, a digital presence can be more valuable than either the cover letter or the resume.  What would an employer rather have, a cover letter that could have been proof-read or even ghost written, a letter that is most likely by and large a form letter, or access to a person’s twitter account, Facebook and blog?  Which is more informative?  Which is more interesting?  Which is more fun for the interviewer?  Obviously, since I’m writing this, I believe that the digital presence can be as much or more of an asset than a cover letter and resume. 

Now, aside from interaction with employers, there is a social element here that I mentioned earlier.  Friends, blind dates and co-workers.  People will be Googling you.  There will inevitably be thousands of results for your name.  Now, as I mentioned earlier, the first result for me will be, “James Robichaud - Sex Offender”.  Even though the most cursory of examinations will reveal that this is a different person, do I really want that to be their first impression?  You can’t tell me that this won’t, at least in a subconscious way, make an individual somewhat suspicious of me.  Therefore it is in the best interests of individuals to control their digital presence, just as it is in the best interest of businesses to control their digital presence.  A person has just as much to lose if their “brand” is damaged as a business. 

To summarize, it is in the best interests of everybody to maintain a digital self since one will exist in the form of search results of people sharing your name.  Since you must maintain a digital presence, you may as well make it an asset to you with creative content that accurately depicts you.  As I came to figure this out for myself over the past few years, I came to stop worrying and love the blog. 

Beginning

I swam competitively for ten years and if there's one thing I learned it's that the first is always hardest.  The first blare of the alarm clock at six in the morning, the first step out the door and the first dive into the pool.  Writing this first blog post, which I don't intend to be particularly insightful or entertaining, has been particularly difficult.  However, I did eventually realize the silliness of fooling around with the design of the template without actually having any blog posts up. 

Tomorrow morning I want to dive into exactly what this blog is and what my vision for it is.  I also hope to dive into my vision for the future of social media. 

Since nobody will read this unless I actually succeed in generating a readership, I'll let you know that I'm glad I accomplished this "first".