Every Wednesday, I share five interesting blog posts from around the Internet. Let’s dive right into this week’s eclectic collection.
Kicking things off, we have Ray Ebersole discussing his experience with not “reaching for great” and falling into a state of complacency. He has since really turned his life around, earning his degree and broadening his horizons. Refusing to take the easy way out anymore, now he’s doing great. If you’re wondering why you will fail to have a great career, you should read his post and watch the embedded TED video from Larry Smith.
Next, we turn to a great post from Maria Popova that explores E.B. White’s thought process in writing Charlotte’s Web. White loved animals of all sorts, but publishers disagreed on his choice to have an “icky” spider as the main protagonist. He stood his ground, fought back, and ultimately produced one of the most influential children’s books of all time. You should check out The Annotated Charlotte’s Web
for even more “over the shoulder” insight.
Fellow freelancer Thursday Bram has a habit of looking for excuses to work on the road. It’s something of a chicken-and-egg situation: she seeks out coworking spaces because she has work to do, but she also lines up work to do so that she can seek out cool coworking spaces. After all, a well-equipped coworking office is far more conducive to productivity than many of the “table and chair combinations most hotels manage to come up with.”
You’ll notice that I have a copyright notice at the bottom of this blog, because I want to make sure I am protecting my intellectual property rights. That said, I do share my Flickr images under a Creative Commons license. Most of us have some knowledge of how those work, but attorney-at-law Sara F. Hawkins is helping to clarify any confusion about the different Creative Commons licenses. What does it mean to give appropriate credit? What does it mean when the CC license includes a “share alike” designation?
And finally, we have a very simple yet very profound lesson from Anny Chih. If you’re not scared, you’re not doing it right. This is in line with Ray’s post about reaching for greatness, as cradling yourself well within the confines of your comfort zone will lead to nothing more than mediocrity. Stretching your limits can be frightening, but that’s how you know you’re “doing it right.”
Thanks Michael. You know, I still feel that the paper is just a piece of paper.It’s fulfilling to have it, but my work experience, my hands on doing is so much more valuable than the what you can get from anyone with the paper.
If you know where to find it and can get it done, get the paper because that’s what matters. Answer me this Michael…..
My last four courses for my degree were Earth Science, Public Speaking, US History through 1877 and Short Story literature. Of those courses, what helped me in being able to run a project team to move 10 major District applications from ISA or basic firewall protection to an F5 Big-IP proxy and load balancer? What helped me know how to set my HOSTS file and to understand that the HOSTS file didn’t matter is I was behind the firewall for SharePoint or not while we were testing the functionality of the APM front end for access from an external port?
Was it the paper I received for getting my degree or was it my base of previous experience with working as a team leader and my experience with networks, firewalls and IP schemes?
It’s never really about the piece of paper as much as what that piece of paper represents, just like the medal than Olympic athlete would earn for winning a competition. You’re in a different situation than younger students who may be coming straight from high school, but for them, that piece of paper could help to represent that they are better prepared or better able to tackle the career ahead of them. This is similar to the kinds of certifications that may be necessary to perform certain jobs.
You bring up a great point Michael, I am 54 and have been doing this for a long time. I have that knowledge, whereas a normal student is a lot younger than I am and it shows the work they put into getting the degree and their preparation.
I am extremely happy that two of my children were old enough to see me walk at graduation and will be able to understand what it means to “Don’t Give Up, Don’t Ever Give Up”. If you have the opportunity, go do it. If you don’t have the opportunity, go out and make the opportunity.