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Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT), the official United States policy on gays serving in the military since December 21, 1993, officially ended on September 20, 2011. DADT was actually repealed by Congress last December, but enforcement was permitted until the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff certified that repeal “would not harm military readiness”. Can you imagine requiring such certification and waiting periods when Truman issued an Executive Order ending segregation in the military? In any event, all certifications were completed by July and the mandated 60-day waiting period ended on September 20th.
Although homosexual men in the military faced recriminations since the Revolutionary War, they were not officially banned from service until after World War II. Warm bodies of any orientation were needed during wars. Through the years, openly gay service members faced severe discrimination and abuse, and were subject to dishonorable discharge, confinement in mental institutions and/or courts martial.
Bill Clinton campaigned on a promise to end the military’s ban on gay personnel, but after he was elected his proposal met intense opposition from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, members of Congress from both political parties, and a large part of the public. As a compromise, Congress reached an agreement known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Pursue” and it became law. Military personnel would not be asked about their sexual orientation and would not be discharged simply for being gay. They could be gay but not act gay. Engaging in homosexual or lesbian activities were still grounds for dismissal.
The growing LGBT movement along with the revelation that the military discharged 20 Arabic and 6 Farsi linguists between 1998 and 2004 because they were gay greatly heightened the call to repeal DADT. President Obama campaigned on a promise to repeal the law and it was fiercely opposed by Congressional Republicans led by John “Faust” McCain, Lindsay Graham and entrenched military leaders. Many of the fiercest opponents of repeal were either sell-outs to the far right wing or self-haters afraid of their own ambiguous sexual identity. (Watch reruns of Glee featuring the football bully.) Those who want to keep government out of our lives are okay with it intruding on our lives when it concerns a woman’s choice or what goes on between consenting adults.
With the repeal of DADT, all qualified men and women can now choose to serve and protect our national security. The US is no longer the only industrialized country banning LGBT individuals from serving openly in the military.
Mary Casey is a student in the MS in Business Leadership and Management program at CUNY School of Professional Studies and is an alumna of Lehman College. She is an administrator for a university in NYC. She loves to travel and wants to see as much of the world as possible. Mary hopes to get more comments on the SPS blog than she received on the community/political blog that she created and maintained from 2002 to 2004.
“Will I make my connection?” I asked the bus driver.
She smiled at me and told me I had three minutes and I would be fine.
Knowing what New York bus schedules are like, I was highly skeptical.
I caught my connecting bus.
This was the first of many culture shocks I would receive while starting over. Fresh out of SPS with my new shiny degree, I moved to California with my fiancé to start a job in Silicon Valley.
When I arrived at my job’s lobby, I was greeted by a very friendly receptionist. I was escorted upstairs by my new boss and given every possible tool I could need to get my job done. I felt like a celebrity my first day.
Countless meetings didn’t bother me at all. I learned so much that first day. I learned about the company, how they operate, the tools they use and how they draw from many different fields in order to get their work done. I am part of a super talented team, but most importantly I felt like a part of the team.
As I watched with amusement, my new boss propelled a foam rocket at one of the team members (even more culture shock), I reflected on how fortunate I was to land a job that used all of my degrees and all of my skills. It is humbling to realize that out of the entire talent pool that is Silicon Valley, that they chose me for this role.
I have so much more to learn, but I am ready for the challenge.
Ebonye Gussine is a recent graduate in the Master of Science in Business Management & Leadership Program at the CUNY School of Professional Studies. She loves writing, reading, and is an avid fan of John Steinbeck’s works. In her spare time she sings off-key and travels to new places.
“Look outside the window, and tell me what you see,” said Mr. P. to his history class.
We all ran to the window, and saw a huge cloud of smoke.
“Is there a house burning nearby?” I asked myself.
“Remember what used to be there?” Mr. P. asked us.
Nobody knew.
“The Twin Towers,” he said to the class.
We all stood there, and loudly accused him of lying to us. He wasn’t joking.
There’s a lot to be said for a moment like that. The realization that your innocence has left you, drifting in the wind like that giant cloud of smoke. For a while, I felt exactly like that. It was difficult to regain a sense of comfort when everything you knew was crashing down around you, literally and figuratively. I can still remember watching 7 World Trade Center fall on TV while my mother recounted walking across the 59th street Bridge to get back into Queens. It’s not the way you’d expect a bright sunny day to end.
When the dust began to settle, there was one thing that I kept on seeing. People helping each other. New Yorkers are perceived to be tough cookies, and they do what they have to do to get by. I didn’t see any of that. I saw people coming together. My mother recounted stories of commercial trucks letting people in the back in an attempt to get home. People went looking for their friends and loved ones. No one, if they could help it, was to be left behind.
While I learned many lessons from the tragedies of 9/11, I will always keep one lesson dear to my heart. If you can help someone, do it. It doesn’t matter how little or big that action may seem. I have made a vow to myself, that if I can help someone, I will.
For all the public service workers, the friends, the neighbors, and the ones who were passing through and stopped to help, I thank you. You have helped show the world, what humanity is all about.
Ebonye Gussine is a graduate student in the Master of Science in Business Management & Leadership Program at the CUNY School of Professional Studies. She loves writing, reading, and is an avid fan of John Steinbeck’s works. In her spare time she sings off-key and travels to new places.
It’s free!
I ended my last post with hoping that iPad works with Blackboard. It does, and I give it a solid B+/A.
I have used my iPad for reading my textbooks, accessing both my courses, opening all the links, folders, assignments, discussion boards and everything else that I need on Blackboard. By clicking on “Quick View”‘, I can create and reply to threads on Discussion Board. I am not sure if Quick View is something that needs to be enabled by the instructor. Both of my courses have that option. If you do not see it on the lower left side of the menu bar below Tools, ask your instructor to add it.
If you plan to post a long DB entry, I do not recommend typing directly into the comment box. The scroll feature with the comment box does not work on the iPad. If your entry is long, you cannot see all of it – only the amount of text that fits in the comment box is viewable. So, if you want to see what you wrote in the first paragraph and you are already on paragraph four, you cannot see or access paragraph one. It is there; you just cannot see it. You can click preview post and view it that way, but you cannot edit it unless the portion that needs to be edited is in the comment box. This is a bit hard to explain, so you may have to find out the hard way yourself.
As I said I would do in my last blog post, I purchased the Pages app for $9.99. It permits me to create a Word-type document, edit it, save it and seamlessly email it to myself so I can download it to a computer and then upload it into Blackboard. It is not as difficult or convoluted as it may sound. There is no “desktop” on the iPad and I have not yet found a way of uploading my saved Pages document directly into Blackboard. I also have not mastered “copy and paste” yet. It is kind of hard on a touchpad.
An added benefit to the Pages app is that I can open all Word documents in Blackboard – even Word 2007. Without Pages, I could open some but not all of them. Now, any Word document that otherwise does not open in Blackboard opens automatically in Pages. I am still undecided about buying the Numbers (Excel) app. I was able to open an Excel spreadsheet on Blackboard without it.
I am typing this blog post in Pages and I will email it to myself, download it to my desktop and copy the text into WordPress. The reasons are the same as for Blackboard – the comment box issue and my copy and paste issues on iPad. As an aside, The SPS Community Blog looks great on the iPad. But, posting comments to someone else’s blog entry does not work. Take care of that please, WordPress people?
Dr. Helft graciously commented on my last post and offered to look into making Blackboard more accessible to the iPad and spreading the word among faculty. In a follow-up email, she expressed some issues with the current version of Blackboard but advised that those would be addressed in the next upgrade. Thank you Dr. Helft. I am sure that the iPad will be used much more frequently with Blackboard and I am sure that by the time the next Blackboard version is available, it will be completely user-friendly with iPad and other tablets. Maybe even an app version will be ready.
Does anyone use an iPad or another tablet with Blackboard? How do you like it?
Mary Casey is a student in the MS in Business Leadership and Management program at CUNY School of Professional Studies and is an alumnae of Lehman College. She is an administrator for a university in NYC. She loves to travel and wants to see as much of the world as possible. Mary hopes to get more comments on the SPS blog than she received on the community/political blog that she created and maintained from 2002 to 2004.
All the time I went to school, from 1st grade through college, I loved school supplies. The best part of late August was buying the new notebooks, loose leaf binders, pens, markers, protractors and everything else that went along with the new school year. Of course, all the new toys needed a nice home and the highlight was the new book bag. My love of school supplies carried over to when my kids went through school, although everything was more expensive, fancier and complicated.
When I started SPS last year, I bought e-textbooks and printed out the chapters one by one so I could read them while I commuted to work. Although the e-textbook was less expensive, I didn’t have to carry a heavy book, and I was spared the ordeal of trying to sell it back at the end of the semester. I spent a lot of time, killed a lot of trees and went through many ink cartridges.
At the end of the spring semester, I decided to buy a tablet. After some research, I learned that the online textbook vendor had an app only for the iPad, so that is what I purchased. I tried it with Blackboard and found that it was useful only if the instructor enabled “Quick View”. So, at first I used it mostly for email and web surfing.
I quickly discovered the joys of downloading e-books from the public library and caught up on all my fun summer reading – everything from the Peoples’ History of the United States to the Stieg Larsson trilogy to trashy summer novels. I downloaded a bunch of classics for free (the complete works of Shakespeare, the Canterbury Tales, The Divine Comedy and many other books I owned but were lost in a fire years ago). Have you tried to check out a classic from the library recently? They are dusty, they smell and the pages feel funky.
Last week, I took the plunge and downloaded my fall textbooks. It took a little trial and error and there are limitations on how many chapters can be downloaded at one time (I bought the cheaper wireless-only version of the iPad and not the 3G model), but it worked! I began reading my Economics and Marketing textbooks off-line while commuting to and from work. When I don’t feel like reading on the bus, I can do the USA Today crossword puzzle without an Internet connection via its app.
Although typing on the iPad takes some getting used to, I will download the Pages app for $9.99 and see if I can delay replacing my ancient and slow iBook.
Many critics call the iPad an expensive toy, a frivolous waste of money and a glorified smartphone. However, it has made my life so much easier and I can’t imagine going to school or doing business without one. Can you?
Now, lets hope it works with Blackboard . . .
Mary Casey is a student in the MS in Business Leadership and Management program at CUNY School of Professional Studies and is an alumnae of Lehman College. She is an administrator for a university in NYC. She loves to travel and wants to see as much of the world as possible. Mary hopes to get more comments on the SPS blog than she received on the community/political blog that she created and maintained from 2002 to 2004.
“It’s a bad economy.”
“We’re in a recession.”
“You gotta take what you can get.”
“Nobody is hiring anymore.”
“Those old jobs are not coming back.”
We are hearing a lot of negativity about the job market these days. The fact that the unemployment rate is hovering around 9% nationwide is not helping our general lack of optimism. While a 2010 map of unemployment shows a more reasonable unemployment rate of 2.8% for Billings Country, North Dakota, it shows a much more chilling realization for Imperial County, California where the unemployment rate was 27.6%. As anyone will tell you, this is an animal we’ve never seen before, and most of us are not quite sure how to deal with it.
In May, an article was published about the new rules for the job interview. I found these rules such as “research, research, research” and “ask questions” to be somewhat refreshing. Many of the online articles that give advice such as “always write a thank you note”, is somewhat dated and doesn’t work in every case. I’ve also discovered that these articles have gotten so many hits, that it seems everyone is taking this advice. If everyone is using the same advice, you can no longer fully distinguish yourself. If the employer can’t remember you, then why hire you?
I am not pretending to be an expert on the job interview process, but I do have some insights that I picked up during my own search. Hopefully, these “rules” will be useful to some of you.
There Are No “Rules” For Every Job Search
This one is pretty hard to swallow. Most people just want to know what to do and how to do it. There are no hard and fast rules. Every industry is different and every company is different. Sometimes the hiring managers have the final say, and sometimes it is human resources. The person reviewing your work may not necessarily know the exact qualifications needed for the job and how to screen them. Some hiring managers appreciate thank you notes and some have no time to read them. Some allow follow-up phone calls and some prefer email. Your best bet is do to as much research as you can, and use networking sites such as LinkedIn to learn more about the company as well as the kinds of people that they normally hire. Are you similar to the typically hired employee? Does the company value diversity in interests and education? It is your job to find out these small details and make them work for you. It could give you an advantage over someone else who does not know these little bits of information.
Grammar and Tone Speak Volumes
Everyone knows that a well written cover letter and resume will help you not get disqualified as easily as poorly-written ones. Hiring managers get hundreds, sometimes thousands of applications for a single position. Having documents that are not perfect will work against you. However, many people forget about the tone that they use when write cover letters. Your voice and personality can really shine through when you use the correct words. Syntax and semantics can also reveal a lot about you. Do you write as if you are confident or entitled? Are you apologetic for circumstances in your work history or ready to prove yourself? These are subtle differences that can make all the difference in how you are perceived by a hiring manager. Be careful with your written language.
Don’t Fool Yourself Into Thinking Interviews Are A Simple Process
So you landed an interview. Fantastic! Your work is not done. Depending on the industry and the amount of applications you may be subject to multiple interviews. This could be a good thing or a bad thing. It could indicate that they really want you or it could mean that they have several close candidates and they are unsure of who to pick. I was recently subjected to four interviews with nine different people over the course of several weeks. No one can tell you whether you should keep granting a company interviews or give up and move onto another company. It really is up to you. Use your discretion or your gut before turning down multiple interviews. It may not necessarily be a bad sign.
Know What You Can Offer The Company
Unfortunately, it is an employer’s market. It’s a potential employee buffet, and the employer can interview as many people as they want, and decide not to fill a position if they don’t find the right person. It’s up to you to let the company know what you can offer them. Are you good at driving up sales? Let them know that. Are you especially frugal and can save the company lots of money? They need to know that. Do you have some innovative ideas that can help them open up to a new market? They want to hear that from you. Don’t offer up too many of your valuable ideas, so that they get free brainpower from you and you receive nothing in return. It is a give and take atmosphere, but at the end of the day, it’s still business. They have something to offer you, and you have something to offer them.
Know What is Important to You About Compensation
Do you need to make a lot of money to pay off bills? Do you need health insurance to take care of yourself or your family? Do you need time off? Will flexible hours allow you to take care of a special needs child or an ailing family member? You need to know what your priorities are, and if a company can meet them for you. You should aim to be flexible, but it still is a business transaction. If work/life balance is important to you, do not be so quick to settle on a job if it will take away from that. While we cannot always have everything we want from an employer, it is important to maintain your health and sanity, not to sacrifice everything.
Just Be Yourself
This can’t be stressed enough. These days, an employer can easily find out if you are lying about your qualifications. These things are so easily checked that you should not waste their time nor yours. You should always be on your best behavior when on an interview, but don’t fake it. Employers want the most for their money, and if you have the qualifications it will help. But if your personality does not match up with theirs or their company culture, then they will be hesitant to hire you. Giving the most accurate yet best presentation of yourself will do you more favors than not. Always remember, just because an employer can’t hire you for a position, doesn’t mean that their other hiring manager friends at other firms can’t.
Ebonye Gussine is a graduate student in the Master of Science in Business Management & Leadership Program at the CUNY School of Professional Studies. She loves writing, reading, and is an avid fan of John Steinbeck’s works. In her spare time she sings off-key and travels to new places.
We all need to save more money. Whether it’s the result of not having enough disposable income, a tendency to outspend our paychecks, or simply the mental disposition of there’s-plenty-of-time-to-save-for-my-future, time has a tendency of passing us by at a rate of speed that seems far quicker in hindsight than it does when looking forward. And yet, in spite of the most genuine and adamant of intentions, people simply fail to save anywhere near the amount of money they must to retire in a financially comfortable manner.
Last year, CNNMoney posted the results of a survey which found that 54% of working Americans have less than $25,000 saved for retirement. Worse, 43% of Americans had less than $10,000 saved for retirement and, even more startling, 27% said they had less than $1,000 saved. As most of us will attest to, one thousand dollars in savings is essentially one un-forecasted mishap away from being forced to borrow money. You do not need a PhD in finance to come to the conclusion that we have a problem in this country; we do not save enough money. Saving for retirement is a progressive, cumulative endeavor that requires discipline to manage one’s own finances and the ability to see beyond next week. This is to say that almost everyone – albeit, surely there are outliers – is capable of saving some of their income, ideally 6% – 10% of their gross salary.
This year, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants issued a report which found that 40% of Americans will never be able to afford retirement. Never! It’s a frightening prognostication and one that any person with decades remaining before reaching retirement ever really envisions as a possibility for him or herself. Remarkably, it actually now seems a fait accompli – the natural default outcome – unless proactive steps are taken to ensure this reality never comes to fruition. So start saving, early and often!
The video below provides an illustrative explanation of the extraordinary power of compounding interest. Although this approach alone may not be sufficient to afford you the opportunity to retire to Bora Bora by age 45, it should certainly position you well enough financially to retire comfortably by age 65.
John Brigantino is a graduate student in the Master of Science in Business Management & Leadership Program at the CUNY School of Professional Studies. He enjoys writing, non-fiction books, traveling and the many cultural and leisure experiences Manhattan has to offer.
As each of us navigates our respective CUNY SPS programs, we have almost certainly constructed opinions of the benefits and drawbacks inherent in online learning. Overall I have been extremely pleased with the Online M.S. in Business Management and Leadership Program and would assert that any losses derived through the online learning experience are far outweighed by the gains. As with any program in its infancy stage, changes and adjustments are administered to optimize the program for the betterment of the students, the faculty, and the university.
If you are like me, you’ve engaged in conversations about your program with fellow classmates. Topics of discussion may have been the possibility of student-professor communication gap, the necessity of taking prerequisites, the difficulty of managing a challenging school workload, or perhaps none of these issues. What is indispensable is that students give constructive feedback to the professors and the University. This substantive feedback is crucial in improving the totality of the online learning experience at our University. One student’s comments may not possess the impetus to nudge an issue in a different trajectory but there very well may be other students who share a similar need, criticism, or suggestion.
Last semester a certain professor requested that each student upload his or her photo as part of the initial “introduction assignment” with points attached for completing the task. It turns out that the photo-from-students directive was derived from students who had submitted the suggestion. As anyone in an online program can attest to, fellow students are merely names that we see constantly and post responses to continually. They are never individuals who sit in the adjacent row; this is not a traditional classroom setting nor is it intended to be. We rarely meet the person behind the name; what does this “name” look like? There is always a cognitive gap that we subconsciously fill in with details. So the photo suggestion helped to bridge the name-person gap, and it was the product of student feedback – although not every professor requests this.
As our program’s maturation process continues, we all play a role in that progression. The program will not remain static but will evolve over time. Without our presence the program would not exist. Sooner than later, in the scheme of life, we will become alumni to our University. It is incumbent upon all of us to maximize our experience and help facilitate the necessary adjustments that will make our program a valuable and enjoyable endeavor for current and future students.
John Brigantino is a graduate student in the Master of Science in Business Management & Leadership Program at the CUNY School of Professional Studies. He enjoys writing, non-fiction books, traveling and the many cultural and leisure experiences Manhattan has to offer.
In today’s corporate world, people are hired and fired on a daily basis. There is a transient nature to this ever-evolving process; I may be here today but could be gone tomorrow. People attempt to stitch together the semblance of a career while trying to maintain the perception of loyalty to their current employers. We often remain vigilant to the next position possibility, and the reasons are numerous, but often these reasons are rooted in consistent themes: an opportunity came along that I just cannot pass on; I have a desire for more money, and I deserve it; my manager is simply unrealistic, unreasonable, and unbearable – it is just time to go! Regardless of these valid motivations, one consistent reality remains unchanged; we are each CEO of our own company: Me, Inc.
In a sense, we are all just free agents in an ever-changing job market paradigm. But as free agents we each carry certain notable attributes along with us, many of which are intangible. It’s incumbent upon each of us to ask ourselves: What do I want my brand to be? What are the qualities of my brand that differentiate me from my competition? Everything matters: our educational level attained, our ability to communicate in verbal and written form, our choice of wardrobe, and our ability to work and play well with others.
We have sufficient control over most of these. What we do not have control over is the manner in which they are perceived, and perception – in marketing – is everything. The best approach to mitigate this reality is to contemplatively observe and critically analyze each segment of our brand: Me, Inc. More than likely we are stronger in certain areas than in others, and can strengthen our shortcomings to become a more formidable brand overall.
Utilizing LinkedIn or writing a blog are channels to market oneself and assist in constructing a solid foundation for the mosaic that composes who we are as individuals. Gaining new expertise, developing new capabilities, increasing our colleague set, and constantly reinventing ourselves as a brand are critical in the process of brand strengthening. The sooner we begin viewing ourselves as individual brands, the better positioned we will become in reaching success in whichever career path we find ourselves on.
John Brigantino is a graduate student in the Master of Science in Business Management & Leadership Program at the CUNY School of Professional Studies. He enjoys writing, non-fiction books, traveling and the many cultural and leisure experiences Manhattan has to offer.
I witnessed a rare sight a few weeks ago while on the train. There was a woman reading the New York Times which, by itself, is not so uncommon. What was atypical was that the woman reading it appeared to be in her early twenties. Many people still read the paper version of the The Gray Lady, but those reading it usually have graying hair. It’s simply a generational thing.
We now live in the age of digital media. Just as the horse carriage gave way to the automobile, and the typewriter to the personal computer, we are now in the midst of what appears to be, perhaps, the slow and eventual demise of the book. Ride any commuter train and look around. People are reading but they’re often reading Kindles, they’re reading Nooks, and they’re reading iPads. Fewer and fewer people are reading books in traditional form.
In Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal lies Posman’s Books. In the transient and frenetic human movement that makes up GCT lies this literary refuge where commuters can take a few of their precious moments and browse countless books, new and old, fact or fiction. It’s a visceral experience to the avid reader; being inundated with a landscape of book covers, different colors, different photos. There is a sensory component to the experience of searching and deciding which book to purchase next. Then there is the tactile aspect of actually reading the book; feeling the book in one’s hands, physically turning its pages, using a bookmark that represents a keepsake while once traveling abroad. These all compose the totality of the reading experience. Yet, most of these attributes are lost when you’re reading a book on a device such as the Kindle. The iPad captures the reading experience better than most devices. With its color, page-turning simulation, and one’s very own bookcase case, the leap from traditional book to digital device is coming at a lower cost to the consumer. What one loses in transition is slowly being diminished.
You can see these changes rather subtly at any bookstore. I often see people typing into their phones just after glancing at myriad book titles. I can only surmise that they are tallying a list of which books to purchase next for their respective e-readers or, for that matter, from Amazon or BarnesandNoble.com. In a way, bookstores are becoming browsing venues for consumers while the actual product-purchase is a transaction that takes place in a different venue, often online, and often cheaper. It is a challenging road ahead for small bookstores.
So how will this process play out? If you live in New York, just look around. Cars are ubiquitous, the only place you can really find a horse carriage is in Central Park, and the typewriter is a long lost relic of the past. Are books doomed to the same fate? Maybe, maybe not. E-reading devices may not necessarily improve the reading experience but they clearly provide readers with a new channel of distribution in which to consume the product, and that matters significantly. There was a time when most people listened to music on a Sony Walkman. You’re now about as likely to find a Walkman as you are to find a typewriter – except on EBay. And speaking of things that may be headed for extinction, there is the aforementioned New York Times newspaper. But that’s a topic for another time.
John Brigantino is a graduate student in the Master of Science in Business Management & Leadership Program at the CUNY School of Professional Studies. He enjoys writing, non-fiction books, traveling and the many cultural and leisure experiences Manhattan has to offer.
