Test 2

Attention admissions colleagues; you may want to be careful at the bar. This is an interesting piece of research conducted by the awesome folks at Penn State - in collaboration with the University of Buffalo:

Employees who force themselves to smile and be happy in front of customers — or who try to hide feelings of annoyance — may be at risk for heavier drinking after work, according to researchers.

A team of researchers at Penn State and the University at Buffalo studied the drinking habits of people who routinely work with the public, for example people in food service who work with customers, nurses who work with patients or teachers who work with students.

They found a link between those who regularly faked or amplified positive emotions, like smiling, or suppressed negative emotions — resisting the urge to roll one's eyes, for example — and heavier drinking after work.

Alicia Grandey, professor of psychology at Penn State, said the results suggest that employers may want to reconsider "service with a smile" policies.

"Faking and suppressing emotions with customers was related to drinking beyond the stress of the job or feeling negatively," Grandey said. "It wasn't just feeling badly that makes them reach for a drink. Instead, the more they have to control negative emotions at work, the less they are able to control their alcohol intake after work."

While previous research has shown a connection between service workers and problems with drinking, Grandey said the reasons why were not known. She hypothesized that by faking or suppressing emotions in front of customers, employees may be using a lot of self-control. Later, those employees may not have a lot of self-control left to regulate how much alcohol they drink.

"Smiling as part of your job sounds like a really positive thing, but doing it all day can be draining," Grandey said. "In these jobs, there's also often money tied to showing positive emotions and holding back negative feelings. Money gives you a motivation to override your natural tendencies, but doing it all day can be wearing."

How cool does this flick look?

Academy Award-winners Matt Damon and Christian Bale star in FORD v FERRARI, based on the remarkable true story of the visionary American car designer Carroll Shelby (Damon) and the fearless British-born driver Ken Miles (Bale), who together battled corporate interference, the laws of physics, and their own personal demons to build a revolutionary race car for Ford Motor Company and take on the dominating race cars of Enzo Ferrari at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in France in 1966.

Plus, you have to love some Matt Damon.

Ford v Ferrari hits theaters on November 15th - just in time for my birthday!

Marquette is joining the ranks of institutions not requiring ACT or SAT exam scores as part of the admissions process:

“Four years of strong performance in rigorous high school coursework has always been the most important measure in Marquette's holistic admission review,” Acting Provost Kimo Ah Yun said. “Requiring standardized tests was never intended to dissuade individuals from applying who felt they had the capacity to succeed here. We acknowledge, however, that requiring the SAT or ACT may have led to this unintended consequence and aim to address that now.”

Brian Troyer, dean of undergraduate admissions, said he and his team look forward to implementing this policy and continuing their work of carefully evaluating all applicants for admission to Marquette.

“We believe that the Jesuit concept of cura personalis [care for the entire person] extends to the admissions review process. We have always engaged in a student-centered approach to our work, and the decision to adopt a test-optional policy reinforces those values,” Troyer said. “Students can decide how to best represent their capacity for success at the college level. We believe students are who they are because of their life experiences, work ethic, and their engagement in and out of the classroom.”

Troyer added that the university’s holistic admission review will continue to consider academic achievement in conjunction with a student's unique talents, leadership and service activities, application essay(s), school profile, letters of recommendation, and any other information a student wishes to submit for consideration.

“Considering a variety of application materials within the context of a student's application file will ensure we continue to admit future Marquette University students who will succeed academically and graduate ready to be changemakers in their communities — individuals who are eager to answer our call to Be the Difference,” he said.

Per the new policy, for students who choose to submit an ACT and/or SAT score, the score will be evaluated as a component in the admission review process. All applicants, regardless of test score submission, will have the opportunity to qualify for Marquette’s array of scholarship awards.

My emphasis. I bolded that last sentence because I think that it's important to highlight. Some institutions require standardized exam results in the merit scholarship awarding process or for placement into first-year seminar or English courses. It's important that students investigate the full policy for test-optional (or "test-flexible") institutions.

credit: Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times

I've been so busy with LIFE lately that I haven't had the opportunity to virtually *drooool* over the Star Wars developments at Disneyland.

In case you've been living under a rock, Disneyland opened the new "Star Wars Galaxy's Edge" portion of the park. Rather than regale you with what awesomeness I think it will be, here's a post from TouringPlans.com where you can see the opening day walk-through of Galaxy's Edge:



I love that he gets choked-up when seeing the Millennium Falcon for the first time.

Of the myriad of cool things that one can do while in the park, perhaps the crown jewel is the opportunity to build your own lightsaber. Over at SlashFilm, Peter Sciretta describes building his "elegant weapon for a more civilized age" as a religious experience:

I am so thankful I did the build a lightsaber experience. It might be my most favorite part of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge honestly. It can best be described as an almost religious experience for Star Wars fans. From the moment you show up at Savi’s and the gathers show you the different pieces available for your construction.

[...]

Savi’s would be amazing for a kid but is even more powerful as an adult fan. You feel strangely at one with the force and the small group of heroes (and villains) who participated in the experience with you.

Here's the video from his experience:

But you can’t even partake in the experience unless you first purchase “the scraps” available inside Savi’s, and that isn’t the price of a cheap toy but $200 plus tax (no annual pass or castmember discounts allowed).

I probably wouldn't want to splurge to build one, as it would just sit on my shelf for eternity. But, it does look like they pulled out all of the stops to create an experience for guests.

Galaxy's Edge opened at Disneyland on May 31st, and the same Star Wars-themed area will open at Walt Disney World Resort's Epcot on August 29th. My family is already planning our next trip to Walt Disney World for fall 2021. Hopefully by then the lines for attractions will have gotten shorter!

A very interesting op-ed from back in March that I read at NACAC's* website the other day.

The school counselor can and should play such a pivotal role in any student’s college search and application activities. But due to over-sized caseloads and often inadequate professional training, even the best school counselors are unable to provide the support most kids need in identifying and applying to the colleges that are best suited to their interests and needs.

[...]

I have long felt that all high school students would benefit from some required curriculum around the college search and application process. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we taught 10th graders the basics about the college landscape, different courses of study, and the concept of thinking about college as a “match to be made; not a prize to be won”? (This is my favorite quote, by Frank Sachs, former NACAC president.)

Or, what if we showed every first-semester junior which online resources could help identify some of the 4000+ colleges in the US that might be a good fit for them? Too many students and parents rely on highly publicized college rankings to consider which schools they might attend.

How about if we gave instruction to all second-semester juniors on completing the Common Application or advice on developing an authentic essay topic? I recently worked pro-bono with a student whose brother has a severe mental illness. The parents would leave home for months at a time, leaving the student to care for her brother and the house, prepare meals, etc. Despite her good grades and part-time job, she felt ashamed that she had no honors or school activities to report on her applications. She had no idea that she could share her personal story on her application and that it would be so compelling.

My emphasis. Which I'll come back to in just a minute...

First, I have to say that the author - Jill Madenburg - is fundamentally correct; school counselors are overworked and underappreciated. In a typical public high school, a counselor's caseload is more than can be handled. And, as Madenburg points out, many counselors don't have the bandwidth in their day-to-day work to devote real time and resources to work with high school students in the college search process.

But - to the part that I emphasized - I take issue with the notion that all high school students would benefit from required college search classes.

Based on the National Center for Education Statistics data from 2018, just under 70 percent of high school seniors enrolled in college immediately following secondary school completion. While that is a large percentage for sure, if more than 30 percent of students aren't planning on going to college, then why waste their time on a compulsory educational program designed to help students navigate something that they will not be doing.

Instead, why don't we have all high school students take a required class that talks about the various options that they will have after high school?

When a student is in ninth or tenth grade they are still figuring out who they are and the things in which they are interested. That is the time to start the post-secondary education conversation. Will Suzy want to be an engineer? A lawyer? A member of the Armed Forces? A massage therapist? Manage a restaurant? There are so many options that require varying levels of education that forcing students to consider college is not the way to go. Taking a class that sets up realistic expectations of the benefits of continued education and juxtaposes them with the challenges would be a great opportunity for students early in their high school career.

Then, in a student's junior year of high school, as Madenburg suggests, you could offer a course designed to help with the college search process for those that are interested: college essay writing, advice for the Common/Coalition applications, college interview tips, etc.

All too often I think that people in the college counseling community forget that not every high school senior will go on to pursue higher education. At least, not immediately following graduation. It is worthy of mentioning that there is a distinct difference between college counseling and school counseling.

School counselors (formerly referred to as "guidance counselors") are the folks who do everything from help with post-high school plans, to bullying prevention programs, to Individualized Educational Plans (IEPs), to working with troubled youth, and so much more. College counselors are typically found at larger and/or wealthier high schools that have the resources to hire specialists for the college search.

Okay, so all of that said, I nearly forgot the point of the article: easing the burden on the school counseling community. That's where I'm lost. How would creating required high school curriculum for all students (or even some - 70%-ish students) ease the burden? School counselors would be the logical choice to teach these college-search-based courses, right? Since we know that most counselors are already over-worked and have caseloads that they can barely manage, what good would come of adding more work to their already full plates?



[*NOTE: for those who aren't aware, NACAC is the National Association for College Admission Counseling. This is a national organization that provides "knowledge, networking, and ethical standards for college admission professionals".]

Dr. John performing at the annual Ponderosa Stomp music festival in New Orleans in 2008. Credit: Lee Celano for The New York Times

New broke yesterday of the passing of a true music icon.

The music legend, guitarist, piano man, jive talker and psychedelic godfather Malcolm John Rebennack – better known as Dr. John – died "towards the break of day" on Thursday, of a heart attack, a statement has confirmed. He was 77.

That last bit of information was something only discovered, or at least disseminated, late last year, in fact: in his fantastical 1994 autobiography "Under the Hoodoo Moon," Dr. John had declared his birth date as "just before Thanksgiving 1940." But in a column for the Times-Picayune published in November 2018, author John Wirt unearthed a birth announcement from the same paper 77 years earlier: Mac, as he was colloquially known, was actually born November 21, 1941. The factual fluidity was, in its way, appropriate to an artist who lived and worked in the shifting, hip space of the trickster, and also to one who was as iconic of New Orleans as Louis Armstrong, to whom his final album, 2014's Ske-Dat-De-Dat... (The Spirit of Satch) was a tribute.

While it was his only top 40 hit, for my money it doesn't get much better than "Right Place, Wrong Time".

Tap to pause!

This is how you know that your mother is using the talk-to-text feature on her phone. Yowza.

Hey, at least she's making an effort!

Wow. It's been a minute since I last posted, no? Life sure gets in the way sometimes!

The above video is from last night's commencement ceremonies at Huntingdon Area High School, my alma mater. The commencement speaker is Dylan Lane, a fellow alum from my graduating class of 1995. I wasn't able to be there in-person, but I live-streamed the ceremony, and got to watch his speech in real-time. T'was fantastic! He kicked it all off with a quote from Alice Cooper's "School's Out". What a great moment.

The over-arching theme was rooted in the famous quote largely attributed to Winston Churchill (but likely should be attributed to a 1930s Budweiser beer advert), "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts." Dylan kept coming back to that theme by saying, "Success is never stable, but neither is failure fatal." - or some minor variant.

Dylan asked the audience - and the graduates in particular - what they envisioned when thinking about success. He asked each student to look around at each other and picture what success will look like for each of their classmates.

Do you think of fame? Fortune? Good health? Longevity? A decent house? A nice truck? Or do you think of maybe somebody who just has a happy family life and gives back to their community?

A very interesting proposition since success is different for each person.

He profiled three of our fellow classmates from '95, and - though he changed names to protect the "innocent" - I knew who he was referencing. He highlighted the different paths that students take after graduation, and how success can look very different for each graduate. It was a speech that really resonated with me, as I have long held the belief that college is not necessarily for everyone.

Dylan featured one of our classmates who didn't go to college after graduating from high school. Rather, he tried his hand at professional motor-cross. When that didn't work out, he took a job in construction. One thing led to another, and he found himself owning his own business. Eventually, he sold that business and made a PILE of money. Moral: he found financial success (through lots of hard work, and some failures along the way), but he did it in a way that was counter to the route that many of our classmates took.

Anyway, if you've got 10 minutes please do check out my pal Dylan. It's a great speech, and I think that he may have found (yet another) talent on which he can capitalize!

Oh, and congrats to all of you high school seniors out there that are graduating!