My boss, Ken, just forwarded this to us, and I think it’s pretty powerful brain food, even at the semi-early hour (I’m still struggling with Daylight Savings, but that’s a whole other story…).
As a fellow Millennial, our future is what we make of it; we decide what we value, how we value it, and what we will make as our priorities in this life. And our future really starts today–you actions, your choices, your dreams have a direct impact on your today, tomorrow, and your lifetime.
Pretty powerful brain food, especially when figuring out which college is going to give you the resources to achieve above and beyond in your very near future.
Some families get excited about big things–big vacation get aways, new toys, and the like. As far back as I can remember, two things stand out: 1) We’ve always been a family of celebrating smaller things–a calm canoe ride on the pond, the accomplishment in finishing a quilt or wood scrolling project, and Skip-bo nights 2) My Dad has always had that hitch in his gitty up, never was really into sports (except to cheer ELF and I on like a champ, “Was that a field goal?” “No Dad, they call that a home run….”), and he’s always needed a hip replacement.
Dad has had arthritis in both his hips since the age of 19. He’s never been able to run (unless it’s an emergency), playing with us as kids for long periods of time meant he couldn’t walk really well the next day, and in these later years my 90+ year-old Grandfather walks better than my father. During travel and when I was staying with the folks, Dad slipped and fell, and as a result had to got back to the Doctor about the hips. Come to find out there are four stages of arthritis, and he has a level 4 in his right hip, and a level 3 in the left one. His doctor claims that they’ll be documenting the whole thing because it’s the worst case he’s seen in a 55 year old, and Hip Replacement Doctors for years to come will learn from the WRF Case Study.
As of…well, actually right now…Dad is under the knife having the old right hip taken out, and his brand new Bionic Titanium one placed in. What amazes me most of all is who thought to do the first hip replacement, or mechanical heart, or mechanical prosthetic hands? Growing up I always thought that scientists and doctors were these old gray-haired men, much older than I, who came up with this stuff. How wrong could I be!
It’s YOU. Our girls are doing this stuff, making things better, creating new ideas, learning how to save the world, one hip at a time, EVERY DAY. Because my Dad is “so young” to be having a hip replacement, the likelihood of him having to have another one later in life is pretty high. But I’m sure that one day a Sweet Briar Grad will have come up with a solution for that. Just like I know our students are going to find the cure for cancer, change lives with programs like Doctors without Borders, educate the future of our country, and be the high-ranking elected officials who can initiate legislative change. Our girls are great, and I for one am excited to be a part of this ever-changing and evolving community.
For today, we wait. We wait until Dad gets out of surgery, we wait to see how he does, and then we start the good work all over again…one bionic step at a time.
This week marked a momentous moment in the L household…for my birthday my wonderful husband got me an iPod Touch. I’ve been resisting the iPod movement for years (claiming, I don’t need that, I have my CDs!), but I was SOOO excited when I opened it up on Thursday.
How does this have to do anything with SBC or Google? Simple–part of the allure of the iPod Touch, or iPhone, or Blackberry is accessibility. Through accessibility comes connectivity. It was soooo simple to get my work/former student e-mail and calendars on this new toy because of how easy and accessible Gmail, Google Calendar and the like are. While I know it took hours upon hours on our tech support’s part to make this conversation a reality, for the rest of us this has been a smooth and easy transition (Thanks, Computer Services and everyone who made this possible!!). This one change will allow us to be more productive, accessible, and more importantly, available to you.
So thank you Google, iPod, and SBC for making this journey to the 21st century a little easier, and a little more exciting
(although now that I have this new technology, there’s no excuses for not starting to run again…I plodded along with day three this morning, and we’ll see how far along I can get!)
I am a Google Convert. I set up an account for my personal stuff earlier this year, downloaded Google Chrome as my web browser, and I have haven’t looked back once. I’m Googlefied, and I’m happy.
Today, as my Facebook status says, Thanksgiving came a little bit early for us at the Briar, and I am ever so grateful–our campus got Googled! We have Google Apps now as our mail server, and will soon be transitioning over to using Google Calendar as our official online calendar of choice. As soon as the e-mail came in, I converted.
This is really going to change, I think, how we do business with each other on campus. Everything is integrated, everything is (in my mind) user-friendly, and it will allow many of us to “think smarter, not harder.” Prime example? Google Docs. I’d totally recommend reading Prof. Bragaw’s blog about this phenomenon, because I have not had the opportunity to work with it much yet, but what I do know is incredible–you can collaborate and make edits on a document on-line, students can submit papers to professors using it, you don’t have to junk up e-mail space by sending docs back and forth, and can you imagine the thousands of pages of paper we can save by utilizing this technology?
There’s a random tree in a random forest right now saying, “Thank you, Google Docs, thank you.”
Tomorrow we have our first Social Media Lunch, and I’m very excited to a) report back how it goes, and b) see how Google might chance how we look at a few things.
