Time for Good Works

He has made everything beautiful in its time. 

Also, He has put eternity into man's heart, 

yet so that he cannot find out what God has done 

from the beginning to the end.

Ecclesiastes 3:11

I am not a sci-fi enthusiast, but I do follow all things Neil deGrasse Tyson. When I heard that my favorite astrophysicist, who has a comedic way of making science cool, was launching  new late night talk show on National Geographic TV, I knew I had to tune in. I missed the inaugural broadcast last week (mommy duty at an away track meet), but I did catch this week's episode of Star Talk.

The premise and tagline for Star Talk is "where science and pop culture collide." Tyson shot this episode at the American Museum of Natural History. His co-host is comedian Eugene Mirman, who expressed an affinity for science fiction, Star Trek, and time travel. Rounding out this week's panel of experts was Janna Levin, an astrophysicist who studied black holes, the science know as cosmology. The pop culture assignment of the week: sharing director Christopher Nolan's backstory behind the movie Interstellar.  

First, let me say that Ms. Levin became my shero when she gave the same advice that I use about solving complex equations and problems: Follow the chalk! In other words, do the math. Understanding of the concept comes from repetition. 

Back to Interstellar: Nolan wanted to do a movie to illustrate that scientists are people too. He wanted to shape a story, not from beginning to end, that detailed the complex layers of time. This allowed the panelists to have a discussion on relativity, Einstein's introduction to the dimensions of time. Time ticks at different rates. Using the example that when you get close to a black hole, time moves so slowly that one hour of travel is equal to twenty years of life. The scientists in Interstellar journey through a wormhole. How could the ability to visit your past potentially influence your future? 

So some cool things that I learned, or remembered, from watching this episode of Star Talk:

• Hydrogen is the only element that appears on the left side of the Periodic Table but has the ability to act as both a gas and a metal under certain conditions.
• Wormholes are three dimensional functions of time, space, and energy/matter. 
• Wormholes are formed through unstable conditions. There is nothing to keep the throat of a wormhole open. 
• An event horizon is the region around a black hole where gravitational forces are so strong nothing will ever come out. It is a place, not a thing.

Yes, my inner-geek was satisfied and I enjoyed this episode of Star Talk. I appreciate Tyson's purposed work in making science appeal to everyone, that it is not all rocket science. If you get a chance, I encourage you to watch the re-broadcast the next time it airs. Quality shows like this must be supported. How can we engage more young futurists to consider the importance of time in the collision of science, technology, and humanities in discovering their purposed work? Feel free to comment, or send me an email at latanyua.robinson@gmail.com. If you like this post, and want to  catch up on some of my previous discussion, please visit the full Purposed Work blog at http://ltr-latrobe-mfg.blogspot.com.

Success in Good Works

I have learned that success is to be measured

not so much by the position that one has reached in life

as by the obstacles which he has overcome 

while trying to succeed.

Booker T. Washington

It's that time of year where prom season quickly transitions into graduation and new beginnings. In our family, my oldest niece is preparing to graduate from high school and head off to college in the fall. My middle niece is beginning to make decisions about whether her post graduation plans include vocational training or university studies. And my son is considering the courses he will take in high school, based on his CAP assessment. Three unique young minds with one thing in common, to answer the question, what do I want to be when I grow up?

When our mom grew up, the conventional wisdom was to get a good job and begin a family. A generation ago, we were told to go to college to position yourself for a long-term career. Our children, Millennials,  have so many options and possibilities, that it is challenging to make a decision today about finding career success in a world that is rapidly changing, that will not be the same a decade, let alone 40 - 50 years from now. So what advice are you giving to children trying to decide on secondary education paths?

Over the years, I have become an advocate of vocational training before deciding on a profession. If I had one regret about the decisions I made immediately after graduation, it is that I did not know how to do anything with my hands. I can solve almost any math problem put before me, but if I had to earn a living, I have no immediate skills to fall back on. Jokingly (and seriously), I always wanted to become a welder. Fast forward to present day and my imagination runs wild with the possibility what I could do in manufacturing if I owned and operated a welding shop!

If you look at the history of several well-known colleges and universities, many began as industrial training schools that met the immediate needs of the workforce during that era. Somehow along the way, industrial, or vocational training, became stigmatized as less valuable that university training, but is it really? When you consider the cost of attending a four-year institution, you have to ask, is the return-on-investment a real value in today's rapidly changing society. I challenge that notion.

Some of the most successful people that I know are entrepreneurs with in demand skills. I have a friend who followed his families' business as a master barber and has franchised beauty and barber shops around the region. By the same token, another friend is a plumber, a vocation whose skills always have and always will be in high demand. What both of these gentlemen have in common is they started with basic skills and transformed their companies into success stories not imaginable a few decades ago.

There are no particular route to finding success in the workplace and in a career. We used to measure success by the education required to obtain the job, or the job title earned. Today, our children have so many more options because the expectation is not to get a job, work for forty years, and retire from that company. Life and opportunity give them so many more options to consider that their measure of success will be different that how we defined it. And that is OK. The thing we have to instill in them is that regardless of the path they choose, it will require hard work and dedication to overcome the obstacles they will face along the way.  How are you encouraging the young people in your life to measure what they consider success in their purposed work? Feel free to comment, or send me an email at latanyua.robinson@gmail.com. If you like this post, and want to  catch up on some of my previous discussion, please visit the full Purposed Work blog at http://ltr-latrobe-mfg.blogspot.com/.

Ordained for Good Works

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you;

Before you were born I sanctified you;

I ordained you a prophet to the nations.”

(Jeremiah 4:5)

I use this platform to share with others things that excite and/or inspire me along my journey of finding my purposed work. Last night, I watched the re-broadcast of #BlackGirlsRock! Founder Beverly Bond launched her purposed work through a youth empowerment and mentoring organization established to promote the arts for young women of color, as well as to encourage dialogue and analysis of the ways women of color are portrayed in the media. (To learn more, visit http://www.blackgirlsrockinc.com/). The fifth awards ceremony aired on Easter Sunday, honoring and celebrating the accomplishments and good works of black girls from eight to their eighties!

The Change Agent honoree, an educator, proclaimed that she “opened a school to close a prison.” Nadia Lopez is the principal at Brooklyn’s Motts Hall Bridges Academy, a school focused on STEM and arts education. She gained national attention when her viral campaign to send five students to Harvard raised over $1M in contributions. She said that before giving her acceptance speech, she paused and drew strength from Jeremiah 1:4-12, and delivered this:

“I wanna thank God for this day and appointed time. I also want to thank Beverly for your vision and conviction. To allow someone like me to even be honored. As women, we are constantly having to prove our worth, intelligence and having to fight for respect on our jobs, in society and many times in our homes. Ironically, when one of us women achieves recognizable success, we are taught to question the credibility of that success instead of expecting greatness and celebrating it.

The SHE that is great, whether recognized or not, lives in all of us. She is significant. She is heroic. And she is exquisite. God fashioned each of us with gifts and talents and abilities that I have been blessed to use. And I use them to empower children. So the daily question that I ask myself that I ask you is ‘What are you doing with God’s gift?’ How are you changing the world? And how are you making a difference in the lives of children?  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to remind my scholars that learning is a lifelong process and the reason why we wear black and purple is because we are descendants of royalty and they are bound for greatness.”

Transcribed  Speech Courtesy

http://www.awesomelyluvvie.com/2015/04/black-girls-rock-2015-recap.html

There were so many motivating and tear-worthy moments throughout the show. Ms. Lopez became a new shero, a woman walking in her purposed work. Instead of complaining about the education system in her community, she became the Change Agent, doing what she was ordained to do. How are you using your gifts to change your community or to make a difference in the life of a child? Feel free to comment, or, send me an email at latanyua.robinson@gmail.com. If you like this post and want to catch up on some of my previous discussions, please visit the full Purposed Work blog at http://ltr-latrobe-mfg.blogspot.com/.

Influencing Good Works

Iron sharpens iron,

and one man sharpens another.

(Proverbs 27:17)

 

Have you ever taken a look at the people in your LinkedIn, civic, or other professional networks to evaluate whether or not you have mutually beneficial business synergies? We were developing a marketing campaign for our workforce training solutions  and this question began our brainstorming exercise.  Why would key decision makers give us an audience to discuss our vision for educating and training through workforce readiness initiatives?


In this development process, one roadblock was evident: wanting to be an advocate for young people about careers in manufacturing and influencing the parents and community leaders of the value of our program required more than wishful thinking. To achieve success, our approach had to include a clearly defined direction, a disciplined doctrine/process, and above all else, a divine determination. Still, we needed someone to lay hands on us, or as I learned in SETX, someone whose endorsement could open doors one could not open alone…an influencer.


In today’s social culture, “friending” is an action verb, not to be confused with the more traditionally understood term of friendship. Friending has reciprocity, the practice of exchanging ideas and information with others for mutual benefit, allowing access, and sometimes, special privilege. Realizing that some efforts require access to people outside of a typical network, it is wise to “friend up” with leaders, or people with great influence.


When we finalized our proposal, we identified an influential community leader with whom we had an established relationship and pitched it to him. His immediate response was simply, iron sharpens iron. After a moment of reflection, he explained the mutual benefits, or synergies, that emerge when two blades rub together. The edges of the blades become sharper and more effective for the good works to be performed. Our children need more real world exposure to jobs and career opportunities available and our approach provided a hands-on, vocational, and valuable solution.

http://www.latrobellc.com/industrial-people.php

I still prefer face-to-face fellowship and meetings. In today’s social climate, I still value relationships and friendships, and feel that regardless of the size of the professional or civic network, people do business with those that they know and trust. I am guilty of “friending” to gain access to ideas and information, but my journey has revealed that no one achieves such alone. Iron sharpens iron, which sharpens our ability to deliver real value and mutual benefits in our purposed work. Who are you influencing by your good works? Feel free to comment, or, send me an email at latanyua.robinson@gmail.com. If you like this post and want to catch up on some of my previous discussions, please visit the full Purposed Work blog at http://ltr-latrobe-mfg.blogspot.com/.