Stevie Puckett

Tag: pace of change

  • Notes on Jeff Selingo’s Next Newsletter

    There are several good insights in this month’s edition of the Next newsletter by Jeff Selingo. It’s always a very thoughtful read with good insights into the trends in the higher education system in the United States.

    This month he is focusing on the intersection between college education and the workforce during this time when hiring the right people is especially difficult. I can appreciate the idea of the trouble with translating skills gained into application packages for job seekers. I find this is very often what people need help with as they have no idea the treasures their experience contains until we talk.

    He and Matt Sigelman of Burning Glass Institute also discuss the idea that curriculum changes can be made in higher ed to bring skills that are in demand to fill the best jobs forward throughout the college career. They are talking about the kind of skills that aren’t easily replaced by technology. Skills like writing, creative thinking, and the ability to collaborate with others.

    Working, as he put it, is a side gig right now for many college students. But maybe it shouldn’t be. Maybe “working is core and maybe the learning is a side gig,” Sigelman said.

    Putting an emphasis on working and the learning that happens while doing so seems to me to be the obvious way to empower individuals, especially during this time of educational upheaval at all levels which has been a long time coming.

  • Companies Are Not Your Friend

    Great points in this post I’m sharing about unrequited love, limiting your choices, disposable products, and shrinkflation.

    I find being shepherded along the pathways they want you to go particularly telling. That was my reason for leaving Facebook for the first time well over a decade ago. I must tell you though that pushing against doesn’t feel like a win either and I don’t like that the speed with which I have tried and left various platforms has only increased.

    There is an aspect of isolation to address because often it feels like I’m walking in a world with zombified others who participate more with their tech than with the people right next to them. Not to mention the phenomenon of being left out of the loop. But I stand on principle.

    As always I recognize expansion and contraction on repeat. I feel jubilation and wonder with most tech advances in my lifetime as I enjoy the increase in efficiency and knowledge followed shortly by the joy in rediscovering and embracing again a simpler way of doing things for various reasons that become apparent.

    The returning desire for an in-person real-connection community is the natural counterbalance to too much being out there in the social media not-really-real space. I’m shocked at how long it takes to become more apparent to most other people though I do believe we all are getting better at it and quickly. The key is to recognize when change is calling and go willingly and don’t dottle once the necessity is recognized.