<p>For reasons of prudence and privacy, I need to file some serial numbers off but for those concerned about what liberal arts majors do for jobs upon graduation:</p>
<p>TheMom just hired a young man for her department. He graduated from UCLA just last week and is starting at around $40K a year. He beat out 21 other applicants for a job that wasn’t widely advertised. All the other applicants had at least several years experience in the field.</p>
<p>Why did this guy get hired? A key reason was the Star Wars fan website that he started in 8th grade. It started with his avowed desire for it to be something different, not like a lot of fan sites. It was designed and maintained with such professionalism, showing an underlying understanding of communications. I looked at the site and, curmudgeon that I am, I was impressed.</p>
<p>The site got the guy the interview. He then got the job by selling himself in the interview. His approach to his job application reminded me a lot of the better points of college application as well.</p>
<p>So from a two-fold point of view, I thought I’d share.</p>
<p>Sorry, this is not about the topic of your thread but since you are reading this thread…I wanted to tell ya I thought of you today while I was reading The Boston Globe on the beach in Maine. While I think your life in Santa Monica is worlds apart from mine in rural Vermont…read on…</p>
<p>Columnist Alex Beam writes:
“Pension off more stars into politics. California was a mess before Arnold. California is a mess under Arnold. Maybe California is just a mess. Liberal stalwarts such as Warren Beatty and Rob Reiner would do a fine job running VERMONT; IT"S LIKE SANTA MONICA, WITH COWS.”</p>
<p>I’d read this on a fast reading pass and then forgotten to respond.</p>
<p>Vermont: Like Santa Monica with cows!!! LOL!!! Though I think a Socialist could probably get elected here. We’ve had Greens on the City Council who don’t think Democrats like me are liberal enough. </p>
<p>In fact, hereabouts I pass for a Conservative, which is really a LOL!!!</p>
<p>Otoh, there’s nothing “rural” within half an hour unless you count Topanga Canyon, which is a hippie time capsule…LA County has something like 12 million people…more than Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Rhode Island combined.</p>
<p>Btw, California’s political dysfunctionality is a function of a 2/3 requirement to pass a budget, term limits, which has shifted the relative power from the legislature to the bureaucracy and the lobbyists, mutual backscratching gerrymandering of legislative districts by both Democrats and Republicans to ensure that as many seats as possible are “safe” for the incumbents, and Prop 13, which has resulted in horrible inequities in the property tax but nobody wants to do anything about it.</p>
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