Don’t buy antibacterial soap! See what Natalie did to get this movement going!

Stop using and buying antibacterial soap!  Why? Because it doesn’t kill more germs than regular soap.  Yup!  One of my students, Natalie Kassel, set out to get all public schools in Santa Cruz County to switch from using antibacterial soap to regular soap back in 2008.  She created an educational outreach program, worked with the press, and stood on a soap box (no pun intended!) to educate the public.  What’s really exciting today is that the Food and Drug Administration finally – albeit 8 years later – stated that “…they (antibacterial soap) do little or nothing to make soap work any better and the industry has failed to prove they’re safe.”

Triclosan and triclocarban are the ingredients that are used in over 2,000 antibacterial soaps and products.  The FDA is giving soapmakers one year to remove these ingredients from their soaps. YES!  I’m so proud of Natalie for starting a movement here in Santa Cruz way back in 2008. 

The FDA says that washing with plain soap and running water remains one of the most important steps consumers can take to avoid getting sick and to prevent spreading germs to others. And good ol’ Ivory or other soaps are a lot less expensive, too!

So it’s been 5 weeks since we’ve become owners of TWO 11-week old puppies. 

If you missed that blog, check it out here. I’ll have to admit that it did take me a few days – weeks – to adjust to having an equivalent of 2 infants without any warning or preparation. But, I forgot how wonderful it is to be greeted by happy pups as they race and fumble with wagging tails towards you every time you enter the room. 

And it’s fun to teach them little tricks because they learn so fast and they’re so eager to please. I think my favorite part is cuddling with them because they just love to be held, and I know this is a short-lived activity considering that they’re a black lab and German Shepherd mix.

Now that scientific research studies indicate that specific types of exercise affect specific parts of the brain – focusing, memory, executive functioning skills – it’s time to rethink mandatory PE in our K-12 curriculum. I just blogged about the amazing benefits aerobics and weight training have for adults. Kids should exercise for at least 20 minutes each school day to improve their learning capabilities and memories.

I recommend that my high school students do hardcore aerobics for 20-30 minutes before taking the SATs or ACTs. Besides waking them up, exercising gets their blood flowing throughout their teenage bodies and THEIR BRAINS, which according to recent studies shows immediate improvement in attention, executive functioning, and achievement in math and reading tests.

Charles Hillman at the Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign recommends that schools consider organizing their bell schedules for students around the students’ need to have at least one hour of exercise per day.  He says that it’s best to spread that hour over the course of the school day to help keep students focused and to promote learning because the long-term effect of aerobic exercise has yet to be determined. 

While you might think that if aerobics is good for attention in the short term, then practicing skills for a sport would should be incorporated in the plan, research shows that this is not true.  When kids practice specific sports skills just before taking a test that requires sustained focus, these kinds of exercise actually reduce the students’ ability to focus on the test. Oops!

But don’t pull your child off her favorite team just yet.  Maria Chiara Gallota at the Univ. of Rome found that doing coordinative exercises 2 times per week over 5 months really does improve their ability to concentrate and ignore distractions.  So what does this mean? You don’t want them to do intense training before a test.

Hillman suggests that students who exercise regularly have a larger hippocampus and basal ganglia, which means that they perform better on attention tests.  These students are more attentive, have goal-directed behavior, and strong executive functioning skills. So they should indeed continue to play sports and work on improving specific techniques. Just schedule practices and trainings when they don’t need to be preparing for a test.

It would be ideal for students to have time to run around the building between classes and before big tests.  They’ll learn more, perform better, and probably be more attentive in the class.

We all know that we should exercise every day to stay healthy and fit. Right? And if you’re like me, you’ve got a million excuses why you simply can’t do it… EVERY DAY! Well, now there’s scientific research that shows that different kinds of exercises affect different parts of your brain – not just your muscles and cardiovascular system.  What’s really exciting about these studies is that you can improve your memory, complex thinking, attention, and more by doing specific types of exercise. Do I have your attention now? 

When I read that Univ. of British Columbia, Univ. of Groningen (Netherlands), Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Massachusetts General Hospital that studied specific exercise regimens and found that you can improve your memory and critical thinking skills by exercising specific parts of your brain, I was so excited I wanted to lay out a plan right then. And, of course, that was at 3:00 am!

So what kinds of exercise should you do?

Aerobic Exercise: Running and cycling 3-4 times per week (30 min. each)
 — Increases hippocampus, which promotes new neuron growth
 — Improves verbal memory (words on the tip of your tongue)
 — Reverses shrinking of hippocampus (cause of memory loss)
 — Staves off Alzheimer’s disease and other dementia
 — Combine Aerobics with Weight training to boost results even more!

Weight Training: Lifting weights 2 times per week (an hour each)
 — Improves executive functioning skills (problem solving, reasoning, and planning)
 — Improves associative memory (link faces to names)
 — Combine Aerobics with Weight training to boost results even more!

Sports Training: Practicing coordination exercises such as balancing, synchronizing arm and leg movements, working with ropes and balls
 — Improves concentration

High-Intensity Intervals: Exercising in quick spurts of all-out exercise (alternating between very high and easy in 30-second to 1-minute intervals)
 — Reduces food cravings

Yoga: Practicing yoga poses
 — Increases cortical thickness (sensory, cognitive, and emotional processing)

Hiking and Playing: Hiking on or off paths and climbing trees or and balancing on a curb
 — Improves visual-spatial processing (mentally approximating distances to get across the street before a car approaches)
 — Improves working memory
 — Helps prioritize and process information to focus on what’s important
 — Improves ability to coordinate between body position (orientation) and movement (navigation/locomotion) to help with balancing and thinking at the same time

Keep exercising to maintain these benefits.  In other words, if you fall off the wagon, your memory and executive functioning skills will decrease. So start by creating a workout schedule that includes a combination of aerobics and weight training for 3 to 4 days per week.  Then change it up by adding a day to hike, climb trees, do yoga, or play your favorite sport. Let me know if you notice a difference in how your brain functions!

With cyber attacks and stolen identities on the rise, your best line of defense is using strong passwords.  But if you’re like me, you forget your password as soon as you select it, and then you spend hours trying to remember it.  I used to keep my secret passwords in a Word document until I realized that anyone could find that on my computer by searching “password.”  UGH. So my IT guy recommended that I create unique passwords and store them in SafeInCloud, a secure password app.

Tips for Unique Passwords:

1. Use a different password for everything
2. Use long passwords: at least 8 characters – the longer the better!
3. Don’t use complete words
4. Use acronyms (abbreviation using initial letters of other words)
5. Replace certain letters with numbers or symbols
6. Don’t use your name, birthdates, pet’s or children’s names, company names

My IT guy once selected a password for our internet that seemed odd to me: 

Octopus+Lemon@de&Firecrackers

But he told me that it was good because it was really long, had upper and lower case letters, and numbers and symbols. So create unique passwords for every site, save them all in one place that is really secure, and don’t share passwords with anyone. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure!

[Source]

I admire creative geniuses.

Back in the ‘70s, my very good friend Tim Niemier taught me how build a stereo cabinet.  It was a simple design – It held about 100 vinyl albums, my turn table, and receiver.  That was the first of over 100 furniture building projects that I constructed since then.

Just yesterday, I came across this photo of Tim’s first VW conversion.  I remember being so impressed that he added a whole camper to his little VW bug.  By adding little cabinets and clever and convenient doors and drawers, so began the beginning of Tim’s innovative designs.

He later designed the first sit-on-top kayak that became a best seller – the Ocean Kayak.

Why do people want to ban books?

In an era of instantaneous fact, images and videos, it seems odd that some people still ban books today.  A teen can flip on the TV and watch extreme violence and hear obscene profanity during prime time.  In a few keystrokes, they can watch porn and they can explore extreme points of view about any religion, the LGBTQ community, and people of color.  So why ban books that contain contents that are much more tame than you could find on the internet? Hmm.  Because it’s old school.

Time Magazine just published a comparison between 10 most banned books in 2001 and 2015. Many of these books were banned at times when religious groups were fueling propaganda with political fear-mongering in the news.  The main difference between the 2 time periods is that in 2001, books were banned because of sexual content, strong language, and drugs.  In 2015, the focus was more on sexual orientation (transgender, homosexuality) and religion (atheism, Islam).

One thing for sure: If you ban a book from the public, you’re going to increase interest in reading it.  Banning books is great for book sales. Here is the American Library Association’s list of most-challenged books of 2001 and 2015.

Most-challenged books of 2001:

1. Harry Potter, by J.K. Rowling
   Reasons: anti-family, occult/Satanism, religious viewpoint, violence
2. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
   Reasons: offensive language, racism, unsuited to age group, violence
3. The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier
   Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group, violence
4. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
   Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit
5. Summer of My German Soldier, by Bette Greene
   Reasons: offensive language, racism, sexually explicit
6. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
   Reasons: offensive language, unsuited to age group
7. Alice (series), by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
   Reasons: sexually explicit, unsuited to age group
8. Go Ask Alice, by Anonymous
   Reasons: drugs, offensive language, sexually explicit
9. Fallen Angels, by Walter Dean Myers
   Reason: offensive language
10. Blood and Chocolate, by Annette Curtis Klause
    Reasons: sexually explicit, unsuited to age group

Most-challenged books of 2015:

1. Looking for Alaska, by John Green
   Reasons: Offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group.
2. Fifty Shades of Grey, by E. L. James
   Reasons: Sexually explicit, unsuited to age group, and other (“poorly written,” “concerns that a group of teenagers will want to try it”).
3. I Am Jazz, by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings
   Reasons: Inaccurate, homosexuality, sex education, religious viewpoint, and unsuited for age group.
4. Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out, by Susan Kuklin
   Reasons: Anti-family, offensive language, homosexuality, sex education, political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, unsuited for age group, and other (“wants to remove from collection to ward off complaints”).
5. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon
   Reasons: Offensive language, religious viewpoint, unsuited for age group, and other (“profanity and atheism”).
6. The Holy Bible
   Reasons: Religious viewpoint.
7. Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel
   Reasons: Violence and other (“graphic images”).
8. Habibi, by Craig Thompson
   Reasons: Nudity, sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group.
9. Nasreen’s Secret School: A True Story from Afghanistan, by Jeanette Winter
   Reasons: Religious viewpoint, unsuited to age group, and violence.
10. Two Boys Kissing, by David Levithan
    Reasons: Homosexuality and other (“condones public displays of affection”).

Read the Times Magazine story here.

Living in the Monterey Bay, just south of Silicon Valley and San Francisco, is arguably one of the best places to live on earth – as long as you don’t consider the ridiculous cost of housing.  I love having gorgeous views and being just minutes from the beaches and redwood forests.  But my husband Rob and I can afford to live in a huge house simply because we bought before the housing market skyrocketed.  For my kids today, it’s almost impossible to get into the housing market in our area.

Over the summer, I was surprised to hear that many young people couples are looking to buy homes with other couples.  By combining their cash, they can put down a nice sum for a deposit and their mortgages will be more reasonable to pay.  Many couples shared with me that buying a house with other couples would be less expensive than if each of them paid rent for studios or apartments in Silicon Valley or San Francisco.  If the Bay Area continues to be the Mecca that it has become, in a few years, these couples could sell their house and have enough capital to possibly buy their own homes.  Rob did that back in the 1970’s.  He bought a house with 2 other couples, and sold it a few years later.  Then, he and I bought a little house in Pleasure Point, and we kept upgrading until we bought the house we live in now in Santa Cruz County.

New millennial couples and even small families are finding that communal living creates a stable and supportive living environment.  By sharing cooking, cleaning, childcare, and eldercare, everyone benefits. It really does take a village to raise a child.  It can take off the strain of being the Jack of all Trades – something that families and couples today neither have the resources to support nor the expertise to handle on their own.  As our population continues to grow, this may be the wave of the future.

If you want to read more about communal living, read this article in The Atlantic, “The Hot New Millennial Housing Trend is a Repeat of the Middle Ages” 

What kind of people (or companies) prey on college students? Despicable people.

With student loans for college tuition as high as $250,000 for a bachelor’s degree, most students struggle with paying back their debt after college graduation.  So, many desperate students have become victims of scammers who promise to consolidate, reduce, or eliminate college debt.

What most people don’t know is that their loan service companies offer the same services to consolidate their loans and work with you to find a payment system that fits your budget, especially if you’re not working after graduation.  And your loan companies don’t charge a fee! The scammers use high-pressure sales techniques and charge $600 to $1,200 to guarantee results.  Then, the borrowers pay the scammers directly (bad idea!), and you guessed it, the scammers leave town with the money, leaving the borrower in even worse financial shape.

Be careful.  These scammers create websites that look like your loan company’s. They even use the Department of Education’s logos for endorsement.  Don’t be fooled! The federal government has programs that help you consolidate your debt, organize repayment plans, and even forgive loans depending on your situation.  It’s all based on your income and your career path.  If you aren’t working after graduation or you’re working in medicine, education, or other fields that need more people, you might be able to find loan forgiveness programs to reduce or eliminate your debt.

Contact certified student loan counselors at StudentLoanHelp.org or check out your options at http://www.consumerfinance.gov/paying-for-college/repay-student-debt/

Whether you’re preparing for a college admissions or job interview, your interviewer or the entire committee will judge you from your initial contact.  What does this mean? Your introductory cover letter that accompanies your CV or resume – YES, ALWAYS INCLUDE A WELL-WRITTEN COVER LETTER – can entice the readers and highlight your skills and accomplishments in ways that might be missed without one.  So don’t shoot quick texts or emails while setting up the interview.  Keep it professional with a positive spin. 

As I review hundreds of applications and resumes each year, I toss out applications that are sent without cover letters or letters that are incoherent.  If the applicant shows little regard for professionalism in applying for a job, it worries me to think how they will represent my programs in the future.  Likewise, when applicants show up wearing torn up jeans or revealing blouses, they start the interview with a mark against them.

But I find the most revealing information about the applicant as we chit chat BEFORE the interview.  Talking about the weather, the traffic, or the latest news gives me insight to their demeanor.  Is their glass half full or half empty?  I like to surround myself with Problem SOLVERS, not Negative Nancys! It’s easier to determine this during an informal conversation before the interview starts than when the interviewee is on their best behavior during the formal interview itself. 

My college-bound students even go so far as to clean their cars and actually practice getting in and out of their cars gracefully before their college interviews.  Yup!  As I coach them on winning over the interviewer, I tell my clients that their interview starts when they pull up to the interview parking location.  If they drive in late and panicked – possibly cutting off other drivers or parking in a handicapped space, the interviewer will probably take note of that.  The way they get out of their car and enter the building may also be viewed by the interviewer.  Applicants should take a deep breath, think of 3 positive things to say to break the ice and open their “pre-interview” conversation, and then open their car doors.  When the interviewer sees a happy face and a positive gait, it sets the stage for a good interview.

A Harvard Business School study just revealed that chatting before an interview offers rapport building that can help the applicant in the initial stages of the interview.  Check out the Harvard Business Review article here.  So whether you’re getting prepared to be interviewed or you’re setting up the structure for an interview, remember that your initial impressions will start way before the formal interview begins!