An Intelligent Career Choice by Professor Bert Lorenzo

I discovered many years ago my students who know what they want to do with their lives professionally and even personally tend to perform better in my courses and from discussions with them I discover they do well in their other courses too.

Not everyone has the luck to know early on what they want to do with their lives. Some discover their call as children but some 50 year olds still don’t know what they want to do when they grow up.

Consult can help. Some discover what they want to do or what they might enjoy when they talk with those who know how to approach this problem. I tend to give students who talk with me about this a set of tips I think work excellently but I won’t mention them here. I have a different goal here.

I want to suggest a profession with a solid future and list some benefits practioners enjoy. We’ve left the Information Age in the United States and now live in what I like to call the Content Age. We have all sorts of devices and media that need material. Technology for the most part exists to provide content: images, words and sounds. Young people inclined toward photography, art, computer graphics, design and especially composition have an opportune future.

No matter how advanced the technology we still need content, good content but we don’t have enough content much less the good kind. Notice how many technical advances we have in cable television yet much programming gets repeated and recycled. Program production and content tend to require more money than technological advancement does but this will change. Young people will see to it.

Quality creative people will find a niche in the Content Age. Take Pixar for example. The movies Steve Jobs and his coworkers have made there and distributed through Disney stand among the most successful movie ventures of all time. They didn’t have a single star yet some contributed their voices. Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Ratatouille, A Bug’s Life, Monsters, Inc. make but a short example of content genius. People paid to see these films for the story and images. The material and art made these films. We’ll see more productions where no stars need apply. Content will rule so I see nothing but opportunity for creative types especially writers who do what they must to establish themselves.

All professional must establish themselves. This takes years. Professionals must establish their abilities, commitment and philosophy. Once writers do this they can reap many benefits.

Writers can work from anywhere because of technology. They can work from home. Established writers enjoy great independence and leisure. The disciplined can do terrific things with these two benefits. Writers get to do something valuable. They can steer their careers to where they choose the topics about which they write so they can choose topics they consider of merit.

The best at their craft can develop a brand and gain a following. They have fans. They become stars. Which lawyers, accountants or engineers can claim this? Writers can develop their style. They can approach their work in a limitless number of ways. Few professionals have this luxury because rules, codes, traditions all bound them. Most importantly the best writers can shape the future and make life better for their readers and listeners.

Start today if you like what you’ve read. In ten years and after steady practice you could stand among the best.

Copyright Bert Lorenzo, 2011

Woman of the Sea by Dr. Harold Mahabir

Of Things, Sketches and Reflections is one of the early publications by Trinidad-born, Dr. Harold Mahabir, who is an adjunct member of the College Prep Department. This poem was published in the Trinidad Express, one of the leading Caribbean newspapers, when his book was reviewed, "I like these poems which were featured by the Express, not only for there indigenous settings, but for the symbolic strength and endurance of woman."

She scurries in her pirogue across the sea

like through a roadway in an automobile,

rounds the corners of sharp coves and bays

rides the potholes and ruts of changing

troughed waves.She is open

to the tropic temperaments

to the sun's blister without a cloud

the rains that look like a wet-look cloth.

Each day she ferries her child to school

and returns, without need of fisherman parent

or spouse. She unmoors her boat

pulls on its power

directs it with stern grip on rudder

her keel aslant

high on a wave crest

squirting the frantic waters like squids' legs.

She had dipped her childhood years

into the sea, floated up and swam

like a foetus in amnion,

like a floating nereid

familiar with the wave foams

as the white divides on a pitch-road.

I stand like Darwin and watch

this creature of adaptation, this woman

who scales a rockface to her yard

where her fine trees bear

the floral centres of finer threads;

who jumps from sea to land

like an amphibian