College Dorm Room Checklist - What to Bring to School

CollegeBoard.com offers this checklist
Off-to-College Checklist
Print this checklist to make sure you have everything you need for your first year at college. Each person's needs are different, so tailor this list to suit your requirements.

Kitchen Needs
Plastic bowl and cup
Coffee cup
Fork, knife, spoon
Can/bottle opener
Chip clips
Room Needs/Storage
Bedside lamp
Alarm clock/clock radio
Wastepaper basket
Milk crates or other sturdy storage cubes (a collapsible crate also comes in handy for carrying laundry or other things)
Stacking baskets
Under-the-bed storage trays
Lots of hangers
Desk lamp
Fan
Drying rack
Adhesive hooks, tacky adhesive, and mounting tape
Bulletin board and push pins
Dry erase wall calendar/board
Toolkit
Electronics
Computer and printer
Phone cord/Ethernet cord for computer
Headphones
Surge protector
Extension cords
3-2 prong adapters
Phone (Check with roommate(s) to avoid duplication.) It should be cordless, with multiple message boxes in the answering machine, unless you're using voicemail.
Portable CD or cassette player (great to use at the gym)
Linens/Laundry Supplies
Sheets and pillowcases (2 sets. Check with school for size needed—some college twin beds are extra long.)
Towels (3 each of bath, hand, and face)
Pillows (2)
Headrest pillow
Mattress pad (Check with school for size needed—some college twin beds are extra long.)
Blankets (2)
Comforter and duvet cover (makes laundering easier)
Clothes hangers (wire takes up less space, plastic are easier on your clothes)
Laundry bag/basket
Laundry marking pen
Laundry stain remover
Roll(s) of quarters
Quarter dispenser
Lint brush
Sewing kit
Toiletries/Misc
Pepto-Bismol®
Imodium®
Aspirin or ibuprofen
Vitamin C
Neosporin®
Band-Aid® bandages
Cough drops
Shower tote
Shampoo & conditioner
Hair-styling products
Bath and face soap
Traveling-soap container(s)
Toothpaste and toothbrush
Dental floss
Comb/brush
Tweezers
Nail clippers
Hair dryer
Razor and shaving cream
Lotion and/or facial moisturizer
Q-tips®
Office/Desk Supplies
CD-ROMs/Memory Sticks
Phone/address book
Assignment book
Heavy-duty stapler and staples
Printer paper
Pens and pencils
Pencil holder and sharpener
Notebooks
Pocket folders
Labels of various sizes
3 x 5 cards
Post-it® notes
Paper clips
Rubber bands
Scissors
Highlighter pens (multiple colors)
Ruler
Stackable desk trays (at least 4)
Hanging files or folders
Dictionary and thesaurus
Stamps/envelopes
These Can Be Purchased Upon Arrival
Paper towels
Trash bags
Lightbulbs
All-purpose cleaner
Ziploc® bags
Kitchen storage containers
Laundry detergent (tablets are easiest to manage)
Fabric softener (sheets are easiest to manage)
Dish soap
Wet wipes
Tissues
Clothing Guidelines
21 pairs of underwear
21 pairs of socks (more if you play sports)
7 pairs of pants/jeans
14 shirts/blouses
2 sets of sweats
Pajamas
Slippers and/or flip-flops
2 sweaters (if appropriate)
Light/heavy jackets
Gloves/scarf/hat (if appropriate)
1 pair of boots
2 pairs of sneakers or comfortable/walking shoes
1 pair of dress shoes
1 set of business attire
1 set of semi-formal attire (optional)
Shared Items (Check with roommate(s) to avoid duplication.)
Audio equipment
TV and VCR/DVD player
Coffee maker/hot pot
Microwave/toaster oven
Small refrigerator
Area rug
Camera
Posters/art

CollegeView.com offers a list of what to bring for your college dorm room

What to Bring to College — Your Dorm Room Checklist
Before running out to the nearest store to purchase the items for your dorm room, it's a great idea to check out your college's Web site (more specifically their Office of Residence Life page). Frequently there will be a list of items that are not permitted on campus, sometimes including air conditioners, space heaters, pets, toasters, etc.

Also, be sure to contact your college roommate to decide who is bringing which items from your dorm room checklist. This lowers the possibility of a duplicate supply of items that may not fit in the small space of dorm room storage.

Here's a college dorm room checklist of essential items that you will want to bring:

Alarm clock
Bed linens/towels
Carpet/throw rug
Chair/bean bag
Clothes drying rack
Compact refrigerator
Computer
Cup/mug/glass/plate/bowl/silverware
Dish soap
Fan
Fish
Handi-Tak to hang posters
Hangers
Iron
Laundry bag
Laundry detergent
Medicine
Microwave (one cubic foot)
Plants (real or fake)
Radio/stereo
Rolls of quarters for laundry
School supplies
Sewing kit
Shower caddy
Telephone
Toiletry items/soap dish
TV/VCR/DVD player

MSNBC adds the following

1. Zip-loc bags
You never know when you might need a helpful container or two, and baggies can serve many purposes. Not only are they good for storing leftover slices of late-night pizza in your new mini-fridge, but they are also good for keeping other trinkets. For me, they have functioned as a place to save spare change for that upcoming spring break trip, and were tacked to the bulletin board to hold important receipts and coupons for the Chinese food joint down the street.

2. Sunblock
Just because school isn’t always a beach, doesn’t mean you won’t be spending much time in the sun. Football games involve long hours in sunlight reflecting stands. You never know when a random weekend road trip to a nearby lake, or the ocean, might pop up — and generally, professors aren’t too pleased when your excuse for missing that test is a second-degree sunburn.

3. Stamps
College will bring many things worth writing home about (and maybe some things you won’t want to write home about). You may also have to be more responsible for your own finances. Having stamps on hand helps you not procrastinate in paying bills, and just might ensure that you send out Grandma’s birthday card on time.

4. Plastic-ware
Let’s face it, you’ll probably be too busy with class, studying and social endeavors to do dishes. Save yourself the trouble and mess by having plastic utensils on hand. Same goes for paper plates. Just be sure to have at least one real set of silverware around for food that calls for something a tad more sturdy.

5. First aid kit
At some point during the year, you’re going to need a band-aid. Chances are it could be from wearing cute shoes while walking around campus all day or a severe paper cut from all the textbooks you’ll be reading. But nonetheless, a small kit with bandages and antibiotic ointment is guaranteed to be useful.

6. Batteries
Think about what other items you are bringing that run on batteries. Alarm clocks, digital cameras, remote controls and calculators will probably require them. AAs are always a good bet, but it doesn’t hurt to have a variety on hand.

7. Umbrella
I recommend getting a small umbrella that will easily fit into a pocket on your backpack. You never know when a downpour will catch you between classes, and sitting through a lecture soaking wet usually isn’t the best learning environment. One more tip — don’t leave it in the hallway to dry on a rainy day, or it will disappear like socks in the dryer.

8. Bucket
Not only are buckets good for holding all of your cleaning supplies to keep that dorm room nice and clean, they also work for other purposes. To put it nicely — if you aren’t feeling quite so well, and the room just won’t stop spinning — your bucket is probably a lot closer than the bathroom. Enough said.

The idea in packing for college is to bring everything you probably will need, and nothing you won’t. Space is limited, so sort through your belongings as well as possible. Be prepared, and remember that if you pick up the odds and ends before you get to school, chances are more likely that your parents will be buying.

LoHud Moms suggests this list
Products that help students stay organized:

1. Elfa Mesh Compact Fridge Cart, The Container Store. A cart on rollers with two storage units underneath. This provides a space for a mini-fridge with drawers for kitchen items. Available in white and platinum. $125.

2. MacBook laptop, Best Buy. A laptop is a must for college students, says Donna Youdin of Scarsdale, a junior at New York University. The MacBook is light and easy to carry around campus, says Youdin, who recently made the upgrade. The MacBook also features a built-in Web cam and DVD drive. $1,099 to 1,999.

3. Microfiber Shoe and Sweater Organizers, Bed Bath and Beyond. Maximize space by utilizing the vertical space in closets, says Vitris. These tan over-the-shelf hangers will get shoes and sweaters organized. $19.99 each, sold separately.

4. Storage Ottoman, JCPenney. Fun and functional, this square piece is a chair, table and storage unit all in one. It will add color to the room and offers 150 pounds of storage. $59.99.

5. Geometric Bulletin Board, top left, The Container Store. A great way to post notes, messages, menus and tickets, keeping them at easy reach. The board comes in either pink/orange or blue/green. Message board $14.99, pushpins $4.99.

6. Fabric Tote Boxes, left, The Container Store. Staying organized will keep you less stressed and more focused, says Vitris. This item can hold linens, school supplies, dishes and out-of-season clothes. The cute geometric designs also add flair to any dorm. $9.99-14.99.

7. Bed in a Bag, Linens 'n' Things. Get bold with purple and fuchsia bedding. The Bed in a Bag comes with towels and a throw rug. Davina Chesterton of Yonkers, a senior at SUNY Binghamton, suggests beginning with a favorite color for the room scheme, choose bedding and decorate the rest with matching accessories. $19.99-119.99.

8. Flower Pop and Graphic Lap Desk,The Container Store. Great for comfortable studying or typing on your laptop with a soft pillow underneath. Comes in polka dot, kaleidoscope and flower designs. $24.99.

9. Collapsible Hamper/Dorm Caddy, Target. This hamper is great for tight quarters. When empty, it collapses flat for easy storage. Soft handles make it easy to drag to the laundry room. $14.99.

10. Emerson 20-inch LCD television with DVD player and Digital Analog Tuner, Wal-Mart. Perfect for late-night studying or just watching a movie in your room. The Emerson has a built-in DVD player and speakers with surround-sound. $298

JustDorm suggests:
Dorm Room
Dorm Bedding
Bed sheets


Usually dorm mattresses are extra long twins and require specially fitted sheets
Pillows
Pillows can make the difference between a good or bad nights sleep so make sure you have a pillow that supports your head.
Blankets/comforter
Dorm rooms have regulated heating systems and most students find that one down comforter is sufficient so extra blankets are not usually needed.
Bathroom
Three piece towel set
Bath and hand towels as well as washcloths are necessities in any dorm life.
Toiletry bag
Most students share one bathroom between multiple people. There is not usually a place inside to keep your personal items. Toiletry bags can hold your personal items and can be carried in and out of the bathroom with you.
Shower shoes
Dormitories showers are a highly trafficked location and the shower floors can contain many germ. It is recommended for both guys and girls to wear shower shoes/sandals.
Storage/Organizational
Coat hangers
Closet space is usually provided with each room and hangers are an easy way to organinize
Dresser Drawers
Check with your college to see if they provide dressers and if they don't, look into light weight dressers that are easy to move.
Electronics
Alarm clock
Alarm clocks are a necessitie that shouldn't be overlooked. Waking up to just any type of beep can start the day off wrong. Radio alarm clocks can be a much less annoying way to start the day.
Extension Cords
There are usually only one or two power outlets for each room, so at least one small extension cord is a must.
Power strip
Along with extension cords, power strips are recommended because of limited outlets.
TV / VCR
Dormitories commonly provide a cable tv outlet to each room. A combination tv/vcr/dvd player is a great way to save space, and enjoy a break from studying.
Stereo
A compact cd player enhances any dorm rooms ambience. Over powerful stereos aren't recommended as the excessive noise capacity isn't usable.
Touch Tone Telephone
Telephones are not included in dorm rooms, however, one telephone line per room is provided by the university. Cordless phones are convenient however the signals can be interrupted by other cordless phone signals close by.

Lighting
Study desk lamp
Dorm rooms usually come with a ceiling light, however a small desk light is preferred for studying.
Candles
are not allowed in any dorm room as they are an extreme fire hazard.
Clip-on reading light
A small reading lamp that can be clipped to a bed post or shelf is useful for bedtime reading or studying, while keeping your roommate happy.
Other
Dry Erase Board

Mini refrigerators and microwave oven
Small or folding chair
Bike and Lock
Plants
Laundry basket or hamper
Laundry Detergent
Reusable/recyclable-utensils, plates and mugs
Iron /Ironing board


Apartment
Cleaning
Dish Soap
Broom/Dusk pan
Mop
Sponges
Dish drainer
Cooking and Eating
Plates/Cups/Bowls/Glasses
Forks, knives, spoons
Serving dishes
Cutting Board
Pots/Pans
Cookie Sheet
Can opener
Spatula
Tea kettle
Toaster/toaster oven
Microwave
Potato peeler
Kitchen Linen
Dish towels
Hot pads
Living Essentials
Light Bulbs
Toilet paper

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Chinese Proverbs

Chinese Proverbs

ANGER & WAR
* The man who strikes first admits that his ideas have given out.
* He who cannot agree with his enemies is controlled by them.
* The greatest victory, is the battle not fought.
* The best soldiers are not warlike.
* If you are patient in a moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow.
* I was angered, for I had no shoes. Then I met a man who had no feet.
* The more you sweat in Peacetime, The less you bleed during War.
* Of all the thirty-six alternatives, running away is best.
* A young branch takes on all the bends that one gives it.
* Forget injuries, never forget kindnesses.
* One never needs their humor as much a when they argue with a fool.
* He who rides a tiger is afraid to dismount.



LEARNING & WISDOM
* Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself.
* To teach is to learn.
* A closed mind is like a closed book; just a block of wood.
* The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names.
* The pine stays green in winter...Wisdom in hardship.
* Those who do not read are no better off than those who cannot.
* If you wish to know the mind of a man, listen to his words.
* He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.
* Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.
* Experience is a comb which nature gives to men when they are bald.
* With time and patience the mulberry leaf becomes a silk gown.
* Man who waits for roast duck to fly into mouth must wait very, very long time.
* A wise man makes his own decisions, an ignorant man follows the public opinion.
* The wise adapt themselves to circumstances, as water moulds itself to the pitcher.
* A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.
* When a finger points at the moon, the imbecile looks at the finger.
* Take a second look... It costs you nothing.
* The tongue like a sharp knife...Kills without drawing blood.
* It is not the knowing that is difficult, but the doing.
* Laws control the lesser man... Right conduct controls the greater one.
* Deal with the faults of others as gently as with your own.



RELATIONSHIPS, TEAMWORK & GOVERNMENT
* With money you are a dragon; with no money, a worm.
* Love your neighbors, but don't pull down the fence.
* Make happy those who are near, and those who are far will come.
* Enjoy yourself. It's later than you think.
* Behind every able man, there are always other able men.
* If there is light in the soul, there will be beauty in the person.
* If there is beauty in the person, there will be harmony in the house.
* If there is harmony in the house, there will be order in the nation.
* If there is order in the nation, there will be peace in the world.
* A needle is not sharp at both ends.
* Great souls have wills; feeble ones have only wishes.
* Never do anything standing that you can do sitting, or anything sitting that you can do lying down.
* If a man does only what is required of him, he is a slave. If a man does more than is required of him, he is a free man.
* Clear conscience never fears midnight knocking.
* If you must play, decide on three things at the start: the rules of he game, the stakes, and the quitting time.
* Men in the game are blind to what men looking on see clearly.
* Govern a family as you would cook a small fish -- very gently.
* Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.
* A hundred men may make an encampment, but it takes a woman to make a home.
* A man without a smiling face must not open shop.
* To open a shop is easy, to keep it open is an art.
* Virtue never dwells alone; it always has neighbours.
* Small men think they are small; great men never know they are great.
* One man will carry two buckets of water for his own use,
* Two men will carry one for their joint use;
* Three men will carry none for anybody's use.


PLANNING & LUCK
* The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago.
* The second best time, is today.
* If luck comes, who comes not? If luck comes not, who comes?
* If you want happiness for an hour--take a nap.
* If you want happiness for a day-- go fishing.
* If you want happiness for a month--get married.
* If you want happiness for a year--inherit a fortune.
* If you want happiness for a lifetime--help someone else.
* When planning for a year, plant corn.
* When planning for a decade, plant trees.
* When planning for life, train and educate people.
* If you want 1 year of prosperity, grow grain.
* If you want 10 years of prosperity, grow trees.
* If you want 100 years of prosperity, grow people.
* It is not necessary to light a candle to the sun.
* Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
* Be not afraid of going slowly, be afraid only of standing still.
* The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying a way small stones.
* Climb mountains to see lowlands.
* A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
* When you want to test the depths of a stream, don't use both feet.
* Enough shovels of earth -- a mountain. Enough pails of water -- a river.
* Men trip not on mountains they trip on molehills.
* There are many paths to the top of the mountain, but the view is always the same.
* Give a man a fish, and you feed him a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.
* A dog in a kennel barks at his fleas; a dog hunting does not notice them.
* The faintest ink is more powerful than the strongest memory.
* If you want to know your past - look into your present conditions. If you want to know your future - look into your present actions.

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Words To Live By: “People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.”

You will meet many people who will naysay your ideas, actions or beliefs. Generally it is because they are too lazy or too dumb or too jealous or too closed-minded to fully grasp what you are doing.

Follow your heart, follow your mind and do the right thing.

“People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.”
Chinese Proverb

Life Lessons

Success recipes most people know, but too few follow

If you want to look back on a life that fills you with joy, conventional rules for success are not the place to start

Don’t chase money, power, or status.

If they come to you, that’s fine. But most conventional ideas about success go wrong because they focus on outcomes instead of on the processes of living. Outcomes come around from time to time, but life itself—the process of living, acting, thinking, and being—happens all the time. No outcome is going to make a lousy, miserable process feel worthwhile.

If you hate what you do, no amount of power or money will make up for that.
If your life is constantly stressful, boring, unhappy, or frustrating, how can achieving some high status once in a while make up for all the miserable days and weeks you spent getting there? It’s tempting to feel that the end will more than make up for the means; that you’ll forget the misery in the blaze of achievement. And you will—for a few moments. Then you’ll be back on the treadmill, with only the distant hope of some fresh achievement or monetary gain to console you. That’s like being a laboratory rat conditioned to unnatural behavior by occasional pellets of food.


Take whatever time you need to discover what matters to you most

Success isn’t simply a matter of money, power, or prestige. You could gain all of those and still feel that you have fallen short of what you wanted; or you could gain none of them and be blissfully happy and fulfilled. What constitutes personal success is mostly in your mind. It has much less to do with finding the best career in other peoples’ eyes, creating a killer business, or holding down a fancy job with a big salary than with achieving what really matters to you. Many people find this out too late. They struggle for years to get where other people said they should go, only to find it does little or nothing for them. Sad;y, it’s often too late by then to do anything else.

Don’t base your choices on others’ approval.

We all want to please those we care about, so it’s natural to try to do what they approve. Natural, but rarely a good idea as the basis for life’s choices. I don’t say that you should deliberately ignore sound advice, or reject a career path simply because other people suggest it. But even the most loving parent or friend can’t always see what is going to make your heart sing. Listen to others. Value their input and their support. But go your own way. It’s better to be committed to doing what you truly love than accept something lesser for the sake of being approved by someone else.

Stay authentic.

That means always doing what truly matters to you and is part of who you are. The simplest definition of a hypocrite is someone who says one thing and does another: like a person who says that he or she wants to work at something that benefits society, then forgets that at the first sight of a fistful of dollar bills. Somewhere inside of you is a part that recalls what truly matters and will never quite let you forget it. Over the years, that inner voice is only going to get louder.

Go for meaning over money every time.

It’s perfectly possible to do something meaningless to you and earn a great deal of cash while doing so. Some people do, especially in parts of the media world. It just requires a stronger stomach and more cynicism that most people possess, plus a huge tolerance for boredom.

Is it worth it?

If money is truly all that matters to you—and you can make lots of it quickly and get out—it might be. Few areas of work will allow you to do that, aside from criminal ones. Meaningless days corrode most peoples’ minds and destroy their happiness. Doing something that means a great deal to you almost always makes you feel energized and alive. It’s your choice.

Be endlessly greedy—for learning.

You can never learn too much or overfill your mind with new ideas. Nothing is more useful in life than a well-developed, well-stocked mind, especially one that has been broadened and enlarged in the process. It’s hard to name a single famously successful person who was narrow-minded, bigoted, or stupid. The list of notable successes who are recognized for the power of their minds is long. And you don’t have to have had an expensive education to be able to develop a great mind. There have been plenty of near geniuses whose education was almost entirely self-produced.

Make a friend of failure.

You are certain to fail sometimes, and the higher your aspirations, the more frequent and significant that failure will be. People who don’t strive for anything glorious rarely fail; they take no risks and never aim beyond what is easily attainable. But if you treat failure as an enemy, it’s going to lead only to discouragement and even the abandoning of your hopes and dreams. Failure can be a friend, pointing out what isn’t right yet and showing you the way to do better. The more proficient you become at accepting the lessons of failure, the quicker you will succeed.

Make sure that every time you make a mistake, it’s a new one.

Making the same mistake several times shows that you haven’t learned what it can teach you. Making new mistakes proves that you’re trying something different. The best definition of a loser is someone who makes the same mistakes over and over again, never managing to learn anything in the process. Such a person is doomed.

Choose to spend your time with the right people.

I don’t mean that in the sense of the rich and the powerful, the movers and shakers of society. Whether they’re powerful or not, the best people to spend time with are those from whom you can learn most: the ones whose own lives have brought them joy and endless fulfillment. That means people who do what they love and love what they do. People who have become experts in life, thinking people, people with wide-open minds and wide-open hearts.

Seek them out wherever you can. Listen to them.

Never mind if they are no longer living. Read their books and emulate their largeness of spirit. Learn from them all, but don’t simply copy what they did in this world. What they did was right for them, but may not be right for you. What you need to use as models are their ways of thinking and responding to the challenges of the world; the process of their lives, not what it happened to contain.

Drop whatever is inconsistent with these principles.

That means all activities that don’t move you forward towards what you value most; things that get in the way of learning; pursuits that waste time and dull your senses; and people who hold you back. You may sometimes have to be ruthless. Each of us has only one life. If you waste it, you don’t get another chance. Besides, if you have chosen your dreams and aspirations wisely, what you must leave behind by dropping what’s inconsistent with those dreams will not be worth worrying about anyway. Those who make bad choices find, too late, that they have abandoned things and people that meant more to them than whatever they gained in exchange. If that happens, you have truly reached one of life’s lowest points.


Adrian Savage is a writer, an Englishman, and a retired business executive, in that order. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.

Efficiency Through Leverage

Andrew Taylor writes:

I have a definition for "Efficiency" which is similar to the formula used in Physics.

The definition is -- Getting the most done with the least amount of effort, even if this means something or someone else doing it for you.

The example I use to teach this definition is:

A Managing Director wishes to send out a personal end of year letter to all 500 company employees and sits down at a typewriter and types up all of the letters himself. It takes him 30 minutes per letter thus taking 250 hours at a value per hour of £35. Total cost £8750

The next year the Managing Director has employed a personal Assistant and they are given the task of typing up the letters. The personal assistant is a touch typist and spends just 3 minutes per letter thus taking 12.5 hours at a value per hour of £15. Total cost 187.5

The next year the Personal Assistant has the use of a computer and a laser printer. The personal assistant types up a mail merge letter in 3 minutes and spend 30 seconds entering the contact details into a spreadsheet for use with the mail merge and printing out the letter thus taking 4.2 hours at a value per hour of £15. Total cost 63.25.

We may wish to do the job ourselves but we should always ask if this is the best use our time and energy, or should we be asking others to who are better at the task than us and have the tools to do the task quicker than we can.

The old adage "Time is money" still holds true, even in cyberspace.

“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”

Intensity

There is an intensity inside you waiting to be harnessed

Relationships: Where Eagles Dare to Fly, Few Go...

Kenzie: You will find in life that when you're an eagle...the rewards are fantastic...the self-actualization is incomparable...and very often it's a lonely journey. Not forever, mind you -- just until you find a "space" in your life where there are others (even one or two?) who are like you. Who are also "eagles". Eagles don't flock. They fly alone in a universe where almost every other species' survival, much less entertainment, depends upon staying with "the group". You're an eagle, and that was apparent from the time you could talk.

Every single one of your teachers at St.John's told Dad and I what a leader you were -- how "special" an individual you were. We didn't ask -- they volunteered this information at parent-teachers' conferences over the years. The analysis of your abilities began at the "new school" -- the YMCA pre-school. It never stopped at St. John's. All of them were describing an eagle--a leader. That's what you are.

Think of it this way: right now in terms of your sporting career, you join teams where most, if not all, of the other girls are gold fish in the tank. They have bright colors, muted colors, some are beautiful, others are not. But they have one immutable trait in common: they're all gold fish in this tank.

One day another fish joins the tank. This fish is not a goldfish. This fish is a barracuda. Sleek, fast and bright as hell, and effective: terribly, terribly effective. And the barracuda likes the goldfish! She tries to play with them, joke with them, in effect, be like one of them! but that's impossible: she can never be a goldfish. Ever.

Now the goldfish are puzzled at firs by the presence of the barracuda, and not a little intimidated. They eye her warily, they tolerate her -- after all she is IN the tank, too. But they realize she is NOT a goldfish -- she is NOT one of them, no matter how hard she tries to be. And when the barracuda nudges the goldfish and tries to coach them into being faster, smarter, more effective...well they become annoyed. They know in their fish souls that they are NOT barracudas and will never be. And they don't understand why the barracuda just won't "let them be".

The nature of an eagle, a barracuda, a leader is to lead. By definition, that means pointing the "way" for others. As a leader, you must learn, and you will eventually, that your happiness and self-actualization will depend upon how closely you fulfill your destiny. And your destiny is to be an eagle/barracuda/goldfish.

There are other eagles and leaders out there...trust me. You won't be lonely on your journey forever. Just for a little while now even as you slog through your teen-age years. but the prize on the other side of personal integrity is awesome, and it's different for every individual. It's worth all of the effort, aggravation, pain, tears, fear and disdain.

Here's the key: remember who you are. Remember who you are. Never forget, not even for a moment, who you are. You've been given many gifts by God -- best get to figuring out how to employ them.

Dad and I love you and treasure you and will always be here for you.

Sports: Coaching

HIGHLIGHT: Stats are only the beginning...

MORAL: Does the girl have passion, hustle, talent and heart?

Stats are only one way an introduction can occur.

More than how high or how fast are questions like:
Does she play hard? All the time?
Does she play smart?
Does she make players around her better?
Does she make plays?
Does she love the game?




For Kenzie

Words To Live By: Hard Work Beats Talent When Talent Fails To Work Hard

HIGHLIGHT: Lots of great quotes.

MORAL: "The harder I practice, the luckier I get."

"A lot of us would like to move mountains, but few of us are willing to practice on small hills."

"Although we cannot do everything at once, we can do something at once."

"Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later." -- Og Mandino

"Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment." -- Robert Benchley

"Anything in life worth having is worth working for." -- Andrew Carnegie

"Before I get in the ring, I'd have already won or lost it out on the road. The real part is won or lost somewhere far away from witnesses - behind the lines, in the gym and out there on the road before I dance under those lights." -- Muhammad Ali

"Between saying and doing, many a pair of shoes is worn out." -- Italian Proverb

"Blaze with the fire that is never extinguished." -- Luisa Sigea

"Build up your weaknesses until they become your strong points." -- Knute Rockne

"By failing to prepare, you prepare to fail."

"By perseverance, the snail reached the ark." -- Charles Spurgeon

"Champions aren't made in gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them - a desire, a dream, a vision. They have to have last-minute stamina, they have to be a little faster, they have to have the skill and the will. But the will must be stronger than the skill." -- Muhammad Ali

"Chop your own wood and it will warm you twice." -- Henry Ford

"Consider the postage stamp; it's usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there." -- Josh Billings

"Decide what you want, decide what you are willing to exchange for it. Establish your priorities and go to work." -- H.L. Hunt

"Diamonds are just little chunks of coal that stuck to their job." -- 'The Old Farmer's Almanac'.

"Do or do not. There is no try." -- Yoda

"Dwell not upon thy weariness, thy strength shall be according to the measure of thy desire." -- Arab Proverb

"Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself." -- Samuel Butler

"Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits."

"Faith makes things possible, not easy."

"For anything worth having one must pay the price; and the price is always work, patience, love, self-sacrifice. No paper currency, no promises to pay, but the gold of real service." -- John Burroughs

"Forget yourself and start to work." -- Gordon B. Hinckley

"Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration." -- Thomas Edison

"Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard."

"Hard work can be fun."

"Having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labor is immense." -- Thomas Bennett

"He who stops being better stops being good." -- Oliver Cromwell

"I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson

"I always remember an epitaph which is in the cemetery at Tombstone, Arizona. It says: 'Here lies Jack Williams. He done his damnedest.' I think that is the greatest epitaph a man can have - When he gives everything that is in him to do the job he has before him. That is all you can ask of him and that is what I have tried to do." -- Harry S Truman

"I have nothing to offer but toil, sweat, tears, and blood." -- Winston Churchill

"I learned that the only way you are going to get anywhere in life is to work hard at it. Whether you're a musician, a writer, an athlete or a businessman, there is no getting around it. If you do, you'll win -- if you don't you won't." -- Bruce Jenner

"I like a person who knows his own mind and sticks to it; who sees at once what, in given circumstances, is to be done, and does it." -- William Hazlitt

"I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours." -- Jerome K. Jerome

"I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble." -- Helen Keller

"I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work." -- Thomas Edison

"I played as hard as I could...That's all I want to be remembered for." -- Larry Bird

"I will get ready and then, perhaps, my chance will come."

"I will prepare, and someday my chance will come." -- Abraham Lincoln

"Idleness is an inlet to disorder, and makes way for licentiousness. People who have nothing to do are quickly tired of their own company." -- Jeremy Collier

"If I do not practice one day, I know it. If I do not practice the next, the orchestra knows it. If I do not practice the third day, the whole world knows it." -- Ignace Paderewski

"If people knew how hard I have had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn't seem wonderful at all." -- Michelangelo

"If you put in the work, the results will come."

"If you wear out the seat of your pants before your shoes, perhaps you are working the wrong end."

"It's a little like wrestling a gorilla. You don't quit when you're tired -- you quit when the gorilla is tired."

"It's not how many hours you put in but how much you put into the hours."

"It's not so much how busy you are, but why you are busy. The bee is praised, the mosquito is swatted." -- Catherine O'Hara

"It's not that I'm so smart; it's just that I stay with problems longer." -- Albert Einstein

"It's one thing to say you're going to do it. It's another thing to go out and do it."

"It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't, everyone could do it. It's the hard that makes it great." -- "A League of Their Own"

"It is better to wear out than to rust out." -- Bishop Richard Cumberland

"It is counter-productive to put your best foot forward while dragging the other."

"It takes no talent to hustle." -- Hans Schmidt

"Know what you want to do, hold the thought firmly, and do every day what should be done, and every sunset will see you that much nearer the goal." -- Elbert Hubbard

"Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do." -- Goethe

"Lack of confidence is born from a lack of preparation." -- Shannon Wilburn

"Let him that would move the world, first move himself." -- Socrates

"Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It's not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it's when you've had everything to do, and you've done it." -- Margaret Thatcher

"Look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before." -- Jacob A. Riis

"Lord, give me the determination and tenacity of a weed."

"Measure not the work until the day's out and the labor done." -- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"Millions of words are written annually purporting to tell how to beat the races, whereas the best possible advice on the subject is found in the three monosyllables: 'Do not try.'" -- Dan Parker

"Motivation is when your dreams put on work clothes."

"Never be satisfied or content. Always want more and you'll compete more."

"No man is ever whipped until he quits - in his own mind." -- Napoleon Hill

"Nobody is ever met at the airport when beginning a new adventure. It's just not done." -- Elizabeth Warnock Fernea

"Nothing ever comes to one that is worth having except as a result of hard work." -- Booker T. Washington

"Nothing will work unless you do." -- John Wooden

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas Edison

"Our days are identical suitcases -- all the same size -- but some people can pack more into them than others."

"People forget how fast you did a job - but they remember how well you did it." -- Howard Newton

"Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work." -- Peter Drucker

"Practice without improvement is meaningless." -- Chuck Knox

"Push yourself again and again...don't give an inch until the final buzzer sounds." -- Larry Bird

"Quit the CRYING and WHINING, and start the GRITTIN' and GRINDING!"

"Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment, full effort is full victory." -- Mahatma Gandhi

"Some dream of worthy accomplishments, while others stay awake and do them."

"Sometimes our best is simply not enough. We have to do what is required." -- Sir Winston Churchill

"Strivers achieve what dreamers believe." -- Usher

"Talk about what one is going to do means little; doing it means all."

"Temporary Inconvenience -- Permanent Improvement." -- sign at road construction site

"That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the task itself has become easier, but that our ability to perform it has improved." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The amount of confidence you have is directly proportional to how hard you work."

"The choicest laurel wreaths are the hardest won."

"The harder I practice, the luckier I get." -- Gary Player

"The man on top of the mountain did not fall there."

"The man who moved a mountain was the one who began carrying away small stones." -- Chinese Proverb

"The mark of a Champion, in any endeavor, is their pride in preparing for their competition. For the businessman, as well as the athlete, it's reading the right books, listening to the right tapes/CDs, attending the right seminars and choosing the right mentors and coaches. Champions are built, not born. There is no off season for someone on the road to being a champion. There is only preparation and competition." -- Greg Werner

"The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary." -- Vidal Sassoon

"The only thing in life achieved without effort is failure."

"The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work." -- Robert Frost

"The secret is this: strength lies solely in tenacity." -- Louis Pasteur

"The starting point of all achievement is desire. Weak desire brings weak results." -- Napoleon Hill

"The three great essentials to achieving anything worthwhile are; first, hard work, second, stick-to-it-iveness, and third, common sense." -- Thomas Edison

"The way to get to the top is to get off your bottom."

"The will to win means nothing without the will to prepare."

"The world is full of willing people, some willing to work, the others willing to let them." -- Robert Frost

"There's no scarcity of opportunity to make a living at what you love. There is only a scarcity of resolve to make it happen." -- Wayne Dyer

"There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there." -- Indira Gandhi

"There is one thing I can control. I will never be outworked."

"Those at the top of the mountain didn't fall there." -- Marcus Washling

"Those who work the hardest are the last to surrender."

"To do nothing is the way to be nothing." -- Nathaniel Howe

"Understand the difference between being at work and working."

"Unless you are willing to drench yourself in your work beyond the capacity of the average man, you are just not cut out for positions at the top." -- J.C. Penney

"Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without."

"We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny, but what we put into it is ours." -- Dag Hammarskiold

"We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents." -- Eric Hoffer

"Well begun is half done." -- Aristotle

"What keeps so many people back is simply unwillingness to pay the price, to make the exertion, the effort to sacrifice their ease and comfort." -- Orison Swett Marden

"What we hope to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence." -- Samuel Johnson

"Whatever your life's work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better." -- Martin Luther King Jr.

"When there's a piano to be moved, don't reach for the stool."

"When we accept tough jobs as a challenge to our ability and wade into them with joy and enthusiasm, miracles can happen." -- Arland Gilbert

"When you're not practicing, remember, someone, somewhere, is practicing, and when you meet him, he will win." -- Ed Macauley

"When you're through improving, you're through."

"Whenever I think I can't do something, I'm usually right. Whenever I think I can do something, I'm usually right again. Whenever I put 50 percent effort into a task, I'm usually 50 percent satisfied with the results." -- David Rich

"Work hard to make things easier." -- Pete Carill

"Work harder than the opposition."

"Work while you have the light. You are responsible for the talent that has been entrusted to you." -- Henri F. Amiel

"You may have good luck or you may have bad luck: but remember, you make your own luck."

"You must have confidence in your ability to perform the act required. This comes from practice." -- Tony Alfonso

“The vision of a champion is someone who is bent over, drenched in sweat, at the point of exhaustion when no one else is watching” -- Anson Dorrance

for Kenzie

Sports: Great Football Players: Bo Jackson - LaDainian Tomlinson

HIGHLIGHT: Bo Jackson - LaDainian Tomlinson

MORAL: By listening to great athletes, you can learn about greatness.

How LT LaDainian Tomlinson Trains





LaDainian Tomlinson, LT, Humble Post-game speech




Tips from LaDainian Tomlinson



Bo Jackson Highlights



Bo Jackson Nike Commercial


For Kenzie

Sports: Practice Doesn't Make Perfect - Perfect Practice Makes Perfect - Jim Edmonds

HIGHLIGHT: Nobody but you really knows how hard you work in practice.

MORAL: Practice Doesn't Make Perfect - Perfect Practice Makes Perfect


A ball was hit to over the head of baseball center fielder Jim Edmonds, surely destined to be a home run. Edmonds put his head down and sprinted for the outfield wall. As he neared the wall, rather than stopping to watch the ball become a home run, he ran faster and climbed the wall, making the catch, with his glove over the top of the fence. A great catch.

Afterwards, a reporter asked a team mate if that was the greatest catch he ever saw Edmonds make. The player responded, "No, I have seen that play hundreds of times. Before games Edmonds has a ball boy throw the ball to the top of the wall and Edmonds practices running up the wall to catch it."







For Kenzie

Words To Live By: John Wooden

HIGHLIGHT: Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.

It isn't what you do, but how you do it.

Never mistake activity for achievement.

Sports do not build character. They reveal it.

Talent is God given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful.

MORAL: Read books by people who are great teachers.


A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment.

Ability is a poor man's wealth.

Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.

Adversity is the state in which man mostly easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.

Although I wanted my players to work to win, I tried to convince them they had always won when they had done their best.

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.

Be prepared and be honest.

Consider the rights of others before your own feelings, and the feelings of others before your own rights.

Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.

Don't measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability.

Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.

For an athlete to function properly, he must be intent. There has to be a definite purpose and goal if you are to progress. If you are not intent about what you are doing, you aren't able to resist the temptation to do something else that might be more fun at the moment.

I'd rather have a lot of talent and a little experience than a lot of experience and a little talent.

I always tried to make clear that basketball is not the ultimate. It is of small importance in comparison to the total life we live. There is only one kind of life that truly wins, and that is the one that places faith in the hands of the Savior. Until that is done, we are on an aimless course that runs in circles and goes nowhere.

If you're not making mistakes, then you're not doing anything. I'm positive that a doer makes mistakes.

If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?

It's not so important who starts the game but who finishes it.

It's the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.

It is what we learn after we know it all that really counts.

It isn't what you do, but how you do it.

Material possessions, winning scores, and great reputations are meaningless in the eyes of the Lord, because He knows what we really are and that is all that matters.

Never mistake activity for achievement.

Our land is everything to us... I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember that our grandfathers paid for it - with their lives.

Sports do not build character. They reveal it.

Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.

Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It's courage that counts.

Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.

Talent is God given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful.

The main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team.

The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.

There are many things that are essential to arriving at true peace of mind, and one of the most important is faith, which cannot be acquired without prayer.

Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.

What you are as a person is far more important that what you are as a basketball player.

Winning takes talent, to repeat takes character.

You can't let praise or criticism get to you. It's a weakness to get caught up in either one.

You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.

You cannot attain and maintain physical condition unless you are morally and mentally conditioned. And it is impossible to be in moral condition unless you are spiritually conditioned. I always told my players that our team condition depended on two factors / how hard they worked on the floor during practice and how well they behaved between practices.

Young people need models, not critics.

For Kenzie.

Interpersonal Skills: How To Read People - Eyes

HIGHLIGHT: Do all liars have tells? Yes. When you lie, you're subconsciously trying to get out of your own insides, and so you overly externalize.

MORAL: Watch people, listen to what they say, how they say it and watch for subtle cues.

How to read liars and learn the trick to telling a whopper - and getting away with it

By: Ben Paynter

You know your son better than anybody else does, but you can't tell if he's lying to you or if he's just nervous talking about cigarettes. Or maybe you have an employee who seems to have an unusually high frequency of doctors' appointments. If you were fluent in body language, you'd always know guile from gospel, says Marc Salem, a self-described mentalist who holds advanced degrees in psychology and cognitive science from the University of Pennsylvania and New York University, respectively. For the past 30 years, he has made a career out of reading people. He has taught interrogation tactics to the FBI, the Secret Service, and the New York City Police Department. Salem has even beaten a polygraph, and now he shares the secrets of his craft in his book, The Six Keys to Unlock and Empower Your Mind, out this month. Here, the master interrogator explains how to read liars and reveals the trick to telling a whopper--and getting away with it.

Best Life: How can you discern genuine from dishonest body language?
Marc Salem: Think of a conversation as a package of related signals. What you're looking for are breaks in a person's normal pattern, abrupt gestures like hand clenching or head movements, or someone shifting his posture away from you. Imagine you're watching the scene back as a video: You might think slowing down the frames will help you pick out inconsistencies, but with lying, it is just the opposite. In fast-forward, suddenly you see repeated movements that you didn't realize were there before, because at normal speed, they are spaced farther apart. They're sort of like guilty tics.

BL: Do all liars have tells?
MS: Yes. When you lie, you're subconsciously trying to get out of your own insides, and so you overly externalize. A person who covers his mouth with his left hand while talking is usually lying. If someone looks up and to the right, he's probably trying to invent an answer rather than tell the truth. People look to the left, either up or down, when recalling the truth. But the ultimate red flag is pupil dilation. Almost no one can escape that.

BL: Why do the pupils dilate?
MS: Pupil dilation is a direct biological response to an emotional reaction. It shows a high level of excitation. Anyone who is telling a lie, unless he's pathological, will experience some sort of emotional discomfort, no matter how slight. That discomfort registers in this uncontrollable physical response. You can't fake it, and it will give you away almost every time. The only way to tell a lie successfully is to use the tools of a method actor and become someone else. You have to believe what you're saying.

For Kenzie

Things To Know: Happiness

HIGHLIGHT: Quenching feelings of hardship also means never feeling desire or want. Unpleasant as those emotions can be, they're also the basis for ambition and creativity. "Happy people are not ambitious," Greenfield says. "They do not build civilizations."

MORAL: It'd is OK to have frustration and a restless fire within you.

Drugs. Implants. Virtual reality. Do we really want joy 24/7?

In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson famously proclaimed a universal right to the pursuit of happiness. The key word there is pursuit. Jefferson thought that people ought to be free to chase after happiness; whether they attained it was their own business. In the 18th century, the technology to get happy despite circumstance or personality did not exist. Now, though, it's on its way — and that's not as delightful as it sounds.

What constitutes happiness? Freedom from worry? Or maybe contentment? A good definition remains elusive despite decades of neuroscience and psychiatry. Many researchers today have come to think that people have affect set points and that some of us are naturally happier than others. In describing optimal experience — the subjective state of happiness he calls flow — the psychiatrist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says it comes down to engaging in activities just beyond our skill level. Like Jefferson, Csikszent mihalyi understands that pursuit, and not outcome, is what's important.

Being reductionist about happiness doesn't mean it isn't fun, in all its myriad forms — free-floating rapture, blissed-out contentment, ecstatic partying. It's just that as a species, we generally keep these experiences in check. After all, the ways to induce them — alcohol, drugs, OK Go concerts — have historically come at a high cost.

We're entering an age in which technology may allow us to produce pleasant sensations all the time. Hints of that future go back to Prozac and other neurotransmitter-controlling drugs introduced in the late 1980s. But our ability to manipulate the molecules and electrical impulses whizzing through our heads is reaching a newly sophisticated level. Precise brain scanning is creating a vast trove of information about what happens psychologically, physiologically, and chemically when we are happy or sad (or stressed, angry, loving, homicidal, spiritual, or altruistic). The narcolepsy drug Provigil turns out to make people feel pretty fabulous and is taken as a stimulant. Ecstasy use has declined and cocaine use seems to have leveled off, but use of the ADHD prescription drug Adderall — increased focus, higher productivity — is on the rise. Today, neural implants are used to treat more than 30,000 people worldwide with Parkinson's disease; someday soon they might reliably jolt regions of the brain to induce or suppress specific emotions. "There is an industry of sorts that is trying to seduce you," says Oxford University pharmacologist Susan Greenfield, author of Tomorrow's People: How 21st-Century Technology Is Changing the Way We Think and Feel. "They want you to lose yourself, to want more of their product, whether it's virtual reality or a pill."

Obviously, sick people — say, with Parkinson's or narcolepsy — need medical intervention. And some percentage of humans will seek out mood-altering substances or experiences that imperil their lives. The problems start when happy-making tech nologies can be plugged in all day long without any of the traditional limits. I'm certainly not against technology. But should we use it to cure insecurity? Normal anxiety? We risk medicalizing the human condition.

From a distance, pleasure without fear or desire sounds pretty good. But in your grasp, it starts to feel less like paradise and more like soma. A species that shuts out adversity does not survive very long in a Darwinian universe. In the short term, humans with happy-making neural implants would cease to be interesting. Quenching feelings of hardship also means never feeling desire or want. Unpleasant as those emotions can be, they're also the basis for ambition and creativity. "Happy people are not ambitious," Greenfield says. "They do not build civilizations."

Ultimately, the problem could be self-correcting. As rich Westerners buy all the happiness products they can jam into their amygdalas, the developing world will be left blissfully productive. A good thing, because places like China and India have mighty new cities and wealth to build.

Maybe it's no coincidence that some of the happy-making stuff is manufactured in those countries. It's reminiscent of the scenario laid out by another prescient thinker, H. G. Wells. In his book The Time Machine, Wells wrote about a world where the happy, indolent elite — the Eloi — are served by industrious outsiders called Morlocks. The Eloi are also the hardworking Morlocks' food. Grim stuff. And also the exact opposite of what Jefferson was trying to tee up for Americans. Maybe he knew that if you have too much happiness, you don't get life and liberty.

David Ewing Duncan

For Kenzie

Sports: A father's view of Title IX

HIGHLIGHT: College used to be a "man's" world, with little attention to female athletes.

MORAL: Don't lose sight of the hard word of those before you and take advantage of college athletics if you can!

A father's view of Title IX

San Francisco Chronicle

THERE IS something special about seeing your daughter dressed up for the prom, looking poised and gorgeous, as mine was on a recent Saturday night. There is something equally beautiful about seeing her bolting through the rain for a soccer ball, hair matted and socks flecked with mud, against the bay-chilled wind on a February night.

You can credit Title IX with making the second scene an attainable dream for so many young women.

On June 23, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon signed a 37-word piece of legislation that prohibited discrimination "on the basis of sex" in any education program or activity that received federal assistance.

As anyone who was in high school or college in 1972 knows, Title IX's effects on competitive athletics have been profound. It is evident in the fivefold increase in the number of women participating in intercollegiate athletics today; and the tenfold increase in the number of young women competing in high school sports.

The positive impact of Title IX is apparent in the athleticism and self-image of the young women who participate in sports today. It helped put an end to the cultural notion that only a "tomboy" would relish robust athletic competition.

"When I was in grade school in Reston, Va., I wasn't allowed to do sports ... I was taught to put my hair up, walk upright, learn proper manners and makeup, while the boys got to play basketball," said Jill Lounsbury, the 40ish manager of the San Francisco Nighthawks, a soccer team that draws scholarship athletes from across the nation to compete in a summer league. "I was better than most of the boys in sports, yet I had to do my hair, which I'm still not very good at."

Lounsbury credits Title IX with giving her and her teammates the chance to inaugurate an NCAA soccer team at Evergreen State College, in Olympia, Wash., in the early 1980s.

Lounsbury said the speed and intensity of the game has picked up immensely, but even more dramatic is the demeanor of today's intercollegiate athletes.

"Now the main quality they have in common is they're so confident, capable and independent," she observed. "They think they can do anything."

By now, various studies have established beyond doubt that girls who participate in sports have higher self-esteem, lower drug-abuse and pregnancy rates and better odds of attaining a college degree. Then there are the intangibles: lessons on teamwork, winning and losing gracefully, rebounding from failure.

"Sports is a place where you learn to be leaders," Lounsbury said.

It's hard to imagine that anyone would want to roll back the clock. But the 1972 law cannot be taken for granted. It has been maligned, unjustly, for causing the demise of non-revenue men's sports such as wrestling and gymnastics. A far greater stress on "minor sports" has been that the king of "revenue sports" -- football -- spends more than it takes in at almost half of Division I-A and I-AA schools. A 2005 survey of major college programs showed that football averaged operating deficits of $1 million.

The best that can be said of the Bush administration is that it has been passive about enforcing the law. Just one of the 416 complaints filed about Title IX violations from 2002 to 2006 were initiated by the federal government, according to the National Women's Law Center.

Earlier this month, the Pacific Legal Foundation and College Sports Council petitioned the U.S. Department of Education to remove one of the three tests of Title IX compliance: The determination of whether a school's athletic offerings for men and women is "substantially proportionate" to the student body's gender mix. That test has been vital in assuring opportunities for female athletes -- and they have seized them, as the participation numbers attest.

Guess what? More men are playing intercollegiate sports today than in 1972. Title IX, when fairly administered, is win-win.

Knowing how sensitive a 17-year-old can be about any public doting by a parent, I alerted my three-sport daughter that I wanted to mention her athletic endeavors in the course of a column about Title IX.

"What's Title IX?" she asked.

Perhaps that's the ultimate measure of Title IX's progress, 35 years later. It's no longer a huge controversy. Young women assume they have a right to athletic opportunities.

Yet all of us should be aware of the forces that want to declare victory or redefine "equality" even before the playing fields are truly level.

John Diaz is The Chronicle's editorial page editor.

For Kenzie

Employment: More American jobs may be headed offshore

HIGHLIGHT:
Nearly 400,000, or 31 percent, of local San Diego jobs have the potential to be moved overseas during the next two decades, according to the analysis, based on an index created by Princeton economist and former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Alan Blinder.

MORAL:
Pick you major wisely!

More American jobs may be headed offshore

Study: 400,000 in county have overseas potential

By David Washburn
STAFF WRITER

June 10, 2007

The offshoring debate was over at Sky Mobilemedia before it began.

Within two years of its 2003 inception, the San Diego-based maker of cell phone operating systems employed a work force spanning the globe. Now, only 30 of the company's 120 employees live locally, with the rest divided among offices in India, Israel and Croatia.


“This is the reality of a startup company,” said Naser Partovi, chief executive of Sky Mobilemedia.

He estimates that he can hire three – even four – software engineers in Bangalore, India, for the cost of one in San Diego. “The cost structure is prohibitive if you have everyone here,” he said.

Partovi's reality may be shared by an increasing number of San Diego County companies and their workers, according to an analysis by The San Diego Union-Tribune of the potential offshoring of county jobs.

Nearly 400,000, or 31 percent, of local jobs have the potential to be moved overseas during the next two decades, according to the analysis, based on an index created by Princeton economist and former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Alan Blinder.

How exportable is your job?

To find out the “offshoreability” of specific jobs in San Diego, go to uniontrib.com/more/offshore
Nationally, Blinder estimates that 37.7 million jobs, or 29 percent of the current U.S. work force, could be outsourced to other countries within the next 10 to 20 years.

Blinder's study, released in March, is the most recent – and perhaps most ambitious – attempt to quantify the effects of globalization on American workers. He analyzed more than 800 occupations and placed each on a scale from “highly offshoreable” to “highly unoffshoreable.”

Not surprisingly, he found that computer programmers and data-entry clerks were the most vulnerable. But other jobs deemed “highly offshoreable” crisscross the employment spectrum and include such occupations as editor, drafter, graphic designer and insurance underwriter.

Blinder said he is estimating the number of jobs that potentially could go offshore, not the number that actually will move overseas. Nonetheless, he sees big changes ahead.

“I believe there will a long and somewhat painful reallocation of labor analogous to what has happened over the last 50 years with Americans in factories,” Blinder said.

U.S. companies have been moving jobs abroad for a generation. It started in manufacturing, with factory work moving to Mexico, China and other low-wage countries where everything from designer clothes to television sets could be made for a fraction of the labor costs in the United States.

Next to head offshore were American jobs in customer service and data entry. Today, U.S. companies employ more than 900,000 offshore service workers, according to McKinsey & Co., a San Francisco economic think tank.

And offshoring is moving up the food chain, as computer systems analysts, microbiologists and financial analysts join factory workers, telemarketers and call-center operators in “offshoreable” professions.

Current trends notwithstanding, several economists say Blinder vastly overestimates the potential for offshoring. One went so far as to call his analysis “dead wrong.”

A McKinsey & Co. study in 2005 concluded that the United States stands to lose at most 11 percent, or 18.3 million, service jobs to other countries by 2010.

Blinder argues that steady advances in communications technology, along with growing wealth in the developing world, will gradually increase the flow of service-sector jobs overseas. This will be especially true for computer-based jobs that do not require a lot of face-to-face contact.

“This will not be a permanent mass unemployment,” Blinder said. “But there needs to be internal migration from impersonal service jobs to personal jobs.”

Marney Cox, an economist for the San Diego Association of Governments, largely agrees with Blinder's conclusions and said San Diego County companies and policymakers need to prepare for a changing employment landscape.

“San Diego is more 'offshoreable' than most places,” Cox said. “Our most important jobs – jobs that drive our economy – are exportable.”


NANCEE E. LEWIS / Union-Tribune
Naser Partovi, CEO of San Diego-based Sky Mobilemedia, says he can hire three or four software engineers in Bangalore, India, for the cost of one in San Diego.

The Union-Tribune analysis showed that 7.5 percent – or 95,795 – of the jobs in San Diego County are “highly offshoreable.” This compares with 6.3 percent of all U.S. jobs that Blinder puts in that category.

Among the highly threatened local workers are biochemists and biophysicists. These are bread-and-butter jobs in the county's biotech sector, which employs more than 36,000 people and is the third-largest concentration of biotech jobs in the nation.

There are no reliable estimates for the number of local jobs that have moved offshore from San Diego County in recent years, but there is some anecdotal evidence.

Over the past two years, locally based Accelrys, which develops drug-discovery software, has cut 100 employees from its San Diego operation and shifted more work to a facility in Bangalore.

Last year, San Diego's Immusol laid off about a dozen of its 50 employees – most of them scientists working in drug discovery – while continuing to contract out work to companies in Shanghai and Beijing.

“The most vulnerable job is chemists,” said Zhu Shen, vice president of business development at Immusol. “We are seeing great value from Russian, Chinese and Indian companies at a great price, and the quality of work is comparable to here.”

Yet, Cox said, local politicians are choosing to spend public money on ballparks, cruise ship terminals and convention centers, which create relatively low-paying jobs, rather than funding infrastructure and services for high-tech industries.

“What about biotech, environmental tech and software engineering?” Cox asked. “Where is the public investment in these industries? A few things in front of us today show we are not serious about these industries.”

Funding for alternative sources of energy and better local airport service are the kinds of public expenditures that policymakers need to be focusing on, he said.

Rare is the economist who would disagree with the notion that forward-looking public policy is the key to long-term economic health. But several prominent labor economists have taken issue with Blinder's study.

To begin with, Blinder makes broad assumptions that other economists say are unrealistic. For example, when determining how readily a job could be done offshore, he deems every worker in that job as equally movable.

“Let's say there are 4 million accountants. He says all 4 million are offshoreable,” said Lori Kletzer, a professor of economics at University of California Santa Cruz.

“That is a bit of a stretch – every accountant is not going to disappear from the U.S. work force.”

Blinder also fails to consider that as the Chinese and Indian economies continue to grow, they will need goods and services provided by U.S. workers, said Jagdish Bhagwati, a Columbia University economics professor.

“He is just dead wrong,” said Bhagwati, who also is a senior fellow in international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. “I would be astonished if something like he is predicting actually happened.”

Bhagwati and others say Blinder incorrectly assumes that any tradable job in the U.S. work force is vulnerable to offshoring. But in many cases, it will be workers in developing countries who will be more vulnerable as technology advances.

Companies in China and India will have the opportunity to employ the services of a highly skilled U.S. architect or accountant rather than settle for a lower-skilled practitioner in their own country, Bhagwati said.

“It is we who stand to gain in many cases, not them,” he said.

Diana Farrell, who wrote the McKinsey & Co. study, said her research jibes more with Bhagwati's position.

While acknowledging that her study has a shorter time frame – five years versus Blinder's 10 or 20 years – she said the less-tangible things, such as management attitudes and worries about intellectual-property protection, will keep companies from moving jobs overseas even if they could do so.

“We estimate that no more than several hundred thousand U.S. jobs per year will be lost to offshoring, affecting less than 2 percent of all service jobs,” Farrell said. “That is far fewer than the normal rate of job turnover in the economy.”

Regardless of which estimate proves to be more accurate, it's likely to be of little consequence to the workers at Sky Mobilemedia. Min Kim, a senior software engineer, said job insecurity has been a part of his life throughout his 15 years in high tech.

“Many companies don't care about the engineer; they care about profit,” the 38-year-old said. “You have to continually reinvent yourself or you will fall back.”

Blinder said that if every U.S. worker has Kim's attitude, the work force will not only survive but thrive as the global economy evolves.

“U.S. workers will win by staying ahead of the curve,” he said. “Creativity and innovation are crucial.”

For Kenzie

Employment: Why the World Is Flat

HIGHLIGHT: For instance, what advice should we give to our kids?

When I was growing up, my parents told me, "Finish your dinner. People in China and India are starving."

I tell my daughters, "Finish your homework. People in India and China are starving for your job."

MORAL:
When choosing a college major, choose wisely!


Thirty-five years ago this summer, the golfer Chi Chi Rodriguez was competing in his seventh US Open, played that year at Hazeltine Country Club outside Minneapolis. Tied for second place after the opening round, Rodriguez eventually finished 27th, a few strokes ahead of such golf legends as Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, and Gary Player. His caddy for the tournament was a 17-year-old local named Tommy Friedman.

Rodriguez retired from golf several years later. But his caddy - now known as Thomas L. Friedman, foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times and author of the new book The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century - has spent his career deploying the skills he used on the golf course: describing the terrain, shouting warnings and encouragement, and whispering in the ears of big players. After 10 years of writing his twice-weekly foreign affairs column, Friedman has become the most influential American newspaper columnist since Walter Lippmann.

One reason for Friedman's influence is that, in the mid-'90s, he staked out the territory at the intersection of technology, financial markets, and world trade, which the foreign policy establishment, still focused on cruise missiles and throw weights, had largely ignored. "This thing called globalization," he says, "can explain more things in more ways than anything else."

Friedman's 1999 book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization, provided much of the intellectual framework for the debate. "The first big book on globalization that anybody actually read," as Friedman describes it, helped make him a fixture on the Davos-Allen Conference-Renaissance Weekend circuit. But it also made him a lightning rod. He's been accused of "rhetorical hyperventilation" and dismissed as an "apologist" for global capital. The columnist Molly Ivins even dubbed top-tier society's lack of concern for the downsides of globalization "the Tom Friedman Problem."

After 9/11, Friedman says, he paid less attention to globalization. He spent the next three years traveling to the Arab and Muslim world trying to get at the roots of the attack on the US. His columns on the subject earned him his third Pulitzer Prize. But Friedman realized that while he was writing about terrorism, he missed an even bigger story: Globalization had gone into overdrive. So in a three-month burst last year, he wrote The World Is Flat to explain his updated thinking on the subject.

Friedman enlisted some impressive editorial assistance. Bill Gates spent a day with him to critique the theory. Friedman presented sections of the book to the strategic planning unit at IBM and to Michael Dell. But his most important tutors were two Indians: Nandan Nilekani, CEO of Infosys, and Vivek Paul, a top executive at Wipro. "They were the guys who really cracked the code for me."

Wired sat down with Friedman in his office at the Times' Washington bureau to discuss the flattening of the world.

WIRED: What do you mean the world is flat?
FRIEDMAN: I was in India interviewing Nandan Nilekani at Infosys. And he said to me, "Tom, the playing field is being leveled." Indians and Chinese were going to compete for work like never before, and Americans weren't ready. I kept chewing over that phrase - the playing field is being leveled - and then it hit me: Holy mackerel, the world is becoming flat. Several technological and political forces have converged, and that has produced a global, Web-enabled playing field that allows for multiple forms of collaboration without regard to geography or distance - or soon, even language.

So, we're talking about globalization enhanced by things like the rise of open source?
This is Globalization 3.0. In Globalization 1.0, which began around 1492, the world went from size large to size medium. In Globalization 2.0, the era that introduced us to multinational companies, it went from size medium to size small. And then around 2000 came Globalization 3.0, in which the world went from being small to tiny. There's a difference between being able to make long distance phone calls cheaper on the Internet and walking around Riyadh with a PDA where you can have all of Google in your pocket. It's a difference in degree that's so enormous it becomes a difference in kind.

Is that why the Netscape IPO is one of your "10 flatteners"? Explain.
Three reasons. Netscape brought the Internet alive with the browser. They made the Internet so that Grandma could use it and her grandchildren could use it. The second thing that Netscape did was commercialize a set of open transmission protocols so that no company could own the Net. And the third is that Netscape triggered the dotcom boom, which triggered the dotcom bubble, which triggered the overinvestment of a trillion dollars in fiber-optic cables.

Are you saying telecommunications trumps terrorism? What about September 11? Isn't that as important?
There's no question flattening is more important. I don't think you can understand 9/11 without understanding flattening.

This is probably the first book by a major foreign affairs thinker that talks about the world-changing effects of … supply chains.
[Laughs.]

Why are supply chains so important?
They're incredible flatteners. For UPS to work, they've got to create systems with customs offices around the world. They've got to design supply chain algorithms so when you take that box to the UPS Store, it gets from that store to its hub and then out. Everything they are doing is taking fat out of the system at every joint. I was in India after the nuclear alert of 2002. I was interviewing Vivek Paul at Wipro shortly after he'd gotten an email from one of their big American clients saying, "We're now looking for an alternative to you. We don't want to be looking for an alternative to you. You don't want us to be looking for an alternative to you. Do something about this!" So I saw the effect that India's being part of this global supply chain had on the behavior of the Indian business community, which eventually filtered up to New Delhi.

And that's how you went from your McDonald's Theory of Conflict Prevention - two countries that have a McDonald's will never go to war with each other - to the Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention.
Yes. No two countries that are both part of a major global supply chain like Dell's will fight against each other as long as they are both part of that supply chain. When I'm managing your back room, when I'm managing your HR, when I'm doing your accounting - that's way beyond selling you burgers. We are intimately in bed with each other. And that has got to affect my behavior.

In some sense, then, the world is a gigantic supply chain. And you don't want to be the one who brings the whole thing down.
Absolutely.

Unless your goal is to bring the whole thing down. Supply chains work for al Qaeda, too, don't they?
Al Qaeda is nothing more than a mutant supply chain. They're playing off the same platform as Wal-Mart and Dell. They're just not restrained by it. What is al Qaeda? It's an open source religious political movement that works off the global supply chain. That's what we're up against in Iraq. We're up against a suicide supply chain. You take one bomber and deploy him in Baghdad, and another is manufactured in Riyadh the next day. It's exactly like when you take the toy off the shelf at Wal-Mart and another is made in Shen Zhen the next day.

The book is almost dizzily optimistic about India and China, about what flattening will bring to these parts of the world.
I firmly believe that the next great breakthrough in bioscience could come from a 15-year-old who downloads the human genome in Egypt. Bill Gates has a nice line: He says, 20 years ago, would you rather have been a B-student in Poughkeepsie or a genius in Shanghai? Twenty years ago you'd rather be a B-student in Poughkeepsie. Today?

Not even close.
Not even close. You'd much prefer to be the genius in Shanghai because you can now export your talents anywhere in the world.

As optimistic as you are about that kid in Shanghai, you're not particularly optimistic about the US.
I'm worried about my country. I love America. I think it's the best country in the world. But I also think we're not tending to our sauce. I believe that we are in what Shirley Ann Jackson [president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute] calls a "quiet crisis." If we don't change course now and buckle down in a flat world, the kind of competition our kids will face will be intense and the social implications of not repairing things will be enormous.

You quote a CEO who says that Americans have grown addicted to their high salaries, and now they're going to have to earn them. Are Americans suffering from an undue sense of entitlement?
Somebody said to me the other day that - I wish I had this for the book, but it's going to be in the paperback - the entitlement we need to get rid of is our sense of entitlement.

Let's talk about the critics of globalization. You say that you don't want the antiglobalization movement to go away. Why?
I've been a critic of the antiglobalization movement, and they've been a critic of me, but the one thing I respect about the movement is their authentic energy. These are not people who don't care about the world. But if you want to direct your energy toward helping the poor, I believe the best way is not throwing a stone through a McDonald's window or protesting World Bank meetings. It's through local governance. When you start to improve local governance, you improve education, women's rights, transportation.

It's possible to go through your book and conclude it was written by a US senator who wants to run for president. There's a political agenda in this book.
Yes, absolutely.

You call for portable benefits, lifelong learning, free trade, greater investment in science, government funding for tertiary education, a system of wage insurance. Uh, Mr. Friedman, are you running for president?
[Laughs loudly.] No, I am not running for president!

Would you accept the vice presidential nomination?
I just want to get my Thursday column done!

But you are outlining an explicit agenda.
You can't be a citizen of this country and not be in a hair-pulling rage at the fact that we're at this inflection moment and nobody seems to be talking about the kind of policies we need to get through this flattening of the world, to get the most out of it and cushion the worst. We need to have as focused, as serious, as energetic, as sacrificing a strategy for dealing with flatism as we did for communism. This is the challenge of our day.

Short of Washington fully embracing the Friedman doctrine, what should we be doing? For instance, what advice should we give to our kids?
When I was growing up, my parents told me, "Finish your dinner. People in China and India are starving." I tell my daughters, "Finish your homework. People in India and China are starving for your job."

Think about your own childhood for a moment. If a teenage Tommy Friedman could somehow have been transported to 2005, what do you think he would have found most surprising?
That you could go to PGA.com and get the scores of your favorite golfer in real time. That would have been amazing.

The 10 Great Levelers

1. Fall of the Berlin Wall
The events of November 9, 1989, tilted the worldwide balance of power toward democracies and free markets.

2. Netscape IPO
The August 9, 1995, offering sparked massive investment in fiber-optic cables.

3. Work flow software
The rise of apps from PayPal to VPNs enabled faster, closer coordination among far-flung employees.

4. Open-sourcing
Self-organizing communities, � la Linux, launched a collaborative revolution.

5. Outsourcing
Migrating business functions to India saved money and a third world economy.

6. Offshoring
Contract manufacturing elevated China to economic prominence.

7. Supply-chaining
Robust networks of suppliers, retailers, and customers increased business efficiency. See Wal-Mart.

8. Insourcing
Logistics giants took control of customer supply chains, helping mom-and-pop shops go global. See UPS and FedEx.

9. In-forming
Power searching allowed everyone to use the Internet as a "personal supply chain of knowledge." See Google.

10. Wireless
Like "steroids," wireless technologies pumped up collaboration, making it mobile and personal.

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