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When I was unemployed a few years ago, a job digging ditches for $2 an hour would have qualified as a good job. I was lucky and got what I thought was a good job. It had a salary, some health insurance benefits, and a few days of paid vacation each year. Within a year or two, the good job somehow turned into a crappy job. So I looked elsewhere for a better job and got it. Would I consider my position now to be a good job? I plead the fifth. (By the way, how ya doin’ boss?)

The three topic options for a term paper in my freshman philosophy class didn’t interest me at all. I looked over the requirements for our term papers – we wrote four over the course of the semester – and thought that it doesn’t explicitly say I had to write on the assigned topics to get an A grade. Knowing that the paper with the lowest grade got dropped from the calculation for our final course grade, I took a risk. I wrote a paper in flawless logic proving that, “Students in Philosophy 110 don’t have to write on the assigned topics in order to get an A on their term papers.”

I work at a large company’s headquarters in the HR department and sit right next to our corporate (and executive) recruiters. What I’ve learned about how jobs are actually awarded conflicts with what many job coaches advise people to do. Of course, this is how it happens at one big company, but I’ve also gleaned some myth-debunking information from working for an even larger company before this one.

When was the last time you were “forced” to learn something? Did you have to attend a training session for your job? Have to complete an online course for school? Required to complete job hunting workshops to maintain unemployment benefits? The fact is we don’t learn very well when we feel the “education” is against our wills. Pink Floyd phrased the sentiment well when they sang, “We don’t need no education…we don’t need no mind control!” The more liberated you feel, the better you’ll learn.

Has the fad of blogging died out yet? I – like Darren Rowse of Problogger.net – hate the term itself. Sounds like some bodily indiscretion: “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go blog.” However, publishing through the Internet offers great opportunities to improve several important abilities. You’ll sharpen your marketable skills, make some new friends, and possibly bring in some extra money as you start sharing your ideas through blogging.