I’ve always posted cool job listings on my @LesleyChang account, but @SoSilkie suggested that I post them all in one place so people don’t miss out on them.

With that in mind, I went ahead and started up a new Twitter account, @BestJobsInVan so people can follow my job postings on Twitter.

The jobs I post tend to run in the marketing, communications, PR, journalism, writing and design side. There are a variety of different listings running from non profits to big names in media and even government and city jobs. I’m also going to include volunteer and internship opportunities for people who are just starting out – people like myself. In fact, I actually have a job posting to share with you today, one that got pulled off Craigslist because it was an internship posting. See below!

Kids’ Newsletter Editor (Volunteer) (Vancouver)

from craigslist | writing/editing jobs in vancouver, BC
Volunteer Opportunity
Kid’s Newsletter Editor

Summary
The D.A.R.E. BC Society is a registered charitable organization that works in tandem with law enforcement officers throughout the province to deliver drug and alcohol abuse prevention programs to children and families. D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) prevention programs are a series of ten-week classroom lessons that empower children with the critical thinking and life skills necessary to avoid drug/alcohol abuse and violence throughout their lifetimes. D.A.R.E. is taught to over 30,000 kids each and every year.

The Society currently seeks a volunteer to produce a vibrant and interactive four-page newsletter for children four times per year. Work on the newsletter can be done at home and/or in the D.A.R.E. BC office. This is an excellent opportunity to develop pieces for your portfolio and enhance your writing/desktop publishing skills.

Skills and Requirements:

• Strong writing and proofreading skills
• Desktop publishing experience and proficiency with related software (i.e. PageMaker, Creative Suite, Publisher)
• An interest in pursuing a career in communications, public relations, marketing or journalism
• Creativity
• Ability to work to deadlines
• Ability to contribute approximately four hours per week either to the production of the newsletter

To apply please send a resume and writing sample to:
Executive Director
D.A.R.E. BC Society
4949 Heather Street
Vancouver, BC V5Z 1K6
Phone: 604-264-2765
Fax: 604-264-2649
Email: dare@darebc.com
Website: www.darebc.com

I hope to provide you with the most relevant jobs to Marketing, Communications, PR, Design, Journalism & Writing – keeping in mind that these jobs are NOT sales oriented! Enjoy!!

Note: these are not resolutions, these are just things I didn’t do, or didn’t do enough of, in 2009

In no particular order…

1. Write more interesting and engaging blog posts – come up with an editorial calendar and stick to it!
2. Run more contests on my blog
3. Go horseback riding
4. Let go of petty things that cause me stress
5. Do more yoga
6. Learn to love laundry (I doubt this will ever happen)
7. Rearrange my furniture
8. Be more proactive at work
9. Ask more questions
10. Be more engaging
11. Go to an all expenses paid resort for at least a week during my birthday – or go to Japan and visit my best friend and experience Japan during golden week
12. Pay more attention to my friends
13. Arrange more family get togethers
14. Attempt to follow the I Will Teach You To Be Rich: No Guilt. No Excuses. No B.S. Just a 6-Week Program that Works program… And succeed
15. Be a happier person overall

What are some of your things on your list to do in 2010?

This card, I must admit, is not 100% my own design. I was originally inspired by these wonderfully huge checklists that had everything under the sky on them and thought, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have something that could be given out at any time, for any reason, and have as many as you needed?”

Well, after thinking about it (and also being a victim of never having a birthday card around), I came up with this: The All Purpose Greeting Card.

General Purpose Card

It’s a bit long, it’s black and white, and it lacks any major (or real) artwork, but it met my needs: cheap & easy to produce, a conversation starter, and something you wouldn’t find in the greeting card aisle. And I’m sharing it (in PDF format) with you. Free of charge!

Spread the cheer and happy holidays!

He conceded that journalism and PR were more or less a “young person’s game”, but that the game was changing so rapidly that people are burning out faster than before. In this day and age of electronic communications, it’s pretty easy to imagine a twenty something year old working well over 12 hours a day in their first, or second year in a communications position.

Throughout Kirk’s presentation, he emphasized that writing was the best skill to hone, the best skill to have, and the only skill that sets the good communicators apart. If you cannot write well, you cannot communicate well. He also mentioned that if you were a good writer, you had the potential to be a good editor.

He gave us PR students a few great tips on the future of Public Relations:

1. The Press Release is Dead
   Now, this isn’t to say that the press release is dead and done, but Kirk pointed out that the time spent on writing press releases could be better spent talking to your target audience instead of an audience of journalists. Not that journalists aren’t important… but
2. The Press is no longer the only gatekeeper
   This is very true. Anyone can pick up your product or service and write a blog post about it, make a youtube video about it, or tweet about it. Journalists don’t have to pick up your story and publish them – you can do that yourself.
3. You’re ALWAYS on
   Let’s face it. This profession isn’t a 9 to 5 job. We’ll always have the next deadline (oh it was yesterday?), the next newsletter, the next article, the next bio, the next story we have to write, the next story we have to chase, or the next meeting we have to go to. And in this day and age, it’s nearly impossible to not be somehow connected to the internet at all times. It’s because of this connectivity that allows us to be as good as we can be, and it also has the potential to run us into the ground.
4. Trust
   This goes hand in hand with the first point. The press release is dead, but journalism isn’t. A good relationship with a journalist will help ensure that your story gets if not published, then at least heard.
   Trust doesn’t just pertain to journalists. It also extends to your audience as well. Kirk was quick to point out that you’ll always have someone in your audience ready than ever to call bullshit, and that they have a wide platform to do it on: the internet. If your product/message/service/corporation/etc isn’t trustworthy, or credible, then someone will call bs on it.
5. Clarity and access matters
   This goes back to points two and four. It’s pretty amazing what the internet’s done. It has given them a voice – a strong one at that. It’s empowered them to make decisions for themselves. It’s given them power to attack corporations for their misconduct. It’s allowed them to call BS on others. It’s also allowing the conversation to go both ways. It’s also changing the way people communicate.
   Kirk’s point here was that corporations need to become more transparent. Create clarity where there wasn’t any. Allow people to say what they want and actually listen to them. Make the dialogue a two way street and turn it into a conversation.

Special thanks to Ashley Letts, a second year PR student at Kwantlen for taking notes during Kirk’s talk!

Kirk’s talk was extremely invigorating and gave me hope that there would be a place for us first and second year students when we graduated. Social media has certainly come a long way in the last year, but nothing beats listening to the pros talk about it.

The piece came out on Tuesday November 10th. You can read it here.

I originally shared a recipe with her to publish along with the article, but due to limited space, it got left out. Buuut, since I run my own blog, I’ll share it here!

Clam Spaghetti!

Courtesy of my good friend Kelly McClintock’s aunt
You will need:
3 cans of chopped clams (one drained)
3/4 cup olive oil
2 cloves of garlic
2 Tbs basil
1/2 grated romano or parmesan cheese
1 lb spaghetti (500g)

First, start boiling spaghetti. That’ll take about 15 min.

Simmer oil, garilc and basil together for about 3-5 min. Then add clams (and juice from 2 cans). Bring to just about boiling, then lower heat to simmering. You can probably turn off the heat (unless you’re using gas, then keep it on low) til the spaghetti’s done.

Drain pasta when it’s done. Add clam/oil mix. Serve and top with grated cheese.

…I think I’m going to go and make myself a pot of that now! Enjoy!

Since one of the requirements was to use high resolution (read: 300+dpi) pictures and I was feeling a little lazy, I used widescreen desktop wallpapers.

Want the set? I’ll upload it later today!

Oh right – I also went to Hamburg!

Yep, so this starving college girl has been extremely busy for the past two months. Instead of having one gigantic post of all the things I’ve been doing, I’ll just leave you with my calling card.

What’s a calling card?

A calling card is essentially a postcard sized (4″x6″) business card. We had to create one in our visual design class (Journalism 1141) and I went through several drafts.

My first draft was inspired by a magazine that had information contained within a column. The vector swirls were an added touch to help deconstruct the box, and I liked this look but felt it was a bit too sterile.

My second attempt came from a suggestion from Roley, who said “Why don’t you make your own word tag cloud?” …which resulted in somewhat of a mish mash of words all over the place. I liked it, but I wasn’t in love with it. Plus, I created this thing at like 2am, so I wasn’t completely awake.

My third draft was, I felt, a lot better. Everything was contained properly, it was readable, it was clear who and what I was, and my information was all contained at the bottom.

So I was happy. I went to school the next day with three black and white drafts to show my teacher, Susan Harman, and she fell in love with my second draft. I showed it to several people and discovered that they liked the second draft better as well.

So there you have it! I have a calling card. Interested in getting one? Well, I’ll be attending a few networking events in November, so be sure to look for me then!

Let me just say that I had NO idea what I was in for.

One month. Thirty days. Thirty classes. Seems simple enough, right? One class a day – I could do that. I even considered doubling up classes on Sundays just in case I needed to take a day off. Everything was going smoothly until halfway through the month, I ended up with a fever of 102F.

Now, I’ve come to attribute my tendency to get sick with stress. What did I have to be stressed about? Well, earlier that same week I got sick, I was told that I’d be out of a job by October, my car got broken into (twice in two different cities!), AND I was trying to wrap my head around sIFR (which I still don’t understand). Bad things come in threes, right?

Having that fever effectively shut me down for three days, which meant missing three classes. The upside of this was that my boyfriend took care of me (thanks, sweetie!) but it also made me realize that if I couldn’t take an hour each day for myself and do something for myself, then how could I ever hope to manage my time well?

When I realized this, it helped put everything into perspective. School’s starting soon and I was going to have to look for employment, manage my volunteer activities and also do homework, attend project meetings, make time for myself, my family and friends, and for my boyfriend. All of these things are important to me, and I knew that I didn’t want to blow any of it off.

The Yyoga 30 day challenge was certainly a challenge for me – but not because of the classes. The yoga was easy. It was fun, I lost weight, and felt way better about myself – physically and mentally. Now, it’s September and while I’ve been wishing it were already September, I’m glad I took the time to do the challenge. I feel like I’m ready for anything now, and I definitely needed that kick in the butt to change my life.

Life, here I come!

I’d like to thank Melissa Joaquin of SugarCane Cares for being my hot yoga buddy and making the 30 day challenge even more fun! Check out her site for amazing skincare products!!

Quick warning: there is some swearing in this post. I don’t normally like to swear in my posts, but I also didn’t want to ruin the original post.

Learn to shut the fuck up

Originally posted Jun 27, 2001. Written by Joel Etherton.

That is a lesson I don’t think I’ve ever learned. That’s probably one of the large reasons for this site. I’ve never learned when it is appropriate just to shut my fucking mouth and keep it to myself.

I’m sure my intentions always seem grand or noble (or some other austerely connoted word), but the result always seems to be the same. Lack of appropriate silence at appropriate times always causes an inevitable alienation of the other party.

This alienation inevitably leads to continued silences, but silences of the wrong kind. Here are some of the silences that you make encounter in the event you don’t learn to shut the fuck up:

• There is the angry silence. This is the steaming silence where an offended party attemps to make the sound of his/her breathing as audible as possible by minimizing all other audible actions.
• There is the hurt silence. This is encompassed by a general malaise and mopiness on the part of the offended party. This silence is characterized by muffled noises such as speech, motion, action, entertainment volumes, etc. This silence is extremely volatile and may erupt into boisterous sobbing and emotion.
• There is the betrayed silence. This is the silence an offended party will belay on you when they feel you have abused their trust in some manner. This silence is characterized by a complete lack of speech. Other noises hence become much louder by comparison simply because of this obvious lack. This one rapidly descends into the angry silence. If this occurs, groveling may be your only recourse.
• The worst of all silences is the cheery silence. This silence is characterized not by the lack of speech, but by the presence of misleading speech. This is evident in the manner in which the offended party addresses you with cheerful greetings, happiness, and smiles. It is very difficult to determine if you are being given the cheerful silence because the offended party will refuse to tell you. In fact, the offended party will often resume cheeriness and shrug off requests for information as trivial. The only positive method of identification for this brand of silence is 3 questions. Ask the offended party 3 questions that are not out of the ordinary, but that the party would normally elaborate on. If the answers to these questions are single word (or worse, single syllable) replies, then you are in serious shit. There is no known cure for cheery silence.

Anyone can be punished with a silence. Often, a silence is the most brutal form of punishment because it assumes guilt. Worse, a silence leaves the offender without a sense of what went wrong. This often lets the imagination run wild on an insane trek to find out what it was that caused the silence, but in the end only leads to the destructive mental ramblings of an idiot.

When confronted by a silence, it is often best to wait the silence out. A silence can often be generated by an offended party’s need for privacy or unwillingness to confront the problem. Forcing the issue will only make it more difficult for the offended party, and your chances of increasing the silence go up on an exponential level. While it sounds completely stupid, often waiting the issue out will bring out the greatest efforts of communication. Eventually the cause of the silence will build in the offended party to a “boiling point” at which that person will bring forth a confrontation.

Don’t take the idea of forcing the issue to lightly. You must at least ask once what it is that you did wrong before you begin the waiting game. If you do not, you will be considered inconsiderate, and a new silence will begin for a new reason (basically back to square one).

Under no circumstances should you apologize for an action unless you are clear what action it was that caused the silence. The following statement could land you in a world of shit: “Whatever it is that I did, I’m sorry”. This may seem on the surface to be a very apologetic statement, but it is extremely ingenuine. It shows that you’re not sorry for what you did, but you are sorry for what happened because of this. Sometimes this may bring an offended party out of silence, but only to scream at you for 15 or 20 minutes. On the rare occassion this venting of emotion will ease the silence and help solve the problem. It is very rare. I suggest not using the global “apology”.

A lack of appropriate silence on your part can cause an inadvertent excess of silence on the part of someone else. Don’t fall victim to your own stupidity. Learn when to shut the fuck up.

Right now, I’m going to shut the fuck up.