Stats

I was invited to a free dinner at the Elements, the new expensive restaurant in Cache Valley. Of course I wanted to go but there was a catch, we had to listen to a presentation on fire safety. I was just fine with that and I still enjoyed the dinner. I am also taking a stats class at the moment and I can say I hate stats, but there is a lot of good that has come from me taking this class. The main thing I have learned in stats is how unreliable stats can be. It is so easy to make anything say whatever you want. So at this dinner, the guy went off on a lot of stats. He showed us a video from the 70s that also had a lot of stats saying that 55% of the time smoke detectors don't sound in a real fire and others. I was surprised at how many people were just taking his word for it and appeared ready to buy whatever he was selling. I did have fun discrediting his stats has much as I could with the group that invited me. But even though I really don't like my stats class right now I can see that it has helped me be aware of smooth talkers and it is just nice being educated so people can't take advantage of you.

There are so many things that we have to learn and perfect to get by in this competitive world that we are going into. One of the very many things that we have to perfect is professionalism. Like what we have learned in the classroom, professionalism isn't something we can just do. We have to practice and make it a habit. "Excellence isn't an act, it is a habit!" is my very quote by Aristotle. It is hard for us to think that our classroom behavior will affect out futures too much. But who writes our letters of recommendations, who helps us find jobs, who is our mentors? Our teachers notice more things than we give them credit for. They notice how serious we take their classes, how much we participate, and if we are even paying attention. They know what we need to do to be successful in this market and if they say we need to be professional then we need to be professional.