Combining nature with hands-on work outdoors

The Nature-Smart Career: 11 New Jobs For a Nature-Rich Future

http://www.childrenandnature.org/2014/03/24/new-nature-smart-careers-11-for-the-future-and-for-right-now/
by Richard Louv


Richard Louv has a lot of great perspectives on connecting nature and people. I like his term "nature deficit disorder"--the disorder being with our system rather than within people.

"7. New Agrarian. Who’s that? Urban farmers who design and operate community gardens. Designers and operators of vertical farms in high-rise buildings. Organic farmers and innovative vanguard ranchers who use sophisticated organic practices to produce food. The focus is on local, family-scale sustainable food, fiber, and fuel production in, near, and beyond cities.

8. Health care provider who prescribes nature. Ecopsychologists, wilderness therapy professionals, are going mainstream. Some pediatricians are now prescribing or recommending “green exercise” in parks and other natural settings to their young patients and their families. Hospitals, mental health centers, and nursing home are creating healing gardens. The Portland, Oregon parks department partners with physicians who send families to local parks, where park rangers serve as health para-profesionals. In the U.K., a growing “green care” movement encourages therapeutic horticulture, ecotherapy, and green care farming.
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  9. Green exercise trainer. Exercising indoors and outdoors seems to produce different results. Even when the same number of calories are burned. Outside exercise appears to have better results, especially for psychological well-being. Green exercise trainers can help individuals and families individually or by organizing “green gyms” and family nature clubs. “People walkers” can help the elderly take a hike.

11. Bioregional guide. We’ll see the emergence of the citizen naturalist who, as professionals or volunteers, help people get to know where they live. One organization, Exploring a Sense of Place in the San Francisco Bay Area, guides groups that want to have a deeper understanding of the life surrounding them. Think of these guides as nature-smart Welcome Wagons who help us develop a deeper sense of personal and local identity."

Working with your hands: the secret to happiness?

Working with your hands: the secret to happiness?by Oliver Burkeman in the Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/may/08/working-hands-happiness-burkeman


"Our physical surroundings no longer hold our attention, and we start to succumb to what Crawford calls 'virtualism' – 'a vision of the future in which we somehow take leave of material reality and glide about in a pure information economy.' This is the vision peddled by numerous commentators on the future of the internet: an ethereal, anchorless world in which all we do is exchange ideas, where everything is funded by advertisements for everything else, and in which all that matters is the production of knowledge – not the sewers and electricity networks and kitchen tables and washing machines on which the knowledge-producers will still presumably rely."

The case for working with your hands

The author has a Ph.D. in political philosophy and runs a vintage motorcycle repair shop.

We need much more training, encouragement, breadth of options for people who want to work with their hands and want to get out of an office--which is a lot of people.

The case for working with your hands by Matthew Crawford
http://www.amazon.com/Working-Hands-Office-Fixing-Things/dp/0141047291/ref=la_B001QV943Q_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1443207185&sr=1-3

Hand-eye coordination is a major part of many careers

Hand-eye coordination is a major part of many careers.

Careers for Those With Good Hand-to-Eye Coordination
http://work.chron.com/careers-those-good-handtoeye-coordination-12465.html

Identifying your gifts

The path-breaking book The Dyslexic Advantage identifies 4 types of gifted minds that often (not always) have issues with dyslexia. The authors found many dyslexic people were actually highly gifted in certain areas that ironically, as a byproduct of their natural talents, caused reading issues.

Here is the website
http://www.dyslexicadvantage.org/

Four strengths (you could be more than one):

-3D spatial/material reasoning - can "turn" objects in their mind in 3D, often feel body movement as they do it

-Narrative reasoning - "storyteller", think in terms of stories and episodes, can use fragments of personal experience to figure things out, operate chiefly in episodic memory brain regions (stories, episodes) not declarative memory (raw facts)

-Dynamic strengths - ability to predict patterns (future or the past based on changing and incomplete information, drawn to fields that involve constant change

-Interconnected reasoning - big picture, holistic, can see how things are connected and fit together ex. Geography, Philosophy, Ecology, History, etc.

It is very important to identify if you fit one or more of these because it can help you choose careers and also choose teachers who are like you. It can also make you realize that something you may have thought was a weakness is actually due to a strength.

From my experience, I have been penalized on tests and even on the filling out of silly forms for missing a box here or a tiny point there, not dotting my I's and crossing my T's as they say, essentially missing small details. If you have a teacher who is extremely detail-oriented, they will often not see that you "got it" i.e. got the big picture and instead will nail you on every minor detail you missed. A detail-oriented teacher will also teach mostly details and test on mostly details increasing the likelihood of you missing details. If you are an "interconnected reasoning" person i.e. a big picture person like myself, this is totally against your grain and can cause a huge amount of frustration.

The same is true of narrative reasoning. I always enjoyed teachers who told a story. I remember in high school we had a history class that I routinely slept through during the last period of the day. There were no visuals or notes, just a guy talking with no stories and no notes. One day the teacher was absent and we had a sub. He came in and basically winged it, telling a story about the Cuban Missile Crisis. I thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. I remember thinking how the same subject--history--could appear horrible and then be so interesting based on how it was presented. There were no pictures, it was just a guy and a chalkboard telling a story.

Finding an environment that values your strengths is absolutely critical to your success.

Email any questions

"I think rebuilding an engine might just be my idea of the perfect weekend."

Here's a quote from a student I had:

"I think rebuilding an engine might just be my idea of the perfect weekend."

Does that sound like you?

No one without high spatial intelligence (and likely high tactile and/or kinesthetic intelligence as well) would say that. Most people looking at fixing an engine as as pain in the neck.

Statements like this are a telltale sign that someone is really high in 3D thinking. It is so important to recognize if you have or don't have this talent because 3D thinking forms a major part of certain careers.

Spatial ability: can you see in 3D?
http://pathfinderscareerdesign.com/spatial-ability-can-see-3d/

Economists Say Millennials Should Consider Careers In Trades

Economists Say Millennials Should Consider Careers In Trades - NPR 

http://www.npr.org/2015/02/02/383335110/economists-say-millennials-should-consider-careers-in-trades

Key points:

-You can actually make more than the average college graduate with less education by working in a trade field.

-"Averages lie" when it comes to incomes for people without college degrees: low-skill workers ex. McDonald's staff get lumped in with high-skill trade jobs like "master carpenters and technicians" and bring down the average.

-"We made a mistake in the 1980s. We basically obliterated the modernization of the old vocational education programs and they've been set aside."

-"The country is going to need a lot more skilled tradespeople"--precisely because training has been so lacking and also because most trades cannot be outsourced, the repairs or installations etc. must be done on site.