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Dreaming of a remote job? Here are our tips for finding one.

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Dreaming of a remote job? Here are our tips for finding one.

Welcome back to our job search series. So far, we have explored tips for finding an entry-level role and navigating a career change. This week, we’re going to wade into a lifestyle topic of interest: remote jobs.

Working remotely can be one way to introduce flexibility into your career, while still retaining many of the employment benefits that come with working for a company. Some companies offer fully remote positions, while others have adopted a hybrid model, which sees employees working remotely on some days and convening in an office on others.

With a remote job, you gain the freedom to work from anywhere, whether your preferred environment is at home, with a coworking community, or even on the beach. This can make it easier to develop a more complete sense of work-life balance, or work-life integration.

At the same time, you may sacrifice some of the social elements of the workplace, like in-person meetings with colleagues and classic watercooler conversations. You’ll also need to manage your own dedicated workspace and motivate yourself to stay on task without the social cues that an office can supply.

If you want to experience both sides of these pros and cons, consider searching for a hybrid role. Otherwise, if you find the pros outweigh the cons, you may enjoy a fully remote role.

How to find a remote job

For the most part, the application process for a remote job is the same as a typical application process. You’ll likely need a resume, cover letter, and, in some cases, a portfolio or work samples. You’ll need to reflect on your career goals. And you’ll need to prepare for your interviews.

All that said, remote job searches can be unique in some ways. Here are some tips for your remote job search:

1. Research the kinds of jobs that are typically remote. You may already have some roles you’d like in mind. Remember, though, to work remotely, you’ll typically need to get a job you can do with just a device and internet connection. Broadly speaking, you’re looking at industries like IT, digital marketing, or customer support. To start your research, check out our guide on remote work-from-home jobs that pay well.

2. Filter your job searches to “remote.” Many companies adopted remote work policies during the pandemic, but some have returned to the office on either full-time or hybrid schedules. The result is that there are fewer remote roles now than there were a few years ago. Many online job search sites, like LinkedIn and Indeed, allow you to filter your search results to only show you remote or hybrid positions. That way, you can eliminate search results for in-person positions and only apply for roles that organizations have pre-approved for remote work.

3. Prepare to interview by video or phone. No matter how comfortable you are on Google Meet or Zoom, it’s still a good idea to prepare for challenges unique to this style of interview. For example, you may need to practice using an unfamiliar video conferencing tool, find a quiet space for the interview, or create rapport with your interviewer without the visual and nonverbal cues of an in-person meeting. Take a look at our Zoom interview tips guide for more ideas.

4. Prepare to describe how you handle working remotely. Even though many companies have introduced remote work policies in recent years, a recruiter may want to make sure that you can work productively outside of a traditional office setting. Prepare for any discussion around this topic by:

  • Reflecting on prior remote work or study experience
  • Thinking ahead to a future remote work situation
  • Describing specific strategies and practices you can use to make the remote work experience more productive, such as using software to collaborate asynchronously and setting up a home office you feel comfortable in

Quick tip: If you’ve taken a course on Coursera, the things that worked for you when you were learning online may be the same things that will work for you when you’re working remotely. You can relate your success with online, asynchronous learning to how you plan to succeed in a remote work environment.

Preparing to work remotely

The technical skills you’ll use to do your remote job well are the same technical skills you’d use if you were working in an office. However, there are some workplace skills that may be particularly useful in a remote environment.

That’s all for this week. Next week, we will close out our job search series with an issue on returning to work after a career gap. See you then!

Retrieval Practice in Undergraduate Medical Education

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onlinefreecourse
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Retrieval Practice in Undergraduate Medical Education

Medical education is divided into Undergraduate Medical Education (UME), which includes coursework, supervised clinical rotations, and specialty electives, and Graduate Medical Education (GME) which is residency and like their entry level job. So, UME is graduate-level education (post-bachelors), but called Undergraduate, for reasons I’ve yet to discover. For the purposes of this blog, I’m focused on Phase 1 of UME – coursework. For most medical schools, preclinical coursework involves a series of short (4-8 weeks-ish) courses on foundational topics of anatomy and physiology and organ modules (e.g. cardiology, brain and behavior, hematology, etc.). UME students have an enormous amount of information to learn in each of these courses in an extremely short amount of time. Many medical schools have switched to a pass/fail curriculum such that the goal is not to master 100% of the content, but maybe 80% to stay safely above the passing threshold. At the end of their coursework, most students (this varies some by medical school) take their first Medical Licensing Examination (called Step 1). The exam is 8 hours long and tests their basic science knowledge through high working memory demand questions that ask them to apply their knowledge to a series of vignettes, usually requiring them to understand how information across systems are connected and problem-solving their way to an answer. Again, the goal is not 100% on this exam, but maybe 70% to be in very safe passing range.

The Problem

During a typical week of medical school, students have many required activities. These vary by school, but might include lectures, active learning sessions, simulations, etc. In addition, they have a long list of material that requires self-directed learning. There are simply not enough hours in the day for them to master the material. They need learning strategies that are not only effective, but efficient.

Effective but Inefficient

A lot of the strategies we discuss take time. It takes time (literally) to engage in quality spaced practice. It takes time to review and retrieve the same material multiple times. Creating effective visuals, organizers, writing quality questions for elaborative interrogation – these are all fantastic strategies for increasing understanding and retention (1), but it is impossible for students to engage in all of these strategies for the vast amount of new material presented to them daily.

Because of this challenge, students often turn to pre-created materials. These are some of the favorites among my students:

Anki (or Anking): Anki is a flashcard system that utilizes an algorithm to maximize retention using expanded spaced retrieval (2). When you get a card right, the space by which you will see it again increases. There are many existing card decks that are often even associated with other third-party materials, so students can unlock cards by topic, utilize cards from former students, and connect those cards with their current classes.

              Pro: Anki is evidence-based. It is a retrieval practice tool and the algorithm used for spacing cards is based in the science of learning and can maximize retention of those cards.

              Con: Anki is surface-level learning. It is a memorization tool that allows students to recall factual information at an item-specific level. That is helpful, but not sufficient. It can also take considerable time and cause considerable anxiety. One student I spoke with said that, on some days, it takes her 6-7 hours to get through all of her cards. There are some ways that you can adjust Anki to avoid that, but clearly novice users aren’t always aware or able to make those adjustments.

Boards and Beyond: This third-party program provides videos on common topics that are found in medical school curriculum and on Step 1. For my purposes, I’m going to put this as the example program, but the pros and cons below are true for most youtube videos (e.g. Dr. High Yield) and podcasts (e.g. Divine Intervention).

              Pro: These videos tend to be more efficient than others. Only the most relevant information is included and the videos have high production value, reducing extraneous cognitive load (3).

              Con: As they are videos, these involve what most medical students describe as “passive learning” (I don’t love this terminology). Without an effective note-taking strategy or other paired strategies, the videos themselves are not necessarily the most effective way to learn (4).

Amboss & UWorld: These third-party resources are essentially question banks. There are others, but these are the most frequently used by medical students. While each of them has other features, students are most often using them to answer questions that are very similar in style to the word-heavy, problem-solving questions that appear on Step 1.

              Pro: There are a lot of pros here. These are retrieval practice tools and represent ideal transfer-appropriate processing (5) in that students are getting practice with the types of thinking that will be required on the actual big exams.

              Con: Each of these has the option to be competed on tutor or timed mode. On tutor mode, students receive a question with immediate feedback. This feels like the most effective way to learn for most students, even though we know that delaying feedback (via timed mode) is more effective. Students can also choose to do a mixed block of questions (i.e. all topics included), a targeted block (e.g. just cardio questions), or they can create a custom bank (e.g. ischemic heart disease and arrhythmias only). Choosing the appropriate way to use these options requires metacognitive awareness and regulation, which may be challenging for students.

In addition to those above, I would love to talk about Sketchy and First Aid, but for the sake of brevity I’ll save those for a Part 2 perhaps.

What Students Are Saying About Why School Absences Have ‘Exploded’

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onlinefreecourse
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What Students Are Saying About Why School Absences Have ‘Exploded’

When I think back to virtual learning, my brain automatically goes to how stress free it was. I was in sixth grade when Covid first hit and going through a period of my life where I was extremely anxious at school. I believe that this break is exactly what I needed at the time. However, I do believe that in the long run, this online learning time period got a lot of people into the routine of not having a routine. A lot of people at my school would turn their camera off and fall asleep or go on their phones during online learning. I believe that there were times that I did this as well. I also think that this mindset carried through into the grades where I did not have an online/hybrid option. In eighth and ninth grade, I happened to stay home sick, go into school late, or leave early a lot. I think this is due to me not taking school as seriously due to the grading methods that were being used and how some of my teachers were not grading harshly. Now that I am a sophomore in high school, I think I have finally gotten back into the routine of actual schooling and not staying home sick unless I actually feel extremely sick.

— Madison, Pennsylvania

Before the pandemic and as I was growing up, I was the kind of student that wanted perfect attendance. For some odd reason, it made me feel like a better student if I never missed a day. This included turning my parents down when they offered me to go on trips, even though I was only in fourth grade and the work that I would have missed wouldn’t have made an impact in my academic career. However, after the pandemic school began to feel optional. We felt what it was like to fall out of the routine that going to school was and were never able to fully recover from it. I think that having experienced attending school from your bed, in your pajamas has played a major role in the current trend of students receiving more absences. For me, it made me realize that the “0” next to your number of absences didn’t matter as much as I had once thought. As a now highschooler, the school days are long and every class requires an abundance of work and undivided attention that whenever there is a substitute or not much going on, it is easy to decide to leave school. With senior year approaching, everything’s purpose is college and the fact that colleges aren’t able to see how many absences a student has when they apply, does play a role in the increasing number of absences.

— Ava, Miami Country Day School

Schools have adjusted rules so much that it makes school feel optional. Don’t want to attend class publicly? Take online classes. Don’t want to take “required” state testing? Opt out. Before, school seemed strict, we didn’t have the option to opt out of tests, we didn’t think of taking online school. Yet now, schools make it so easy to skip because everything is simply online. Our assignments, lectures, and teachers are all online. There are no longer requirements in school. What’s the point of attending if we can graduate without taking state testing or attending advisory — also a requirement, yet I no longer have an advisory because my counselors said I don’t need to take it to graduate. It’s confusing. Students have been enabled for over 4 years now since quarantine started. School doesn’t feel mandatory, it’s optional. I’m currently enrolled into 2 AP classes, so I try my best not to miss school. But it’s inevitable, I get sick, I have family situations or maybe I simply don’t feel like attending school. But I see people skip school like nothing. “I didn’t feel like going” is a constant statement I hear. Not many students have the motivation to attend, and simply don’t go because they have a comfort in their head that they can graduate while missing multiple days of school nearly everyday.

— Olivia, Salem, OR

Current absenteeism rates have significantly impacted my learning experience for the past few years. Since the pandemic, there has been a noticeable shift in the perception of the value of education and whether or not attendance is an important factor in a student’s academic success. In the years following 2020, I found myself struggling to make it to class everyday due to my new found efficiency of working at home with my computer. I felt that even if I was not in class personally, I would be able to keep up with my work easily as it was all online regardless. Due to this I would go on trips or skip class purely because I was under the impression that I would be able to continue achieving virtually.

— Ruby, RFHS

Before the pandemic, my attendance was stable but after the pandemic, my absences were piling on. It was difficult to get back in the rhythm of in person school when I had already done a whole year online, but now my attendance in school is definitely getting better. On the other hand, students in my school tend to miss school and it is a rare sight to see a full class. Some students go as far as showing up to class once a week and just do the classwork online. After the pandemic, schools went from paperwork to all online, which is a big reason why students miss all the time, knowing that school work can just be done at home. It has definitely affected students’ grades and goals in life, but hopefully in the future, absences can lower back down.

— Emily, Atrisco Heritage Academy High School

Film Club: ‘There’s a Tax Season Villain, and It’s Not the I.R.S.’

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onlinefreecourse
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Film Club: ‘There’s a Tax Season Villain, and It’s Not the I.R.S.’

I recently learned how big of a scam taxes in America are, not the actual tax rate, but how we actually pay our taxes, all of this. In countries like the Netherlands or Japan or New Zealand, none of this exists. Like if you search how to pay your taxes in Estonia, you get a video that is less than three minutes long. “Should be all fine. So let’s confirm. Submit.” What? How does this exist? These are places where the government operates a free — “Free.” “Free.” — internet portal where the citizens can pay their taxes. Meanwhile, here in the United States, filing taxes has two huge problems. It’s too complicated. And it’s too expensive. The majority of US taxpayers have to pay a private company to help us pay our taxes to the government. Collectively, we spend billions of dollars every year doing this. We spend billions of our precious spring hours tracking down documents, scanning crinkled, faded receipts and just hoping that this little green number goes up. “Right now, the tax code is so complicated, so complex, it is not working for anybody.” Oh, and we also pay emotionally. We worry. We wonder if we’re doing it right. And most of us have wondered what happens if we do it wrong. So why is it that a bunch of other countries have it easy, whereas we get the expensive, stressful, time-eroding version of paying taxes? To understand this absurdity, I teamed up once again with the Times editorial board writer Binya Appelbaum. OK, let’s do this. “Paying taxes in America is tense. It’s scary. But the process of doing it doesn’t need to be.” Binya has been reporting on economic and tax policy in America for a very long time. So let me show you how paying taxes in America has become the biggest scam you’ve never heard about and how some lawmakers are trying to change it. “One of the most unpleasant facts of life, taxes.” “You may be wondering, who got all this money?” “Why we have a $10 billion-a-year-plus business in helping people do what the government should be helping them do instead.” Walk me through the history of all the attempts to make a government-run portal to pay taxes. “So in the before times, it was a thick book. You picked up a copy maybe at the local library. And you worked through these complicated worksheets, either with the help of an accountant or in their dining rooms. And you eventually arrived at a bottom-line calculation of what you owed or what the government owed to you and put it in the mail. And then Ronald Reagan gives a public address.” “We envision a system where more than half of us would not even have to fill out a return. We call it the return-free system.” “In which, he says, we are going to deliver to Americans an easy way to file taxes. We’re going to move from this era of long forms and short forms to an era of no forms. The government is going to be the solution to your problem.” Reagan was serious about this. In 1987, 78,000 Americans filed their taxes using cutting-edge technology, these primitive modems and these old machines called like the Zylog System and the Mitron. And it was a hopeful experiment in what could have saved us so much pain. “And then his successors basically continued to make this promise for the next couple of decades. Bill Clinton makes it. George Bush goes out —” “When I took my job 18 months ago, virtually every other major country in the world had the ability for citizens to go online and freely file their taxes. We didn’t.” “And then Barack Obama, when he’s campaigning for president in 2007, he goes ahead and he makes the same promise.” “We’ll make it easier, quicker, and less expensive for you to file a return, so that April 15th is not a date that is approached with dread every year.” “And now we have the Biden administration making that same promise once more. This story really begins during World War II when the United States needed a lot more money, all of a sudden, to conduct this war. And so it needed to change the way that it collected taxes. And the innovation that the government came up with is it said, we’re going to get employers to tell us how much they are paying their workers.” So because your employer takes money out and pays taxes for you, at the end of the year, the government already knows how much money you’ve made. They know how much you’ve paid in taxes and, thus, how much they owe you or you owe them. “It’s a great system.” They don’t know everything about your finances if you have complicated stuff like medical bills or investments. But for a lot of Americans — “Taxes could be done in 15 minutes or 20 minutes.” The reason why Tax Day is a breeze in places like the Netherlands or Japan is because that’s the day when the government just sends you a pre-populated form. You can either approve it or you can amend it if you think you qualify for some credit or write-off or if you think they did the math wrong. But if you approve it, you’re done in just a few minutes. And your refund is on its way. But here in the U.S., they don’t tell us the numbers, even though they already know them. And they don’t even give us a platform to file our taxes on. So taxpayers are left with two dreadful choices. They either pay a private company to do taxes for them or they do it on their own. And here’s what that looks like. A high-stakes honesty test, one that is horribly confusing, where your children are actually called dependents, and where your total income is actually determined by adding lines 1z, 2b, 3b, 4b, 6b, 7 and 8. I mean, it’s not that complicated. Just get ahold of this 113-page instruction booklet on how to file your taxes. So if presidents from both sides of the aisle have been making an effort to do this, why has it failed? “I mean, the one word answer is —” “Intuit TurboTax.” “There is a company that dominates the tax preparation industry in the United States. It makes billions of dollars by charging Americans to help them complete their taxes. It makes a product called TurboTax, which, for most Americans, is practically synonymous with doing your taxes. And it has made an industry out of something that ought to be a public service.” It’s no surprise to me that TurboTax cropped up as a solution to this problem. “And so this private company comes along and says, we’ll help you. We have a software product that will make your life easier. And it did. It made millions of Americans’ lives easier.” “Intuit TurboTax, 100 percent expert guaranteed.” What happens next is the story of how we almost had what they have in other countries, a free and easy way to file our taxes. And it was almost given to us by George W. Bush. “Morning.” “I think the early 2000s were the moment when we came closest to having a public filing system.” So it’s the early 2000s. And the government is making this big effort to put more services online. “It’s a pleasure to be here to talk about the e-government initiative.” “A number of other countries around the world were beginning to successfully move their tax filing systems onto the internet. States were beginning to move tax filing onto the internet. There was a huge demand for it. You had a Republican administration backing the idea.” The Bush administration tells Intuit and the other tax-prep companies to, quote, ‘Get another line of work.’ Like, you’re going out of business. What is their response? “The company sounds the alarms, all hands on deck moment. They recognize this is an existential threat to what is an increasingly profitable business. And they do everything that they can to prevent it. They engage a very successful Washington lobbyist, who, among other things, is fond of comparing himself to Darth Vader. And they do something very clever. They say to the government, we’ll construct a free filing portal. And you can stay out of this business. This lobbying effort worked. And the Bush administration agreed to not make a tax-filing portal. And in return, Intuit and other tax-prep companies agreed to create a version of their software that would be available for free to lower-income Americans. So it’s the early 2000s. And you’ve got regular TurboTax, which people have to pay for. But now you have this free version of TurboTax that Intuit was providing. Much to Intuit’s chagrin, Americans started catching on that there was a free version of their software. And they started using it. Millions of them started using it. And this is where the real shenanigans start in earnest. It seems like a good deal in terms of, well, if the tech company will do this and will provide it for free, then what’s the problem?” “The problem is that the tech companies had absolutely no interest in doing this. This was a trick.” A ProPublica investigation found that Intuit and others added lines of code to their free file site. “So that it doesn’t appear in a Google search. And several of the other companies are also found later to have done this to make it invisible, essentially, on the internet.” Then there was their marketing. Intuit and TurboTax started appearing everywhere, from basketball stadiums to the Super Bowl. “Welcome to the Intuit TurboTax halftime.” Then they start flooding the world with the word “free.” “That’s right. TurboTax free edition is free. Free. Free. Free. Free.” “It feels pretty good.” To most people, this looked like the government-required free file version of TurboTax. But no. Intuit had created an entirely new program confusingly called TurboTax free edition to divert traffic from the government option. “You arrive at this website that is billed as being a free tax-filing product. And you begin to do the work of filing your taxes, right? You’re uploading forms. You’re inputting personal information.” It was only after you spent all of these hours putting in all of your information that you discover that you actually can’t file your taxes for free, that you don’t qualify for the free version. All this hiding from Google searches, the confusing branding, the deceptive use of the word “free” — are you confused? That was the point. “Tax-prep companies have sabotaged the Free File program. They’ve tricked and trapped American taxpayers into paying for alternative services that should be free. That are marketed as free. But in fact, they don’t make free.” I fell for this so many times over the years. And after doing all of this work, there was no way I was going to do anything but pay. What other choice did I have? All of this? Who were the demographic of Americans that are maybe most susceptible to this kind of deceptive messaging? “It’s the middle of the population, people who are earning middle-class salaries, who have very simple taxes.” And the result was that by 2019, 14 million Americans that were eligible to use the free tax filing software that they had promised to make ended up paying a fee for commercial software to prepare their tax returns. All the technological and marketing deception worked. So much so that they actually got sued. Regulators on behalf of customers sued Intuit last year for $141 million. They also agreed to cool it on the whole free, free, free false advertising campaign. So now when you go to the site and you see the big $0 sign, there’s an asterisk next to it. So justice was served. And the greedy tech company learned its lesson. And from then on, taxes were free and easy, just like in Estonia. In 2021, Intuit announced that they were walking away from their deal that they made with the Bush administration. They would no longer offer a free filing software to low-income Americans. But in their blog post announcing this, they claim that they’re still committed to making a free filing platform. “Nobody should believe that Intuit is ever going to seriously commit to offering a free version of its core business. That would be suicidal for a company to do. And there’s no reason to expect them to act against their own self-interest. We should treat them like adults and assume that they’re going to do what’s best for them. And what is best for them is to charge as many Americans as much money as possible to complete their taxes.” It’s ironic to me that Intuit often positions itself as like the advocate for the people. They have this whole ad campaign showing them all the time that they could save by not doing taxes. “We all have different, sometimes crazy things to deal with. We believe people can be good at anything. Yes, even taxes.” “In the free market, you have the right to walk away. That’s the defining feature of the free market. You don’t need to buy the apples. You don’t need to buy the car. You don’t need to buy the computer. You do need to file your taxes. What these companies are doing are standing astride the highway that everybody needs to travel and collecting tolls. And so the idea that this is a private market is ludicrous. And the Bush administration was quite rightly saying to these companies, get off the highway. You are not allowed to collect tolls here.” But luckily, there might just be change in the air. “The I.R.S. is releasing a report this week on the possibility of a free government-run tax filing service.” “The Biden administration has funded a pilot program for the I.R.S. to create a portal where we Americans can pay our taxes without the need of a third-party middleman called TurboTax. They’re set to launch this as a small pilot for the 2024 tax season. But of course —” “They are determined to prevent this or to make it as impractical and small scale as possible. Because they have lots of money to throw at it. They’re collecting from all of us, every year, our fees for filing taxes and using them to ensure that we have to continue paying those fees to file taxes.” Bloomberg reported that Intuit’s spending on lobbying has hit an all all-time high. It’s paying dozens of lobbyists. These lobbyists include Mitch McConnell’s speechwriter, Nancy Pelosi’s ex-chief of staff, a former Republican congressman and an adviser to Joe Biden when he was vice president. “You know, it’s really striking. Because the rhetoric around the I.R.S. is so unremittingly negative that you might assume that Americans would want the protection that TurboTax says it is offering to them. But when pollsters go out and ask the American people about this, both parties say we want a government option. We want a free-filing portal. We do not understand why we need to pay in order to pay our taxes. It doesn’t make any sense.” “Each time free file came up, an army of well-paid lawyers and lobbyists descends on Congress to squash it. This must not be allowed to happen again.” But the pilot program is already in danger of ending. House Republicans are pushing to cut $14 billion in funding for the I.R.S., including the money for the pilot program. They say that the government can’t be trusted to tell Americans how much they owe the government. But this isn’t a partisan issue. Leaders from both sides of the aisle have known for decades that we need to make this happen, that this is the sensible thing to do. And hopefully, this is the moment to finally make it happen. “I think, at the end of the day, this story is about faith in government. It’s about the ability of the government to do what it should have been doing all along, to do it well and to deliver what Americans deserve, which is an easy and free way to file their taxes. This is a chance for the government to prove itself. It’s a chance for the government to make right on a promise that it has broken so often over the last 40 years and to say, we can do better, we are doing better, we’re going to do this right.”

Should Colleges and Universities Get Rid of Legacy Admissions?

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Should Colleges and Universities Get Rid of Legacy Admissions?

Virginia will end legacy admissions at public universities after Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed a bill on Friday banning the practice that gives applicants with family ties to alumni a boost.

Under House Bill 48, public universities in the state will be barred from giving preferential treatment to applicants based on their connections to not only alumni but to donors as well. That means universities can also no longer give an advantage to applicants whose relatives make donations to the school. Critics of such preferences have said for years that the century-old practice perpetuates privilege.

The ban will notably affect the University of Virginia and William & Mary, which are among the country’s more selective public universities. Virginia Tech, another prestigious public university, already announced last year that it would no longer take an applicant’s legacy status into account in the admissions process.

The law, which passed unanimously in the Virginia House of Delegates and the State Senate this year, will take effect July 1, after admissions decisions have been made for this fall. Mr. Youngkin, a Republican, said in a statement in January that he believed “admission to Virginia’s universities and colleges should be based on merit.”

Virginia is the second state to ban legacy admissions, after Colorado, and similar legislation is being considered in New York and Connecticut, among others.

State Senator Schuyler T. VanValkenburg, a Democrat who sponsored the bill, said he was pleasantly surprised by the bipartisan support for the ban. He said he hoped Virginia’s decision will lead other states to follow suit, which he said would help promote diversity in college admissions.

“It’s kind of an indefensible policy, especially in light of affirmative action being declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court,” Mr. VanValkenburg said in an interview. “There’s a lot of ways you can measure merit, but we know that legacy admissions is really not about merit at all.”

While there is growing bipartisan support for ending legacy admissions, the article notes that some are in favor of preserving the practice and oppose the Virginia bill:

But critics of such measures argue that there are adverse effects to banning legacy considerations and that minority students could actually benefit from having familial connections in higher education. There are also concerns about the impact on alumni donor relations if legacy admissions are no longer allowed.

This year, an organization of conservative Virginia alumni known as the Jefferson Council expressed being split on the Virginia legislation.

“We are of two minds,” James A. Bacon, the group’s executive director, wrote in an email. On one hand, he said, intergenerational families tend to be more loyal and generous to the university. “On the other, we support merit-based admissions based on character and academic achievement.” The group did not immediately respond to a request to comment on Sunday.

  • Should colleges and universities get rid of legacy admissions? Is it unfair to give preferential treatment to applicants with family ties to alumni?

  • What’s your reaction to the Virginia bill ending legacy admissions at public colleges and universities in the state? The article notes that Virginia is the second state to ban legacy admissions, after Colorado, and that similar legislation is being considered in New York and Connecticut, among others. Should other states follow suit? Do you think many will?

  • Critics of legacy preferences argue that the century-old practice “perpetuates privilege” and that ending it will “help promote diversity in college admissions.” Which arguments from the article against legacy admissions are most convincing?

  • Others, however, warn that banning legacy considerations will have adverse effects, arguing that “minority students could actually benefit from having familial connections in higher education” and that “intergenerational families tend to be more loyal and generous to the university.” How persuasive is the case for preserving legacy admissions?

  • Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who signed the bill, said that “admission to Virginia’s universities and colleges should be based on merit.” Do you agree? What factors do you think colleges and universities should take into account when considering whom to admit?

  • Do you plan to apply to college one day? How might the end of legacy admissions affect you?

    • Flying Plastic

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    Flying Plastic

    What do you think this image is saying? How does it relate to or comment on society or current events? Can you relate to it personally? What is your opinion of its message?

    Tell us in the comments, then read the related Opinion essay to learn more.

    Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.

    Find more Picture Prompts here.

    Word of the Day: fabricate

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    Word of the Day: fabricate

    The word fabricate has appeared in 30 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on Dec. 13 in “Chatbot Hype or Harm? Teens Push to Broaden A.I. Literacy” by Natasha Singer:

    It was difficult late last year for many teenagers to know what to make of the new wave of A.I. chatbots.

    Teachers were warning students not to use bots like ChatGPT, which can fabricate human-sounding essays, to cheat on their schoolwork. Some tech billionaires were promoting advances in A.I. as powerful forces that were sure to remake society. Other tech titans saw the same systems as powerful threats poised to destroy humanity.

    School districts didn’t help much. Many reactively banned the bots, at least initially, rather than develop more measured approaches to introducing students to artificial intelligence.

    Can you correctly use the word fabricate in a sentence?

    Based on the definition and example provided, write a sentence using today’s Word of the Day and share it as a comment on this article. It is most important that your sentence makes sense and demonstrates that you understand the word’s definition, but we also encourage you to be creative and have fun.

    If you want a better idea of how fabricate can be used in a sentence, read these usage examples on Vocabulary.com. You can also visit this guide to learn how to use IPA symbols to show how different words are pronounced.

    If you enjoy this daily challenge, try our vocabulary quizzes.

    Students ages 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, can comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff.

    The Word of the Day is provided by Vocabulary.com. Learn more and see usage examples across a range of subjects in the Vocabulary.com Dictionary. See every Word of the Day in this column.

    How Web Development Helped Me Upskill as an Administrative Assistant 

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    How Web Development Helped Me Upskill as an Administrative Assistant 

    Learning to code so that you can land a job in tech can feel daunting. That’s why we’re sharing inspiring stories from Codecademy’s community — to show how people like you (yes, you!) can embark on a learning journey and end up with a totally new career. We hope these stories serve as a reminder that there’s no single path to a more fulfilling work life. 

    Today’s story is from Abigail Matibag, a 23-year-old Virtual Administrative Assistant, living in Manila, Philippines. Read more stories from Codecademy learners here — and be sure to share your story here. 

    Why I chose to learn to code 

    “In 2022, I was working as a Virtual Assistant, and I wanted to upskill and find an additional service that I could offer. I did some research and consulted with other fellow freelance VAs as well. The one service that resonated with me the most was web design. To offer this service, I realized I needed a portfolio that could prove I could design websites.  

    The first website builder I explored was Wix, and I found this feature called Velo. I did some research and learned that it was similar to JavaScript, where I could add more page features to my website. I had zero knowledge about JavaScript or code at that time, but I was really curious about what it could do. 

    Learn something new for free

    I read Velo’s documentation a couple of times and tried to write code. Surprisingly, I was able to add a few simple animations to my website, and I really enjoyed this process of thinking about how I could convert an action I had in mind into code, as well as solving bugs and issues about what went wrong and what didn’t work. 

    That experience sparked a lot of questions in my mind, like, what is JavaScript? Can I use JavaScript to build a website? So, I reached out to one of my friends and asked these questions related to development. I found out that I could build a website from scratch from code, not just from any website builders. That realization made me really want to start my web development journey.”  

    How I made time to learn 

    “I work on a part-time basis, so I have a lot of spare time on my hands. I usually work in the morning, and when everything is settled for the day, I study during the evening. Every day, I make it a habit to study for at least two hours, or sometimes it takes more than two hours if I’m working on a project. Each time I have nothing to do, I basically choose to learn a new lesson or start a new project.”  

    How I saved up money to pay for Codecademy 

    “The first time that I tried Codecademy was October 2022. I had to set aside some money to subscribe to a one-year Pro plan. So told myself that I had to learn as much as possible for that one-year subscription in Codecademy. I waited for a New Year’s discount in January 2023.”  

    How I started building projects 

    “All of my projects that can be found on my GitHub profile were actually portfolio projects that came from the Front-End Engineer path on Codecademy. Additionally, I have an uncle who recently got married last November. I offered to create a website, like a digital program for their wedding. I was able to work on that project for them last year. It was an unpaid project, but it was still a real-time experience working with other people. 

    I volunteer for a program called OneQuantum Philippines, which is an organization in the Philippines leading in the field of quantum technology. Currently, we’re in the phase of developing their website. I’ve been part of their web development team since February, and I’m in charge of designing the front-end website platform using Figma.  

    The application process was kind of cool. One of my favorite questions during the interview was to share a specific project or experience where I had to learn new technologies. So, I highlighted my recently completed project at that time called ‘Jamming,’ which was part of the projects on the Front-End Engineer path. It was a pretty challenging project, and I had to understand how authentication and the Spotify API worked. It turned out quite successful, and Jamming is the project I’m most proud of, because I added a lot more features to it. I was even able to use two different user authentications for that project.”  

    What I plan to do next 

    “When I started this career in virtual assistance, I realized there was a lot more opportunity for me in this field. I had the chance to shift careers based on my interests and the jobs I preferred, rather than being stuck in a predefined role in a corporate job. Once I discovered web development, that’s when I had this realization — it was kind of a surprise to me — that maybe this is the right job for me, that this is where my passion lies. 

    I was looking into a full-time career in web development, but I’m leaning more towards a freelance role rather than pursuing a corporate job. I feel like freelancing allows me to mainly handle my time and work schedule. However, I do want to gain experience, maybe through an internship or volunteer experience in a corporate setting because it would provide me with more experience and help build credibility on my resume.” 

    What I wish I knew before I started learning 

    “I wish I had realized right away how destructive comparing myself to other learners or developers out there could be to my motivation to learn. There’s nothing wrong with looking up to someone — maybe they’re a great programmer or someone who studied the same path as mine. But there’s a big difference between imitating someone and using it to assess our own progress. 

    We can see a lot of great developers on social media posting their work and learning progress, and it’s easy to compare myself with them, eventually leading me to questions like, Why is this topic easy for them but difficult for me? or How can they create such an amazing product while I struggle to even create a simple one? Stuff like that gets in my imagination and makes me feel discouraged from learning. 

    But I found some very useful advice that I still use to remind myself up until now, and it’s from an old saying that goes: ‘Let each one examine his own actions, and then he will have cause for rejoicing in regard to himself alone and not in comparison with the other person.’ The point is to only compare yourself to your past self; only in that way can we see our true progress and be happy with what we have accomplished. I wish I had realized that sooner when I was starting out.”  

    Not sure where to start? Check out our personality quiz! We’ll help you find the best programming language to learn based on your strengths and interests. 

    Want to share your Codecademy learner story? Drop us a line here. And don’t forget to join the discussions in our community. 

    What’s Going On in This Graph? | April 17, 2024

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    What’s Going On in This Graph? | April 17, 2024

    On Wednesday, April 17, teachers from our collaborator, the American Statistical Association, will facilitate this discussion from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Eastern time.

    5. By Friday morning, April 19, we will reveal more information about the graph, including a free link to the article that includes this graph, at the bottom of this post. We encourage you to post additional comments based on the article, possibly using statistical terms defined in the Stat Nuggets.

    We’ll post more information here on Thursday afternoon. Stay tuned!

    More?

    • See all graphs in this series or collections of 75 of our favorite graphs, 28 graphs that teach about inequality and 24 graphs about climate change.

    • View our archives that link to all past releases, organized by topic, graph type and Stat Nugget.

    • Learn more about the notice and wonder teaching strategy from this 5-minute video and how and why other teachers are using this strategy from our on-demand webinar.

    • Sign up for our free weekly Learning Network newsletter so you never miss a graph. Graphs are always released by the Friday before the Wednesday live moderation to give teachers time to plan ahead.

    • Go to the American Statistical Association K-12 website, which includes teacher statistics resources, Census in the Schools student-generated data, professional development opportunities, and more.

    Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

    How Far Would You Push Yourself Physically to Meet a Goal?

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    How Far Would You Push Yourself Physically to Meet a Goal?

    Have you ever run a difficult race? Walked, biked or swum a long distance? Landed a dangerous trick on a skateboard or skis, or perfected a complex shot in tennis, basketball or hockey? What is the most physically ambitious — or stressful — thing you have ever done?

    What was it like? How did you feel afterward? Did it make you want to continue to push yourself — or to back off?

    The Barkley Marathons is an extreme footrace that requires participants to navigate 100 miles of rugged terrain in rural Tennessee in no more than 60 hours. It also has the equivalent of 60,000 feet of ascent and descent, about twice the elevation of Mount Everest. As its founder said, “Anything that makes it more mentally stressful for the runners is good.”

    Last month, Jasmin Paris became the first woman to complete the race. Here is how the moment shown in the image above was captured in a New York Times article:

    At the end of the run, Paris sank to the ground in front of a yellow gate that marks the start and finish of the event, which consists of five roughly 20-mile laps.

    “The final minutes were so intense, after all that effort it came down to a sprint uphill, with every fiber of my body screaming at me to stop,” Paris said in an email.

    The same week, a professional rock climber named Beth Rodden published an essay in the Times Opinion section headlined “Tired of Sucking It Up as a Climber, I’ve Embraced a Softer Strength.” Near the beginning of the essay, she describes the “hard core” life she once lived:

    Hanging in the middle of Half Dome was an ordinary thing. Ascending ropes with bloody knuckles and a heavy pack thousands of feet off the ground was as conventional to me as grabbing the bananas and apples in the produce section: just part of my day. Climbers pride themselves on being better than normal people. Not just in the “I climbed a mountain and you didn’t” type of way, but in the fabric of how we approach life. How we eat, where we sleep, the stories we walk away with: It’s all better.

    By the time I was in my mid-20s, I was a walking archetype of how to succeed in that world because of the belief system I followed: suck it up, persevere, win. I was used to pushing the level of climbing further, used to doing things that no other women had done — and even, a couple of times, things that no guys had done.

    But later in the essay, Ms. Rodden writes:

    I can’t say there was one moment, a specific event that made me start to question the “suck it up, Rodden” theme song I had lived by for so long. I got divorced, and eventually remarried; I got injured over and over. After years of injuries I had a child, and that led to relearning my body. Maybe it was the scale of all those changes in my life that forced me to reconsider the way I’d always done things, or maybe I just got fed up with the facade. Why was it noble to climb through cracks on El Cap soaked with climbers’ urine, but leaking while jogging postpartum was something to be ashamed of?

    Gradually, I began to question the old mentality. I began to be more open about what I found value in, and learned to share my pain and my fears with friends instead of hiding them behind a perma-smile. I started to be kinder to myself, and to be frank that, as effective as it had been for me and my career, I just didn’t see the point in suffering for the sake of a climb anymore. In letting go of that, I was surprised to find a new kind of strength — something perhaps truer and more durable than the ability to just plow through.

    Students, read both articles and then tell us:

    • Are you attracted to physical challenges in general? What are some of the things you have done to push yourself? What emotional or physical effects did they have on you?

    • Whom do you relate to more — an athlete like Ms. Paris who challenges herself to win, even at great physical cost, or one like Ms. Rodden, who has goals but is more interested in taking care of herself than suffering?

    • To what extent do you — or those around you — believe that people should “suck it up” in order to achieve their goals? How has that attitude affected your life, whether in sports, at school, at work, or even in your relationships?

    • Do you think Ms. Rodden is right that the world of sports is “starting to embrace a softer kind of strength?” Do you think that “taking care of ourselves, whatever that looks like, can now be as celebrated as dodging death for a summit” — or will going to extremes always be rewarded?

    • “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Barkley,” Ms. Paris says in the article, “it’s that you never know what you are capable of until you try.” Do you agree with this sentiment in general? How does it apply to your life in terms of sports or anything else?

    • What athletes do you admire most? To what extent do you think they push themselves to extremes? What have you learned from them?

    Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.

    Find more Student Opinion questions here. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate these prompts into your classroom.

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