Hi everybody it's Sam at Mixed Up Crowd, thank you for watching my tutorial today. This kick starts this year's creative card series 2019. So for those of you that have been with me for a while now will know that this basically just means that I'm now going to be making loads of cards. So the series is just really focusing on fun fold cards, unusual cards, pop-up cards, cards with a difference and that's kind of what I do a lot anyway but I also like to just kind of combine really fun cards within a kind of small window. So this is probably going to be, I'm thinking maybe within the week back to back but it might go over two weeks so anyway you just now know that every tutorial I bring out is going to be a card for possibly two weeks. So this is the third year now so I will link in the other 2018 and 2017 series because there's some really fun cards in there and lots of inspiration. So this first one is a pop-up box card so you would have seen these lots of these I've already made the envelope and everything but this this is a bigger size and this is a six by two so when it folds flat it will go in an eight by six and a half envelope which is on the envelope punch board okay so that's my envelope already there but how gorgeous is this and then on the back here you have your space to write your message but look at all that lovely color I just love how these fold completely flat which you can obviously post them easily but isn't that lovely so I have made box cards before but I haven't made one this big in terms of the length I've gone higher I've done some tiny little ones and I love this little planter style which I've done before and again look into that playlist there because you'll see others for more inspiration but it stands up perfectly it's got such a pretty profile and I love making these now the inspiration to do these has come from so this is the pop-up box kit and this is from Papercraft Essentials issue 176 so this is currently July 2019 issue okay and the inspiration on the front there using it is this pop-up box card and I thought hmm I really like it and let's see how I can adapt it and here's my version so the kit's brilliant I will link the magazine below and inside here you get so much stuff so let me just get all this out here I've got some bits that I've already obviously been using so I'll probably use them in the one that I'm going to do now you get all of these little foam squares little adhesive pads there and then inside here we go here's a template so if you want to have you know that tall box card that's on the front here's the template to make it you just draw through these draw around it and then cut it all out so that's handy to keep to one side but I've done this one myself so what you get in the kit is papers at the back which are all double sided beautiful designs you can see there and on the back you get popa dots or you got that one there as well with the little watering can so there's loads of papers but then the best bit is all these lovely pop outs so you get all these different flowers and sprigs and they're all on really thick about 300 gsm card and they're all different I think there's a few duplicates look at this one here with the plant pot yes you must get two of each because there's two of that one and then I've already used one of the big flower here in fact it was mainly that one no it wasn't yeah it was they used a lot of from that one you've got these here I've used that one in that then you get your sentiment toppers so use the birthday one so I might use this one here on your birthday for this next one that's ones that I've already started using look how much you get so much so it's well worth it and I think that magazine is only let me just have a quick look seven nine no six ninety nine so you can make a lot of cards with this okay so I'll leave that one there this is what you're going to need today so for the sentiment on the back I've used the happy birthday and that's from the occasions stamp set by dovecraft but you also have general which is this one here what was it the other way around I think that's the right way these are a bargain the two pound each on amazon so again I will link them below because I've already been using them loads so you're going to see them feature probably all the time this is how you make the card lots of strips of cardstock so it's a perfect one to use any scraps that you might have you don't have to cut into any of your main card for this one so you need let me just pop them to one side because there are inside pieces so the main strips for the front and back okay so everything is half an inch apart from those which I'll talk to you here in a minute so these are half an inch by six and you want eight pieces so it's going to be four on the front and four on the back and then these here again half an inch and you want eight of them and they're all two inches long okay so half an inch by two and you need eight of them half an inch by six and you need eight of them then these are seven by half an inch and you want two and these are going to be our kind of pieces in the middle to be able to stick all of our pop-ups onto and you just want to score along the seven inch side you want to score it half an inch and six and a half on both pieces fold and that will give you these little tabs and that's how we will attach it to our pop-up box then to create the four hinges on each corner you want four pieces that are one inch by three and a quarter I think it's just nice to have this like little bit where it kind of like overhangs so that's why I done the three and a quarter so again you want four of them and then along the one inch side you just want to score it half an inch and just fold all of those okay then this piece here for the back to write my message on my pattern paper is two and a half by four and a half and the white in the middle is two by four and I've just stamped that now so that's already so first of all you want to grab one of your hinges okay and leave those bits to one side and first of all we're going to be working with the longer pieces all right so you're going to use four of these first of all and all you want to do is dab some glue in kind of four places so just equally spaced I've got four blobs of glue there if you've got a glue that dries clear and not sticky or tacky that's what you want so it doesn't matter if you go over the edges because you're not going to see any of this alternatively you can put the glue on here if you want but I find it easier to put it on the hinge and then you want to stick them if you use your grid to keep everything lined up so I'm just going to follow this line here and I've come down by about about a quarter just under a quarter of an inch then the next one it's entirely up to you how you want to space these but just make sure that the key is to keep it all straight and then that one so it doesn't matter what the gap is doesn't matter if one's bigger than the other and then the bottom so again I'm leaving the same kind of gap as I have at the top and just stick them all down like so then I'm going to add glue now to the other side so flip it over and just add some glue to each of those grab another hinge flip it back over again and pop it all in making sure it's all lined up so I'm using this bottom line in this corner here for that hold that there and then I can make sure this is still lined up there and just push them all down keeping everything nice and straight that's the hardest part of doing this keeping it all straight and make sure it's butted up to the score line the fold there and kind of fold that over as well if you want just to add some more pressure okay so now we've already created the front or the back then you want to grab four of the smaller pieces okay pop it on its side and again just you can follow now where you've stuck the ones before as to where you need to put the glue so again see that I've just put three blobs and now you're going to do the same but with the shorter pieces this time all you've got to do now is line it up with this here or as close as you can again butting it up to the score line so I just kind of tack them all in place and then I can kind of wiggle them around a little bit so line it all up again like so okay you can fold that over there again when you fold them over can you see they run perfectly over the ones there maybe that one can be moved a bit but that's what you want to kind of aim for then flip it over I'm going to add the glue to the outer sides of these pieces okay then grab another hinge and this time pop it on there again keeping everything all lined up because you don't want to have a wonky pop-up card you know when you go to a restaurant and your table wobbles you've got to put some tissue under one of the legs that's what could happen with this if you don't get all these straight okay and then again I'm going to grab those other four small ones and just stick them all in again I'm lining it up okay and then flip that one over pop the last hinge on okay so that's where you need to be now so at the moment it kind of looks like a bit of a farmyard kind of gate or something next you want these pieces where you scored so these are our little kind of pieces that are going to hold all the pop-ups that are going to go inside so it doesn't at this point it doesn't matter if this is the front or the back because they look exactly the same but you want to open this out slightly okay you're going to add some glue onto one of the tabs here on any one actually before you do that what you might want to also do is just take a little wedge off of these so you're creating a tab because otherwise some of it may overhang and you don't want this to be seen you see they've just taken a little bit off just to kind of yeah just make it a little bit smaller and then so actually I'm going to have this as my front okay so these four pieces here will be the front once we put that on so you want to come down to the second one and you want to kind of line up the fold here this folded bit with this outer part of this hinge here so there's that piece there and I'm going to stick it on the second one but line it up with that hinge there okay just stick that in place for a second whilst that one's kind of drying keeping everything straight let's have it hang that way there we go I'm just going to take these little wedges off here for this one this end here is going to come to the end here so the fold should kind of roughly line up with the hinge here I'm just going to fold that over okay so you can see there you've got the two stuck together if I bring it up can you see so this fold is lined up with the outer part of this hinge here and then this one I've stuck so it's almost there but the hinge kind of lines up with this one okay it doesn't have to be exact but that's roughly where I've lined them up so if I bring this across you can see how they're going to sit okay then what you want to do is fold them down so now they are lying across that they're lying on top of each other add some glue to the tops of each of those tabs make sure you don't get glue on anywhere else you just want to get the glue on the two tabs okay like so and then this one as long as it's lined up with the panel that's underneath them both if you just fold that right down across it should all hide behind that one there and just put some pressure on that for a minute and already you know that your card is going to lie flat because that is the that is the way it's going to be so that's completely flat even by the time we put them on it will still lie nice and flat so now when I bring that over you've got your pieces inside to be able to stick everything to so it's a really easy way to do it and to make sure everything lines up so you might find now when you go to fold it that way flat it won't quite go because we stuck it in that formation so that is now the way that this will always fold flat so that could be the front now if I wanted to and that that's how it would be in the envelope okay so I'm going to turn it back over and then if you just lift up these pieces here and then again I'm just going to add blobs of glue in line with these because I know that's where these next pieces are going to go so I'm going to bring it out like this and keep everything nice and flat and just stick them up to the school line again using my grid here to make sure everything stays nice and straight and just lie those four down okay fold all of that in and then you can just add some glue onto the tops of those four fold that hinge kind of in and just kind of tack them all in place and if you fold it all flat and you can line them all up with the ones underneath and can you see everything should line up with each other so spend some time in it obviously you know I've done a lot of these now so I can do it pretty quickly but it isn't hard you know it's not hard to do and it shouldn't take too long as long as you just follow that way and there you have your little pop up now if you wanted to stick them up higher here you can I like to stick them one down a bit just so you don't really see it look looking through there you wouldn't know that they're in there okay but if you want to have them right up here but we can stick on here as well so they're in there they're stuck down on this second one here but I've also stuck pieces you know behind and in front here as well okay so that is the box that's it everything now is up to you how you want to decorate it but a little tip on how to make sure you want to keep it all within that envelope okay so I've just pulled all these pieces out now you don't have to have this kit to make this card you can use any you know die cuts you can use any other kind of pre die cuts that you might have anything you want stamped images it's entirely up to you so now what I would say is get the first one down and one of the largest ones down first at the highest height because from there you know that that you can't go any higher than that so everything else will kind of work its way around so I think I'm going to go for probably this one in the middle so I'm going to lie that down in the way you'll know because one way it won't really want to go this is the way that it wants to fold flat so when I lay this down here it will come slightly over eight inches which is fine okay each of these squares is an inch so one two three four five six so here is my highest point I don't want to go any higher than that otherwise it's not going to fit in my envelope and you also don't want to go over you know the eight and a bit there and this line here because again it won't fit in the envelope so I know that I can stick that one there so that's going to be my highest point so I'm going to bring in some acetate here I've got a strong acetate I think this was just left over from some packaging and I'm just cutting random strips they're about half an inch and then I'm just going to half that again so I've got about half an inch by about two and a half inches and I'm going to use my red tape for all of this because it sticks well to the acetate and obviously to the paper as well but I'm just going to run a little strip along the top of the acetate there this is the same way that I've done all of these kind of boxes I like to use the acetate because it looks like they're floating but if you don't have acetate just use you know white card it's fine because you're actually adding so much stuff that you can't actually really see if there was white kind of you know pieces like this rather than acetate so but some of the ones I've done you can they really look like the floating so I'm just going to lift this one back up and I'm just going to stick that behind it like so then I'm going to add no then I'm going to pop it in bearing in mind I know it's going to come down to this second section here so when I sit that in there that is going to fit perfectly so I'm just going to run some sticky tapes what you don't want to do is sticking out but you can easily cut it away even once you've stuck it down because you can pop your scissors in from the side here and you can cut it away or you can go in from the top it's up to you if I just bring this back down so it's all lined up you don't need to do this for the first one and maybe check it every now and then one two three so now I'm going to stick this bearing in mind you're working within this section in terms of your display because you can see everything is within that six inch section here this is just your side piece so you don't want to don't look at this whole piece and think halfway it's like here you want to just look within this six inch section here so I'm going to pop this in and I can see where the second one is because I want to make sure I stick it in between and I'm going to have it just there so now I want to bring it up that pops up and I've stuck it on the first one okay so that's my highest point so now if I add this yellow one I know I can stick it just there on the second one but I know that's as high as I need to go so again I'm going to cut another piece of my acetate in fact I've got a piece here and I know this is roughly the same kind of height so I'm going to again add some double-sided tape and popped it on the bottom one there and then I'm going to stick it on that back one like so so there's two in place now then I like to put some on the front even at this early stage because it starts to fill in kind of gaps and helps you then place other pieces so for example this one here I actually think I'm going to have crawling up the side there from the wall so that one's from the ground so that one's really easy to just stick straight down like so and then I'm going to have I think maybe this one here like so I'm going to have maybe that yellow one there actually and then I can add a little leaf behind it I love doing these I just love building up these little scenes and I'll cut a few other pieces in a minute so you see what I mean already now that's starting to feel like kind of this gap here okay so that's what you want to do so I'm going to now add I think this pink one here just to kind of balance out there and then I'll put another largest one there okay so that's those four so now when you fold it flat you can see where you've got space to be able to have things like flourishes like leaves so I could have you know a leaf coming out here but again you don't want it to go any further than this line here because it won't go in your envelope and I'm not going to stick them like that but I could have something like that and then when it opens up do you get what I'm trying to say so every now and then just lie it down flat and make sure you're all within that area because you don't want to do all that hard work and then find you well you can't make an envelope and you've got to buy like a big white one or something so I'm now just going to carry on decorating it with your message here this piece will just stick on the back there so all I've done was ran a bead of glue along the outside and then just rough ones there because you can kind of see where it sits and then just make sure you get in the center okay so I'm going to carry on decorating this I've also got my happy birthday I don't think I'm going to use that one I'm going to pick another one okay so there is my finished card I absolutely adore it I think it looks so cute I put this one here sending special birthday wishes and you can see there I've got a little butterfly in the back I've added these all these little extras yeah looks really cute so all falls flat you see nothing is overhanging I think my butterfly I may have to like I don't know I should be able to peel it off because it's on like a glossy paper but I might have to move him but for the minute okay so you want a piece of 11.5 by 11.5 this is the paper from the secret garden collection and for the six by eight and a half it's the the last one card size six by eight and a half that's what this will be so it's 11.5 by 11.5 paper size so it's saying your first score line needs to be four and seven eighths of an inch so I'm just lining that up with the four and seven eighths punching and scoring if you haven't used an envelope punch board I will link in a tutorial now where I use it and then that one there and then you just need to line up these lines now obviously this is the largest size so it goes doesn't go all the way I can't score all the way there so I'm just kind of eyeballing this but it works you can fold it first if you want I'm being lazy but you want to line up this here with this score line and then you know it's okay here we go and then just fold and burnish all of your score lines and I want to make sure I've got it up the right way because I've got it upside down on the other one but it's not the end of the world and then on your bottom you want to of the inside flaps you just want to add some tape so I've just got some double-sided thin tape here and I'm also what I've got it going to run two strips here you can buy the envelope glue where you run a thin amount along here and then if you sell your cards whoever you give it to or if they buy it from you they can then once it dries you can lick it and it will seal it so it gives it a professional finish but I'm quite happy to use the double-sided tape but the that glue is out there if you want to so then I'm going to just fold that up and then see how this works inside I'm going to have to just trim I didn't think about this one here that's me saying make sure you keep testing it I'm going to try and just take otherwise I'm just going to have to move it in a little bit I don't it's only catching ever so slightly because the envelopes although they say that size they're always again slightly bigger she do have a little bit of extra yeah that's fine I can get it in now I don't want to have to move it and I just make sure you don't catch it on anything as it goes in I'm just being a bit careful here oh no I think I'm okay yeah I can just get away with that so now I can fold that over yeah it fits in fine I'm happy with that I'm not going to play around I might shift that across just a little bit just in case I do end up someone ends up buying this one from me probably won't I'll probably end up actually giving these to someone it does come out all right but I think I might just shift it just across a little bit but no it's turned out really nice so that's that one and there's the other one two I think absolutely stunning pop-up cards love these so much so I hope you like the first card for this year's creative card series 2019 I have some really fun cards to share with you I can't wait for it and I can't wait to see your versions of them once you start making them as well so hope you've enjoyed today please give me a thumbs up check the description box below for all of links and things like that to the products that I've used and I'll be back again very soon with another card tutorial thanks for watching bye


This summer, students from the Montgomery County Maryland School System spent a week learning what we do at the NRC. This is the second year we've hosted students for the A Week at the NRC program. Students earned this opportunity in one of three ways. By placing in the top three NRC award categories at the 2018 Montgomery County Science Fair, by participating in a 2018 summer high school internship at the NRC, or by receiving a recommendation from their STEM teachers. I did a science fair project and my science fair project was on the statistical analysis of outliers. So I studied different data sets and determined the outliers and determined how they're different from the rest of the population. And so the NRC, surprisingly, they came to my project and they want to know more about it. And so I qualified for their summer program. Well, student STEM programs like A Week at the NRC are, in my opinion, a win-win-win activity. It's a win for the students. They get to come in and see what we do here at the NRC, meet the staff, see scientists in their natural environment doing technical work. It's a win for the technical staff, both the organizers and also for the presenters who have to present to these high school students. These are really sharp high school students and they ask really hard questions and they're really inquisitive. And it's also a win for the NRC as a whole because the NRC is getting 11 or 12 ambassadors into the community of students who have seen what we do here, seen our commitment and our passion towards our mission and our technical work. During the week, the students heard presentations from experts on topics such as nuclear materials, basic reactor concepts, new and advanced reactors, the NRC inspection program, and emergency planning and incident response. Students met with judges Roy Hawkins and Paul Bolwork of the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board panel, the independent adjudicatory body of the NRC. And they heard from Nuclear Security and Incident Response staff on cybersecurity at nuclear facilities, which was a popular presentation with the students. My favorite segment of this week has been our cybersecurity presentation earlier today. It was really interesting to see how the NRC has responded to global cybersecurity issues and how they always get back on their feet regardless of what kinds of compromises happen around the world and how they're so quick to respond in these high technological activities. To keep the students engaged, we plan several hands-on activities. They spend some time at our Professional Development Center, learning about nuclear plant equipment and important nuclear concepts like the half-life of radioactive materials. And of course, the students got to dress out in radiation protection gear like an NRC inspector. Putting on the boots, putting on the gloves and putting on the hood and everything, it was just really fun and it was really interactive. And I think it was great to know what workers are doing every day, like they're dressing up in these uniforms and they're going out into the field, going into the reactors to inspect them. The students logged some time on the reactor simulator used by NRC human factors researchers. They experienced the complexities of operating a nuclear plant and how important the NRC's work is. They were even tested with some unusual circumstances that caused alarms to sound. To demonstrate what they were learning, the students chose NRC-related topics on which to focus and present on later in their week, such as the regulation of radioisotopes and the reactor oversight process. I did my project on the Three Mile Island crisis and how, 30 years later, how it changed the NRC, how the events, the lessons that the NRC learned during that crisis, how it changed the way regulation procedures happen now and how the improvements that the NRC has made based off of that crisis. After a graduation ceremony attended by NRC commissioners Stephen Burns and David Wright and other staff, the students spent their final day down the street from the NRC at the Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology. There they were treated to a tour of the NIST Museum and saw firsthand some research conducted using an NRC licensed research and test reactor. We hope the students had some fun and learned a lot while exploring the NRC. I think the ALEE program is important to the students because it gives the students an opportunity to understand what NRC's mission is, how we regulate. It also gives the students the confidence to interact with NRC subject matters experts and interact with their peers. And lastly, it gives them the opportunity to think about careers that they may not have thought of.


Making it in New York, doing anything is hard, especially without a whole lot of financial backing. And these people right here that you're about to meet are doing it all for the culture and their own passions. This is the underdogs. What is up, people? Have you ever felt like the underdog?  I will tell you this, David and I, being the Fung Bros, we definitely have felt that way. Over the years of doing a lot of food videos, we got to know a lot of restaurant owners, and one thing that I learned is that it is really, really hard to open up your own restaurant, let alone be successful. So that's what I wanted to do in this video today. I wanted you guys to meet five new business owners that we know and have them tell you about their underdog story. Before we get into that, I wanna give a big shout out to YouTube Red for sponsoring this video. I wanna tell you guys about a new YouTube original series called Cobra Kai. It is based off of the original Karate Kid series from 30 years back, after that epic iconic fight where Daniel pretty much hits him with the boom, boom. One like a kick crane. It's about being an underdog and it's about redemption. And if you guys see the trailer, there's a link down below. Basically the first two episodes are free, starting May 2nd on YouTube Red. So definitely make sure you check out that YouTube Red original series when it comes out. But right now, without further ado, let's go meet these underdogs. Hi, I'm Kushal from Pittsburgh. My family is from China, originally. So I came to New York as a hungry young person thinking I wanna be an industry that's meritocratic. And I wanted to understand how the world kinda works. So actually I worked in finance for five years. And when you wanna open up my own business, I've always been more entrepreneurial. I've a lot of ideas of how things can and should be done. Why matcha? I've never been a coffee person. So matcha as a product, when I drink it, it makes me feel more relaxed. Like there's a lot of chemical stuff going on there. There's compound that are called L-phenine that kind of interacts with caffeine to make it slow release. Seem like a pretty calm dude. Is that reflective of you? Or sometimes too calm. Sometimes I have too much matcha.  We have a less than scrupulous landlord. And we had a leak that kind of closed us down for a week. And we lost a lot of momentum after having a strong start the first two months.  And then having worked through that, you realize nothing really matters, but your happiness and the people around you. So Zen, man. I'm an underdog because I don't have any restaurant experience or any ex for financial help. And my partner left the business a few months after we started. But I always bet on myself because I focus on the core of the service and product. And I know I can put my heart and soul into this business. Okay, all right. That was Zen Chai. I'm really glad we got to talk to Chris. He's a really smart guy. Definitely check out this spot. If you've ever come to the Lower East Side, chill Zen vibes. All right, so our next spot is a coffee shop called Cabecera Cafe. It's opened by a lady named Chanita. She's got an interesting story. Let's go talk to her. Cabecera Cafe is a neighborhood Filipino art cafe dedicated to making art customers happy. We opened Cabecera Cafe because we wanted to bring some of that Filipino family love to the Lower East Side. All right, I am here with Jeannette and Chanita from Cabecera Cafe. Thank you for making this adobo sandwich. How would you guys describe your spot? This is the extension of your living room. I know every single, yeah, every single customer that came into our coffee shop. I do memorize their names. And what's their favorite? The DJ is coming from the FBI. The full-blooded Igrot? I am Ilocano as well, coming from Tarla. How are you guys trying to show Filipino culture in a different way? First food, we want to make sure that the food has a personal touch and we want to make sure that it has the taste of a Filipino. Once a month, we're trying to take the baraco coffee, which is the locally grown coffee in the Philippines, and give it your tasting. And this becomes a very favorite hangout spot of Filipinos in the city. And of course, the art that's in here, you know, that's one factor that draws people. Exactly, yeah, yeah. An art gallery because this location, the lower east side, is an art gallery area. She does a lot of art. She puts ants and dogs. So I have to make sure that we are getting in there, did not disappointing any customer. We just noticed that everybody that comes in goes out with a smile. How can you walk out of here with a frown on your face? You look at one thing, you go. You don't have a sign outside, we had a sign inside. What I'm going to do right now for you is our exclusive drinks, almond chitado. Wow, between these two, I'm just double fisting this. We are an underdog because there's a lot of copies in New York City, but none of them are Filipino influence. So we are exposing people something new. Definitely, me and David can relate to what Jeanette and Shanita are trying to do. You know, fuse their culture into something that people are not used to them seeing. Minorities aren't the only people who can be underdogs. Even like this guy, Ted behind the camera right here. Ted, come over here, man. You were telling me before that even you feel somewhat like an underdog in what you're trying to do. Yeah, so I just recently moved from New York, from Arizona, not from an entertainment background. Don't have a ton of financial backing. And so it's hard to make it as a cinematographer in the city and as a new YouTuber. Anybody who kind of has like these barriers or maybe lack of systems to do something, you know, generally I would say that's an underdog story. And that brings us to our next spot. It is a guy who was also in the professional route but decided to work in the kitchen and now owns a small restaurant, Tongkatsu. Let's hear his story. I'm Ben Tong. I own a cozy Japanese fusion comfort food restaurant in the Lower East Side. I opened Tongkatsu because even though I started as an engineer, I naturally had a passion for food. I wanted to create a space so I could interact with the customers I served. What's going on, everybody? I am here with Ben Tong of Tongkatsu. That's from the name, Tong Tongkatsu. Let's try to create like a real quick business name, you know, because everything moved really quickly to the spot and between finding the location and signing the lease, it was like a five day period. Went to school in Los Angeles, California at UCLA, dropped out engineering school for about a semester or so. Found out I really enjoyed cooking and sharing food with people. It just felt so natural and so, so motivating. Talking about the struggles, as I can see there's a door lying here. Second month being open, I opened my door on Saturday morning. The bottom hinge of my door breaks off so I couldn't open. So, you know, that really definitely hurts. There's a lot of things that I had to adjust in the kitchen, you know. I had to develop the concept to kind of fit what is logistically possible for the small kitchen. You know, I had a deep fire, an oven that didn't work, a grill that didn't work. I kind of changed my concept to fit what was possible. So far, most, everyone has been really enjoying my food and seem to be happy that I am here in their neighborhood, you know, the Lower East Side. I'm an underdog because I'm alone in this venture. I don't have a chef or partner to rely on. I do the accounting and cooking and I've only been open for three months, so I'm still fingering it all out. All right, we are here on Eldridge Street in the Lower East Side, pretty much in Chinatown, and we are here at Avocado Appetite with James. How would you describe this restaurant in like one sentence? We are a healthy, deem avocado-based restaurant that try to promote a lifestyle out to public, especially to the Chinese community out here. People say that we're an underdog because we are young. As for myself, I'm only 25 and my partner's also around the early 20s. We, this is our first project and everyone else doubted, everybody else doubted us. They did not think that we would succeed because we're Asian, getting into avocado-deem restaurants, but I want to promote the lifestyle to everybody in the Chinese community. Back then, I used to be like 200 pounds over, but all I ate was avocado and I lost like 40 pounds over the half a year. Avocado did so much for me, and I really want to promote avocado back to the community and like give back to avocado. Yo, you are a avocado evangelist, man. You're spreading the word. Thank you so much. All right, everybody, that was Avocado Appetite. That was James. Definitely check out this spot if you're ever in the Lower East Side Chinatown area. Good vibes, good lighting. Check it out. So as you can see, Tay is like the only guy behind the counter, so he's a little bit stressed right now. I am here with Tay from Kona Coffee, man. Thank you very much. Quickly explain to me Kona Coffee. So Kona Coffee is the only coffee that grows in the United States and because it's from Hawaii and as you know, I grew up in Hawaii, basically bringing Hawaii to New York City. We wanted to provide good space where they can relax. Korean American coffee is huge in Korea as well. And you know, even in Korea where the market is really competitive, especially in coffee shops, Kona did really well in Seoul. So I'm an underdog because, you know, I'm the only guy here who runs the shop and I'm trying to educate people about Kona Coffee, which is really not a thing yet, but I believe in my coffee and I know it's gonna, you know, success. Come to my shop and taste Hawaii. All right everybody, yo, thank you so much for watching that video and big shout out to the new YouTube red original series Cobra Kai that's coming out on May 2nd. First two episodes are free, definitely check it out. You know, underdog story about redemption based off the iconic karate kid movie with the same actors. It's gonna be funny. I didn't wanna make it sound like owning a small business in New York is only a lot of trouble. There's a lot of glory. There's a lot of love and passion behind it. There's a lot of fun behind it because, you know, it is true, man. If you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere. It means so much to do it in the city and that's why people are going through so much trouble to do it. So definitely check out these spots if you guys ever come to New York because these are spots that I personally go to and whose products and service I personally like. And I was so glad to cover it in this video.


cheap everyone does in here check this place out just leaving the neat stuff on it a hospital it's pretty cool and we'll set this off for a minute YouTube I'll be back in a second don't know what this place was YouTube okay if the color looks funny it's because I brought out the full spectrum in case I could get in here look pretty dark so I can night vision it for you there's a place in right there and there's houses right across the street sorry about the language YouTube does this fucking creepy big giant ass rolls of paper here that's what these are okay I don't know if you heard that I just don't know what it was you know I heard something in there I like to move walk right down the steps I'm gonna shut off the night vision I think this was made into a haunted house always black vinyl things up in the way that's all like that like a maze all right I'm gonna videotape this with the samson on the way out I don't know anything about this place but I'm gonna try to google it for you before upload this and see what we can come up with but the ceiling's all black I'm guessing it was a haunted house at one time so I'm going to the other camera it was definitely a haunted house and this it's it said make a good one that's for damn sure I wish I knew more to tell you about it so if I if I can't find anything on google for you I'm sorry that haunted house goes way back into this little section it's just back in there floorboards from upstairs glad poo bearing in here she's upstairs and this time we'd get her falling down through hey poo bearer what's up man glad you could drop in it I'd like to say she's okay now and I'm glad she is going to have to roll a paper a lot of big giant rolls of paper that are wet thousands of pounds YouTube I'm gonna keep filming but we're heading out of here my poo bearer wants to come back and we know my baby girl with this you know kind of watch her real close now we don't want anybody getting hurt especially a child you know I mean we're not going to put any of our children in danger like this all right I don't know if you can see this there's a couple all right one more floor there's a ladder going up and somewhere let's turn the slide on it's a big tank oops my bad but downstairs man I could have sworn I seen the shadow somebody walked by okay this is the wood floor and it looks very not going back in there I can feel the floorboards moving I can feel it I can feel it I can feel floorboards moving I'm hearing stuff I gotta get out of here real quick like hand footsteps and people walk around we gotta go YouTube but anyway poo bear ones come back do this and when I came in these places the upstairs is definitely very unsafe poo bear will not be going upstairs in this one regardless because if I ain't going she ain't going and we know what her track record's like track record's like but just wanted to share this with you I mean like I said must be must have been some kind of paper mill maybe all them rolls of paper like I said YouTube never repeat myself I'm sorry but this is an awesome place I want to see what I can find out on Google as you can see I mean the brick are different colors so it's apparently been built on this place huge we we was only all probably in about a fourth of it hi YouTube she bear poo bear we're gone


Hey, what is up Electric Academy? This is episode one. I've been promising it. Sorry. It didn't happen last night I had a few technical issues my internet went down so I couldn't get it up That's not as bad my internet went down so I couldn't broadcast So today we're gonna be I'm gonna be giving you four tips to my morning routine Why I think they're important and why I think you guys should consider them to F Yeah, not if I so here we go I just for those of you who don't know me. My name is Chad Flynn I am an electrical instructor as well as an electrical contractor So I've got my hands in both things I love teaching and I have been teaching now for it'll be eight years in the September. I cannot even believe it Hey, Matthew, I can't even believe that it's been that long But it has been amazing and like I tell all my students who've had me that I'll be dragged kicking and screaming from teaching. It's something I'm passionate about but I also love being an electrician So I decided to marry the two things together and start the electric Academy I've been running that now for two years and it's been going pretty good. I've been really enjoying it So hopefully you guys been enjoying it, too Yeah, so I also teach an entrepreneurship course for trades So if you're ever interested or have questions about that sort of thing about how to start up a trades company I am your man. I also have another page called app to CEO So you can check that out. I also have a Facebook group. This is going through my Facebook Fan page, but there's a Facebook group, which I will send the rebroadcast to so you can check that out there So let's get started I had a podcast or had I have a podcast and I thought I have a lot of fun with these Facebook lives And why not kind of marry the two of them together? So I had one more podcast to go in my first season I've promised ten episodes in I'm at ten episodes as of today because what I'm going to do is I'm going to Take the audio from this and turn it into a podcast. It's just amazing time. We live in So enough about that. Let's talk about our morning routines and why it's important as electricians and as Students there are electrical apprentices out there. You guys know that it's important Or you should know it's important because there's two scenarios that can happen Now if you get up in the morning and you set your alarm to the as late as possible You're going to find that you are darting out of bed. You are running to get your keys and stuff You're wondering where things are you're feeling rushed and out of sorts by the time you get to school or to work You still feel kind of out of sorts because you haven't had time to Get things figured out and you are not loving it So that's one situation one scenario the next scenario Could be that the night before you get everything ready You get your coffee kind of ready to go in the automatic mode I don't know if some of you know that your coffee maker does have an automatic mode So you can set it to that You get your keys found you get your wallet found you get your lunch made so that when you get up in the morning You know where everything is at and you can have a nice leisurely breakfast if you choose But at least you know where your work stuff is and then when you're going you're not dashing around now I used to be just so bad for that. I used to be running around the house I would always lose my keys or not remember where I put them. I would always lose my wallet I would never have my lunch made I would just feel absolutely stressed out by the time I left for work And by the time I got to work because traffic is not easy here in the lower mainland of bc I'd be just as stressed out So that's where I started coming up with my morning routine and why it's important So number one the tip number one and if you guys are tracking with this If you can hit a like down in the comment hit the like button there That'd be great or any comment along the way there Especially I know some of you guys are going to be watching the replays So you can check that out and you can still give me likes and I'm going to put this on youtube It's going to be everywhere. So first thing And you're going to notice I'm going to be looking at my notes once in a while because I prepared for this Is your night or your day begins your morning routine starts the night before so the first thing I do Before I start any night or morning routine is I get it ready the night before so the night before I always make my lunch I always get my coffee ready. I get my backpack ready. So if I'm going to school I make sure that my laptop's in there.  I find my work boots all that fun stuff I get my clothes figured out. I generally I know it sounds a little OCD But I get them laid out the night before I find my wallet and my keys the night before There's nothing worse and I'm not sure that we can all relate to this Losing your wallet and keys So you got to keep at this habit of getting all that stuff ready If you get all this stuff ready by the time you get up in the morning You are good to go and it's ready to go Now my next thing when I get up in the morning The first thing I do is I come down the stairs I grab a big glass of water because if you think about it Your body has not had any water for eight hours. If you're sleeping eight hours That's another whole other discussion. Make sure you're getting enough sleep I have a big glass of water and then I go meditate and it's summertime right now So what I do is I go out onto my patio And I just I set my timer on my phone to 20 minutes and I meditate Now meditation is not just for monks and it's not just some woo woo fru fru thing Check it out online if you check out meditation You're going to find that there's a lot of scientific studies towards this If you're not into meditation, but you are a spiritual person perhaps times a prayer Or just times of silence Just take that time to kind of let your brain relax and find itself I have found and there's no joke if you talk to my wife I've been meditating now for two years It has been a game changer for me. It totally totally has changed my life So if you want to know more about that you can private message me I'm not going to get too much into it But there's lots of studies that show that meditation is not just a woo woo thing It does something it helps out your brain. It's scientifically proven So I take 20 minutes now. There's lots of apps out there There's an app that I used if you're just getting started called headspace It gives you I think it's 10 like 10 free weeks. I believe off the double check on that I'll give you a thing in the comment 10 free weeks of um It just guides you through it and teaches you how to do it and then there's other ones out there as well Now meditation is not let me just tell you what it is not it's not a spiritual new age practice It is definitely not that it's not only for the enlightened. It's not really difficult It's not only for hippies. It is not a waste of time It is something that it is meditation is A great way to quiet your mind to gain insight into your thought process So it's it's this whole thing of mindfulness and understanding where your thoughts are It's good for your brain. It has scientifically been proven that it's good for your brain A lot of successful business people practice this and it's a good way to get a jump on the day Just kind of quiets myself and gets me ready to go for the day So again, I could there's so much more that I could say about meditation. I'm not going to get into that Now it's worth your time. There's some apps that I've used. I used an app called calm It's a subscription based app. So it's something to look into Headspace is the one that I highly recommend because they've got little videos and stuff like that and the guy andy He's a former monk buddhist monk, but he's really down to earth and really easy to understand Simply being is another completely free app. That's a great one to test out Because it's uh, it's absolutely free. There's this woman that kind of guides you through it and gives us a nice calm voice And it's worth doing Okay, so that's my first thing I do. I get up have a glass of water go down and I meditate for 20 minutes And again, I would start out maybe five It's a lot harder than you think Trying to let your mind run off and get lost in your thoughts when you're just trying to concentrate on your breath Way harder than you think number two after so I get my water I meditate for 20 minutes The next thing I do is I journal and I know that sounds like I'm doing some sort of diary deer diary thing But I'm participating in this thing that's called a gratitude journal So what I do and it's just kind of it helps me get my mindset, right? But I write down So basically I just do a little free form writing I just whatever's on my mind to do that for a couple minutes And then I write down this is what I do. I go three things. I'm thankful for So I spend some time thinking about that and I write those down Then I write down three goals for my day. Now, whether those are concrete goals or they're more like Self-help type goals. That's totally up to you. I do a little bit of both And then what I do is I write myself a daily affirmation I know as I'm saying this it sounds a little woo, especially talking to tradespeople But honestly this puts your puts things into perspective, especially the thankfulness thing And then just so you know that so that's what I do So it's just three things that I'm thankful for three goals for the day and one little thing Affirmation like you know, I've I'm a great electrician and I'm good at my trade. It just kind of it pumps yourself up for the day Then at night. This is part of my night routine I take that same journal and I write in it three things that happened that day that I was thankful for So it's the last thing I do before I go to bed And honestly it helps me sleep so well because it puts me in a good mindset and a good way of thinking So that's something I I totally would recommend journaling now. It doesn't have to be written I know some people don't like the idea of writing in a journal like having to take on a moleskin and write down There's an app that I use called day one and there's a free version of it I've got the paid version that allows me to write on my mac and my ipad and my iphone But you can get free versions of these things or you can just write in your notes Or you can get if you got every note you can do it through that So that's something to consider. I find it's very very useful So it's something I would consider or I do and so I would definitely recommend to you guys Next is I exercise Both my mind and my body. So what I do is and I get up a little early I usually get up when I'm working on right now. I'm off for the summer But when I'm working I'm up at around 415 And out the door by seven Um now that I'm on a summer break. I get up at five But anyways, I exercise in my mind I make sure that I make time for at least 30 minutes of physical activity and that is huge Because you just you know, I know we're all working physical jobs and for those of us going to school It's easy to get into the to get that 15 pounds you get over those 10 weeks of school We all know what I'm talking about But also it's just great to get your blood going and even when I'm working on the tools And I do a lot of side jobs and sometimes in the summer projects will last a month or so Then I still get up and I do that run I go for a run every morning I'm doing this run cross train thing. It's so it's been working out great And honestly you think that it would exhaust you but it gives me way more energy than you would you could possibly think And those of you guys that understand or do this sort of thing like exercise every morning You know what I mean? It gives you lots more energy than you would think so definitely do that Then after my run I come back and I read for 10 minutes or what I do is I set myself 10 pages I've got to read 10 pages of something every day So it doesn't take that long. What do you think about it? 10 pages 10 minutes not that bad if you're not in a reading And I know some of you guys might not be into the reading maybe listen to a podcast Maybe watch a youtube video Just do something that's going to kind of build your brain up Because we all do things where we just let our mind go and it goes to mush And then this way by setting up your morning routine you're getting your brain primed and ready for work So it's starting to start thinking that's why I kind of start slow I start with the meditation and then I move into my journaling to get my mind working again Kind of thinking and then I go into the exercise and then I read and from there on then I'm ready to hit the day Then I have my breakfast and I shower and I'm out the door and I'm running off So that's my morning routine now. Here's my morning schedule Just so you know right now in the summertime my morning schedule is 5 a.m My alarm goes off. So I go down the stairs Grab a big glass of water pound it back then at 5 10. I'm outside right now I am meditating for 20 minutes at 5 30 I come inside and I journal so I do my gratitude journal Then at whatever time after that works out be and I try to get out there for a 30 minute run I take my dog some of you guys have seen the facebook lives that I've been posting the past couple days Grab my dog Molly and we go for run. I run to playground I do a little bit of cross training then I continue on my runs about 5k run Then I get home. I get ready for the day. I'll shower I'll help get the kids out the door for daycare And have breakfast in my days ago So that's my morning routine and it it works for me whether I'm working or not It sometimes requires getting up a little bit early So that might be a little bit on the thing if you're not a morning person It might be something you want to consider But uh, yeah, so some key points. I've got I've got these notes here and it's called my super action plan So be proactive the night before make sure you get all your stuff together Get your lunch ready your morning coffee ready get your bags figured out get your wallet and keys Those are the two two main things get your wallets and keys Med meditate or pray or take some quiet time. So at least five to 10 minutes I would suggest 20 the more I'm trying to push it more and more. I'm up to 20 minutes now Right in the journal Again, doesn't have to be much Just get this app called day one or use ebernote or use your notes app on your phone But just three things you're grateful for three goals You're hoping to accomplish that day and an affirmation and then they're not night three things that were awesome that day Then exercise make sure you get some sort of exercise in there. It's just such a good good healthy thing to do Then you got to read or listen You don't have to but I suggest read or listen to an ebook or a podcast or watch a youtube video And then you're ready to go good for the day So that's my morning routine. This is my first facebook live episode. So I'm super excited about this Hopefully I'm going to continue on this. I'm going to go for right now It might not be thursday It's gonna be thursday nights for the summer But then I'm teaching a night course come september. So I'll probably have to move it to wednesday nights or tuesday nights I'll see how you guys are doing with that I am going to I wrote an ebook for electrical students or not electrical students trade students called beyond the tools I'm going to leave a link to that There's it goes to a site called gumroad and it gives a price. It says it's kind of a pay what you want You guys put in zero dollars and you can get the pdf. It's like a 30 page thing It covers this morning routine But it also goes over study tips for tradespeople And it goes into the money tips for tradespeople So I'll make sure I link to that in my notes or in the comments below so look for the chad flinn name popping up And that's basically all I got So I know I said I was going to do this at six I had to do a little early because today we pumped up our Our pool we got a pool for the kids and they're absolutely flipped out and there's right now I don't know if you can hear them right now. They're outside screaming running around I got a four year old. I've got a three year old and I got a 14 year old So they're all having great time outside. So I thought I'd get it done early so I can get outside and have fun with them Hopefully you guys are enjoying your summer. It's I've been having an amazing summer It's uh, it's a little smoky here in Vancouver right now. It's crazy I feel so bad for the people who are actually up in the interior where the fires are happening We have a lot of fires going on in the bcm in canada So it's something to consider for that. It's uh, it's hazy as f out there. So Anyways, thanks for checking in the facebook live I'll be checking in daily. I keep doing these little morning rants Check in on those. I've been having some great talks about that Today I talked about the importance of pre twisting your wires in a marat. Yesterday I talked about backstabbing a receptacle So definitely check in. Thanks a lot guys. I hope you're enjoying your summer and I will see you guys on the flip of the flop Stay classy


Hahahaha It never gets old it just never gets old That that drop kick is probably the best move in the game. All right, let's saw knuckles Put that in my right hand And this is another iron, so I'll put that in my inventory He was on the yeah, I died on this floor in that open area My old body was in here. I feel like I think going here. Is this the open area? I'm kind of scared that's a lot of people okay and I throw we're gonna throw this sleep thing in here I hope that just happened and raise gals okay let's store that wow I I got a coat oh my gosh I can't believe that that's my first time doing a sneak attack like that so now I know oh no no she's blocking all of that all right we're gonna have to get a hot iron on her chat it's on Steve setting 10 this is one of my this is the first character I made chat it's coming back to kill me he's giggling boy I don't have any more heels I got the pumpkin but that's not a hill okay I definitely don't want I anymore bats I think this is where my character died no it isn't it was like a big circular ah making that noise I was like who's making noise there's a level nine over there that might be I don't have any more corbels I think it does my rage meter yeah I come in here and do this whoa it healed me I know that would heal me the pumpkin I mean I know it would heal me what's this that pumpkin is off the chain though here's where I died here it is the moment of truth chat where am I at where's my body alright don't get caught up like you did last time no he's tired you little jerk you broke my shirt I was using that that goes that I keep doing that I hate this thing the rain sucks so bad pay me my money I miss I think I just actually hurt myself this is the goofiest fight ever give me that coat I feel better now so I still haven't found my body who will meet this big heels oh this is where I died because I freaking didn't know how to do basic stuff my body is I know that's where I died oh stairs are here but I want to find my body if in your character was recovering your body so you already got it I haven't seen my character yet that was a old character that wasn't the one I just died I'm talking about the one that just died that you that yee-yee was a old character this game change a lot I'm not my first time playing it man I wouldn't know let me where's the zero zero gun all right it's called me Iron Man man or an air and air and air on air I made that jump please check the freezes he was forward on this world was on this one all right I guess I'll go up a floor and hope that there's a hope that there's an elevator there when I go up to get check to get the checkpoint all right well that's that's not that's not an elevator so that's not good and wasted that charge Iron Man chat I'm stuck man would you please run I need you to run I need you to run so I can eat this was a bad idea this was a very bad idea I regret everything chat oh oh stick a move stick a move that's bad okay this is bad too you guys cannot survive this I must go through you all with great theory and anger I'm okay I don't like fireworks launchers so I'm gonna it's like that's all they give me I hate this weapon so much I hate fireworks weapons so much oh it's a dude here is that baby on his neck oh gosh I'm not gonna be creeped out I haven't seen you around here before you know I only sell this death stranding freqle so I can't even talk to you because my bag is full I got trickery it's called trash I don't like this gun anyway oh it's you well I've got some real professional quality items in today so he sells materials so if you go on the vendor floor they sell materials oh it's judge people based on how they look materials and blueprints blueprints have a blue background right cuz for blueprints I need to get out of here cuz I got to go and if I leave this character dies so I got that I got to take him home to the freezer how do I get out how do I get up this floor I guess there's another way up on the floor below okay all right all right I'm gonna take this guy to the freezer now I'm gonna call tonight cuz it's 5 a.m. yep it's 5 a.m. tomorrow the layout will be different make sense tomorrow win is there a certain time a lot of messages they want me to come back to the arcade fine they respawn oh I can't fight them wait a minute not like this not like get your butt in here everybody respond once upon a time there was a guy named one that's called dead end no stop it you have no business doing that to me stop it I'm trying to get out of here chat all right here we go I'm pressing buttons and does happen time to equip the irons I'm gonna give you my special tea I call it permanent press fun chat yes put them on oh this run just got infinitely better I got a hammer and I got pants how do I get out of here like I'm legit loss the elevator is that way it's other way but I didn't see how they get out of here is just oh that was a close one chat that that pumpkin saved me man that pumpkin really see because I was good as dead I was good they had me cornered and everything I was lost I didn't bring I never brought the map so I was just like trying to go by memory and I had no idea no idea where I was going all right so the proper way to log out is to do it from here right just go start and quit game and I won't lose this guy right I won't lose this guy if I do it this way so I mean I haven't worked super hard on them but these level 13 so all right good all right I'm having fun I'm having fun with that this is fun


I'd like to welcome everyone to the plenary session. Roundtable discussion, working nine to five in your pajamas, life in the time of COVID-19. Presenting today or speaking on the piano will be John Foudreau from the University of Pittsburgh Libraries or a young University of North Carolina at Charlotte Graduate School, Elise Fox and Dana Dickman from Sacramento State University Library. And the moderators today are myself, Terry Green from the University of Toledo, and Stacey Wallace. And I don't know if Stacey is on here yet. I don't hear her. So I will just continue to go along. So before we begin, during the presentation portion, just keep your microphone muted unless you're a speaker. Please feel free to use the chat feature to pose questions. Those are going to be addressed during the Q&A portion. And then so I'd like to welcome everyone. And I'm going to go ahead and start asking each presenter a question whether they all received already. So let me do that. OK. So Dana, Elise, John, am I missing anyone? Whoever wants to answer first, you're each going to be asked to answer what is the most surprising change in your work life and your home life since March. I'm Elise Fox here. I can go ahead and get us started. I'm the library services specialist for digital projects at Sacramento State University. I would say probably the biggest change has been I had these preconceived notions that I was a home body and wanted to work remotely. I am neither of those things. As a mom with a toddler, I didn't realize how much I really relied upon going to work in that process of, I guess, the ritual of going to work and that commuting time to myself and even just having the social interaction of being with adults. And even if you're not personally socializing at work, the social aspect of working on projects together and being able to talk through bibliographic problems fulfilled a social quota that's been very hard to replace in a remote environment, especially out here in California. We've had incredibly strict guidelines under COVID. And recently with all of the wildfires, we haven't even been able to leave our house on a lot of days. So it's just been, there's always something new challenge underneath this kind of umbrella of the COVID pandemic challenge. So yeah, I think that transition to working exclusively remotely and not having that direct social interaction has been definitely a challenge. My email box now is a very convoluted hierarchy of folders and subfolders just to keep everything organized. So just kind of that readjustment to entirely email or app-based communication has definitely been a lesson in organization. I also transitioned immediately to going from having one student assistant to having 45 student assistants who are also themselves transitioning to remote schoolwork and remote work. So that was a huge learning curve and was definitely a challenge to keep that many people on the ship. I was sailing as we kind of did these trial and errors and resolve technology issues that come with remote work. So I think those are, I don't know if that solves any problems, but that's kind of my experience and the surprise that I just didn't really anticipate happening with working remotely or I didn't think at all through, I guess. Right, right. Thank you so much, Elise, for sharing that with us. Laura, can you go next? Yeah, well, I can relate to some of those problems a little bit. I'm a single mom, I'm an eight-year-old, and fortunately, I am an introvert. So I love working at home. It's great. And the biggest surprise, I think, was I've actually been pretty good at facilitating online events, and my supervisors were super happy about that. I conducted an orientation panel the other day that almost 800 students attended, and I never would have thought I would have done anything like that. But it has been pretty challenging, and it's going to feel really weird when we get back part-time in person soon. Thanks so much, Laura. Elise, are you still on the phone? Oh, Dana? Oh, Dana. OK, hi. Yeah. Hi. Yeah, so I have a new challenge, which is trying to attend and present at a conference with the electricity out, which I feel like at work, there would be some more options than what I have right now. But I had been at Sac State for about six months when we went home, and my prior job was actually primarily remote for a hospital system, where our library department was based across seven states. So I honestly didn't think it would feel like a huge change to work from home, but I was really wrong. My prior job was set up to be remote, and coming home this time, this was a huge adjustment for my colleagues because our library is very place-based. We are very much like a nine-to-five sort of library, as far as staff. I mean, obviously, we're open longer than that. The biggest change in my work life has been how complicated it's been to collaborate outside my department, because this was all new for us as a university. So I've been running into things like not everyone keeps their outlook calendar up to date. They don't all use the same communication platforms. So I can't just send out a calendar invite for a meeting like I could at my old remote job. I have some colleagues where I have to go back and forth on email a couple times. Elise and I, our department uses Slack. Our reference and instruction department uses Teams. So part of my job requires working with people in that department, but I'm not on the same platform as them. And then there's, of course, complications working with folks outside the library. I think another thing has been a lot of the people I work with are parents who are extra stressed since our K through 12 districts are still mostly remote as well. But on the whole, I am definitely lucky because I came into this with remote experience. I'm tech savvy and I have a job that transfers really well to being remote with pretty minor adjustments. I think the biggest change in my home life has just been how stir crazy I've been. Elise has mentioned we've had wildfires and smokes and not being able to go outside. And when I worked remotely before, I would often split up my day by working at cafes or libraries or just going for a walk. And of course, that's not as possible now. I can take walks, but that's about it. So this is just really not normal times, not normal working remote. I do love being able to do things like cook at home, do laundry at home during work. And yeah, I am lucky that I have a dedicated office space and I don't have childcare or child teaching to juggle. Thank you so much, Dana, for sharing. And I think I saw John on here. If you would like to share with us the most surprising thing to you since March. Yeah, sure. I guess the most surprising for me, probably the antithesis to Elise is sort of, I am also an introverted person in heart and we had recently moved into an open office setting and our office shifted. And that was completely what I didn't like at the time. And it was very interruptive. We were close to a large computer lab area where people would ask questions. And so being able to shift into, be able to set my own sort of timing for when I'm working on a lot of projects here, my daughter's also in middle school. So having that ability to help her with her projects and step away during the day. So I didn't have to have this sort of asynchronous with her was very positive. But I think the other side of it in terms of just work in general, being able to find the policies and procedures and things that weren't necessarily codified or put in place somewhere though, this is how this should work and be able to try and get those down in writing and post them somewhere and discuss them with the team and sort of iron out the issues that have been lingering for years. And a lot of our processes has been really positive. So I hate to say that it took a disaster to bring about change and small things, but it's a nice time to refresh and sort of do a cleaning house in that regard. So yeah. Awesome. Now all of our panel presenters today also received a list of possible topics that they could, you know, expound on. So since we already have John, John, do you wanna just lead the pack and let us know, you know, a little more information about one of the questions? Sure. Let's see. I wrote them down so we can take a look here. I guess I'll probably look at the one of what does the future look like in terms of libraries or in terms of your TVs, what have you. I think a larger sense is my hope in general is to take a look at how we structure our staff environments and the way we set up interactions and manage projects, things of that nature. I think we definitely at Pitt, I know we had this problem that some departments had sort of remote policies where faculty could work remotely, very few staff could. And I hope that this brings about the ability to allow managers and administrators to make decisions that are a little more flexible and realize that, you know, we had, I think, eight or nine people in a very small room as an open office where half of those could have worked remotely. You would save time, save energy. And I hope that that sort of echoes throughout the rest of the environments and how we facilitate our workshops and our presentations and what have you to realize that there's more than just a building and we can still make things work and be quite as efficient, even if we're not all standing next to each other in arms length. That hopefully that brings about some of those change. I don't think it's gonna change overnight necessarily once we all start to get back to a normalization of what we had as our previous lives. But I think we definitely are realizing that we can do a lot more in a hybrid setting without interrupting the larger scale of things. Thanks a lot, John. Heidi, we just heard from Dana that her powers back on, yay. I'm on it, yep, I'm on it, thank you. I knew you would be. So now we get to see your lovely face, hello. Dana, if you would like to share your response to one of the questions that I sent out, that would be great. So I'm just grabbing my notes. This was a little hectic. So I think similar to what the last panelist was saying, I'm really hoping that the future will include more flexibility with remote work, flexible schedules. I know at least the library at our campus has been very anti-remote work and anti-flexible scheduling. And it seemed to largely be from a place of distrust. So I'm really hoping that administration sees how dedicated everyone is and how well everyone is working during this time so that when we can go back, we'll have some more ability. I'm also hoping the future looks like less meetings. I know for me, coming from a work environment that was set up to be remote, when I came to Sac State, just the amount of meetings was crazy to me. And I really think that being remote is showing us more effective ways to communicate and empowering people to have more autonomy with their projects. Since we can't walk over to someone's desk or check in with someone at their office. I've also really been into strategies for balancing work-home life. I think because I did have this background of working remotely and I saw a lot of my colleagues not having good boundaries around that. So I'm really strict on setting my work hours, just like any job. There's some days I do work a little longer, but otherwise I am working 8 to 5.30, just like before. I turned off, part of that was turning off my email notices on my phone because I would get emails from other librarians at 10 at night and that wasn't something I wanted to feel like I had to respond to. Now that we're back in session and I do have some liaison responsibilities with our College of Ed, I'm planning to add in my signature my working hours just so that's clear that this is when I'm available and this is when you can expect our stances. Thank you so much, Dana. Could we have Elise next? Sure, I definitely, you know, everything that, you know, John and Dana have both said, I definitely feel those are excellent recommendations I would make myself. I would also add too that, you know, for instance, you know, I don't have the option of having a home office. My home office is a nursery and an office and kind of a storage space because we are currently living in a, you know, very small quarters. So I don't get to have that ability to like shut a door and walk away from work, but what has helped is making sure that at least my little work area meets all of my needs, especially ergonomically. So if you haven't done so already, you know, working with whoever you need to make sure you can bring home your desktop computers, that was a huge game changer for me rather than just working on the laptop. I also, I did have to pay out of pocket the university wouldn't pay for it, but I did purchase, you know, a pretty reasonably priced tabletop converter so that I can convert into a standing desk, which has also been incredibly helpful. So just anything that you can do to just, you know, if even if you don't have like a little, you know, room that is exclusively for your work, just making your little workspace work as best as you can for you. I know we're actually gonna be remotely through next semester also. So that's a lot of time to be spending at home. And I know not everyone's in that boat, but just even those little minor adjustments can really help to stay focused and stay energized and engaged. Thanks a lot Elise, Laura. Well, as I was thinking about changes going forward or what changes we've had that hopefully will remain the same, our graduate school has always been really strict about no remote participation during pieces and dissertation defenses, especially for the chair or the outside members actually needed to be there. And of course the student and all of the paperwork needed to be signed by hand and like carried over to the graduate school, although finally got to the point where people could actually email me stuff. So that was nice. But then, you know, all of a sudden we had to go remote and lo and behold, somehow the world did not end with people defending remotely. And they managed to get their electronic signatures on their documents sometimes and kind of the documents to me and everybody got graduated in the spring and in the summer. So now we have finally instituted docusign for our documents instead of just relying on the Adobe signature feature. And in future, I hope, I think that the grad school will continue to be flexible about remote participation, especially when we have obviously faculty members and students all over the world doing research, doing all kinds of things. I think it's really impractical to require that everybody come to campus. It's so difficult for scheduling and it's just a pain for everyone. So I think this has been a good thing to come out of this. Salad, thank you so much. We've started getting some chat comments going. And so, you know, if you have questions or ideas or thoughts, please go ahead and share them. I'll go ahead and share some of the conversation prompt questions in just a second because now my computer is freezing out. Okay, hold on. Sorry. I think one of the questions would be, you know, what would be the best piece of advice maybe that you could give to other ETD professionals? So, I mean, this is addressed to our panelists, but also, you know, I'd invite our participants to, you know, offer their suggestions in the chat window because all the chats are going to be, you know, recorded and available for everyone. So, yeah. So what advice can you offer? So I had, oh, sorry. I had thought about this. So I'm based in the library and we obviously work with our Office of Graduate Studies around ETDs and our library is in the midst of migrating to a new institutional repository platform where ETDs will be housed. And I would say if you work with another department in any way, give yourself way more time than you think because you don't know what's going on in their department, what things might need to happen on there and it just seems like we're gonna need way more time than perhaps what we had originally thought. I know I've had experiences not with Office of Graduate Studies but with our archival collections where because so many things need signatures, we've had to figure out workarounds for that whether that's using something like DocuSign or our institution uses AdobeSign which is a similar platform or we've been moving things to web forms where we don't need a wet signature but we need them to acknowledge something. And, you know, if we need a web form created at our library, we have to ask the one guy at the library who does that who has a million IT related projects. Thanks Dana. Any of our other panelists have a choice piece of advice to give? I guess I would say that one of the very similar of that is to sort of get a landscape idea of what is going on in the university, what changes have been made. Understanding what maybe you haven't been made aware of a new technology or new application or some new change to a policy in your IT division if they have that sort of ability to figure that out because if they've added some new service that you can take advantage of and integrate into a service that you've already been doing and perhaps in an analog way, you might be able to sort of outsource that to their expertise and find a better solution than you initially thought of. I know we've had similar things with that going on where we were lucky enough to get Zoom as a license quite quickly and able to transition certain aspects of our workshops and things like that to different environments. So it's really being able to reach out and find connections in the university landscape to say, how else can we try to solve this problem and not try to do everything yourself? We tend to do that, at least we do at Pitt. We've also often tried to reinvent the wheel a million times over instead of asking for others who can help us and be partners in a solution rather than the only ones trying to think up a new idea. So that's my big piece of this is really to say, look for support in your organization. You're probably gonna find it now because everybody's stressed, everybody has to make changes and don't be afraid to ask. It sounds odd, but. Thanks a lot, John. I know I'm the moderator, but I just wanted to add something to kind of add on to that. And that is, a lot of universities have lost a lot of staff positions. And so people that you may have collaborated with or had to work with on a regular basis may not be there anymore. So it's always a good idea to just kind of keep up, keep monitoring who it is that you work with. Yeah, because that's what we've discovered at the University of Toledo. Anybody else would like to share a piece of advice? Okay, how about this? What big question do you have for other ETD professionals? I guess I'm just personally interested to know what projects or opportunities have arisen as a result of this pandemic. For example, Dana and I will be presenting on our 508 compliance project that we would have never had the opportunity to do at the scale we're doing unless there was a pandemic situation. But our repository is still far from perfect and I'm definitely always interested in hearing what other projects people are doing to either remediate content or metadata in order to enhance discoverability and access to documents. Thank you so much. I know participants are sharing, you know, what systems they're using and steps that they're taking. So please just keep sharing. Anybody else with question for other people? Aura, Dana? I just wanted to respond to, let's see, Josefina Greene's question about kind of casual contact with grad students. Because I was answering a reference question for someone saw that our Office of Graduate Studies essentially has their Zoom open during business hours for drop-in because I'm not in that department. I can't comment on how frequently it's being used but that's one thing I've seen. I was, I saw that question there as well and I was sort of thinking, you know, I work in the Center for Graduate Life which is within the graduate school but we provide professional development programming and writing support and all sorts of different things. So we have lots of opportunities to interact with the students. And at the, let me see, at the beginning of COVID, the graduate school had to send out a survey to all the graduate students and ask them what they're struggling with and what they need. And the grad school went through the responses and tried to figure out if they could help anybody financially or, you know, what they could do. And now we're sort of like working on another similar survey right now because now that the semester started, a lot of students have said that they're really overwhelmed. So we kind of want to figure out why they're so overwhelmed exactly and see what we can do. So I don't know, I guess a survey sounds funny but that might actually be a good way to connect with your students.  So if students want to make an appointment with me, they just go to the website and make an appointment or talk to me on the phone. So we do, you know, like formatting support that way and in groups as well. So that's just a few things that we do to keep in touch. Well, yeah, I would like to add on to that as well. I mean, I saw the question about other schools having a special graduation period and I know at Pitt we did have an extended spring semester deadlines that went throughout the summer, which was a slight interruption, obviously, to the schedules and how things were running, but we were able to facilitate that and communicate it out through. Some of the other changes we made, similar, that's what Oro was saying, that we used spring share software to allow for people to book consultations with myself and some of my colleagues in the ETD support round with things here. So we could allow the students who normally would walk in into our office or kind of sit down with us at our desk to schedule a Zoom meeting that way and trying to keep our avenues open for questions and availability there. It's been interesting to see that change. And we have a million things and projects coming up and I'll be talking with that in my presentation later. We had already scheduled out phases to things we were gonna be looking at in terms of the ETD process at Pitt, but some of them kind of cropped up rather quickly because we had to make changes to what we were already thinking. And some of them are basically, what do we do with ETDs or aren't PDFs or what do we consider those sorts of documents and sort of files? And what can we do with those in our institutional repository, which we're also looking to change the next few years. So when it rains at pores, I suppose for us right now, but looking at how we do online forms from milestones within the student systems, what we can change with the committee forms and the way they do remote committee defenses, all the things we've heard are probably gonna be a lot of people we're dealing with and hopefully we can get together and find solutions that worked. We're still stepping through a lot of those hoops right now to figure out what was gonna be the best solution. But yeah, it's a matter of doing sort of a process audit in a lot of ways here, what we're looking to say, what has been done, what can we do, and what happens the next time something interrupts the services and what if a platform goes away, what if support for a platform goes away or services, what are the alternatives we can use? So disaster management, I guess, is some of the skill we didn't know we were gonna need in repositories. Thanks a lot, John. I'm reading a question here from Larry. Larry says that they conduct ETD mixers training sessions using Zoom for the first time. It was Q&A, it worked great. And so if Larry can unmute himself and share, did you get more participation through the Zoom than you maybe normally would have for a training session? Yes, actually, I got a tremendous turnout. We had the best turnout for our students, this particular Zoom session than we've ever had before. I would say it was almost double. And we also had more faculty this time in the session as well. What was really, I felt was the thing that was most important in terms of the Q&A was posting what we would normally do in stand-up presentations and talking with the students. We did that using video prior to the mixer, almost a week prior to the mixer, and we posted it to a Blackboard discussion thread which had the ability for the students to actually ask questions before we got to the Q&A. That was extremely helpful. And because we were able to review the questions, questions that we might have had a problem or stumbled over during a live session, we were able to deal with very well in that way. So it went very smoothly. We cut down our actual time in terms of the live video, the Zoom video piece from three hours to one hour. And we were finished. And I've got a lot of good feedback from the students on it as well. That's fantastic. That is fantastic.  What do you think is going to remain changed for the better? Hey, everyone, this is Tim Watson from the Graduate School of Ohio State. Hey, Terry, I'm going to second Aura's comments from earlier in that we were very strict about no remote defenses. Students had to be on campus. Format reviews had to be done in person. We do format reviews of their documents at the time of the defense for the PhD students. So they had to come into the office to do that. The cat is out of the bag and all that is gone. As far as I'm concerned, and I think the Graduate School administration would feel the same way. We are moving forward to using a online format review system. We're actually adopting a bit of Virio, to be honest, for that, and so we'll be doing that. The remote exams will take place. We will allow hybrid exams, all remote, all on campus, whatever happens. So those things have changed dramatically. And I think it'll be interesting to see going forward just how much will we see students in person? That was a big influx for us. I'm actually back to work. We are working part-time back on campus. So I am on campus today. I've been back for over a month, working three days a week on campus. And I've seen three students and it's been the same student the whole time. She keeps coming back for more questions. But other than that, it'll be interesting to see how this impacts things going forward with whether students will come in or whether we will continue to do a lot more remote. And I think it's gonna be a lot more remote. Yeah, I'd like to comment on that too. At a prior position, I worked with students with disabilities around their accommodation requests. And there was oftentimes a lot of resistance to things that are now very much the norm, right? So the last person was speaking about doing things more remotely. And I feel like there had always been such pushback, especially to students with disability needs around those things. And I really am hoping that that is something that stays, that we continue with these things that were special accommodations before where students felt like they had to really justify and then were often turned down anyways. I just hope we become more accessible as a result of this. Thank you so much, Dana. I agree with the comment that this is a very important issue. And in fact, for OhioLink, we are looking at a major requirement to make our ETDs accessible. And so this is kind of a major undertaking. But like you say, it's more than just making an ETD. It's more than making a document accessible. It's about how do you support and serve your students? Well, we only have about four minutes left. So I would just like to thank all of our panelists and our participants. You know, if you have any more comments or questions, get them in the chat as soon as you can. And then at 1.50, so three minutes now, we'll be taking a quick break and we'll also have some sponsor messages right here in the same room that you're in. And then after that at 1.55, we'll do the breakout sessions. So I think I'd like to just go ahead and wrap this up. If anybody has any, from the panelists, if anybody has any final words to say, go ahead. Oh, just thank you for having us. It's been nice to, if anything, commiserate about our experiences. I don't see anybody in their pajamas though. So I don't know how accurate this panel was, but you know, I can't speak for myself because, you know, I may be wearing pajama bottoms. We don't know. All right, everybody, thank you so much again. And we'll go ahead and take our break and do the sponsor messages. Thank you.


Hello and welcome to Celebrating Excellence. This series of programs aims to showcase the contributions of St Lucia's two Nobel laureates, Sir William Arthur Lewis, who received the Nobel Prize for Development Economics in 1979 and Sir Derek Alton Walcott for Literature in 1992. 2023 marks the 30th anniversary of the initiative first instituted in 1993 to honour and celebrate the life and work of St Lucia's Nobel laureates. So in 2023 the theme for the festival is Celebrating Excellence, nurturing our creativity, consolidating our legacy. Our guest, Dr Anderson Reynolds, was born and raised in Viewfort St Lucia. Dr Reynolds founded Jaco Productions, a cultural and entertainment enterprise that seeks to encourage the artistic expression of St Lucia culture and to promote that culture worldwide. We asked Dr Reynolds for his reflections on the contribution of Sir Derek Walcott and that of other contemporary St Lucia writers to the literary arts, both at home and on the international stage. Well in terms of the influence of St Lucia writers including Derek Walcott on Caribbean and world literature, the starting point has to be with the 1950s to 1970s St Lucia arts skill that led the way in West Indian theatre and spectro-cultural renaissance. Out of the arts skill emerged Gap Centome, the cousin of Dunstan Centome, who gained international acclaim as a novelist. This actually was St Lucia's first novelist and he went on to earn a PhD in literature at Princeton University. Of course there is Derek Walcott who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992, the very pinnacle of the literary world. This first generation of St Lucia writers and artists influenced the second generation of writers, the second generation of prominent St Lucia writers including Kendall Hippolyt, John Robert Lee, Mark Donald Dixon, Adrian Ogie, Jane King and Modest Downes. This second generation and now we have a third generation of St Lucia writers with Vladimir Lucien and Lou Brain leading the way, they are like the rising stars of St Lucia and Caribbean literature. Both Kanisa Lou Brain and Vladimir Lucien has won the overall prize, Boca's Prize, which is the highest literary prize in the English Caribbean. Derek Walcott is the only other St Lucia that has won this prize. What this says is in effect saying that we are not just about Bacchanal, Ram, Beach and Sunshine and Touristic Smiles, we are creating some very serious and important literature that rivals what obtains anywhere else in the world. These writers by virtue of their work are very much involved in nation building, in forging our national identity and in establishing that our way of life, our culture is as much deserving of artistic expression as that of any other country. In terms of Derek Walcott, Derek Walcott has been a big revelation in my life. When I first read Walcott, I thought this writer is expressing the way I feel and the way I view my country. In other words Walcott was essentially giving voice to my voice. In Walcott I found many gems. For example it was there I first found out that Shabin means Red Nigger and it was there I first encountered the Shebonnes, the women called Carriers. In just one line of one of Derek Walcott poems, I was able to visualize the Shebonnes in action, so much so that when I was writing my first book, the novel, Death by Fire, that one line from that poem allowed me to write a whole passage, a whole description of the Shebonnes in action. Later when I was writing my second book, The Struggle for Survival, I found a National Geographic magazine photo of the Shebonnes in operation and the photo matched almost exactly my Derek Walcott inspired description of the Shebonnes. My favorite writer is Toni Morrison, African American novelist who won the Nobel Prize in 1993, the year after Walcott won his Nobel Prize. In fact Toni Morrison was probably one of the best things that happened to me in my adult life. Why? Because she writes the way I think. Besides that Toni Morrison takes an entity, a person, a community, strips it to its bare essential and colors magnifies that those bare essentials to illuminate the very essence of that entity. In my writing what I'm trying to do, like Derek Walcott, I'm really trying to give voice to our voices and like Toni Morrison for the African American society community, I'm trying to capture the very essence of Saint Lucian culture, the very essence of our way of life. To what extent I'm succeeding in doing so, well I guess the readers might have something to say about that. The Nobel Laureate Memorial Lectures will be recorded by the National Television Network. Visit our Facebook page at Nobel Laureate Festival Saint Lucia for festival events. I'm Delia De Law, goodbye.