I deliver mail and I was out on my route delivering mail and the supervisors two of them whipped up in front of me and my dad's in bed was in bad shape he's on oxygen and I thought oh something happened to my dad and so they come running over to my car and I said is it my dad and they said they shook their head no and I said is it one of my kids and they went like that and I said is it my son my son was a senior at the University of Pittsburgh and a girl that lived on the second floor her ex-boyfriend set a fire and the smoke you know killed my son while he was upstairs sleeping this boy more or less was I don't know if he was talking her or what but you know jealous or whatever and you know set the fire and intended to kill her and you know Joey didn't make it you know we buried him on Monday I think it was Thursday was when the detective called me to tell me that it had been an orson and he wanted to let the family know before it hit the news while I was by myself when he told me and yeah I just can't imagine the trials would start and stuff and the first time I took my daughter was when the trial was actually going to start and ever since that day that she seen this Matthew I've had to sleep with her and that was back in July Chrissy and I was watching TV the other day and they said how one act stupid act can affect so many lives and she looked at me and she said we really know that mom don't we but you figure this boy was jealous or whatever about this girl living with this guy or I don't understand what he was thinking of but his stupid act has ruined lives of people he didn't even know existed we've never done anything to her I've never gotten a traffic ticket nothing and to be punished like this further and we'll be punished the rest of our lives because of someone we didn't even know if he would have been in an accident with a where he was drinking or if he would have it been a car accident where it was an accident or something but the know that someone deliberately while he was sleeping but where is the safest place you think your child is in bed sleeping he's the with this kid did is he has no idea how he has affected all of us I mean just the emptiness the sick feeling that you have inside you every single day not a day goes by that I don't do not shed a tear not one day had gone through a couple of years of problems my wife found a boyfriend and moved away to Cleveland and then my mother started getting sick so I came home to take care of her and we were together for about eight months and then she passed away and I had just got a job with a real estate company where I was going to do their maintenance for them and I was in an alley behind their property bringing a key back somebody followed me back to the property well these are all fun loving people you know and I thought it was mistake I thought it was a joke somebody pulled in behind me and got out and approached me with the fact that he thought I was somebody else he thought I was somebody that had stolen a stained glass window from his one of his properties and I just happen to be working across the street from one of his properties and I thought it was a joke I really did and so I I really didn't put up any resistance and then he he slid on a metal baseball bat and he started to attack me I was obviously the wrong person at the wrong place the wrong time but I backed up he took out my knee I went down he just started beating me like crazy I never even defended myself which is the the hard part because all my life I've defended my family my friends I've worked as a doorman at local restaurants and clubs and I always had confidence myself to take care of myself and my friends and my family and when he took me out like that it was it it changed my life I'm very angry and I mean from time to time I'll burst into these screaming fits in my own health you think I'm talking to myself I'm talking to myself I'm just mad it's tough when you can't physically do what you want to do I can't climb ladders I have no knee my muscles and tendons are crushed and that's going to take four or five years to maybe build up the strength in my knee that I could even climb a ladder I've been going through a lot of depression I sit on my couch and cry and I live like a spider I mean I keep my blinds closed I I'm scared to death the answer to phone or answer the door and that ain't right I'm six I'm almost six three I weighed 225 pounds and yet I'm scared to walk from my house to my car you know what aggravates me the most is I was just at the point where I was ready to rebuild my life I look to the future and I see things but it's I'm not impatient but I really want to get back to where I was my house was broken into while we were at work and I it was when I but I actually had called kept calling my house it's because my husband gets home before I do and I was going to be inviting him over to my parents for dinner and that's where I was at and he picks up the phone and immediately and says the house has been broken into you need to come home they kicked in my back door and they had taken our 36 inch TV that was in the living room they took our 25 inch TV that was in our bedroom they took just a lot of weird stuff that we kind of don't understand why they would take it but like towels out of our our closet they took like wash rags there just seemed like there were so many little things that just kept coming up missing every day that went on I'd find something else they took my camcorder which had my my youngest son's newborn video in it which that's probably the worst thing they could care less what's on that video they're not gonna watch it they probably just threw it away but that's that's my you know that with my baby my newborn baby on there that I'm never gonna get that back a detective like try to get fingerprints on on like the computer because they had messed with that and he couldn't we've never heard anything back I was just one of my things back you know I mean granted they came into my house and I don't think it would have been the greatest to get it all back you know or to find it I still would have been that I think that would have probably been traumatizing too is knowing that they had them and then they got them back you know it's like what have they done with them we ended up getting a security system but there's still times when like if I come home by myself and I have the kids and it's dark our garage is detached from the house and and it's like I just want to grab the kids and run and I make sure that my oldest son doesn't leave the garage until I'm I've got the baby out and I'm just I just almost want to run hurry up and lock the door run shut the door I mean I don't even set anything down until I've shut the door and locked it and I mean that's not a good feeling and I do that any time I'm by myself I'm always really scared you do you feel violated it's just like it's like they've been in your home they've been through your things and I just it's not a good feeling and that's something you know yeah they're there for 20 minutes to wreck your life for you know your sense of security for a year it seems like such a small thing to you know to get burglarized and that it wouldn't be that big of an impact or it wouldn't really affect you since you weren't there you weren't physically being harmed but it is I mean it just mentally it messes with you and just not feeling safe in your own home is not good not a good feeling at all it happened when I was between I can't remember the exact age but it was between five and seven but I never told anyone until I was a senior in high school 17 the one that I was abused by was my at the time my best friend's older brother he was about seven we were the same age he was about seven years older than us and all started off with the hugging game he would take us into his room her and I individually and just we would sit on his lap and and he would hug us and to any child that feels really good it was a fun game you know but he was very weird about it he said we couldn't we couldn't even talk to each other about it we couldn't her and I couldn't talk to each other about it every time she would leave the room he would jump on me he never I was never penetrated vaginally it was always oral mostly he would lay on top of me I couldn't even breathe he would say stupid things like well why didn't you say something how could I when I told my mom I remember we were in my room and I just kind of broke down I started crying and I ran I ran out of my room and ran downstairs and it was like I didn't want to tell you this I didn't she's going what don't you want to tell me and finally I just laid it all out there for and she she was very I mean she was upset she was hurt and I didn't tell her who it was I didn't tell her for about a year or so who it was it took a while for me to tell her she got me into therapy right away it was never a question of are you sure this happened you know are you sure you're not making this up or you're just remembering things wrong she never doubted me and to this day I wish I'd said something to her years before but I couldn't I was depressed for a long time I didn't even realize I was so depressed for a long time all I ever did was sit in my room and watch television and eat I have a hard time trusting people or I just jump in like feet first without them giving me any reason to really trust them usually I find I've gotten burned like that a lot of times but it's like because I did I feel as though as when I was that young I wanted to be able to do that with someone and I couldn't so now I'm still kind of looking for that when I walk into a room within 10 minutes of being in that room I know every way out of that room including if I had to jump out of a window and it's just it's like instinct to me now I don't even realize that I do it anymore but just I'm always looking for an out I'm never trying to be trapped in the corner never again I recognize now that it's not about sex at all it's all about power and I really do fear that a lot of them get off on that the whole idea of you hurt me you know you're hurting people I think that's what that's what they're looking for it's weird for me to talk about this because it's so third-person because I do feel as though she's still with me she's still in there that little girl is still you know she cries sometimes still and it's like it's okay it's okay to cry I mean I'm still angry I think I have every right to be angry but it doesn't it doesn't rule my life anymore it was a part of my childhood to be beaten so badly that my eyes would be swollen shut for days on end I had an uncle who was he was a sadist he was brutal he was he was absolutely insane and I suffered beatings at his hands time and time and time again he would be the only father figure that I would know as a child because my mother and him lived together all throughout the earliest part of my childhood my mother was as well she was a violent person any any small thing that annoyed her it was taken out on his kids my mother handed me over to a pedophile when I was five and by then I you would have thought that I was conditioned to handle the horrors of my life but this added a new dimension to my suffering and I found it almost unbearable to deal with so as a kindergartner I would have to leave kindergarten or class and go home and have sex with this man who was in his fifties I remember the long walk home and crying and falling down and having to get back up and walking on and falling down and crying and getting back up and walking on I had to adjust to that situation I had no choice but to shoulder this responsibility and I learned that food meant sex for me young in life I would turn to drugs and that would be a friend of mine for a long long long time my journey has been an enormous struggle for me I've known years and years of depression I've I've I've been physically sick in times in my life I lost my job I had no friends I I assumed I would die never expected to live through this I don't think being abused as a child goes away there's things that I do deal with as an adult now that it's kind of like problem troubleshooting I maintain taking care of my mental health and my emotional health and I've learned over the years to be fairly good at it I I know that I am a high-functioning abuse survivor I have a propensity towards honesty whereas my siblings don't they they want to just forget it they don't want to think about it but I think it's more insidious than that we were made to witness crimes committed against one another over and over again it's like we were we hold the truth and we can't get near one another it's too horrible to even see each other it's so painful when I was 16 years old a senior in high school my girlfriend and I were coming home from snow skiing and she had just taken her eyes off the road for a minute and we hit a truck and my neck was crushed and it left me paralyzed from the neck down after I had recovered from my injury and kind of built back some self-esteem and confidence I was a senior in college and had a boyfriend shortly after we became engaged I heard him refer to me as his pretty bird in a cage and I think it just sent chills down my spine when I heard that I always had to come home from class on time and tell him where I was going and when I would be back and when I came in from class I was a few minutes late and when I came in the door he was sitting on the couch and he had a butcher knife in his hand he grabbed me by my feet and pulled me out of the wheelchair he climbed on top of me and held my arms down with his knees and he started choking me and stabbing the butcher knife around my head at that point in time I realized my life was in danger and I didn't want to stay in this relationship but it was just three weeks later that he had pretty much held me hostage throughout the night and I was admitted into the hospital with a broken arm broken nose broken ribs and my sternum was permanently damaged then at that point it took the hospital the police the university and my family all stepped in and got me out of that relationship and it was about a year later when the trial was starting for the first charge and I went into that courtroom with the utmost confidence that the person that did this to me would be punished for what he did it was a five-day trial on the witness stand his attorney portrayed me as a woman with a severe disability that no other man would ever want or ever love and how wonderful his client was for giving up his life to take care of me and in a jury of 12 my batter was found not guilty that was completely devastating for me I felt revictimized only this time by the system what was so difficult for me is I knew there were other people that went through experiences of domestic violence but I felt like I was alone as a person with a disability going through that and there were so many layers of issues with my disability that contributed to the abuse made it more difficult to get away and to recover from I had moved to California after the abusive relationship and I was out there and I had just completed my master's degree in social work and this was six years later in 96 and it was one Friday evening about 8 o'clock I was sitting on the living room floor and I had my bedroom window open not unlike all the other apartments in my complex and I heard a noise in my bedroom I called for my caregiver to come to see what the noise was and the next thing I saw was she was walking out of my bedroom backwards and there was a man that had a gun to her head and behind him was another man with a knife then the man with the gun went to the sliding glass door opened the door and walked two more men so there were now four men in my apartment and they pulled all of the foam cords and all of the lights out and they burglarized my home and I was raped and repeatedly told that they were going to kill me I know that the reason I was chosen is because of my vulnerabilities with my disability I could not run from them I could not fight back I hardly even have the strength in my voice to be able to yell I'm an easy victim an easy target those four men were never caught I see all of the additional stigma in our society for people with disabilities I see how they are being targeted for crime and abuse and for me I felt like those experiences happened to me and I don't want to just bury them and not do anything with those experiences and people with disabilities is a huge population and I think it's important for everyone to realize that people with disabilities want to be treated fairly and equally in our society like everyone else and we want to have the same services and the same respect as everyone else in our society I am a victim of domestic violence and I think the thing that was the hardest to realize was that I really was a victim my access moment was very controlling very isolating from friends family church he monitored my coming and going he didn't let me talk on the phone you know my family was stupid and I was stupid and the things that you know the apartment that I lived in that he moved into with me it was stupid you know everything wasn't up to his par including me and so you know I was constantly in a race with myself to see you know what I could do to make it better or fix it and it just kind of snowballed from there and the crux was when he threatened to have me killed you could put on your your social face when you were outside but the thing that was most frightening was I was literally afraid to go home at the end of the day work was a comfortable setting church was a comfortable setting nobody was gonna do anything but then you get in your car to go home you start having panic attacks the daily impact once he threatened to have me killed it was like you were outside looking in because by the time that happened you know I wasn't really talking to my family because I had pretty much pushed them by the wayside they didn't like him or how he treated me because they could see it of course I was I was too involved in the relationship to see and so there was nobody to go to I kept thinking in the back of my mind that domestic violence happened to somebody else you know on TV it's it's some other person or some other background or lifestyle or age of a person you know I didn't think that it would be happening to me you go through the whole realm of emotions one minute you're mad as a hatter that you allowed yourself to do this or that he did it to you and the next minute they're so glad and relieved that you're out of it he was sexually abusive and I think of all of it that was probably the most painful and still probably the hardest to get past you know when you're in a relationship with somebody that you love and they use sex forcefully it's devastating it's demoralizing I've gotten to the point where I know I'm better off without him and I'm moving forward me being a victim of domestic violence has really affected my whole entire family and friends structure for the longest time it was the elephant in the room they tiptoed around all of the issues the fear has eased a little but it's still there it's still fresh enough emotionally I just I can't imagine going out on a date again or getting into a relationship again I can't imagine being intimate I'm afraid that if I put myself out there it'll happen again my daughter and I were going to the grocery store in the morning in November of 1979 and she was five months old and we were hit head-on by a drunk driver it was his fourth time for drunk driving he had no license he had no insurance he drank a pine a whiskey about before 10 o'clock in the morning my daughter was in a car seat and she the straps just busted on it and she came around and hit the back of her neck right here on the corner of the dashboard and crushed you have a cervical section of your spinal cord and it goes C1 through C10 to right about here and she crushed C4 5 and 6 these three vertebrae right here and they kind of twisted like this and went across and then ended back on top of her spinal cord and she was paralyzed from the neck down and I broke about 14 bones from the waist down and I have a couple of plates in my left foot and I have a rod in my right leg you know she always had pneumonia's and she had atelectasis and she had bladder infections and she had tracheostomies and other kinds of infections and she had seizures I had seven years of playing tug-of-war with God and I knew that he'd win someday she died and that was in 1986 I try and have the good pictures in my head of Laura instead of the bad pictures now but the bad pictures plagued me for a long time and the hatred was just unbearable for the man that hit me I mean that was like just carrying an extra tumor you know a big tumor and so you've got the hate you know it's just this intense hate and you lay in bed at night and you know I used to concoct all kinds of plans on how I was gonna kill this guy and then I thought I'm not gonna kill him I'll hit him in the back of the neck with a lead pipe I'll have somebody hold him down I'm gonna paralyze him like he did Laura and then you just go on with these scenarios and you just build this up so now you've got all this hatred for this person and you get all this pain and sorrow sometimes the people who do it even after they've been picked up for drunk driving they still don't see themselves as a problem you know because maybe somebody isn't in their face showing them a picture of their dead daughter or telling them what that felt like or how horrifying it was to have her chew her fingertips off because she couldn't feel them and was covered with blood one morning you know let's and then now let's start thinking about what if it was your kid what if somebody did this to your kid let's start thinking about that a little bit you know or having your mom or your boyfriend or your girlfriend or your wife or whatever you know start thinking in those terms a little bit and you know maybe that'll help deter you you want to drink drink take a cab my son Anthony Dyer who's 16 years old had gotten had joined a gang that I didn't know about and the gang that he was in they murdered him my son hadn't come home and it was on my pay week and hadn't came home for two days that Friday I was going to call the television station and ask them to air my son on the TV but that evening I heard about a body had been found and I didn't feel comfortable with that I went down to look at the body and when I what I saw it didn't look like my son because it his face was swollen he was he was frozen it was it was a bitter cold the only way that really identified him was by his fingernail biting and it was hard it was very hard to deal with that they end up beating him then they put him wrapped him up and put him in a towel and put him in a trash can so the leader of the gang told him to 69 him which went meant killing so one of the guys went down down the hill and kicked him in his head until he wasn't breathing anymore and he took his gym shoes off that I had just bought him when they finally picked him up the the guy that had kicked him in his head he had his shoes on I didn't even know my son was in the game until after he passed he was only 16 he was to me he was still a baby I had a memory lost people that had known for years I couldn't remember where they were I couldn't go back to work for at least three weeks you know people would question me about different things and I don't want to deal with it I would cry all the time it's just your whole life you know you just it just turned upside down none of them showed any remorse next year three of them will get out they plea bargain some of them got seven years one of the girls that cleaned up the blood at the at the apartment that he had got beat up at she's out the leader the gang got 15 to 30 the one guy that had his gym shoes on he got 12 years they got 16 years and a guy that took his clothes off and burned them he got 12 years so they all got time if you've committed a crime and it's totally shut out and you're going on with your life but if that family they're not going on because their life is forever changed it's it would never never be the same and it hurts because I know my son wanted to live and it wasn't fair it was not fair name is Chi Young-on and I am the sister of Dong Young-on it was a long and difficult decision to sit and write this statement bringing up the feeling of memory is still something I avoid doing it was a Sunday and I think he was playing basketball with our church youth group Korean church youth group kids they went over to a local school court to play and five or eight white teenagers came over he said he didn't know them they asked you want to play five on five and they were they agreed they started playing basketball it seems like the white boys were purposely fouling pushing them shoveling and that happens in basketball so my brother was the oldest among the kids who went with him he said come on you know let's play let's just play a game you know why are you guys pushing and they would keep on pushing snicker about it together you know so it came up to a point where it grew into argument and my brother said I had enough we're gonna go and that's when they started kind of who the fd you think you are about five or eight more kids came so they were in total about 16 12 to 16 kids he heard from the back there's that chink standing there alone let's jump on him now when he's alone my brother turned around and they circled him and they're like chink go back to your country and we're not even from China after they spit on his face they knocked him to the ground four or five maybe even more kids started to step stomp and kick his head face and back he was lying on the ground he did not fight back all the facial cheekbone was all just cracked into pieces nose bone fracture and he lost sensation there was a nerve damage so he lost sensation on this four of his upper tooth and a whole bottom all the part he doesn't have sensation till now and it's been about a year since that happened the police report was that they wrote it up as if it was a gang fight that they were playing basketball they got in an argument it was a mutual fight they thought it was a Chinese gang versus American white gang and that offends me just because of the description of how I look and how we are the image of my brother falling on that concrete floor and people stepping and just kicking with shoes on his face I couldn't get that image out of my head what goes through once my when they kick and step on a living human being just covering his face and head to survive what does one have to do to deserve all this getting into an argument playing basketball I had a chance to read my victim impact statement at the court I wanted to see the kids who did this to my brother and I after I read my statement I said just because someone speaks less English than you just because someone looks a little different than you and whether it fits the same that doesn't give you any right to step to kick or spit on someone's face and the response I got from him was I'm sorry I caused you such inconvenience and but if you think I'm a racist I'm not because I don't treat people by their color hate crime you know it's not something explicit that you can see you are just hitting or you are just punching someone to your anger or your frustration but then pack the hurt that that person has they carry on for life and the people around that person who loved him or her they carry on the same pain to see someone that you really love suffer and go through pain that's not an easy thing to carry because it always stays in the back of your mind and it really hurts Joe was on the second floor the first floor apartment was empty and the basement floor was inhabited by the man that killed her he apparently had gotten the idea that Jill was gnarling on drug dealers in the area and he had been dealing drugs out of the apartment she had been there too much she had no idea he was waiting for her when she returned home from work at one o'clock in the morning and he punched her in the face stunning her and got her tied up and spent six hours killing her raping and killing her eight years later it still seems like yesterday they did not want any of us seeing her because she had been so badly beaten I was allowed to hug a body bag that was on the elevator at the funeral home and I basically said the goodbyes for the entire family at that point Jill's murder left me with this huge gaping void in my gut and I felt like if I ever let anybody close enough to see that they'd either think that I'm crazy or they would be terrified by what I had to show him I became really really suicidal after Jill's death and wanted very badly to be with her my oldest sister became pretty agoraphobic it's still difficult for her eight years later to leave the house without a strong family member with her my brother who had problems with alcohol prior became full-blown alcoholic now I am hyper-vigilant so unless I know everything that's going on I'm not comfortable eight years later I'm still sleeping with the door locked I have insomnia now stomach problems that make it impossible for me to eat out it's like traveling grief so it just keeps remanifesting in different different areas but it's all the same pain and anger that are sitting in there I got the the nickname angry Amy when I was working at the salon and I don't think I've been showing any anger at all you know I some of my reactions you know if this guy that's in prison for my sister's homicide if he gets raped and killed I don't care and maybe that's what they were perceiving in a vanguard that's I don't see it as being anger I see it as being realistic I can't care about his life he was found guilty of first-degree murder he was found guilty of rape it was death penalty plus 60 the death penalty was then overturned on appeal to a life sentence the biggest thing as far as as offenders in homicide goes is the fact that there is not just one victim you're not just stopping at that one person they are destroying many many lives my quality of life will never be the same as it was you know my innocence is completely gone there's very little that life can show me that is gonna be as good as when Joel was alive my daughter was trying to stop an argument between two more girls her friend of hers and the young lady that stabbed her and she walks up to her and try to you know protect and well how do you say stop the fight so it wouldn't start rather and the girl stabbed her in the neck and it hit her a order and she bled to death you see my daughter suffered from MS she couldn't fight she couldn't walk straight on a straight line when I got to the hospital they did tell me that she had a pulse and of course that made me feel better because I knew she was you know she had life but then a doctor came out and told me she didn't make it and that's when I kind of went to pieces I guess you might say I do know that there are a lot of people who commit these crimes and think that they should be shouldn't be held responsible but they should and they should be punished because you can't go around taking people's lives and not be punished I think the girl that took 10 years she just thought she should get out because she had a son at home who needed her and I wanted to jump up and say some but that big son of mine was with me and he held me down because we wasn't supposed to talk really and I wanted to tell yes my daughter had a mother at home that needed her but she couldn't have her if she ever comes to court again or tried to get out on parole again I want to be there too because even though I know I won't get my daughter again I miss her if people just realize how it hurts the family of these people that they hurt kill and maybe they could understand I wouldn't want that to happen to me so I can't do it but we have some people with no conscience I guess one year later that my son I lost my youngest son and that didn't help matters either but God has been with me and I'm doing the best I can and I'm sure they wouldn't want me crying every day or you know suffering because of them I can hear them I'm like you got to go on you have to live so that's what I'm trying to do I was carrying on doing routine housework and I had gone outside for a few minutes to check a dryer vent had come back in left a door unlocked just for a matter of moments and before I could go back to close that door to lock that door man came in through that door came up from behind me threatened me took me out to the woods behind my home where he robbed and raped me I really feared that I'd never see my husband or children again but he did let me go but with the words you remember that I know where you live and if you tell anyone I'm gonna come back and I'm gonna kill you and in a small town like we live in to relocate would have been you know of no use at all especially my husband's a police officer he'd been upstairs asleep during that time that the man came in but he'd been up for over 30 hours and I knew that if I screamed then I was afraid that it would the end result would be not only my death but his death as well I'm the protector I'm the the husband and I felt like I had failed and as a police officer especially and here this happens not only in my own town but in my own home my husband called the police I begged him not to I had knew that this man meant what he said that if I had told anyone that he was going to come and kill me of course I went into immediate shock I was like a zombie it was like this can't have really happened to me you know I've got to be dreaming and I just can't wake up I couldn't sleep when I did finally sleep there were nightmares I couldn't eat I couldn't think I couldn't focus the kids and I would be having dinner with Debbie in the evening and she would just explode seemingly for no reason and you know it would shock us and then we'd realize okay something was just said or there was some reference that that flashed her back and we had to learn how to accept that and deal with it anytime I was in a crowd I was looking wondering you know is he following me is he looking at my children when I would kiss my children goodbye in the morning I'd wonder are they gonna come back through the door in the afternoon because I just that really and truly felt that if he couldn't get to me that he especially would probably grab my daughter a lot of people told me after I was attacked at Debbie at least you're alive and I remember thinking you know I'm not alive I felt like I couldn't trust anybody especially of course strangers I never felt comfortable anywhere I never felt safe anywhere you never get over this I see an anger sometimes in my son whenever he hears about a woman that's happening to another woman because he knows firsthand what it does to the entire family it's not just the primary victim that's involved here it's each and every person that touches her life and my husband of course he felt guilty because here he felt like he was able to protect the whole city of Williamsburg but yet he laid asleep while his own wife was taken out of her home in the middle of the day so the guilt was phenomenal there's multiple victims I was a victim both of my kids suffered my daughter was afraid to go out from the house to the car at night my son both of them were actually bullied at school over this because we did go public with it it was six and a half years after the rape that he was found and he was found because he had robbed two other women Virginia has a law where they will take the a sample from all convicted felons they do a DNA typing on them testing on them put it in the data bank the computer immediately does a cross check with other evidence that has been entered and because he was there for another robbery he got caught I want to be able to meet face-to-face with him I guess in some ways it's like facing your fear I want to look at him and I want to tell him I'm not afraid of you anymore I need to be able to look at him eye to eye and say you can't hurt me anymore it's over and it's done and I need that for me I was walking home from a dinner party it's 11 o'clock at night walking down Pennsylvania Avenue in our nation's capital and was accosted by three gentlemen that grabbed me and drug me behind a dimsy dumpster and beat me and kicked me they knocked out my front tooth and bruised a couple of ribs and all they really got out of the attack was $20 I literally gave them my bill fall they took 20 bucks out that's what it was in there threw it back at me and they took off I got up and I ran I ran home for the rest of the blocks during that entire night I didn't sleep I didn't bathe I just remember laying in my bed staring at the wall and the ceiling and thinking God I'm so thrilled to be at home and so thrilled to be alive we called my parents after the police officer had left and I had one friend on one phone and I was on another and I just wanted to assure my mother that that I was first of all okay that I was going to be okay but I told her and she was on one phone my dad was on another and so it was kind of hectic and crazy and they were both very upset and my mother was very emotional and crying and you know you never want to hear your parents be that just so sad you know I had a great doctor I had a great dentist they worked with me but financially it was very difficult my parents were extremely helpful in that situation if not I don't know what happened I still think about it when I'm walking down the street whether it's you know six o'clock at night or nine o'clock at night I really don't walk after nine I know that sounds crazy but I take cabs everywhere now long-term I just don't think that you ever ever recover from it it makes you so much aware and it makes you a little bit more jaded about people that you pass on the street you never know what's going to happen there were three individuals that were captured that were doing random acts of violence roaming Capitol Hill I think that they need to take responsibility for their actions I think that certainly so they can't do this to anyone else I think that monetary damages should be a consideration also counseling I mean just all these different all these different factors but first of all I'd really just want to know why I don't understand what makes people that way


The singer-songwriter Billie Eilish just did an interview opening up about what was going on when she wrote the song Zanny with her brother Phineas and in this video I want to talk about why someone like Billie Eilish deserves a lot more credit. What is up everybody? This is Chris from The Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem but focus on the solution and if you're new to my channel sometimes what I like to do is pull different topics from pop culture to try to see what kind of lessons we can learn from them. So if you're into that stuff make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. So I guess I'll start out with this. Yes I've done a lot of Billie Eilish videos. I talked about this a little bit on a live stream yesterday but anyways like yeah I'm going to like the more I learn about her and everything like that the more I'm like seeing that she is a pretty positive role model but I do think there should be some more information and resources like the conversation that Dr. Mark Goldston and I just had yesterday about teenagers who are struggling and just to help you get into my mind a little bit like everything I struggled with that resulted in my depression my suicidal ideation my drug addiction my anxiety all that stemmed from my teenage years and I wasted the years 18 through 27 in this dark dark terrible place and one of my missions one of my goals is to reach a younger audience and try to help them avoid some of the pitfalls that I went through because like I said I wasted like almost a decade of my entire life so when I see somebody like Billie Eilish out there doing what she's doing and talking about some of these serious things and the demographic she has I want to expand on that and if any of you are watching this in your older and your parent or maybe you have nieces and nephews or I don't know you you're around people who are a little bit younger like I think it's important to have these conversations and discuss what Billie Eilish is putting out there into the world but I was motivated to do this video based on the video I just saw that was released on her channel where it was talking about inside Billie's mind for the song Zanny alright so anyways I broke down this song just from my perspective from the perspective of recovering prescription drug addict the other day but like hearing what she was talking about with this I am like dang this is so cool like it's so awesome that this young woman has millions and millions of millions of people watching her and like and she's opening up about this because whether you want to acknowledge it or not like young people are looking to model behavior after people they look up to so like something I've done on my channel forever now is what are good examples what are bad examples so the first thing that Billy kind of talks about in this video is just this idea of like being cool and partying the night before I had been with a group of my friends and they all got drunk and we're throwing up and I wasn't and Jooling and they were all you know they were Jooling throwing up drinking kept throwing up kept drinking more kept throwing up more and then keep keep kept drinking something that we definitely need to talk about because so many kids like high school is difficult being a teenager is difficult I know us adults looking back at it like you don't got anything to worry about you don't got any bills to pay you're not even filing taxes yet not not at all right but during that time that is their entire reality and for a lot of teenagers like not only is there a stress of like getting good grades maybe playing sports extracurricular activities you know but a lot of it has to do with friendships and relationships during that time people are trying to develop their own identity and see where they fit into this big crazy world and part of this like is is people falling victim to peer pressure and we still see this with adults too like people trying to be cool right like what's the cool thing to do I did a video about Kevin Hart the other day about you know how he was talking about how being negative is the cool thing to do and this is a trap that many teenagers fall into where they they go they hang out they party they get messed up and all that because it's cool and then other people are lured into that lifestyle thinking that's cool as well but it's amazing that this young woman Billy Eilish who at this time is 17 years old is saying like this is ridiculous like she talks about seeing her friends like legit getting messed up drunk and high and like drooling right and then there's like girls with two cigarettes in her mouth and like blows them in Billy's face and like this is what these people are thinking is cool so it's so awesome that somebody like Billy Eilish who is like this teenage icon if you will say like what what is cool about that and like I know coming from me a 33 year old man like if I went up to like some teenagers like you think that's cool that's not cool right but it's so awesome seeing Billy Eilish who is one of them talking about this and like like I had an interesting conversation with Dr. Mark Goldstein but you know let's say for example my son he's only 10 years old right now he was getting into Billy Eilish you know whatever like I would be looking more towards these things and stuff so if he was like into her music and can connect with her music I'd be saying looking look at her as a person look at what she's doing as a person something I haven't died into yet is the way that she connects with her fans and how she loves her fans which is awesome as well but like I think it's great that she sends out these messages about it's not cool to just go out and do these things and you know something I would say is like what are other things to do so me personally like I was a triathlete I avoid parties until the end of my senior year that's when my addiction took off but I had so many other things that I was doing throughout high school I had legitimate fun without getting messed up and the thing that we need to realize too for a lot of young people who get sucked into you know substance abuse and partying and things like that a lot of them are trying to escape the reality that they're currently in a lot of young people have a bad family life you know and they're one of their escapes or to numb that pain is through abusing substances okay but anyways when it comes to the title of the song Zanny Billy Irish opens up about how she actually had just like a couple days prior lost a friend to Xanax right after that I did the last full was of the song which was the last verse and a friend of mine had like passed like two days before and so I was like really it was really like hard and especially was really hard to record that song because I was really cut up about him yeah I was really emotional about it and that right there like it's it's a terrible situation but I've lost so so so many people to drug addiction to suicide and things like that like I think the best way to honor their memories is to put out some kind of good message out there and that's why I'm super super you know proud or inspired by Billy Eilish for taking this situation and like turning it into something to like put a message out there and her and her brother Phineas talk about how much emotional she was getting while talking about this subject because like man I hate it I hate it so so so much like something that just drives me absolutely bonkers is I have some videos about Xanax and Xanax addiction and things like that I talk about overdoses and overdose rates and there are so many comments so many comments that are like you can't overdose on Xanax right but like still thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people are dying every single year in the United States from Xanax and here's why because it's often being mixed with other substances like I'm not here to knock Xanax if you're taking Xanax for anxiety do your thing boo the only precaution I would give is make sure that you're following up with a doctor to make sure that you're not becoming dependent because Xanax can create both a physical as well as a psychological dependent so I'm not knocking you for using that you have extreme anxiety and you're using an S prescribed do your thing but in this context we're talking about a people who are abusing Xanax and putting themselves at risk of death okay because Xanax is a tranquilizer okay a tranquilizer it depresses your nervous system when you combine that with alcohol or other substances it can be lethal there are so so so many people who are dying from this thing like one of my best friends I remember you know having to talk to her right after one of her very close friends young woman I think she was like 24 years old who passed away from a combination of Xanax and alcohol she started taking Xanax didn't realize how much she was taking was high started drinking and she overdosed and died all right and the thing was she was at a party I think there was some other illegal activity going on there so while this young woman was overdosing nobody even called the cops because they were afraid that they were going to get in trouble like you guys like this is a big deal and whether or not you like me talking about Billie Eilish I don't really care because it gives me the opportunity to talk about very serious subjects that are actually going on in our society okay like this is some real real stuff so by the way just to go back to that that topic of people not like getting the police involved if somebody's like overdosing in many states there are actually laws that will ensure that you don't get in trouble if you call in an overdose like one of the things is a lot of people are dying from like even heroin or fentanyl overdoses and a lot of people just don't call the police or first responders to get help and fear that they're going to get in trouble so states have actually set up laws that give you the ability to not get in trouble for calling that in you get a free pass and this is one of the reasons why we need to talk about this stuff because if more people knew that maybe we could save more lives like when it comes to overdoses whether it's xanax fentanyl heroin um other prescription opioids whatever it is like there can be a huge difference like the matter of seconds right like if you wait too long that person can die okay like if the person is unconscious and they're not breathing they're not getting oxygen to their brain they can also throw up choke on their own vomit all sorts of stuff like I went through an entire Narcan training to learn about how to reverse the effects of an opioid overdose and this is some really serious stuff you guys so anyways I am super glad that Billy adish is putting some type of information out there and the goal of my channel is to take topics that people are already looking into and expand on it a little bit more and try to increase a little bit more awareness about these very serious things all right so if you are a teenager out there like like do you like listen to music play sports get involved with your friends get involved with family get a hobby and stuff like that like I'm not saying that I would never say in a million years that no teenager should ever drink or use drugs because that is a ridiculous expectation but I really do wish more teenagers would start to learn that if they're trying to use it to be cool or if they're trying to use it to cope with a difficult life like that is not the way to go about it and you can turn out like me where I waste an entire decade of my life where I should have been going to college and doing all sorts of cool stuff but it developed into an addiction so super glad once again that Billy I was just putting out this type of message um if you have any comments if you want to chime in on this topic let me know down in the comments below and if you like this video please give it a thumbs up if you're new make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell because I make a ton of videos and a huge huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on Patreon you're all amazing and if you would like to sign up become a patron support the channel get involved in our monthly Q&A some other benefits clicker top right there all right thanks so much for watching I'll see you next time


Aging is universal. It's merely another expression of time. We all age at all times. That's just how time works. One might delay some conventional signs of it, but often at incredible cost. And the social pressure that denies our right to experience time through our lives can become very oppressive.  Society weighs us by our youthfulness and offers it as a key to beauty, success and happiness.


Hi, everyone. I'm Kim Doherty, career consultant for the iSchool, and I'd like to welcome you to today's LIS Careers webcast, Interplay and Compatibility, using soft skills to ace interviews, get hired, and excel at work. We're fortunate to have two wonderful speakers who will be sharing their expertise with you about the importance of graduating, not only with solid LIS skills, but also with excellent soft skills. So first a little bit about our speakers. Heidi Murphy is currently director of library and recreation services for the city of Pleasanton. She's been involved in the library field for more than 15 years, bringing experience from a wide range of library systems along with her passion for people and people's stories. Heidi has a Bachelor of Arts in Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and her MLIS from San Jose State University. Heidi also serves on the Executive Committee for the Pacific Library Partnership. Deb Sica, who has both an MFA and MLIS, has been in research, education, and library since 1993. She's been an archivist, an academic, and a public library administrator, for both the Texas Gulf Coast and San Francisco Bay areas. She spent the last decade in public libraries working to transform data, excuse me, dated discordant policy into socially just, fully inclusive practice. Deb has been politically active for over 25 years and continues the fight for equity, diversity, and inclusion in libraries and in life. She currently serves on the Executive Board of GLB-TRT, which is ALA's Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Roundtable, is a member of the Freedom to Read Foundation, and is part of Jim Neal's ALA Presidential Advisory Council. She currently serves as the Deputy County Librarian for Alameda County Library. And now just a bit of housekeeping information. This will be a one-hour webcast, and there will be time for Q&A at the end of the session. So if you have questions, just type them into the chat box as they come to you, and then we'll go through them at the end of the presentation. Please don't hesitate to ask questions for two reasons. One, if it's a question you have, then others may be wondering the exact same thing. And two, this is an excellent opportunity to hear directly from successful professionals practicing in your field, and you want to make the most of that opportunity. So I know I'm going to have questions. If you have them as well, please let us know.  It will be posted to the iSchool website within several days, and students will be notified when it's available for viewing. Okay, so I think we're ready to go. I'm going to hand it off now to Deb, who will be our first presenter. Take it away, Deb. All right. Thank you, Kim. That was a great introduction, and we're happy to be presenting here for both Heidi and I's alums. So today we're going to talk about the difference between hard scales and soft scales. And a lot of times you'll hear librarians joke, well, I didn't learn that in library school as they go about their day. So a couple of things that we wanted to make sure that you learn before you left library school is the importance of what soft skills are. And so just in comparison, so that we can kind of frame what soft skills are, hard skills are the things that in your library and toolkit. The Rosie, the Rivet Gun, the tools that you learn during your time getting your degrees, your master's degrees. And they're usually specific. They're things that you can learn or teach. They're quantitatively defined, and they're measurable. So these are the those kinds of skills that you fill your resume with as you start to apply for jobs in library. Things like cataloging or processing, reference, those types of skill sets, which are all very important. And it's the stuff of librarianship. And we need to know all of the inner workings of technology, but it's where we tend to focus most of our energies. And so a little bit on soft skills and some good amount of time spent learning soft skills will help us to do that. So soft skills are your interpersonal toolkit. They're assembled during your upbringing, your experiences and your interactions, the relationships that you build with people. And they're sometimes learned subconsciously and left unexamined, but they're equally important as hard skills. And I also think that the ability to work within a team, being decisive when it's appropriate, communicating with different people that hold relative to your success, hold positions that are relative your success in your libraries, or archives or businesses, is very important part of the work that we do. So also an ability to be independent, to think on your own feet, being reliable and to apply for information situationally. And those are kind of things that we don't ever talk about. And so we wanted to make sure that before you left library school, we talked a little bit about that.  But just if you can do kind of an assessment in your mind of what you've done preparing your soft skillset for interviewing. And so I'm going to talk a little bit about the interview process. And then Heidi is going to talk a little bit about how you're going to meet those skills in the future as you actually get that green job of yours. And so if you just take a look at your resume, you'll see that you have no doubt you have plenty of great experiences there. But you'll have to have different things to ace that interview and land your ideal job. So go ahead and we'll talk about soft skills for interviews and personal preparedness. The things that I like to do before I go on an interview, and I've done this for a couple of positions that I've held in my job is do a personal checklist. Just about my self-awareness, a little personal inventory helps. There's all kinds of assessments that we can take. And I'm not talking about the kinds that are stuck in the magazine next to the perfume ads. I'm talking about real disc assessments, Myers-Briggs, Strengths Finders from Gallup. There's a lot of different professional self-assessments.  But more so, what can build your professional soft skills toolkit? So how do you and ask yourself how you handle difficult conversations? Even when you don't agree with what's going on, do you have diverse communication strategies? And then just think about how you exhibit entrepreneurial spirit. Are you a self-starter? Can you work collaboratively? Can you do both? How do you show initiative? What does that look like in a work environment? So let's see. A lot of times when we go on an interview, and I can tell you from sitting behind, I've been on both sides of an interview. I've been an interviewee and an interviewer several times over in my career. And you will learn the most about the interview process as an interviewer. So if you ever get the opportunity to sit on a panel, it is incredible and it is the most the best way to learn about interviews, because you see one after the other and you see different people engaging the interview panel. So one of the ways that you can prepare for that interview to be successful is ask yourself these questions. Do you understand the specifics of the library, the organization? It's not you're not walking in as a cold call, you know where you're going, you know what they do, take that time to prepare. Also, do you know about their recruitment process? Is there what you know that you've gotten off of different websites or through civil service information? If you're public library, usually the spec information. So to be able to sit in the interview and show the interviewees that you've done this type of research speaks volumes. And it's not necessarily that you need that information at that moment, but you're able to show that you have obtained it, you have vested interest. So you can also just develop your talking points around why you want to be part of a specific library. But the fact that if you illustrate that you've done your homework, it shows not only are you interested, but you know how to prepare and you've taken time and that this hour interview is very important to you. Alright, so interviews are probably the most unnatural stage and formulaic interaction when you walk into it. But once you've done a couple of them, you get to see different ways of doing interviews. You get to see that it's both an assessment on your end and an assessment by the people that you're meeting. And so it's a give and take relationship. So you want to be able to kind of see, think at the same time, is this a good fit for you or and are you a good fit for them? I kind of liken interviews to a big Thanksgiving dinner where you spend a week preparing and maybe buying all of the fixings and the dressing and everything that you need for Thanksgiving. So you get everything that you need ready for your interview. And then you spend the day before kind of plotting out all of the specifics about the Thanksgiving dinner and how your interview could go. You arrive early and you meet with everybody that you've been so looking forward to meeting with. Spend 45 minutes to an hour having a Thanksgiving meal. And then at the end, you're completely and totally exhausted. And so to go through this kind of cycle with an interview is the closest thing I can think of is the preparing and then the actual event is only a short amount of time. And then afterwards feeling like total relief and kind of total exhaustion. So just know going into the interview that that's the process and everybody else that's going to interview for that position that day are all going through the same thing. So knowing that you're in that type of company and knowing what you need to do to self-care, take self-care during that will help you a long way. So then it's very easy to look at interviewing as a big, scary process. But if you break it down to its major elements, it'll take some of that anxiety away. So that anxiety also stops you from shining. And so it's really important soft skill to be able to have a genuine confidence in a conversation that you're going to have in an interview. All right. So I thought we do a little fun, fun thing. You could see the difference in what a hard skill answer would be in an interview and what a soft skill answer might look like. And it's they're very different. And so let's Heidi, would you like to practice a little bit with me? Absolutely. I'd love to. All right. So I need to ask you the question first. Um, sure. All right. Tell us about an experience working with a team. All right.  Some people pulled their weight when others didn't, you know, it's just nature of the work, right? Am I right? I'm so I am right about that. You know, I have to get stuck doing everything. So I make sure everything was done by the due day. And I or quote unquote, we actual air quotes ended up creating a small catalog of rocks found in Lake Tahoe. Was it useful? Not really, but it was just a beta. And so it really didn't go anywhere from there. But you know, I really, I really picked up a lot of the pieces that from other people that dropped the ball. So I'm really responsible. So that's one option. I wouldn't recommend that though. And I'm actually that's one of the option that's all put together from answers that I have heard before on interviews. And so that's it may sound really crazy right now. But I've heard lots of lots of first time candidates coming to interviews with those types of responses. So let's read you this rewind a little bit and I'll ask Heidi, and she can kind of illustrate what it could look like. So Heidi, could you tell us about an experience working with the team? Absolutely. The opportunity to work with people allows for team members to balance their skills and service and really work toward a collaborative outcome. While I was in library school, I had the opportunity to work within a team on several occasions. While sometimes we started off slowly, we eventually learned to work together and were able to create small and informative projects. One example was we created a catalog highlighting rock formations unique to the Tahoe area. The experience really for me was more about our collective impact and learning to work together than the final product. But this really enhanced the value of the coursework for me. Oh, that's a good answer, Heidi. And you can see the difference that the content of the question is exact same. You know, worked as a team, did a small catalog of rocks from Tahoe, but the way that Heidi framed it was much more eloquent and emphasized certain soft skills and that sends volumes of message over to the interviewees and interviewers. Let's do this one more time. Let's go with you. All right, Deb, why would you like to work for the City of Pleasanton or the Alameda County Libraries?  I've gone to library school and I can bring that to work. So let's try to use some soft skills to get a better answer. I'll ask Heidi. Heidi, why would you like to work for the City of Pleasanton or the Alameda County Libraries? I'm a card-carrying patron at the library and I'm really familiar with the range of services provided here. I even bring my kids to story time. On your website, you've discussed your socially just mission of providing library services to all in an equitable way. I believe in this mission as well. I spent the past year volunteering as a court advocate for foster youth and I've loved helping young people find their voice to get on a path to a better life. I want to work and my lifelong career to bring this same fulfillment for me. I want my work to be something that connects with my personal and professional beliefs and your library does that and I would love to be part of that enduring mission. That feels a world's away and much better of an answer and so just to seeing those two differences is really important. So I'll pass it over to Heidi. Heidi's going to talk a little bit about once you actually get the job. So you ace the interview. Now you've got the job. How do soft skills apply in the workplace? These soft skills are really the building blocks for you. They're what connect you to your colleagues and to the community you serve. Those technical skills help you to do the work but it's really those relationships with the patrons who come into the library, the relationships with your colleagues, the relationships that you build within your organization and within the community where you work that make your work successful, that make your work meaningful and that build culture. So what are some of these soft skills? I used to think that professionalism was just this mystical transformation that happened when people put on a suit and tie and went to work in the morning. Over time I learned really that professionalism is how you carry yourself in alignment with your personal goals and in alignment with the organizational values in all situations even when no one's watching. Professionalism is an ethic that you carry with you everywhere you go. One of the things Deb talked about earlier was doing research on the areas, doing research on the organizations where you're interviewing and that's so important because it's really hard if your personal values and the organizational values don't line up. So it's really really important when you're interviewing to really interview places where you want to work and where their organizational values match yours because that's where you can find true professionalism. So for you to think about professionalism how do you define it for yourself? There are several questions to think about to maybe journal about. What are your personal standards of professionalism? What are the organizational standards either where you're working or where you're anticipating working? Do they line up? If you're already working there and they don't line up you should probably think about looking for another job. If you're not working there yet you should really look to make sure that they do line up and then once you're in that job how does your work represent your organization? How does your work product represent the organization? How do your words and actions represent your organization? And then there's a soft skill of understanding perceptions. Are you aware of community perceptions? Are you aware of staff perceptions? And are there things that you could do to create better perceptions? We had an example of this recently when I started here in Pleasanton I started a book club with the executive team and we had a blast with this book club and we had so much fun we started meeting earlier and earlier in the day each month so we originally started at five and then we moved it to four and then we were meeting at three and our boss at one of our meetings just said hey I know you guys are doing good work but how does it look to the community and the entire executive team is sitting at three o'clock in the afternoon talking about a book outside the organization and so even though that what we were doing wasn't a bad thing the perception to the community needed to be considered in that situation and we revised how we were meeting and we always met after five and that was an eye-opening experience for me to really understand that that perception is part of professionalism and then another question to ask is do you do what you say you'll do do you follow through do you meet deadlines and then is what you say truthful helpful and beneficial to the community to your co-workers to the organization are you responsive to people do you respond to people when they get in touch with you do you treat them with respect that's all part of this professionalism package one more example of a time where this professionalism wasn't learned early on and long ago I worked with a person who didn't understand that talking negatively about your workplace even outside the workplace could have negative impacts and this person was was making comments about the way the library's budget was being handled and the leadership of the library in a public place and it was overheard by a former mayor he came back to the city manager to talk about this situation and it was a really tough situation this employee didn't mean to be unprofessional didn't mean to be negative but was young in her career and didn't understand he actually was able to be really responsive to feedback even that was difficult for her to hear at the time and she was able to turn her career around and become a true professional in the organization and so feedback is hugely hugely important in the growth of your career and um you know the ability to give and receive feedback to ask for feedback and to incorporate feedback is hard and it takes knowing your values separate from your work product so being able to receive criticism about your work product and know it's not a reflection of you as a human being is the first step many people make the mistake over time of hearing feedback as a negative reflection of themselves rather than a helpful tool for improvement at work though for feedback to work successfully it takes a leap of faith for you you have to assume the best of the other person and think okay someone's giving me feedback because they care it doesn't always feel like they care but if you can take the time to reflect and think about it incorporate that feedback and use it to improve it truly truly is in the best interest for you and the community and the organization asking for feedback can be hard because it's hard to receive sometimes it feels critical and it can feel mean spirited and again getting feedback is the only way that we know that we're doing the right things for the organization and it opens yourself up to potentially identifying failures in areas where you could do better but those pieces are how we continue to learn and grow and being able to take the feedback you learn in one situation and apply it to another saves you from having to go through that difficult process again the more that you can incorporate early feedback into all you do the better off you are and an even more challenging piece that i've learned over time for teams and for staff members is to have the courage to provide feedback to their colleagues and their superiors and i will tell you as a library director i need feedback we all need feedback and so it's essential in the workplace for the feedback loop to be an actual loop where it's not just one directional but to do this effectively it really has to come from a place of good intent it can't be that you're just complaining about something but you're providing legitimate feedback of some potential remedies and solutions and workarounds and doing it in a very thoughtful and caring way so it can't be callous it can't just be this was horrible but have you thought about x y or z often phrasing feedback as a question can be helpful especially when you're providing feedback to a superior do this cautiously but but do know that as leaders and organizations we need that feedback and i've worked in organizations that are feedback friendly and organizations that are feedback averse and organizations that have higher morale and more innovation are the ones with the better feedback last note on this one remember that mistakes are human so feedback just helps you you know be a better human but making the same mistake because you've not incorporated feedback is what frustrates your bosses and colleagues so it's really important to actually take that feedback to heart deb hit on this a little bit in our interview questions but equity diversion and inclusion are huge especially in public libraries in all libraries and in life in general but public libraries especially because we're so well used by so many members of the community and so this one is really a lot of self reflection and reaching out to others and learning and being open but do you have a genuine understanding of what equity diversity and inclusion are you don't there's a lot of books there's a lot of classes there's a lot of colleagues you can reach out to and are you able to create personal dissonance to learn more can you step aside and open up your mind to someone else's view and shift your perspective and look at things from that side um we have so many opportunities to interact with people and to serve people and in order to do this we really have to challenge our own biases and acknowledge people and opinions we're different from our own when i started first started in public libraries i was really anxious about serving people that i felt were difficult and difficult for me was how it could be anything someone who was stubborn someone who was pushy someone who was um maybe i thought mentally ill and i i these were people who came to the library every day and i would talk to my colleagues about these interactions and seek feedback how how do you interact with these people how do you turn this interaction to be a positive one um and i started to learn people's names and learn a little bit more about them and all of a sudden these people who were challenged before were now people with a story that i could connect to and that is a whole library team we participated in improv training and it's a really cool idea because the idea of improv is you're open to whatever someone says to you you validate it and then you find a common ground to continue to build on and that along with leveraging your team go a long way to opening the door to equity inclusion and diversity leveraging your team is i would say the biggest soft skill out there knowing how to work with your team members um building a support network is crucial but it can be challenging so even from from the rock team the rock cataloging example um you know the first example where the one person did it all it can be hard i'm sure you've had a team that you dreaded working with where people didn't meet their commitments there were personality conflicts um you carried the load for everybody there was the person who talked all the time and didn't listen there's a lot of team dynamics that can be challenging but teams themselves don't need to be painful and it really starts again just as dad outlined for us it starts with your own self-awareness do your own personal inventory what is your work style what are your preferences what are your limitations and ask your teammates about their work styles their preferences their limitations and so you all of a sudden open this up okay this person likes to brainstorm this person likes time to quietly reflect on things before they have an answer and so how do you shape your team so that everyone can work well in their own style can you put together an agenda for meetings for the people who want to think about things can you have some brainstorming time for the people who like to just rip and build off of other people's ideas it's really by building the strengths and weaknesses um together in a team you can leverage the entire team and move projects forward the base of all of this of course is that you have to assume the best of everyone in that group you have to take a leap of faith again and assume that the person on the other side of the table is there for the right reasons doing the right thing and really being empathetic not assuming the best i think is crucial in your work as well assume the best of people unless they prove you wrong and then as public librarians and academic librarians any librarians we all thrive on partnerships and collaborations and i when i think about our public library in the community there's so many people groups organizations other departments working toward common goals it's really important to look up and to see what other people are doing and how we can relate to those other people even if we're outside the library so what's the big picture in our community what other organizations have similar mission vision values goals um what commonalities do we have with our larger city or county organization with local nonprofits with schools with the business community and then how do we build networks and partnerships with these groups and really the first step is to reach out to build a relationship so you can build partnerships by building relationship taking the first step picking up the phone inviting someone on the other side to a cup of coffee and talking about what you do and asking them what they do and looking to build those bridges in the city of pleasant in our currently in the process of combining our library and community services departments which is the a huge collaborative effort and so we're really looking at how do our two services overlap and how do we leverage those areas to do more for the community to enhance service to limit efficiency and to really build more connections with the community we found some really fun and interesting connection points that we never would have imagined through building these relationships but for example we have a cemetery that we run and the cemetery is an active cemetery still but there's also a whole history in that cemetery so between the library's genealogy genealogical program the museum who has the history and the community services team who oversees the cemetery we're looking at developing a historical tour of the cemetery we have summer camps all over the city summer camps that fill up in the first five minutes of their life for people to sign up for and we're going to move summer reading out to every single one of those programs this year I'm sure a lot of you have heard about the student success initiative at statewide now where public libraries and school districts are working together to make student IDs work as library cards so students can carry one card and access resources from both these are all examples of looking at the big picture and looking for partners and the partners aren't always in the places where you'd expect them so really looking up looking out and exploring is truly the way to be focused on your community also when you look up you look out you start to see new things which leads to a lot of creativity and innovation it's a soft skill and often accompanied by a lot of hard skills to execute on these ideas but I would urge you all to think about when you get into your new positions you're going to want to try a lot of the things you've learned on all new ideas new things to you but to really be thoughtful innovation can be a sensitive subject for those who've been in their roles for a long time and so it's important to appreciate the people and the work that's being done in the present and that's been done in the past while you introduce new ideas and move forward so really you know what ideas are you bringing to the table how are you bringing those how are you building buy-in from team members to launch those ideas are you looking outside of the library world for new ideas and efficiencies um and then really having the courage to fail forward oftentimes when we try something new it doesn't work out perfectly the first time and that's okay that's part of innovation and creativity all the books you read about our best inventors they failed multiple times before they invented every new great thing that we know and use today and so you really need the soft skill to pick yourself up after not getting it just right and reflect on what worked and what didn't work and why and try it again one of the best employees I've ever worked with had a motto and she used to say give me seven tries and I'll get it perfect and she leveraged that and she was able to change and innovate and grow so many amazing programs in the library implement new systems in the library that are still there today and still incredibly successful this whole process can be incredibly challenging and painful so it's really really important that you take care of yourself this really is the biggest soft skill of all especially as you move into more and more demanding roles in the organization it's just really knowing what you need are you a meditator are you an exerciser um are you getting enough sleep do you eat well do you have ways to decompress outside of work everyone has their own formula here um for me it's running I've got to run every day or I have a really hard time sitting all day and getting through meetings so for me it's it's exercising it's sleeping well it's eating well but I have colleagues who meditate they meditate every morning and they come in and they're that's how they center themselves and are available for others public library jobs are incredibly demanding because people need a lot from you you're on all the time they are no longer jobs where you're sitting behind a desk um you know quietly cataloging or looking through book reviews you are actively engaged with people all day long people who need things from you and um demand things from you so it's really important to center yourself and be be available for you and for others if you want to summarize for us I sure would and there's a lot of important points that I'd like to just go back to revisit I think Heidi you had just mentioned that um the importance of being able to create dissonance and I think and and that gives an ability to accept feedback as a gift so if you can put yourself into a couple of uncomfortable positions or you can be a stranger in a strange land as much as possible that's that's definitely a skill that crosses over with your professional and work life so that really was I think really thank you for bringing that to this conversation too um but sure it's it's really important to take time to evaluate the soft skills that you have and you have them you were raised with a bunch of um uh subconscious messaging kind of pick that apart and and what does what does your upbringing bring what special skills um you know I'm an Italian New Yorker I try you know I tend to bring candor and and um sometimes direct honesty and there's a time and a place for it so it's really important that you take time to evaluate you know the gifts that you have um and then also to take those gifts and hone or enhance them so a lot of times even even leadership from top down bottom up or inside out um is really those folks that have taken the time to hone and enhance a couple of really important um qualities uh so I think it's important to hone those and enhance them and if we don't pause to do that it just becomes kind of this tornado experience so I think it's really important to pause and and and do that assessment and um they prove to be very important in all of your levels of success and much more so than your factual knowledge and I know that can be kind of hard to think about but the ability to build relations the ability to um give and receive feedback um the ability to um somebody once told me that you know we judge ourselves and our thoughts and our good intentions and we judge others on their actions and so I think the ability to kind of see try to figure out where people are coming from and having that empathetic ear is also a very important part of all of this so um appreciate your time I think um Kim do we have time for questions uh we do have some time for some questions and and I have about 400 of them but first I I want to point out that you're what you just mentioned we want to be judged by our intentions but we tend to judge other people by their actions that comes from um Stephen Covey's books the yeah and and it's so true and and it absolutely gets to that dissonance that you mentioned of being able to put yourself in someone else's shoes and as Heidi said learn their narrative find out what their story is because then they stop being some other person and instead become an individual who has depth and meaning and presence in your life so I that was so cool so can I ask some questions here absolutely okay the first one is is in reference to something that Deb said which is applying information situationally would you clarify what you mean by that sure um there's a time and a place um and so you may be an expert in certain fields and you also you know may know little to nothing about something else and it's important um that you know you know when and where that information to be stow upon people um you need to know your audience and so for instance if you um have a mile long sheet of statistics um and you are talking to a mayor or an elected official there's a time and a place in which to have an elevator speech and a time and a place in which to give you know a tone detailed report with lots of supporting data and so it's there's a judgment call um and that judgment call is usually based upon the other person's time framework attention um and the audience that's receiving your information so one of the one of the best things that I was ever taught by a friend of the library and she had taken me I was early out of my career and she had taken me to a um a civic event where there's a lot of great funder potential and she said you are going to get up there and you are going to talk about how much you love libraries and she said you're going to tell them about the great services and you're going to tell them about your awesome staff don't do that she said that is the worst thing that you can tell this group of people what they want to know is how your work will positively impact their business and so it was a real great lesson in this viewing time and a place for for right information okay that that makes a lot of sense um one of the question that's the questions that comes up from students is okay so I'm in grad school I've heard about it's important to have a good soft skills I'm not so sure that mine are really great what do I do to improve them you know I I still sort of have time while I'm in grad school and before I launch in the world what can I do in grad school that would help me improve my soft skills that's a fantastic question I would offer a couple of recommendations one is volunteer at your local public library volunteer at a local organization where you're interacting with people and be open to feedback let the people know hey I would love your feedback on various things you have soft skills in your day-to-day life so in your interactions whether you're part of a faith organization or a rotary organization or a book club any of those areas allow you the opportunity to hone soft skills and really learn how how how do I relate to the world around me there's this book on emotional intelligence which I think is really beneficial it's a definitely a soft skill that comes into the workplace a lot that's on this slide here I would look to those pieces and again be open to feedback through the whole process how about you Deb yeah I think and first of all I it's short thinking to say what can I do before I get out of graduate school to learn soft skills it is lifelong I learn soft skills every day I learn you know the faults and and the things of my soft skills on going basis so that's important it's a lifelong process I think as we grow and mature our maybe our bag of hard skills it's a little lighter and our bag of soft skills it's a little heavier and I think that's kind of a due course time and experience but there's also a tool called the 360 and that can be a very a great way to get feedback it's 360 meaning all around you so above you below you to the sides of you and it's people that you know and trust and work with that you know will be honest with you and it can often be very shocking to people what others say about them in a 360 so I would recommend trying to do one of those as well but also like Heidi said it's it's the relationships that you have existing in your life are the platforms in which to test soft skills um and I think there's safe places to do that too so that's really important that's that's great and certainly your point Deb about if this doesn't just you don't just learn this in grad school this is every day we're learning this um makes so much sense but part of that to your point is being open to understanding how you are interacting with people and what the impact is of those interactions um are they serving to advance the goals of the organization or the team or whomever or are they putting up obstacles to that kind of advancement so then a question for Heidi and Deb as well if you want to chime in I you guys have talked about something that's really important which is being able to give and receive feedback and constructive criticism and a question would be for both of you how would you phrase when phrase it when you were trying to deliver or wanted to deliver constructive criticism to someone in a way that made it clear to them that it was constructive criticism that you were delivering because you cared about their success because I'm assuming both of you have done that a number of times sure you want me to dive in first don't worry I think it really is dependent on the person so it takes having a relationship with the person and knowing their style in order to be able to really give that feedback in a positive and meaningful way so for me um you know there's some people where I would say I have some feedback for you do you want to schedule a time for that or is now a good time right because some people need to be in the right space to be able to even hear the feedback there's other people where I know that they're completely open to whatever feedback and so it's more like the one-minute manager or walking by and walking by hey next time could you x y or z or um hey I have a quick piece of feedback for you and you just go through it so I think it really depends um on on who the person is and can I offer you feedback is an okay question to ask and I offer you feedback now or would you prefer it later if you know you have to give it sometimes you don't want to give that open-ended answer but you can give the you know would you like this now would you like to do this later yeah that's I tend to ask the prompting question too of and it depends on where you are like you said if you're walking you know through the library you're not going to give that kind of feedback across across the desk or anything but it's I tend to say can I share a couple of things with you or do you have a minute um and try to kind of ask permission to give a gift of feedback and and that kind of frames it a little differently but it really depends on how important the feedback is to the whole so if I have you know a very toxic person on staff and um the emotional leakage is just kind of suffocating people around them um that's going to be kind of a different a different framework for feedback that'll be a little more direct and so I think I calibrate the style with with the feedback content and I think that's really important to do too and that's that's kind of the same going back to make sure that you're delivering the message to the right audience in the right way that makes a lot of sense and then if one of your staff members had constructive criticism for you I think it's very difficult or it can be difficult for someone who's reporting to a supervisor or a manager to know how to frame a suggestion or a concern how would you want that discussion to to happen with you I can start on this one Heidi all right I I appreciate direct and it's stylistically I like to have and and not a harsh and not um and not mean spirited in any sort of way but this is you know I'd rather have somebody come to me and say um you know I've noticed this and this is kind of the outcome of what you're doing Dev um can you take a moment pause and think about it um and I really appreciate kind of that direct style it works for me and so um I've been very blessed to work with some amazing leadership that have been able to kind of give me that but then I've also gotten feedback in a way where it's it's a little coded and it's complicated and makes me pause and think and step back and go hmm what what are they really trying to tell me so I think you know for me I'd love it if somebody can you know give me some specifics it's a brave act to give somebody feedback too so kudos kudos on that but I also like when and Heidi touched upon a little bit too she said when you had given feedback try to offer solutions as well so marry those two things together and providing feedback to me um that's so helpful because it gives me a firmer framework to kind of actually put that feedback into action as well so I get a better understanding okay I would second all of that and I would just add that it has to be done in person don't use email as a tool for feedback thought of being in person because you can see intent a lot better in person and emails when it's potentially contentious can add a whole layer that you didn't intend to put there yeah last question we've had some great questions so far one last question someone has asked which is how would you want soft skills demonstrated in an interview so students or a recent graduate is in an interview they heard your your presentation they know how important soft skills are would you want them to tell you stories of how they handled a similar situation or how they theoretically would handle a situation or or what their values are around a certain topic what would you be looking for I'll kick this one off I think in interviews it's really important to use specific examples I don't have a specific example that's exactly that you can say you know I I've not done that particular thing but I've done this and go through it and here's how it's similar and you can tie your values into your answers I think one of the best tools I ever learned in interviewing was to really identify the three things that make you unique and incorporate those into your answers so people start to see what your true value set is as you answer those questions and so incorporating specific examples and values in your answers allows people to see your soft skills we look in our interviews to really understand what did this person do in that situation what was their role how did they react how did they incorporate feedback those questions you get if you could have done something differently what would it have been and why that's a feedback question right how did you how did you either receive feedback and make a change or provide self-reflective feedback and make a change those are really important and they're they're hidden in every question but your soft skills come through in every single question you answer that's that's great I did what I mean exactly I agree with Heidi the specifics is really important um giving the details of actual things that had happened and in fact a lot of us are looking for that level of detail not what you think you would do but what you've done and that's that's really important but also you may not have done a specific library job and most likely for introductory applications you're not have you won't have that experience and so being able to have a lateral experience or a parallel example illustrating your soft skills that's transformation that you can transform um that type of experience into something that can really feel a great answer for an interview question shows you that you can problem solve and and shows um areas that that you excel with soft skills that's great feedback all right we're we're almost at the end of our hour and so I am going to read something um for everyone which is Heidi and Deb's contact information Heidi's is H M U R P H Y at city of Pleasanton C A dot gov and Heidi's phone number is<PHONE_NUMBER> Deb's information is uh hold on just a sec here we go uh d s i c a at ac library dot org and her phone number is<PHONE_NUMBER> and on behalf of both of them I'm going to pass along some information which is that they would love to hear from you guys um they are looking to recruit uh employees and so if you would send them an email just letting them know you're interested they will send you all their information about their respective libraries and their hiring practices and everything you would need to know to to take a look at that so um I I would have to say on behalf of the iSchool and all of the students thank you both so much for taking the time to share your expertise and your insights with the students this has been incredibly helpful and I think really um has framed the idea of soft skills and how they play out through our professions really really beautifully uh I think that wraps up our webcast for today thank you all for participating and with that enjoy the rest of your evenings