Alexa/Siri won’t you be my Career Neighbor?
When I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life I went back to school to start over with the idea (after teaching continuing education night programs) that I would pursue teaching design.
My reasoning was, as a kid, I hated school. I wanted to teach others that school could be fulfilling and entertaining. Something to look forward to rather than a chore filled with homework and lemmings.
I thought it was important that people learn with their own unique faculties whether they were auditory, visual, kinesthetic, sensory or otherwise. I always had a hard time in school, which required me to work extremely hard to come out ahead and succeed with good grades. Even today, though never formally diagnosed with a learning disability, I wonder if I have an actual learning disability or just don’t jive to formal teaching methodologies.
In my last semester of grad school at Eastern Michigan University, I was juggling thoughts of how to share my creativity with the world. The problem was that this was the same semester that my life around me was building and crumbling simultaneously and it was hard to focus.
My grandmother was battling terminal cancer and my best undergrad college friend was in stage four of his brain tumor and quickly losing that war. My (now) husband and I had been pressured to move our wedding prior to my last semester in hopes that my best friend could stand up as our man-of-honor and that my grandmother could see her only daughter’s surviving grandchild get married.
I was quickly getting mentally and physically exhausted juggling an assistantship, working as a graphic designer with the college, which was paying for that education, and all of these other things that were simultaneously happening around me.
As hard as it was, and boy was it, I stayed on track and managed (with the help and support of my husband and family) to create my master’s thesis project called “The Dyning Room.” (www.dyningroom.com), which was a big hit with the college and all who visited the gallery where my installation was held.
It was a project that would not have existed if the emotions of my grandmother’s and best friend’s death were not so timely to occur prior to that last semester at Eastern.
And so, I went on to teach at a private college for two years before realizing it wasn’t what I wanted to do. Beyond my focus to create a curriculum of inclusivity for a society that wasn’t ready to receive it, I became the teacher that I’d preferred not to have. It was then that I knew I had to go back to the drawing board and begin once again.
I share all of this with you because last night I watched the documentary “Mr. Rogers Neighborhood” where one of his quotes really resonated with me;
A lot of people have helped me get through everything I’ve listed above and then some and now it’s time to return that favor.
In today’s society (not really any more tolerant than 50 years prior — unfortunately), a show like Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood would most likely be viewed as too slow and perhaps too preachy sounding to “make it” in today’s society. So how does one reboot Mr. Roger?
What the documentary made me do was stop and think. What is the number one way we communicate these days? Sure we have TV shows and sitcoms, Netflix binges, movies and YouTube videos that shows us how we can do everything from changing car parts out to parting our hair into an up do but what really dominates?
I believe it is our need for instant gratification and ease with machines like Siri and Alexa that just give us the most “relevant” answer to whatever question we ask them.
This made me think, with the dissemination of all the information in the world at the tip of our tongues we have the power through top prioritized search engines to share messages of help and hope to others.
Recently in the news I read an article from Fast Company Magazine about searches for suicide and what “help” can be offered for people typing these words into search engines or Facebook’s ai search window available to scope out potential people needing help according to their somber keyword choices. It’s a set of complicated systems that will always harbor on what should or shouldn’t be censored.
So that got me thinking; what if I was a “Dear Abby” sort of person. Not for suicide prevention perhaps, but for career help. And what if people talked into Alexa and asked something like “can Kristina help me find a job?” or “can Kristina tell me what I’m not doing right on my resume?”
Perhaps I could be that neighbor who, without a TV show where I sit down and put on a pair of lace-up Keds, could instead help you tie down your needs to help us all figure out how to follow our hearts, careers, volunteer time, or ideas and inventions. To offer connection to the right resources and thoughts like Dear Abbey would reply to broken hearted individuals through her news column.
Perhaps I could be that neighbor who, without a TV show where I sit down and put on a pair of lace-up Keds, could instead help you tie down your needs to help us all figure out how to follow our hearts, careers, volunteer time, or ideas and inventions.
— Kristina Rudolph
So, I give myself to you all. If you want to be my neighbor, write me, and feel free to make me the go-to-person for all that is career related. I don’t pretend to know all but I know I can help or lead you in the right direction if you are ready. Perhaps just some day you’ll be able to ask Alexa (or whatever replaces her), how Kristina can help you find what you are looking for and give you a chance to find yourself.
kris@kcandy.com
