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 First I saw Karen do a list like this on her blog, and I thought it was brave of her. Then Thu did a similar list for her birthday. When I told Adam I should write a post about myself too, he asked me why I hadn’t yet. I took this as a challenge, so here’s my attempt.
1. If you dare me, I will probably do it, as long as it’s safe and legal. That’s why I’m writing this post. 
2. I’m not originally from Texas. I was born in New York but I can’t imagine living in a cold climate anymore.
3. I’m an excellent cook, and I can make everything from soup to stir fry. My favorite cuisine is Italian though.
4. I find it difficult to speak if I can’t use my hands. People think I must be Italian but I’m not even a little bit. No one knows how I picked this up, since my family doesn’t do it. Continue reading 19 Things You Probably Don’t Know About Me
 This is a guest post from David Rostcheck. Trained as a physicist, he became a software engineer and has worked in IT for 18 years. David is employed by a security company who sent him to SU in October.
As I approached the campus, an airship flew over my head. And when I stepped on campus, the first person I met was Peter Diamandis – founder of the X Prize Foundation. His foundation had sponsored the record-setting first private manned spaceflight, which is to say that Peter had single-handedly launched the private space movement. Who better to teach changing the world than someone who had done exactly that?
I was at Singularity University, the only educational institution in the world dedicated solely to studying the future and preparing humanity to handle it. Located on the campus of NASA’s Ames Research Facility in California’s Silicon Valley, this two year-old institution is like no other. With faculty and lecturers plucked straight from the pages of Wired magazine and with students drawn from all around the world, I would spend the next 9 days trying to understand the changes that were coming quickly upon us. Continue reading A Visit to the Future: Singularity University, Part 1
After toying with learning  Spanish for a few years, I got serious about it in 2007. I was motivated by a scheduled trip to South America – really a late honeymoon. My husband and I hired a tutor to come to the house two hours a week. With consistency, practice, and a few trips to Latin America thrown in, I’m now quite proficient in Spanish, especially understanding speech.
As an American, it’s easy to be lazy about languages. You can travel almost anywhere in the world and find someone who knows a little English.
However, I think the world is changing rapidly. Language skills are more and more important. You may well lose out on a job or business opportunity to someone who is bilingual. I will probably live to see Mandarin Chinese supplant English as the most used language on the planet, so I plan to pick that up next. Continue reading 5 Surprising Benefits of Learning Spanish
 This is an excerpt from the October 2010 issue of Global Asset Strategist.
I continue my interview with Adrian S., a married man with a family who sold most of his possessions in search of a better life. Links to earlier parts of the interview can be found at the end of this post.
Jennifer Barry: How long have you been home schooling your kids?
Adrian S.: It’s been a progression, so we started home schooling about 3 years before we left in 2007. So, once, it’s been a steady series of steps of getting further and further outside the box really, because once we started home schooling, that opened up whole new questions to ask. It’s a healthy thing, we should all be trying to question why we do what we do. Continue reading Stranger in His Own Land, Part 7
This is an excerpt from the August 2010 issue of Global Asset Strategist.
In Canada and the US, they are commonly known as boomerang kids. They are adult children, usually in their twenties, who move back in with their parents after living independently for a while. Unlike past generations, living with parents after age 21 is not stigmatized, but rather applauded as a sensible measure to avoid racking up debt. By 2006, 43.5% of Canadians under 30 were sleeping in their old bedrooms, while in the US, 10% of Americans under age 35 have returned to their parents’ home.
For some young people, the decision is not whether to move back home, but whether to leave at all. Increasingly, the global trend is for adults to stay in their childhood bedroom well into their thirties. In Germany, dependent adult children are known as nesthockers or nest squatters. In France, pundits refer to “Tanguy syndrome,” named after a film about a 28 year old who refused to leave the family home. In New Zealand, the 20% of young men between the ages of 20 and 34 who live with parents are called “mummy’s boys.” Austria has its “Mama hotels” that are a comfortable refuge for Generation Y, while the UK has KIPPERS, or Kids In Parents’ Pockets Eroding Retirement Savings. Continue reading Boomerang Kids
 Healthy food is important to Adrian. This is an excerpt from the September 2010 issue of Global Asset Strategist.
I continue my interview with Adrian S., a married man with a family who sold most of his possessions in search of a better life. Links to earlier parts of the interview can be found at the end of this post.
Adrian S: Well, we’re planning to go to Paraguay this year but we’re still researching what they would require for health examinations. I really don’t want to get shots from some Rockefeller allopathic doctor who’s going to stick me a mercury barb.
Jennifer Barry: Yeah, I can understand that. I have not gotten any vaccines in a while and one of the last ones I did was Hepatitis B, and I reacted poorly to that. I think that vaccine is still affecting me 15 years later. Continue reading Stranger in His Own Land, Part 6
 Decide if college is worth the time and money. This is an excerpt from the May 2010 issue of Global Asset Strategist.
Skepticism about the value of a college education is totally warranted. University costs have skyrocketed, but the quality of education has fallen. While the elite schools like Princeton still have great international reputations, even these exclusive institutions have dropped their standards. Between 1964 and 1993, the school year shrank 16% on average, rhetoric disappeared from curriculums, and requirements for foreign language study fell from 96% to 64% of selective colleges.
Nevertheless, it’s probably the middle tier of schools that are failing students the most. Unlike community and junior colleges which have mandates to accept almost anyone, these institutions can be more discriminating about the candidates they enroll. Nevertheless, many public universities have shockingly bad graduation rates, such as the University of Massachusetts Boston, which only awards degrees to 33% of its students within six years. Continue reading Is College Worth It? Part 2
This is an excerpt from the  May 2010 issue of Global Asset Strategist.
As part of my effort to help readers “live richly,” I’ve tried to steer you away from financial disasters. I warned you of debt pitfalls in 7 Debt Survival Tips, and talked about real estate dangers in Home Sweet Home or Debt Trap?
However, there is one area I haven’t mentioned where people borrow huge sums of money, often without any logical thought – educational loans. Americans have been conditioned to urge everyone to get a college degree, regardless of the fit between this path and the potential student. The US media sounds a constant drumbeat that college graduates earn higher salaries than workers with a high school diploma, and the highest prestige professions – like doctors and professors – require years of advanced schooling. Continue reading Is College Worth It?
You can take Harvard classes online for free.
This is an excerpt from the May 2010 issue of Global Asset Strategist.
What would you do if you could audit first-class college courses from around the world for free? How would that change your life? Thanks to a recent movement to open up [...]
Jennifer Barry: How did you end up getting your MBA from Indiana University since there are some good programs here in Dallas like at SMU?
Sai Balakrishna: Well I did consider SMU, but the type of program I was interested in was at Indiana. The pressure of work was tremendous and I had [...]
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