Spectators gasp as the red and white pole comes down, tangling up four dark legs as they search for the sand. Above flies a young equestrian, her love for her horse and self-preservation locked in a battle as she has only a split second to decide if she can save them both or only him. He stumbles as she bails, the only option is to let go, and the ground and darkness swallow them both.  The horse untangles himself from the pole and runs off across the arena, where someone on

So I love database, all parts of it, but I didn’t start that way. I’m a 9 I, a massive introvert, the last thing I want to do is go out and have a bunch of conversations with strangers, especially conversations about myself. So why do I love it?  Well, let’s talk about it.  When I started the program, I heard, “you need 1000 people in your database to graduate.” My brain said, that’s a requirement and you can’t afford to have to pay more because you don’t build your databas

There are a million ways to grow your database, but sending out email requests sits at the top of that list in terms of efficiency. When writing your email and sending it out, you need something formulaic (needs to be generic enough that you can copy and paste, no matter who the recipient is) and personal.  So how do you create something that works as a copy-and-paste email, only changing your signature or greeting, but also ensuring that it is personal and relatable enough

Now, some of you may already use these terms interchangeably; however, there is a distinction between them, even if it's not talked about.  Your Email List is the list of emails or other contact information you have collected that haven’t consented to join your database. That’s it.  This can be emails from your coffee shop's bulletin board, emails you found on social media or on the internet, emails you had lying around, cell phone numbers from your contacts, and so on. Or

So we have all explored it. AI (Artificial Intelligence), my worst nightmare.  Now, I’m gonna guess that you are going, “But you’re 21, this technology is your generation, you’ve been in college, you have to know how to use it and love it.” So on and so forth, but the reality is, I don’t use it for anything. EVER!! And there are many reasons, but the largest is because it's an incredibly dangerous technology that steals your work, makes it artificial, and then pins you in

The big “WHAT IF” that we’re all afraid of, the one that paralyzes us in the program. Can I really send an email to this person to ask them to opt in? Well, yes. Yes, you can.  Getting your emails reported as spam is not good for business and generally degrades your credibility as an individual, even if it's not your monthly newsletter. Getting your database invitation email, sent from your personal email, reported as spam can still have a disastrous effect, so let's learn

Those complicated-looking, patterned squares that magically connect you to webpages or apps are called QR codes, and creating them is actually the easiest part of working with them, taking only about 5 minutes. The difficult part is creating what you want the QR code to link to. A QR code works because the pattern of black and white space stores the data that links to a URL, such as this one, which is the URL for the homepage of my website. Once you have this, you are alrea

In a middle school biology class, boys assault your nose, girls whisper behind you, nails tapping on a glass screen, a teacher pointlessly calls for your attention, and on the board is a picture of your brain. There are seven sections of your brain: three parts, two hemispheres. It's pink, slimy, moist. Science tells us that neural impulses, hormones, and chemicals make us feel. Our mothers tell us it's our heart. Our therapist tells us it’s a disorder. We tell ourselves…

This bathroom was the kind of bathroom that reminds you of high school movies. The ones where drugs are done, suicides occur, and...