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Brainfood

A Religions Overview

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In A Religions Primer, I introduced the basic elements of religions and reasons you may or may not be interested in exploring particular faith practices. Below are some of the (still-very-general) specifics of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam—the top four world religions by population.

Photo by Sara Slattery

As I write this, my heart is trembling a little bit. My personal faith practice is a huge part of who I am, and I have close friends for whom different beliefs play just as big a role in their lives. My goal here is to give a general overview of a few world religions, hopefully in a way that helps you learn more about a certain faith. But I am a student of religions, not an expert: if I at all misrepresent a part of your faith, please leave a comment below so that I can remedy the mistake. Rather than in-depth or comprehensive descriptions, consider the following as a springboard for you to continue your own education and exploration. In the interest of space, I won’t mention the many other smaller religions and faith practices out there.

Buddhism

Basic Ideas

Buddhism is based on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, who abandoned his wealthy life in order to seek enlightenment. He achieved enlightenment after meditating under the Bodhi tree for forty-nine days, after which he sought to share what he had learned so that others may be freed of life’s suffering. He advocated a balance called the Middle Way between self-indulgence and self-denial, and he delivered a set of teachings called the Dharma that reveal how to achieve freedom from suffering. They include the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path, among others. Buddhism teaches that there is rebirth after death, but not because our individual souls keep living; rather, we continue being reborn after we die until we attain enlightenment and freedom from suffering. BuddhaNet is a good next step if you want to keep digging deeper.

Weekly Practices

Following the Buddha’s Dharma is the place to start. Meditation is an important daily practice in Buddhism; in order to free yourself from suffering, you need to be aware of your own sources of suffering. The practice of mindfulness—being aware of yourself, your actions, and your motivations—permeates daily life for many Buddhists. Community service is also highly valued.

Faith Community

The Buddha Dharma Education Association has compiled a World Buddhist Directory of Buddhist centers and organizations around the world. You can narrow your search by continent, country, state, and type of Buddhist tradition, making it fairly easy to find Buddhist communities in your area.

Christianity

Basic Ideas

The foundation of all Christian denominations is the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth: raised as a Jew under the Roman Empire, Jesus was  the prophesied son of the monotheistic creator God, sent to redeem humankind. Jesus performed miracles of healing and gave many teachings, the basis of which form the Gospel books of the Bible. Jesus of Nazareth was sentenced to crucifixion for the crimes of claiming to be divine and creating political and cultural unrest. Christianity teaches that Jesus was resurrected three days after he was entombed, visited with his disciples and followers, and then ascended into heaven. The Gospel books and books written by early Christians form the New Testament, which in combination with the Jewish Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, form the writings that inform Christian religious practices. One core belief is that humans are imperfect and need redemption to be worthy of an eternal afterlife in heaven. Jesus’s crucifixion is believed to be the sacrifice necessary to redeem humankind’s failures, so acceptance of him is seen as the way to baptism and redemption. Each Christian denomination interprets the Bible differently, and here is a chart that gives a sense of their main differences.

Weekly Practices

Most Christian practices revolve around a gathering or service on Sunday, often in a cathedral, church, or other designated meeting area. Services may include singing hymns or other songs of worship; a message delivered by the priest, pastor, or minister; and spoken or silent prayer, along with other rituals. Outside of the Sunday gathering, practices range from meeting in small groups for prayer and Biblical study to individual daily following of Christian principles.

Faith Community

Churches of many denominations are easily found throughout the United States.  If you’re not sure where to start, this directory has a fairly comprehensive list of churches by denomination, so you’ll be all set to explore.

Hinduism

Basic Ideas

Hinduism doesn’t have a particular founder, and its various forms may follow one deity, many deities, or the sacred nature within all of existence. The Vedas are a collection of scriptures that contain many of the beliefs that Hindus follow, though there are several other sacred texts as well. One core belief is that Truth is the one Reality, but this belief can be expressed in a variety of ways—Truth can be thought of as Brahman, the sacred nature that is all-inclusive, eternal, and that encompasses all existence in the universe. Gods and goddesses in Hindu traditions are considered expressions of Brahman, and a person’s soul in relation to Brahman is often described using the metaphor of a drop of water in the ocean. The dharma is what Hindus strive to achieve in their lives, and can be interpreted as morality, duty, or right conduct. (Sound familiar? Gautama Buddha was raised in a Hindu society, and his Dharma came out of his experiences with Hindu dharma.) Unlike Buddhism, Hinduism holds that our individual souls are immortal and are reincarnated into new bodies after we die. Karma, your actions in this life and all of your past lives, determine what kind of body your soul will inhabit in your next life. The ultimate goal is moksha: liberation of the soul from the cycle of life and death by realizing its true nature and uniting with Brahman.

Weekly Practices

Many Hindu practices include daily or weekly rituals centered around shrines with sculptures and images of deities in their own homes—these follow bhaktimarga, or the path of devotion. Other practices called jnanamarga, or the path of philosophy, don’t involve deities at all and instead focus on Brahman through meditation. A third branch of practices—karmamarga, the path of works and action—is based on fulfilling the social and moral roles specific to one’s lot in life. All three paths are equally valid. For more specific rituals and practices such as Ayurveda, different types of yoga, and the daily puja, here is a list to get you started.

Faith Community

Temples, ashrams (religious centers or monasteries), shakhas (Hindu theological schools), and Hindu cultural centers are good places to get plugged into communities of practicing Hindus. This comprehensive directory lists such places located in the United States.

Islam

Basic Ideas

Somewhat similar to Christianity, Islam is founded upon the belief that there is one all-knowing God (Allah) and one man (Muhammad) who was chosen to communicate divine truths to humankind. The central creed of Islam is called the Shahada: “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the prophet of God.” Unlike Jesus, Muhammad was not divine; rather, he was the last in a line of great prophets who received messages from God to give to humanity. The Qur’an is the central scripture of Islam and contains the teachings given to Muhammad from God through the angel Gabriel. The teachings show how to live life in a way that pleases God, so that after death one’s soul will be judged worthy of spending eternity in Jannah (paradise) rather than in Jahannam (the abyss).

Weekly Practices

The Five Pillars of Islam are considered the essential practices of the faith. They include the Shahada, or confession of faith; the Salat, or ritual prayer performed five times a day; the Zakat, or alms tax; the Sawm, a period of fasting during the holy month of Ramadan; and the Hajj, a pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia. (Exceptions to the Sawm and the Hajj are made for Muslims who are physically or financially unable to fulfill these duties.) Certain sects of Islam have other practices in addition to the Five Pillars.

Faith Community

Muslim places of worship are called mosques, but many Muslims also gather at community centers and Islamic schools. Here is a directory of mosques and Islamic schools in the United States.

Still interested? Or want to learn about a religion I didn’t cover? There are a lot of great resources out on the web. ReligionFacts.com and Pluralism.org are good introductions to a wide range of religions practiced worldwide and in the United States. Pluralism.org also includes a great directory of religious centers, organizations, and places of worship in the United States.

Career

That Time I Killed my Childhood Dream for the Sake of my Sanity

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As a kid, I was blessed with a hyperactive imagination and a dramatic sense of destiny.  These are both helpful once you’re older and trying to be assertive in your creativity… but if you’re at a stage in your life when you’re obligated to take an afternoon nap, it makes you a tiny lunatic.  I believed in Santa until I was prepubescent (who cares what other people said, I had the logic worked out), and nobody could prove that dragons didn’t actually exist so I inverse-propertied that shit and stubbornly held out (we just haven’t been looking in the right places).  This was just the more fantastical stuff—you can only imagine how I was about anything over which I actually thought I had control.

Photo Submitted by Emmy Yu

I started acting in films when I was 5.   Ask me some other time, and I can go into the details of how bittersweetly intoxicating it was—the intricacies of how quickly and willingly any child ruled by wild, hungry imagination would slip under that wave of magical make-believe.  For now though, let’s just suffice to say that set life was pretty sweet.  There was free food always, someone announced my presence over walkie-talkie whenever I was anywhere, and working meant having my face on all the monitors.  I fucking loooved it.  (I’m a Capricorn.  You know who else was a Capricorn?  Stalin.)  Point being, when I realized that this was something that I was getting paid to do and technically could get paid to do for the rest of my life and, therefore, not need to do anything else but this all the freaking time… well, I was in.

I turned 6. And chose what I (thought I) would do for the rest of my life.

It’s fascinating how attached you can become to even the most trivial choice.  You embrace it because it gives definition to that messy, inscrutable concept of “self” you have in your mind.  You lock it down in front of you so you can trace the shape of it with your eyes and claim that this is you.  It’s incredibly satisfying… until, of course, it’s not.  Heavy-hitters like Fight Club and Mad Men explore the “not” in a way that I can’t even attempt, but from my basic understanding of it, you either 1) start hating the shape you’re seeing or 2) someone (maybe everyone) starts telling you “Hey, you’re wrong.  That’s not you at all.”  And you’re expected to just let go.

The second was what happened to me and, honestly, it became clear pretty early on that I would not have a future in acting.  But this was the choice I had made—not a trivial one in the slightest—and I was so very deeply attached.  I closed my eyes to the (mostly well-intentioned, for the record) Dead End Ahead messages I was getting.

I turned 10, I turned 11, I turned 12.

It’s difficult for me to step into this next part.  Even with the time I’ve had to soften the light and mute the volume, I try not to dwell on the memories of this time because it’s so easy to linger and ask unheard, unanswerable questions.  To keep it brief, the auditions were torture.  The stifling hush of cattle-call waiting rooms, where I spent at least 45 minutes for every 5 I actually auditioned.  The canned “thank you” responses that I carefully memorized, word for word, so later I could pick them apart, turn them over in my fingers and see if they meant something else. The dwindling callbacks.  The incredible silence from the phone—undeniably the most judgmental silence I have ever experienced.

I turned 17.

I don’t believe that I was an unusually intense child; it was just an atypical context for someone of that age to find herself in.  So, with the logic of my years, I decided that this whole experience couldn’t simply be something that was just happening to me—it had to be as melodramatic as “destiny.”  How on earth could anyone expect me to let go?  It had been molded into my identity for as long as I could remember and, no, it wasn’t even a significant time investment out of my year anymore—much less my day to day—but it was part of me.  You may as well have asked me to hack my arms off.

I can make jokes about it now (armless kids are funny, guys) but really, I struggled with it.  So I gave myself a cheat and went off to film school that fall to study writing and directing.  I packed your usuals—you know: clothes, new laptop, headshots, kitchenware.  I gave myself a little hope.  I wasn’t letting go of acting entirely—I would just come back to it later, and everything I had ever known about myself would still be true.  Everything I had ever insisted to be true would be true.

Photo Submitted by Emmy Yu

Photo Submitted by Emmy Yu

There’s no dramatic, climactic ending to this story.  There was no eureka! moment when I suddenly said, “Hey, get over it,” and then I did.  College and post-grad life led to a natural diminishment in the time and energy I put into keeping acting on my mind.  Admittedly, at the time, this was a transition I ignored because it was too painful to accept.  Better to cover it up with dismissive jokes about “my acting days of yore.”  Even now, I find myself fighting my panicked instinct to minimize the significance—to look it in the eye, this darling, childish fantasy of mine, and say that acting was just a phase I went through.  But I’ve also wised up to the fact that this is a kind of denial—the emotional equivalent of smiling after you’ve knocked your own teeth out.

Somewhere between ages 5 and 18, I missed the memo that there is always a gap between who you are and who you want to be, and sometimes that gap is unbridgeable.  Acknowledging reality—that this thing I once thought was an everlasting part of my life would actually end up as a montage in my head—was a terribly painful but necessary step in growing up.  And I’m not even sure how it happened but I can say that it did.  I stopped paying my SAG/AFTRA dues.  I don’t even remember where my headshots are stored.

The concept of “letting go” is a horrible, shrieking abomination—one of life’s unfortunate staples that will hold you down beneath the surface of all your expectations, breathless, drowning in your impotence.  What’s worse is that your instinct to fight it will cause you just as much pain—the lengths to which you will go so you can trick and manipulate yourself into thinking that it’s done or that it didn’t matter.  If you find yourself there, be honest with yourself but be gentle, too.  Be okay with the fact that you had hoped for something you couldn’t control and it ultimately disappointed you.  Paolo Coelho said “Everything will be okay in the end.  If it’s not okay, then it’s not the end.”  The end comes when you least expect it and will be much easier than you ever imagined.  You won’t even feel relief because you will have already floated on.

And if that’s too flowery to digest, just think of it as forcing yourself to throw up after a night of hard drinking.

Sports

A Newb at NERF

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“Hey, you wanna go kill some zombies?”

Excuse me, what?

This über nerdy and physically intense activity is called a NERF war, and I have only recently stumbled across its thriving subculture in my neighborhood.  In Humans vs. Zombies you split into two teams: a team of Humans and a team of Zombies.  The zombies’ mission is to tag the humans and turn them into zombies; the humans’ only chance at “survival” is to mow down as many zombies as possible with NERF darts and get to a safe zone.

I’m a “newb” at NERF, but my fiancé and I have a growing arsenal of NERF automatics, rifles, pistols, and melee weapons that is slowing taking over our limited closet space.  It’s a never-ending stream of Facebook event invites and strangers geeking out online over NERF’s latest gun releases (“I just got the RapidStrike!  You can borrow it next round”).

Don’t Go Alone: Equipment

Photo by Meggyn Watkins

NERF veterans are very welcoming to newbs, and are also typically very trusting with their equipment.  My roommate goes to more NERF events than my fiancé and I do, but he doesn’t own a single gun.  Vets love to share their guns and strategy, huddling up into bands-o’-brothers of mixed experience to fight back the zombie horde.

My first Humans vs. Zombies (HvZ) game was at San Francisco State University with a high school friend who loaded me up with a rifle to carry and as many baby pistols as I could fit in my (super-trendy) cargo pants.  After loading up with darts (specially marked to distinguish from everyone else’s), all I needed was a bandolier of backup dart cartridges and a bandana around my arm (to distinguish me as Human)—I was good to go!

In that first game, there were a couple things I learned.  First of all, no matter how uniquely you mark your darts, you will not get them all back.  Just resign yourself to that fact from the get-go.  Though your opponents are often incentivized to pick them up (either to take them out of the game or to reuse them against you), some will get lost in the arena and some will be picked up but never returned to you.  Organized games usually have a dart box where you can at least take home a portion of the darts you contributed.

Another lesson for a newb is to moderate the amount of gear you carry.  Running from zombies gets tricky if you’re holding onto three pistols to keep them from falling out your pockets and a bandolier of ammo is weighing you down.  Now, I pretty much only carry my rifle (on a shoestring around my neck in case I need to free my hands fast), with one small pistol.  I’m no good at melée, so I don’t bother touting around a foam sword as my fiancé prefers.  I’m also not the best shot, so I’m fairly conservative with my darts.  This means that I don’t even have to carry more than one backup cartridge, because I can refill between rounds before I run out of ammo.

Last lesson learned: don’t be afraid to ask questions!  Especially back at your start point before the game or between rounds, veterans have a bunch of advice to share.  One lady showed me how to duct tape two 18-dart cartridges together for quick reload.  A zombie guy helped me retie my bandana so it wouldn’t keep falling down when running.  Everyone’s there to have a great time and shoot each other with little foam darts: they’ll help you out!

Veteran players usually also have the most visually impressive guns.  Modifying is huge in the NERF community, and it’s not uncommon to find a vet wielding a behemoth double semi-automatic with a shotgun zip-tied underneath!  The versatility of NERF’s stocks and barrels allow for some easy basic modifications, and it’s also quite simple to throw in some overvolted batteries or custom-tension springs to get your NERF darts flying faster and farther.  Some of the more artsy types will even paint and weather their guns for a kickass realistic look.

Competition: Capture the Flag

Not all NERF events are all-day HvZ games.  There are tons of different, classic competition games, just like in paintball and airsoft.  Most are competitive team games: VIP (protecting the president), King of the Hill (protecting a defensive zone), or Capture the Flag (invading the opponents’ base); however, there’s always Deathmatch (individual elimination games) to spice things up a bit and destroy all friendships, Hunger Games style.

The closest NERF organization (B.U.R.N.) to me plays a lot of Capture the Flag tournaments, with rounds of teams competing.  As a newb, I really enjoy these for practice: team games normally include a spawn point, so getting shot just means that I have to run back to a spawn point and count to ten, rather than in HvZ where “dying” involves hanging up my rifle for the rest of the game and playing as a zombie.

Survival of the Fittest: Humans vs. Zombies

HvZ games typically start out with a group of dedicated zombies, decked out in fake blood, decomposing makeup and running shoes.  Zombies don’t carry guns, but must instead be able to use their numbers to overwhelm and two-hand touch to infect humans.  The humans are released first into the arena to spread out, camp up, and get started on their mission.  Missions are typically survival-related, such as finding and moving “food” (a wrapped bundle or cardboard box) from the arena into a human safe zone.  Sometimes, the missions are as unstructured as “create and defend a base.”

My first HvZ game had a twist: there were 20 antidotes and 10 passports.  Not only did humans have to find the little index cards taped around campus, but they also had to compete for them!  Humans without antidotes at the end of round one would die and become zombies, and those without passports at the end of round two would not make it off the infected island.  This was a pretty harsh start for a newb like me when my little merry band was mowed down with darts in round one by a group of fellow humans, as we ran past their safe zone in an escape attempt from the zombie horde.  Pretty sucky!

Yet, being a zombie isn’t half bad!  Yeah, you have to put your gun away, but then the pressure of surviving isn’t constantly freaking you out, and the arena basically becomes a giant playground game of tag.  If you’re shot as a zombie, your game rules will either require you to walk out of sight (behind a corner or tree) or just crouch down where you are and then count to the predetermined wait time.  Then you’re quickly back in the game, hunting down those delicious, delicious brains.

NERF games are constantly being moderated by very dedicated groups!  The organizers are usually college kids, and they appreciate and respond to feedback from NERF enthusiasts.  The mods do a great job of participating and keeping everyone honest during the game.  They also keep the community up-to-date with events and news, typically via Facebook or their own websites.

Geekery

Forays into Laptop Land (by a Desktop Builder)

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Photo by Meaghan Morrison

*beep*

<black screen>

Welcome

…

…

…

COME ON ALREADY!

I was sick and tired of the 15-minute boot-up times on my old computer—and I didn’t think it had much life left in it, anyway. I knew that I would need something that I could take to my engineering classes, but I had never looked into a laptop before. Ugh… where do I even start? Well, with the basics, I suppose. Operating systems, ahoy!

I decided that a Windows laptop would be better for my future classes (he typed on his work MacBook Pro at 35000 feet, with said Windows laptop safely tucked away in the overhead bin for use at the hotel—I’m not as biased as I once was). I decided on Windows because of the wealth of programs that are exclusively available for it, including some of the applications that I would need while pursuing my Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering. Many of my alums chose MacBooks, or even wiped their Windows laptops and dropped in their favorite Linux distro (Ubuntu, anyone?).  And, to be honest, I wanted to be able to run games on my new laptop in-between classes, and at the occasional LAN party. I knew the Mac would struggle with gaming, not because of any hardware deficiencies but rather due to a lack of developer support from some game companies. So, the slightly better-rounded of two evils… Microsoft, it is. Okay, what’s next?

Having built my own custom desktop computers for years, I knew a fair bit about the internals of the machine. I also knew that it would likely cost me more than I had in my skeletally thin piggy bank to get the specs necessary to use the machine for everything I wanted. I did some begging, made a withdrawal from the Bank of Dad, and ended up with a budget of about $1400 in exchange for a promise to my parents that I wouldn’t need to buy another one in the next year (five years going strong and it still plays Starcraft II, so I’m happy!).

For me, choosing my specs revolved around restricting my budget to $1400 and getting the fastest processor I could—while maintaining a dedicated onboard graphics card (because integrated graphics at the time just couldn’t support graphically intensive applications).

Here’s the techie blow-by-blow of my thought process:

  • I knew I needed a dual-core processor, so I went with the Intel Core 2 Duo because I read a lot of reviews and found it to have adequate performance at a not-so-prohibitive price. I went with 4GB of RAM at the time, in order to support switching between engineering programs and the basics (32 different chat windows, at least three Chrome tabs, and no less than four Excel/Word documents in the background—you know, just the necessities).
  • Having a good track record with NVIDIA graphics cards in my custom-built desktop PCs, I went with one of the NVIDIA mobile graphics cards with 512MB of dedicated video memory. I knew that for gaming I’d need something with decent graphical processing power under the hood.
  • The standard HDD at the time was 256GB, and that was enough for my needs at the time. (I have since dropped in a newer 512GB HDD that is also moderately faster, just because the original started making horrible grinding noises after three and a half years).
  • 14” seemed too small for a screen, and 17” way too big, so I took the middle-of-the-road 15.6” screen. My Goldilocks choice ended up being perfect—I constantly complain about the 14” on my work’s MacBook, and I can hardly lift my dad’s 17” work laptop without straining something. Also, 15.6” was a perfect fit for both of the backpacks I have since purchased (with those fancy laptop ease-of-travel pouches).
  • I have since learned much more about batteries, which may have tempered my choice, but back then I didn’t even care—I figured that I’d be in the classroom for 50% of the time and at the library for the other 50% with no lack of available AC outlets. Oh, to be young and naïve again… It has since been revealed that the best way to extend a battery’s lifetime is to not leave it charging 100% of the time. If I could, I would go back and educate myself (and spend the extra $90 to get a spare battery).

It’s important to note that all of my research was spent picking parts piecemeal from different laptops that I had searched on Newegg.com—which was effective at teaching me which parts were good, as I was voraciously consuming reviews, but I hadn’t yet found The One Laptop to Pwn Them All. I knew that it was possible to custom build a laptop, but I also knew that it was out of my price range—I was starting to grow worried that I wouldn’t be able to find any one laptop that would fit my needs.

By far, the most important thing to consider when looking into a new laptop (or any product that you’re buying online) is the wealth of reviews from consumers like you. Never rush headlong into the fiery chasm of an impulse-buy. Your wallet (*ahem* or dad) will thank you. I read reviews and comparisons for two weeks straight before I even had a Top Five list of candidates. Many of the options that I looked at were awesome from the perspective of the specifications and the price. But, of course, what good is the thing if it spontaneously bursts into flames (like I read in one review) or has to be exchanged five times before one is found without manufacturer defect?

What I ended up with was an Asus M51Sn, and at the time it had stellar reviews (4.5 out of 5 eggs, now up to 5 out of 5 eggs since it has gone out of stock).  On top of that, it was only about $1200, and the $200 I saved stayed comfortably in my parents’ savings account. I used it for years as a gaming machine between classes, and during class ran AutoCAD, the Autodesk Suite, three different flavors of IDE for C/C++, Java, and even used it as a server for a Databases class project. Sure, there were a few complaints along the way about the gimmicky fingerprint sensor and the inevitable crapware that comes with any modern computer purchase; however, I was able to minimize the impact that it had on the system by strategically uninstalling services that I knew I would never use (who really has or knows what a Smart Card is, anyway?).

As with all things in the church of planned obsolescence, it is certainly showing its age now (five years later). As it happened, a couple of years into owning it, the HDD started making noise and slowing down, and the computer would get so hot that I couldn’t leave it on my lap. For the typical user, these problems would likely spell The End for my silicon-hearted companion—but not today! I was able to open the laptop, clean out the fans, and drop a shiny new 500GB HDD in it. The new HDD was larger, faster, and quieter, and with the fans cleaned out I was no longer cooking an egg on my graphics card.

Now that I’ve got a job (and many, many games waiting on my shelf to be played), I’m thinking about a new laptop, and I’ll follow the same process I did before. I’m going to be patient, do my research, and find the next laptop that will take me another five years down the road.

Sex

Virginity: It’s None of Your Business

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So, you’re a virgin.

Or, you’re not.

Either way, has someone ever told you that it’s a “big deal”? That they can’t believe that you’re still a virgin. They can’t believe you lost it so young. They can’t believe you lost it with that person. They can’t believe you didn’tlose it with that person. They aren’t sure your virginity really counts, given what you told them about it when you were drunk. Given what they know from that person you were seeing, they don’t believe you’ve really had sex.

For something that seems so personal, people seem to have a lot of opinions about your virginity. It can be really hard to sort through what you want and what matters to you, as opposed to what other people expect.

It used to be that a woman—without an education, a job or the right to vote or own property—had little else besides her virginity that she could use to advance her place in the world. To a woman, virginity was something to hold onto tightly while a man, on the other hand, could be expected to “sow his wild oats” before he got married. Even today promiscuity is often expected of men and considered poor taste in women. But we live in a different time now, a time where sexuality is personal. It doesn’t (or shouldn’t) determine how far one goes in life. It can be as important or as unimportant as you want.

That idea used to sound strange to me:  society’s outdated value judgments aside, your virginity is supposed to be a big deal. It’s shackles. It’s the first time. It’s your most precious gift. Or whatever. Those are things that I’ve been told my whole life.

But it’s not true. Or maybe it is. That’s the great secret: we all get to decide. It took me awhile to realize virginity was just a social construct. It’s like the first time you do anything new—the first time you kiss someone, the first time your parents leave you home alone, the first time you ride a bike. But if it’s important to you, if it’s a moment that means something to you, then it means something. No one gets to tell you that it doesn’t.

As with most things, there is a flip side to that: virginity doesn’t have to mean anything either. It can be the first time you try something new, it can be with someone you’ve just met, or it can be with someone you’ve known forever. You can be in love, or “like,” or you don’t have to be. It can be on the fifth date, or your wedding night, or the first time you meet. You can wait until you’re 30 or 40 years old, or you can have sex for the first time at 18. Or you don’t ever have to have sex at all.

That’s right—you don’t ever have to have sex at all. You can have sex every day. You can have sex with girls; you can have sex with guys. You can have sex with people who don’t fit into society’s gender binary. You can define your sexuality or you don’t have to.

Sometimes, you’re going to struggle with it, and that has to be okay too. It takes serious mental effort to get through our socialized concepts. In spite of everything I’ve said to you here, things that I truly believe, I still struggle with it regularly. Because the social construct doesn’t go away and people asking about it doesn’t go away. Things are going to make you call into question your choices and people are going to try and force you to defend them. You may feel uncertain about what you’ve done or whom you’ve done it with. You may feel that you’re not as experienced as your friends or that you’ve given things away too easily.

Virginity is subjective. It’s socially constructed and it’s extremely personal. The person with whom you choose to have or not have sex, how old you are, when or where—none of that matters as long as you are honest with yourself about what you want. It sounds cheesy, but it’s true! In this, as in all aspects of life, the best thing that you can do is be good to yourself. Be honest. Be loud. And know that whatever you decide is okay, as long as you decide it. No one has any right to tell you what virginity means to you.

So, remember: your virginity is your business. Consent is sexy. If it’s not sexy and enthusiastic, then it wasn’t consent. And no matter who you are, no matter what gender or sexual orientation you are, you get to define sex for yourself—the first time, and every single time after that.

Photo by Sara Slattery

Career

Understanding Employee Benefits

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Congratulations! You’ve got a new corporate job. Your HR representative hands you a big envelope detailing your salary and all these benefits—401K, vacation, health insurance etc. And the questions start to pop up: Mom, do I need life insurance? What’s an employer contribution? I don’t know what any of this means!

BenefitsSquare

Photo by Meaghan Morrison

It’s important to understand your benefits and have the tools to take full advantage of them. If used correctly, your benefits can add approximately $10,000 value to your compensation package. (Note: I have no idea if this is a proven fact, but this is just something my parents and my first HR rep told me. They are all ‘money people,’ so I believe them.)

Here are a few things to look at a little more carefully while choosing your benefits:

1. Health Insurance

If you have any benefits, you probably have health insurance. Usually you have a couple options: plans where you pay more upfront and have lower out-of-pocket costs later, and plans where you play a lower premium but have to save that money for the “big bill” later.  Other important things to take a look at: your co-pay, deductible, and if there is an annual or lifetime maximum. One time, an employer offered me health insurance and, upon further investigation, I discovered there was an annual maximum of $1,000. My car insurance was offering me better medical coverage! I looked to purchase insurance outside my benefits plan because I knew that in any sort of serious situation, that medical insurance wasn’t going to help me.

2. Employer Match/401k 

Employer-matching contributions are another great benefit: your employers will match your 401K contributions up to a certain percentage of your salary (usually about 5% to start out). It’s a great way to increase your savings quickly! One important note: if you leave your company before you are considered “vested,” you will lose all your employer contributions. (Total bummer, I know!)

At my first company, employees didn’t become vested until two years in, and I left after a year and a half. But my current company’s 401K vests immediately. If you do happen to find new employment, ask HR what would happen to your vested balance if you came back to the previous company. I found out before I left that if I went back to my old company within two years of leaving, I would get my employer contributions back. Pretty cool research to have in my back pocket!

3. Life & Disability Insurance 

Life insurance is another common benefit. Generally, if offered, your employer will pay for the amount of one year’s salary, while giving you the option to purchase additional coverage. You also get to designate this money to your loved ones, so be prepared with all your beneficiaries’ social security numbers ahead of time.

Many companies also include short-term disability and long-term disability insurance options. Depending on your insurance, this may extend to illness or injury while not on the job (pneumonia, hospitizalion, etc.). That’s why you want it to pay extra for it, even though workman’s compensation would cover injuries on the job. Even if you are working a desk job, if you can make an affordable monthly contribution to earn these benefits, I would recommend you take it. Accidents happen everywhere and there is nothing more taxing for you or your family than a career-ending injury. Some examples of career-ending injuries include accidents in company vehicles, slipping on ice, and falling down stairs. Again, all very unlikely, but could lead to severe injury that would keep you from working.

You should also figure out when your disability rolls from short term to long term. An employer cannot replace you until you are considered to be on “long-term disability,” which can be anywhere from 3-6 months. If you like your job, you would hopefully recover during the short-term leave, before you get rolled to long-term and find yourself out of a job.

Finally, perhaps the most important thing about corporate benefits is to feel empowered to ask questions. Many corporations provide benefits hotlines that can answer your questions, get you specific details on your medical plan, and just help it all make sense!  If you don’t have a benefits hotline, your HR rep will be able to talk to you about any questions you have.

Brainfood, Career, News

That One Time I Started a Blog: The One Year Anniversary of UE

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A year ago today, we started the UNDERenlightened.

In the past year we’ve covered everything from lock outs to hand jobs, drunk texts to internet slang. We’ve offered advice on dealing with your finances, your eyebrows, your car, your face, your period, your apartment, your roommates, and your toolbox. From finding the perfect lipstick or playing Quidditch, going to brunch or making cocktails, getting started with Android or trying out cosplaying, our writers have shared their stories and their experiences. They’ve taken you through being diagnosed with cancer, losing their wallet, turning 26, getting catfished, and going to the West Bank. We’ve created primers on religions, grammar, programming, wines, fan fiction, STIs, and an article on vibrators that is consistently the most viewed post on our site. We taught you how to make a GIF, make new friends in a new city, get from the couch to a 10k. Offered tips on outfits, interviews, restaurant behavior, DIY transformations, and decorating. And whether it’s getting that first number, meeting online, dating long distance, moving in together, or proposing, our writers have tackled relationships, sex, and dating with honesty and insight from their own lives.

When I first dreamed up the idea for UE in my friend’s kitchen, I had no idea it would grow into what it has become today. I am immensely proud of the articles we’ve put up this year, the people behind them, and I believe I can speak for all of us when I say that we are eager to continue bringing you the great content you’ve come to expect from us in this upcoming year.

Like all fledgling projects, our first year has not been without its ups and downs. And, in keeping with UE tradition, I would like to share with you some or our successes and some of our mistakes. While I can’t give you a textbook for starting a blog, collaborative or otherwise, I can tell you what it’s been like to start this one:

Start With An Idea

Back in early 2012, I was listening to my friend tell me about getting her license suspended and it got me thinking about all the things we will forever be learning how to do. I started keeping a list. The more I talked about this idea of being “under enlightened,” the more ideas people gave me. Soon I had several hundred “potential” article topics. Even though I knew most of these experiences had to be lived to be understood, I hoped that by creating a place where we could share these experiences, we could make it just a little bit easier for us.

From the beginning, I knew I wanted UE to be a collaborative site. I had so many friends who, like me, were writers without a place online where they could showcase their work. I wanted to start building an online writing portfolio but I found the idea of starting and maintaining a solo blog overwhelming–plus, let’s be honest, I’m not that consistently interesting. But through our combined efforts, we could maintain a constant content source and build a community where both writers and readers were learning from each other.

Just Do It

I started by talking to everyone about UE. And I mean everyone. Even my Grandmother was trying to wrap her head around “collaborative blog” during those first few months. At first, I was just trying to drum up potential writers among my friends but, to my surprise, the idea struck a stronger chord with some and they offered me their professional skills along with their time and dedication. I’d pretty much planned to beg, barter, and bribe people into helping me with the more complicated aspects of putting together the site (i.e. web design, graphic design, etc.) but before I knew it, my idea had spread from my friends to their friends and I had people sending me emails with their resumes asking if they could help.

I still remember saying right after a “phone interview” with a potential new editor, “Doesn’t she know that we have no idea what we are doing?” The managing editor at the time said back to me, “It doesn’t matter because you sound like you do.” Over the past year I’ve come to realize, with the help of UE, that no one has it figured out: there is no “right” way to do things. You just have to do it and trust that you will work it out.

Find a Team

Through sheer luck, our staff ended up being a mix of very close friends, good friends, and brand new acquaintances (whom I now consider very good friends). I knew there was no way I was going to pull off something this massive on my own but I still hadn’t anticipated running a staff of people dedicated this idea. I already knew how valuable a team could be from years of collaborating on creative projects and I felt an obligation not to waste their time or efforts. It was also important to me that they felt some sense of ownership in the site, so I saw each of them as the director of their own “department.”  I knew that giving them responsibility (read: trust) would foster a truly collaborative environment.

The minute you decide to make a collaborative blog, that blog is no longer yours. Even though people will often assume that I do all the work behind the scenes or call UE “Anastasia’s” blog, I do not like this. Whether in praise or in blame, I am always quick to remind them that there is a team running this show.

Be a Leader

Leading isn’t about telling people what to do, it’s about guiding a vision. It means listening and learning. When it came to creating something new, generally I would start by offering my vision for a particular aspect but used this merely as a place to get the conversation started. Give your staff the creative freedom to come up with their own approaches and implement them. You’ve put together a team of brilliant minds, trust in their talents. Your job is to keep everyone pushing towards the same goal.

Take the Time to Get it Right

Since our staff (and our writers) are located all over the country, we had to do all of our communication via the Interwebs. We embraced the power of Google. We use Google Drive to keep all of our articles, photos, publishing schedule, to do lists, etc., in sync and Google Hangouts to run our staff meetings. For many of us, UE is the job we do in addition to our full-time jobs. So, when we were building the site, gChat became an essential tool for getting things done during the work day.

We spent weeks working to get the look and feel of the site just right. We all agreed that it was essential to have a fully polished site before we went live. Even if this meant pushing our launch date (initially planned for early July) all the way to early September. We spent those months finessing every single little detail on the site. No link or font or color choice was too small to warrant some sort of discussion. We wanted UE to be a brand, so this meant coordinating not only the site but also our social media accounts as well. Every time we crossed something off the to do list, five more things would get added. And as the launch date moved closer and closer, it seemed like it would never get done.

The two hardest things were the site navigation and the legal. Try condensing a site about “everything” down into easily navigable subcategories. We’d come up with a plan, we’d throw it out, and we’d do it again. This process went on for weeks until slowly we built one that worked. The legal, on the other hand, ended up being a solo mission. It’s probably the least read thing on our site, but it’s one of things I am most proud of. Researching and drafting the various policies and agreements was particularly daunting for me because UE is legally registered and paid for by me. It would be my ass on the line if anything ever happened. There was one night, the week before launch, where I seriously considered scrapping the whole thing because I couldn’t get my head around it all. But with a little focus and a read-through by someone with a law degree, it came together. Now we have a solid User Agreement, Comment Policy, Submission Agreement, and Privacy Policy.

Honing Your Tone

I was so focused on putting the site together that I neglected the editorial side. I wanted us to have a backlog of articles before we launched the site. But what I didn’t anticipate was that when you are asking people to write for an unestablished site, no matter how much explanation you give them upfront, you’re going to get a lot of different tones back because they don’t have any clear examples as a base. And even if you thought you had a clear sense of your tone, once you start reading articles it will start shifting. So you have to balance deciding exactly what you want your tone to be, and communicating it back to both your writers and your editorial staff, all while carefully nurturing these fledgling professional relationships. This took time, practice, and a lot of mistakes. And, even a year later, we’re still working on getting it all just right.

Learn Your Limitations and Admit Your Faults

I believe the best managers are the ones who can admit their own faults: mine is deadlines. Despite all of my delegating and my best intentions, I’d overestimated the workload that I could handle. I was taking longer to edit submissions than I’d allotted time for, and since I couldn’t stick to my deadlines, I felt bad nagging my writers to stick to theirs.

Even with my team, for the first few months, I was still the lynchpin to the site running. If I went dark for a day, so did the site. So while I’d dreamed of UE publishing content every day, it got harder and harder to do so with both my managing editor’s and my own increasingly hectic schedules. We struggled along for a while, with a lot of last minute posts, but without either of us to keep the publishing schedule together the site fell silent.

We were dark all through the holidays and I felt tremendously guilty. I didn’t want to admit where I had failed but I also wasn’t willing to let all our hard work go to waste. I wanted to get the site back up and running but I knew that I needed to take a hard look at where we’d fallen short and be very honest with myself about what I could and couldn’t handle. I knew this would mean handing over control on things I’d previously been overly concerned with. But, as I said before, this was not “my” blog and if I wanted it to really thrive, I had to really let it go.

I called my managing editor and we had a very frank conversation about our time. This is where a lot of people might say working with your friends can get messy, but I thought our honesty in that conversation only strengthened our friendship. Together we reached out to one of the editors and asked if she might be interested in stepping up to take on the role.

When she agreed, I handed over complete control of the editorial side. I asked her to come in and implement her own ideas and system and to let me know where I would best fit in. I still wanted to read every article before it went up on the site but no article would again be held up by me in the editing process. We shrunk our publishing schedule down from five or six articles a week to a much more manageable three and we spent a lot of time making sure our new system worked before we were ready to officially “relaunch.” I really can’t thank Meggyn Watkins, our incredible managing editor, enough for her tremendous dedication and persistence. Without her efforts we would not be here today.

But if I have learned one vital lesson from UE this year it is:

The Importance of Commitment

This includes the commitment of the staff and writers, but I mostly mean a leader’s commitment. If you want to create something like UE, you have to remember that you are the reason all the wheels keep turning. If you lose drive, if things stop being shiny, if you don’t have time, or you stop pulling your part of the weight, everyone else around you will do the same. Not only are you the barometer of motivation, you’re also the source. If you’re not meeting your deadlines, why should anyone else? How can you be annoyed at someone for not doing their job, if you’re not doing yours? Teams are only as strong as their weakest link. If someone on your team is dropping the ball, it is not their fault, it is your fault for letting them.

To everyone reading this and to everyone who has ever taken the time to read any of the articles on our site–thank you so much for being a part of the UE family. We look forward to continuing to bring you great content for another year. If there is ever anything you’d like to read on the site, please let us know here. If you are interested in writing for UE, drop us a line over here.

Again, thank you for this incredible year.

Anastasia Heuer
Founder & Editor-In-Chief

Geekery

How Humans Talk to Computers: Programming 101

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Programming languages come in many different forms, but they all accomplish the same thing: they allow a programmer to communicate with their computer and make it do what they want it to do. At this point in our history, we rely on computers for just about everything we do, and yet many people have no idea how they actually operate! Learning a programming language not only lets you write your own programs, but it gives you a stronger understanding of the hardware that affects your everyday life. Programming builds your analytical abilities and, like learning a foreign language, it keeps your mind sharp. This article is a basic introduction to some of the concepts you will need to know in order to successfully learn a programming language.

Photo by Sara Slattery

Programming languages are divided into high- and low-level languages. High-level languages are written to be easily read and understood by programmers, while low-level languages consist of assembly languages and binary, which the CPU reads and understands. The most basic type of code a computer understands is binary. Binary is made up of strings of ones and zeroes which can be used in different combinations to make different characters. Binary is very easy for a computer to understand, because it only has to recognize two states (a one or a zero). Each 1 or 0 is called a bit, and a set of 8 bits makes a byte. One byte is enough data to represent a letter of the alphabet, or a number up to 255.

The position of a bit in a byte determines its value. From left to right, bits represent exponentially larger numbers. Programmers can string together multiple bytes to store larger amounts of data.

Below is an example of how the uppercase letter “A” would be represented in one byte of binary:

0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1

This expands out to represent the equation below:

00 + 11 + 02 + 03 + 04 + 05 + 06 + 17 = 65

When you type an uppercase letter “A” on your keyboard, your computer is actually saving a value of 65, which is interpreted graphically as the uppercase letter “A.”

However, it requires a lot of effort for a programmer to program directly in binary: it takes a lot of instruction to do even basic tasks! This is where assembly language and the high-level languages come in. In order to go from an assembly language to binary, the code is run through a program called an assembler, which translates the assembly language into the machine’s language (binary). The same process is true for high-level languages and assembly languages. In order to make your high-level language (one that programmers can read, like C++ or Java) program into assembly language, it goes through something called a compiler. Most programmers set up a development environment in a program such as Visual Studio which allows them to write and compile the code all in the same place. The benefit of this structure is that programmers don’t have to work in low-level languages like binary. C++ and other high-level languages are easy-to-read and use common words that a human could understand, even without an extensive background in programming.

One of the most basic programs is the “Hello World!” program, often used for absolute beginners. Below is an example of “Hello World!” in C++ and an assembly language. Notice how complex the assembly language is compared to C++. Even if you don’t know any C++, you could probably make a pretty good guess what the different lines of code do, while the assembly language is much more cryptic.

C++ Assembly – x86 Windows 32 bit

#include <iostream.h>
main(){
cout << “Hello World!”;
return 0;
}
.486p.model  flat,STDCALLinclude  win32.inc
extrn            MessageBoxA:PROC
extrn            ExitProcess:PROC.data
HelloWorld
db “Hello, world!”,0
msgTitle
db “Hello world program”,0

.code
Start:
push    MB_ICONQUESTION + MB_APPLMODAL + MB_OK
push    offset msgTitle
push    offset HelloWorld
push    0

call    MessageBoxApush 0
call    ExitProcess

ends
end Start

The main challenge in learning a new programming language is the syntax. Even though they are designed to be easy to read and understand, programming languages require the user to know the correct syntax, just like learning the grammatical rules of a foreign language. A computer will read all of the information it is given exactly as it is presented, so minor things (like forgetting to close a bracket) will show up as errors.

This will work:

#include <iostream.h>
main()
{
cout << “Hello World!”;
return 0;
}

This will get an error:

#include <iostream.h>
main()
{
cout << “Hello World!”;
return 0
}

The only difference is the lack of a semi-colon after the “return 0” line, but it is enough to stop your program from functioning.

My own experience with programming has been through game design and development. There is a much greater need for game designers to read and understand code than to necessarily be masters of programming, so I’ve taken a more everyday approach to my practice. Many of the complications I have run into are usually related to setting up a proper development environment. If you work with different libraries, it can sometimes be difficult to make sure your program files are all organized properly. In game design, it is typical to work from massive amounts of pre-written code, which you then have to make sure are all connected and communicating properly. This is known as a “game engine,” and allows game programmers to spend less time reinventing the wheel, and more time adding new features to their program.

If you keep these concepts in mind, learning to program becomes a lot easier. It takes time and effort to truly master any language, but you can start with a solid foundation by learning the basic concepts before worrying too much about complex grammar rules and syntax. Anyone who wants to learn a programming language should look at the books available in their respective field, in order to learn not just the basics but how different languages are used specifically in each field. For example, expect a software industry job to be more involved in low-level coding, while game design will typically focus on high-level coding. Probably the most popular code for beginners is C++, because it is particularly easy to read and has many attributes found in most popular programming languages. For game designers, I would recommend the second edition of Starting Out with Games and Graphics in C++ by Tony Gaddis. It begins with a well-rounded introduction to C++, followed by an introduction to a simple game engine, the App Game Development Kit.

Relationships

Long Distance Sucks: How to Make it Suck Less

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For two years, my partner and I lived across the country, on opposite coasts. It was totally worth it, because he’s awesome, but the situation was awful. There are really no two ways about it. I constantly felt like I was reevaluating my decision to leave the city we both lived in for a really fantastic career opportunity, making me wonder if I was ungrateful. Or I would listlessly watch airline prices go up and down. All in all, it was a super fun set of emotions.

Here are a few of the things that worked for me to make things suck a little less:

Know your tools: The Internet makes life a lot better. For example, just seeing a familiar person’s face on a screen can boost your mood automatically. And if it’s your partner’s face—even better! Skype, Google Calendar, FaceTime, Google Hangouts, AIM, Tinychat, Instagram, Snapchat: all of these are ways to informally and quickly stay in touch via the Internet. Relationships are not all about two hour heart-to-hearts. While those are great, I need to feel like my daily quota of small cutesy interactions is being filled. These apps/programs/services work super well for this. A good friend who is currently in a long distance relationship recommends the app Couple, which allows you to text, play games, make pictures, and “finger kiss”—a little cheesy, yes, but what isn’t?

Know when the long distance will end: But don’t necessarily keep a countdown on your phone if it’s more than a couple months, mmk? No need to remind yourself that there are 682 days ‘till you can live in the same time zone. However, knowing that there was a stop date sometime in the future made it so I didn’t slip into ennui.

Know when you’ll see them next: This is a good one to keep as a countdown on your phone, if you are able to visit during your time apart. My partner and I would always try to book tickets for our next trip when we were physically together so that there was never any “I don’t know when I’ll see you next” time. This wasn’t always possible, but was incredibly helpful when we could manage it.

Know your limits: Mine, for whatever reason, is 30 days. Exactly, like clockwork. After that, I better go to Costco for tissues. There is just something about passing that thirty-day mark where things get really tricky. This doesn’t mean that I bought plane tickets every month (because, damn, flights from DC to SF can be expensive), but I knew that I would need more support from my partner and my friends after the thirty-day mark. In fact, we typically saw each other about every three months, so I knew to make friend dates and phone catch-up nights more regularly during months two and three of apart-time. I learned to actively seek out support before things got hard. Speaking of…

Know your support network: Who can you call when you are at wits’ end about this stupid decision and stupid world that makes life stupid and hard who won’t say “Well, you chose to do long distance”? Hearing that when you are at rock bottom will only show you that there are actually a couple more special levels of hell you have yet to explore. Make a list of people who support you well (newsflash, not all friends are equally supportive) and tape it to your fridge so you don’t have to think hard when you already are feeling totally ragged.

Know your schedule: Worst for me was not knowing when I would talk to my S.O. next. Even if it’s only a 10 minute chat, knowing I got ten minutes of phone time at 7pm on Tuesdays was really comforting to me! Google Calendar is great for this. Try to work the time difference to your advantage, if there is one. Is there any chance your lunch break is while they are eating breakfast? Or your break between classes is when they are driving home from work? It’s definitely worth exploring to find the parts of your schedule that make for easy touch-base times. Share your calendars and give your partner permission to make changes to events. Maybe it’s me, but I always loved having a meeting with my partner pop up unexpectedly on my schedule.

Know what you need: Have really open and clear conversations about what you need in order to make it work. Does that mean you need them to respond to your texts within at least an hour or two? Fine. Does that mean you need to watch a movie together over Skype every two weeks? Talk it out. Daily mix tapes expressing your general mood? Okay, if you’ve got that kinda time, it’s definitely worth throwing the suggestion out there. Not every request needs to be honored, but it does need to be discussed.

Know what happens next: Do you move in together when you are back in the same place? Are you considering marriage? These are huge questions, I know, but they’re totally reasonable. Long distance is work, and I personally think that if you’re going to do it, it shouldn’t be just because you don’t feel like breaking up. This does not mean you have to walk out the door engaged or anything. But it’s good to know you are on the same page, whether the agreement is that you both think this might be a good marriage someday (if you decide marriage is a thing you both want to do), or just that the goal is that you will live within 10 miles in 5 years. Coming back and having the relationship fall apart because there was no discussion about where things were going is totally common, and can make you feel like you wasted a lot of time not hooking up with all the new available people in the place where you moved (you know, if that’s your jam).

Know that when you’re together, it may not be a bed of roses: I would beat myself up when I would hit a rough patch with my partner when he was in town, because ugh this is the only time I get to see him! Which led to this strange anger/shame/frustration spiral that inevitably ended with me lying on the floor sobbing and him just beyond confused. You are in a real relationship, and putting on a perfect face for the weekend/week/month they are around just doesn’t work. Yes, you should work hard to fully enjoy the time together, but allow yourself to be a human being with complex emotions. You’ll feel more whole, and be able to work through the issues more quickly if you aren’t also dealing with feeling like a failure for being upset.

Bottom line, there is no cure-all for being in different cities, states, countries or continents (besides moving to the same place), but there are definitely ways to make it less painful.

Any other tips and tricks? Leave a comment below to share your experiences and successes!

Photo by Sara Slattery

Geekery

How to be Veronica Mars: Getting Information via the Internet

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You don’t have to be a tiny sassy blonde in order to sleuth your life away! All you need is a bunch of search know-how, a little creativity, and some perseverance.

Photo by Sara Slattery

There are many different reasons you might have for needing information about people. You may need to gain knowledge on potential employees, employers, dating prospects, roommates, buyers, sellers, caretakers, that shady friend… Sometimes a little free DIY background check is necessary to prevent yourself from making a huge mistake. It’s so easy to create a false identity by using the Internet, and on the flip side, it’s so easy to be fooled. Here are some of my tricks that I use to find out what I need to know, as well as what you can do to prevent people from finding out the same information about you.

Search Engines

This is obvious, but so many people don’t know how to utilize the full potential of a search engine. The information that you need is out there, it’s just hidden among everyone else’s details. These days, many people share everything on the Internet. They’re just giving it away without a second thought. And to start your search, sometimes all you need is a first name, a significant detail, and a search engine. You can use any major search engine—it’s up to you.

Once you know where to look, use these tips:

1.   Quotes for fine-tuned results: “Donald Draper”

2.   Use the right keywords: location, education, career, first and last names. You can also try searching for their name and location grouped with the activity you suspect: “Donald Draper” + “Rio de Janeiro” + “Starbucks” + “fraud”

3.   Search again on another search engine. Cross-reference and double-check everything for maximum accuracy.

Basic name and contact information can also be found at these people-specific search engines:Pipl,Spokeo,WhitePages (reverse phone look-up comes in handy every single time). Don’t bother signing up for a subscription to these sites, though: you’ll get the basic information you need and you can use that information to search elsewhere (like on a major search engine). With these, you want to look up screen names, email, nicknames and phone numbers. Screen names usually turn up the best results because these are what people use to assume their Internet identity. People also tend to keep the same username across various accounts, so search for the same one across multiple websites. What I also like about these people-specific search engines is that they tell you when there are more online accounts for the person you’re investigating.

Keep this in mind when you are signing up for your own accounts. Use separate email addresses/variations of your own name when signing up for accounts that you wouldn’t want just anybody to find.

Yelp

Know where the person works? Use Yelp. Maybe they’ve been mentioned in a review. Or if their place of work has a website, check it out. Leave no stone unturned. You might find out that your hopeful employer is a real shady character who has a history of treating employees unfairly.

You can’t really prevent someone from using your name when they’re writing a review, so this is a bit tricky to prevent. You can try to limit the exposure of your last name, but this is very dependent on what kind of job/career you have.

Social Media profiles (Facebook, Twitter, Google+,Tumblr, Instagram)

If you have access to a person’s Facebook, don’t just check out their history—click on their friends as well. Genuine interactions with other people are important. Anyone can create a hundred different profiles by using a hundred different email addresses, but it’s harder to fake an actual life. You’re looking for quality profiles! Conversations, details from shared events, responses to tweets, and photos with the people they say they are friends with—these are all good signs. An abundance of photos showing the person actually doing stuff, participating in events, hanging out with friends and such may bring relief, but this can still be faked. These photos could actually have been stolen from another Facebook! Interaction is very important: I cannot emphasize this enough.

If you have incriminating information on your Facebook, try keeping your own profile private and don’t post valuable information about yourself on other people’s walls. I thought I was being super careful by not friending my employers on Facebook, but unfortunately a few of my other coworkers had, so a manager was able to see a comment I made on a coworker’s wall that was not work-appropriate. Very frustrating, since I thought I had all my bases covered.

People

Do you know people? Then use them! Just be subtle. However, you should always keep in mind that all sources are biased, so try to scope out concrete definitive facts. Know the right things to ask (this will vary based on your situation, obviously). Pay attention to all the details. This is where it pays to be a good listener.

Before you go searching, be prepared. Do you actually want to find what you are looking for? It’s important to remember that whatever you find may be inaccurate or attributed to a person with a similar name. The Internet is a big place, and wrong turns happen. I’ve searched for people from my childhood and instead found people that could be them, but in a bizzaro, meth-y world. Take a break and try again later—maybe you overlooked a link.

Even if it is accurate, it may seem worse than it actually is without the benefit of the bigger picture. Keep an open mind: the Internet can’t give you all sides of the story. Also, please don’t do anything creepy. This is defensive investigating, not offensive. Use what you find to protect yourself and not to ruin any lives.

It’s too easy to find out information about people’s lives via the Internet. The same can be said about you. The Internet is NOT a place of privacy. It’s a community made out of glass and everyone can see what you’re doing.