We all like to think that we do what we can to make the world a better place and help people in need, but some people choose to make a career of it. Social workers labor tirelessly to help those who need it, without much glamor or glory.

To learn a little of what the daily work of a social worker is like, we spoke with Kate Abramson, who currently works with the Lung Cancer Alliance.

Tell us about your current position and how long you’ve been at it.

My name is Kate Abramson. I have been a social worker for seven years. At the start of my 7^th year—lucky seven—I joined Lung Cancer Alliance as the Support Services Manager.

What drove you to choose your career path? Why social work?

Ever since I was a child I had that clichéd desire to “help people.” My parents were very active volunteering with social service agencies when I was younger. When I found out that a big aspect of social work is advocating for those who don’t have a voice and working on their behalf to make positive change happen in their lives, I knew this was the path for me.

How did you go about getting your job? What kind of education and experience did you need? Did you need any licenses or certifications?

Most social workers have a Masters in social work from an accredited school. Each state has its own individual licensing exam and process. After graduate school, you take an exam to be a licensed graduate social worker (LGSW). Two years later while working in the field under the supervision of a social worker, you take another exam to become a LICSW.

The six years I spent at a community mental health center working with mentally ill and medically compromised individuals prepared me to counsel the types of patients I encounter in my current position; lung cancer survivors and their families dealing with a variety of health issues as they battle a disease.

What kinds of things do you do beyond what most people see? What do you actually spend the majority of your time doing?

The duties of a social worker vary from job to job and differ greatly depending on who we are trying to help. At my previous job, I was working directly with mentally ill patients and individuals battling major health concerns and most of my time was spent doing things like advocating for their care, helping them maintain their correct mental health, helping acquire proper medications as well as continuing ongoing therapy and skill-building.

In these types of roles, you need to be flexible because your schedule can change very quickly depending on the needs of the individuals who rely on you for support. The counseling skills I learned in my first position help my every day that I take a call from a lung cancer patient who is looking for answers to their questions whether it is about a new treatment they are seeking or helping them find a support group in their area. If I had to sum it up, I would say basically social workers are master listeners who try to make the lives of people going through tough times just a little bit easier.

What misconceptions do people often have about your job?

I think when most people hear the term “social worker” they think of people who show up to take away babies from families like the characters you see on shows like Law & Order. The truth is that people have no idea how broad our work can be. Depending on your particular focus area you can make an impact in a variety of professional settings. For example, I started my career working in a local mental health agency and then moved into the nonprofit world working with lung cancer patients across the U.S. These are two very different work environments, but the desire to help people is the same in both settings. Those skills never change. The bottom line is there are no set rules for what you can do with your social work degree. The professional possibilities are endless and are only limited by personal interest and skill set.

What are your average work hours?

Job hours can vary, like many professions, depending on what type of social work you are doing. Now my hours are mostly 9 to 5, but in previous positions I’d have to get up early in the morning to meet clients or get called late at night to go locate someone who hadn’t been seen in weeks.

What personal tips and shortcuts have made your job easier?

I’ve learned over the years is that being flexible and open to change is one of the most important things you can do as a social worker. You might struggle in this field if you worry about a hard adherence to schedules and expect people to behave in a certain way. I’ve learned to embrace the uncertainty and adjust on the fly.

What do you do differently from your coworkers or peers in the same profession? What do they do instead?

I’m not sure I do anything different than my coworkers since we all have the same primary goals. As social workers, we are uniquely trained to help people maximize the opportunity for change in themselves and/or their situations. You are affecting change on a daily basis, whether it be big or small. Also, your daily to-do list can change every day. I don’t think I’ve ever said that I was bored doing a social work job.

What’s the worst part of the job and how do you deal with it? I imagine this work can take an emotional toll.

Sometimes being a social worker can just be straight up exhausting. There are really good days and there are also really bad days. You are working with people who can be happy, excited, depressed, angry, and frustrated all at the same time. Obviously taking time for yourself and knowing your limits is the best. You also have to understand that some people aren’t ready for change and they might have many failures until they have a breakthrough which moves them in a more positive direction.

What’s the most enjoyable part of the job?

The most enjoyable part of the job is probably developing meaningful relationships with patients. The process of advocating for a person or family that does not have a voice is very empowering work which falls in line with what I have always wanted to do. Helping someone who other people have looked down upon work towards their goals and reach their potential makes all the effort worth it.

Do you have any advice for people who need to enlist your services?

I think sometimes people see a social worker when they’re not really ready. If you don’t have any desire to change it will be very hard for us to work with you. It’s okay to not know how to change or what to do to help yourself, but as long as you express that you are ready to move in a positive direction working with a social worker will be effective.

What kind of money can one expect to make at your job?

You will never become a millionaire as a social worker no matter where you work. However, most people who go into this field would probably agree that they aren’t doing it for the money.

How do you “move up” in your field?

As I mentioned before, there is no set “social work” job which actually is a very good thing. The profession offers multiple opportunities for long-term advancement and strong growth potential. Most people straight out of school will work as a case manager, rehabilitation specialist or a similar entry level job. It’s where you will definitely be the most overworked, but it helps you get the best sense of where you’d like to work long-term in a professional setting. Once you figure that out, you need to immerse yourself in that setting to get the necessary counseling skills you will need as you take greater responsibility and acquire a more difficult case load.

For me, Lung Cancer Alliance was an excellent transition and “move up” for my field. I’m working with lung cancer patients from all over the country and able to use my skills I developed during my initial social work training. I’m still supporting patients, but I’m also working as a resource for other social workers who are seeking to create support environments at the local level for the individuals they work with on a daily basis.

What do people under/over value about what you do?

I think that people undervalue the importance of one-on-one interactions that happen daily between social workers and their patients. If an outsider looks at a social worker’s tasks and actions it might be hard to see that anything meaningful is taking place, but this underscores the importance of the relationships that deepen over time. We really are working to lay a foundation to actually make progress.

On the flip side, I think people overvalue impartiality that needs to happen in a professional setting particularly in the face of difficult circumstances. Sometimes we get angry when we take a personal interest in someone’s life as they battle mental illness or a late stage cancer diagnosis. It’s a normal response to stressful circumstances.

Trust me, we feel it, we know some of these situations suck, and we’re also talking to people after it’s done. People need us to be there “in the moment” with them to fight through problems. It’s important that they know they are not alone when they reach out to us.

What advice would you give to those aspiring to join your profession?

I would tell them to make sure they figure out what they are passionate about and how they want to try to make a difference. At the end of the day, social work is a career that speaks to the basic desire to really help others. It isn’t easy work, but it can be so rewarding, impactful and meaningful to so many communities that need open-minded listeners to help solve problems.

It used to be that cakes for special occasions were pretty ordinary.  But TV shows like Cake Boss and Ace of Cakes have changed that…elevating cake decorating to a new art form. Nicole learns from an expert that if you have the right talent, becoming a pastry chef is a piece of cake.

The ancestors of the pants you’re wearing today could be include ancient Peruvian dyeing techniques, scientists say, after the discovery of a 6,200-year-old piece of indigo dyed fabric.

Archaeologists discovered the ancient cloth samples during the 2009 excavation of a Peruvian ceremonial mound known as Huaca Prieta. After dating the dyed cotton scraps, researchers discovered that their samples were at least 1,800 years older than the next-oldest instances of indigo dye use, found in Egypt.

"The cotton used in Huaca Prieta fabrics, Gossypium barbadense, is the same species grown today known as Egyptian cotton," the study's lead author, Jeffrey Splitstoser, said in a press release. "And that's not the only cotton connection we made in this excavation – we may well not have had blue jeans if it weren't for the ancient South Americans.

This ancient scrap of fabric, decorated with indigo blue stripes, was found embedded in a concrete-like material that made up Peru's Huaca Prieta temple.

Peru is famous for its cotton – in fact, a particularly hardy cotton was domesticated at an undetermined site in Peru, likely along the northwest coast. The country's modern-day cotton is practically insect-resistant, and often grown without insecticides or fertilizers.

The cloth scraps at Huaca Prieta were found sandwiched in-between layers of a ramp that led up to the temple. Originally, their blue coloring was hidden from archaeology workers, because of the sooty material used to build the temple, as Dr. Splitstoser, an anthropologist at The George Washington University, told LiveScience. 

After gently washing the cloth and using a technique called high-performance liquid chromatography, however, researchers discovered that they were holding the oldest indigo-dyed fabric in the world.

Five of the eight samples that researchers put through testing procedures were confirmed to contain traces of indigo. The remaining three samples may have been degraded over time.

Traditional indigo dye comes from an organic compound called indigoid, generally found in plants such as the plant Indigofera, the likely source of the Huaca Prieta indigo dye. Ancient Egyptians, however, extracted their indigo coloring from sea snails. Today, the dye used for the ubiquitous blue jean is usually produced synthetically.

While the researchers knew that blue dyes were used in the Americas at least 2,500 years ago, and that Egyptians had been using indigo for at least 4,400 years (prior to this discovery, the oldest scrap of indigo dyed cloth was an Egyptian sample from about 2,400 BC), the Huaca Prieta samples prove that the great-great-grandfather of blue jeans might actually have first been created by our neighbors to the south.

"The people of the Americas were making scientific and technological contributions as early and in this case even earlier than people were in other parts of the world," Splitstoser told LiveScience. "We always leave them out. I think this finding just shows that that's a mistake."

"Many people … remain mostly unaware of the important technological contributions made by Native Americans, perhaps because so many of these technologies were replaced by European systems during the conquest," he said in the press release. 

By Amy Crawford

In the morning of October 21, 1892, children at schools across the country rose to their feet, faced a newly installed American flag and, for the first time, recited 23 words written by a man that few people today can name. “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands—one nation indivisible—with liberty and justice for all.”

Francis Bellamy reportedly wrote the Pledge of Allegiance in two hours, but it was the culmination of nearly two years of work at the Youth’s Companion, the country’s largest circulation magazine. In a marketing gimmick, the Companion offered U.S. flags to readers who sold subscriptions, and now, with the looming 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the New World, the magazine planned to raise the Stars and Stripes “over every Public School from the Atlantic to the Pacific” and salute it with an oath.

Bellamy, a former Baptist preacher, had irritated his Boston Brahmin flock with his socialist ideas. But as a writer and publicist at the Companion, he let ’em rip. In a series of speeches and editorials that were equal parts marketing, political theory and racism, he argued that Gilded Age capitalism, along with “every alien immigrant of inferior race,” eroded traditional values, and that pledging allegiance would ensure “that the distinctive principles of true Americanism will not perish as long as free, public education endures.”

The pledge itself would prove malleable, and by World War II many public schools required a morning recitation. In 1954, as the cold war intensified, Congress added the words “under God” to distinguish the United States from “godless Communism.” One atheist, believing his kindergarten-aged daughter was coerced into proclaiming an expression of faith, protested all the way to the Supreme Court, which in 2004 determined that the plaintiff, who was not married to the child’s mother, didn’t have standing to bring the suit, leaving the phrase open to review. Still, three of the justices argued that “under God” did not violate the constitutional separation of church and state; Sandra Day O’Connor said it was merely “ceremonial deism.”

Today, 46 states require public schools to make time for the pledge—just Vermont, Iowa, Wyoming and Hawaii do not. It’s a daily order of business for the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. And hundreds of thousands of newly minted citizens pledge allegiance each year during the U.S. naturalization ceremony. The snappy oath first printed in a 5-cent children’s magazine is better known than any venerable text committed to parchment in Philadelphia.

Yet the pledge continues to have its critics, with some pointing out the irony of requiring citizens to swear fealty to a nation that prizes freedom of thought and speech. The historian Richard J. Ellis, author of the 2005 book To the Flag: The Unlikely History of the Pledge of Allegiance, acknowledges that the oath is “paradoxical and puzzling,” but he also admires the aspirational quality of its spare poetry. “The appeal of Bellamy’s pledge is the statement of universal principles,” he says, “which transcends the particular biases or agendas of the people who created it.”

Bellamy did some transcending of his own. The onetime committed socialist went on to enjoy a lucrative career as a New York City advertising man, penning odes to Westinghouse and Allied Chemical and a book called Effective Magazine Advertising. But his favorite bit of copy remained the pledge—“this little formula,” he wrote in 1923, with an ad man’s faith in sloganeering, which “has been pounding away on the impressionable minds of children for a generation."

In establishing the first U.S. marine national monument in the Atlantic Ocean, President Barack Obama is protecting an ocean area that harbors whales, puffins, 1,000-year-old corals, undersea mountains, and chasms deeper than the Grand Canyon.

The designation of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument protects 4,913 square miles and begins about 150 miles southeast of Cape Cod. Although little fishing occurs there now, the designation phases out commercial fishing and prohibits other extractive activities such as mining and drilling.

The monument is the latest addition in a movement to protect special ocean areas across the country and the globe. Unlike the Administration’s other marine monument designations, it is located offshore from major urban population centers: according to the U.S. Census Bureau, at least 25 million people – more than 8 percent of the U.S. population – lived in counties with ocean coastline from Maine to New York in 2010.

President Obama’s move to protect the area comes after scientists associated with the New England and Mystic aquariums catalogued its rich, healthy ecosystem. In 2013, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sent a deep-sea submersible vehicle to probe the region and capture video of the abundance of marine life there.

On their missions to the area, researchers discovered rare species and explored a series of canyons and underwater mountains that rise as high as 7,000 feet from the seafloor—the only such formations in the U.S. Atlantic.

The protected area includes three canyons and four underwater mountains, where scientists have documented hundreds of species. Brilliant cold-water corals, some the size of small trees, form the foundation of deep-sea ecosystems, providing food, spawning habitat, and shelter for fish and other marine animals. The region is also home to tunas, sharks, seabirds, dolphins, and other marine mammals, such as endangered sperm whales and rare North Atlantic right whales.

While the U.S. has a long tradition of protecting lands—Yellowstone, our first national park, was established in 1872—marine monuments are part of a newer generation of preserved areas. President George W. Bush established four U.S. marine national monuments in the Pacific Ocean in 2006 and 2009. President Obama has expanded two of those—the Pacific Remote Islands and, last month, Papahānaumokuākea, in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, which regained the mantle as the world’s largest marine reserve; it held that distinction when President Bush created it in 2006 but had been surpassed by larger reserves in other countries’ waters. The expanded Papahānaumokuākea is more than four times the size of California.

When the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument was proposed, itdrew support from hundreds of thousands of scientists, educators, business owners, boaters, surfers, beachgoers, Connecticut legislators, and members of faith-based organizations—together with the region’s leading aquariums and conservation organizations, representing millions more people.

Robust ocean food webs are the foundation of New England’s whale watching, recreational fishing, and seabird viewing industries. Research has shown that protected areas increase the likelihood that marine life will reproduce and boost the abundance, individual sizes, and diversity of sea life. Given sanctuaries in which to feed and breed undisturbed by humans, more fish and fish larvae can spread out beyond the reserve’s boundaries and support more fishing opportunities.

Today, limited fishing occurs in the canyons and seamounts area, much of which is too deep and rugged for bottom trawling, the dominant fishing mode in the region. Bottom trawling is prohibited in two canyons already. But the president’s action protects against future extractive activities as the push to fish, drill, and mine in new places puts these fragile habitats at risk. And with climate change already affecting ocean conditions–recent research has found the nearby Gulf of Maine warming faster than 99 percent of the world’s marine waters – the monument will serve as an increasingly important refuge for the region’s sea life.

The monument creates a safe haven for marine resources that have helped define New England’s maritime culture. It’s a major step forward and an investment that will reap dividends for generations to come.

Hannah gets a first hand look at what it takes to be a food critic. She sits down with teen food writer David Fishman for a meal at New York’s “Good Enough to Eat.” They sample everything from tacos to cupcakes and then deliver the verdict! 

Tyler reports on the 9/11 Tribute Center.  The goal of the Center is to not only remember what happened, but to teach future generations about it.  The Center believes that through education, comes understanding.  The founders strive to have 9-11 added to classroom curriculum across the country.

You’re in a bind. Whether it’s for a pitch, presentation, new product, or an important meeting, you need to be armed with a brilliant idea in your back pocket. However, no matter how hard you rack your brain, you’re coming up short and drawing a total blank.

We’ve all been there—feeling like you’re completely tapped out of genius creativity is definitely a discouraging and disheartening experience. But, what if there were certain things you could do to help you avoid that panic-inducing scenario altogether?

Luckily, there are. Use these four easy strategies and you’re sure to train your brain to have bigger, better, and altogether awesome ideas.

1. Keep a List

You probably could’ve guessed that this would appear here somewhere, so we might as well get it out of the way right off the bat.

If you’ve ever had one of those moments when you know you’ve had an amazing idea, only to be completely unable to remember it mere moments later, you already know how frustrating that situation can be.

Jotting things down the second they pop into your brain is a surefire way to combat this all too common problem.

I use a notes app on my phone to make sure I always have a method for keeping track of those fleeting bits of insight. I even keep one list that doesn’t have a specific, designated purpose—it’s just a place to drop all of those little nuggets of wisdom that aren’t yet a fully formed idea, but could serve as some great inspiration down the road.

Yes, it takes just a little bit of extra time and effort. But, you’ll be happy you have that easily referenced list when it comes time to think on your feet.

2. Use Yourself as Inspiration

I’ll be the first to admit that using yourself as a source of inspiration can seem almost unbearably conceited and self-centered. But, if you take just a minute to think about it, it starts to make a lot of sense.

Some of the best products were invented by people who had a specific problem they wanted solved. Some of the greatest discoveries were made by people who wanted an answer to a question that they had.

So, if you’re feeling fresh out of inspiration, don’t hesitate to look inside yourself. This process can even include looking back at some of your older work.

For example, when I’m really churning to come up with a solid article idea, I’ll read through some of my previous posts to see if there’s a smaller idea or tip that I could expand on in a totally new piece.

If you learn to implement tactics just like that for yourself, your own brain will transform into an endless well of resources.

3. Think Small

We tend to put a lot of pressure on ourselves when it comes to generating ideas. Our internal critics convince us that every single proposal we make needs to be solving a huge problem or making an immeasurable impact.

But, placing all of that weight on your shoulders will only make you crack. So, you shouldn’t be afraid to start small. Little ideas can often turn into bigger ones—and they’re much easier to come up with than those grand plans that seem impossible to wrap your mind around.

Don’t be so tight-lipped with your minor suggestions. They may not offer the answer for world peace, but they can still make a pretty big difference.

4. Leave Yourself Enough Time

Some of us work really well under the wire. But, when it comes to coming up with thoughtful ideas, it’s usually best not to pressure yourself with a ridiculously tight deadline.

Of course, sometimes those oppressive time restraints are unavoidable. However, when you have the option, leave yourself plenty of time to tap into your inspiration, brainstorm, and elaborate.

After all, hearing that subconscious ticking of the clock or the Jeopardy theme song playing on a loop in your brain will probably cause you to choke—leaving you with zero ideas to share.

We’ve all experienced those times when we feel like we’re fresh out of thoughts. However, that doesn’t mean you need to toss your hands up and deem yourself useless and uninspired.

Put these four easy tips to work, and you’re sure to be overflowing with brilliant suggestions in no time.

Carly visits Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Maryland where she learns about us about the historic battle that helped spark the creation of our National Anthem. Plus, TKN speaks to historians who explain the meaning of key phrases in the poem that Francis Scott Key wrote and how it became a song and our national anthem.

It’s easy to watch financial shows on television and feel like a fool for missing opportunities to pick up “screaming buys,” in “beaten-down markets,” but at a time when home values are in the gutter and people are worried about where their next paycheck is coming from, it’s more important than ever to understand what’s involved before you play the Wall Street game. In our nest report Nicole takes us on a tour of the New York Stock Exchange. The NYSE was founded in 1792 and today billions of dollars exchange hands there everyday. More than 2,000 companies trade their stock there. Owning stock is like owning a stake in a company, if the company does well you can make money, if it does badly you can lose money. 

Are you like me and you accidentally let bananas get way too ripe, way too often?  Next time they’re getting a little brown, cut them up and freeze ‘em.  And then you’ll be able to make this.  Another great recipe tip from the Culinary Institute of America.

Ingredients:
4 ripe bananas
Chopped nuts or chopped fresh fruit

Method:
1  Peel the bananas and then freeze them for one or two hours.
2. Put the frozen bananas in a blender or food processor and blend till smooth.
3. Put it in an ice cream tin and freeze again for an hour if required.
4. Serve cold scoops in cups garnished with nuts or fruits.

The most popular theory concerns Samuel Wilson, a New York meatpacker who provided food to U.S. forces during the War of 1812. As the story goes, Wilson and Elbert Anderson, the contractor he supplied, stamped all their beef and pork barrels with the initials “E.A.-U.S.” The “U.S.” was shorthand for United States, but workers began joking that it stood for “Uncle Sam,” as Wilson was locally known. Before long, soldiers had helped bring the term into common use as a nickname for the United States.

The Sam Wilson story was first popularized in an 1830 article in the New York Gazette. It was later made a matter of public record in 1961, when Congress passed a resolution acknowledging Wilson as the “progenitor of America’s national symbol of ‘Uncle Sam.’” Nevertheless, many modern researchers doubt the tale’s veracity. Historian Donald R. Hickey has uncovered a reference to Uncle Sam in a U.S. Navy midshipman’s diary from 1810, which suggests that the term predated the War of 1812. In 1813, meanwhile, Wilson’s hometown newspaper wrote an article that referenced the term, but made no mention of his role in inspiring it. Instead, the story stated that the name was simply a playful take on the “U.S.” that was often emblazoned on military wagons and supplies.

Whatever its origins, the nickname “Uncle Sam” became entrenched in the American vernacular in the years after the War of 1812. The first drawings of Uncle Sam followed in the 1830s, but his trademark look wasn’t popularized until the 1870s, when Harper’s Weekly cartoonist Thomas Nast began drawing him with a whiskered face, top hat and red-and-white striped pants. The final step in the character’s transition into a national icon came courtesy of artist James Montgomery Flagg. In 1916, he used his own face as a model for an Uncle Sam cartoon in a periodical called Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly Newspaper. The image, which shows a goateed Uncle Sam pointing straight at the viewer, later appeared in a now-famous World War I recruitment poster featuring the tagline “I Want You For U.S. Army.”

J. M. Flagg's 1917 poster, based on the original British Lord Kitchener poster of three years earlier, was used to recruit soldiers for both World War Iand World War II. Flagg used a modified version of his own face for Uncle Sam, and veteran Walter Botts provided the pose.^[1]

You know you’re nearing the final stretch of an interview process (and that it’s looking good for you) when a potential employer asks for references. If you’re not prepared, though, you might be left scrambling at the last minute to find a good reference. Who do you ask and what’s the best way to reach out?

When you nearing the home stretch of an interview process it’s common to be faced with these three questions:

Question number three can rattle even the strongest of candidates if you’re not prepared to respond swiftly with names, titles, the nature of the relationship, and current contact information for however many people with whom they’d like to speak.

Don’t get caught in scramble mode at this stage of the game. Your prompt response and the quality of your references can take you the distance if you play this right. Let’s begin.

Who Should I List (or Not List) as a Reference?

Generally speaking, your future employer wants to talk with the following people, in order of importance (depending on your role):

1. Your current manager or supervisor
2. Your prior managers or supervisors
3. Your current peers or clients (if you’re interviewing for a client-facing role)
4. Your prior peers or clients
5. Your personal references or friends who will vouch for you

Number five, by the way, is a remote fifth place. Reserve this one for only those times you have few other options, and make sure to ask if it’s okay to include personal references before you do so. Also, if you’re a graduating college student (or recent grad), you can absolutely include professors who may be able to speak to your performance and work ethic.

Never (ever) include relatives, unless you happen to work directly for or with one. Oh, and absolutely don’t ever give a fake name and then commission your buddy to “pretend” to be your employer or peer. Recruiters are not stupid. Treat them so at your own peril.

Keep in mind that the primary reason why potential employers want to check your references is because they want a third party to vouch for your on-the-job performance and character. You can tout your greatness all day long in the interview, but it truly gels for decision makers when others tout it for you.

Nooooooo. Heavens, no. Not only do you not need to list out your references, you shouldn’t. It takes up unnecessary resume space, and there’s a remote chance that a recruiter may be more interested in, say, your manager (who you’ve listed) than he or she is in you. No need to hand over all of this information before you captivate him or her.

Likewise, no need to write out “References available upon request.” This is a given. When the hiring manager want them, he or she will ask for them. 100% of the time.

What If I’m a Covert Job Seeker?

This can be a tricky one. If you’re currently employed—and job searching on the sly—who can you trust in these final, important legs of a job transition? I can’t answer this one definitively because every situation is different, and the stakes can be quite high. Trust your gut.

Chances are, you aren’t going to be able to use your current manager as a reference. Certainly, consider enlisting former managers. But you should also think about asking one to two colleagues with whom you have a close personal bond (and established level of trust). If and when you ask them for this support, spell it out very clearly how important it is for you to keep your search under wraps—and the potential consequences for you if they blab.

Also, if you’re providing your potential employer with a relatively weak list of references, be sure and alert them that you’re aware of that, and explain why.

How Should I Ask?

I always encourage clients to approach potential references with specificity, instead of the old, “Hey, would you be willing to be my reference?” Do that, and you’re going to have to let the chips fall where they may in terms of what this person offers up. And along those lines, do this over the phone if possible. You’ll get a much better idea of how excited (or unexcited) this person is to help you.

Make sure to frame your request in a way that spells out the details of the role you’re pursuing, what you anticipate the caller is likely going to want to talk about, and how he or she can be the most helpful. For example you might say:

“Because they’re going through so much change and restructuring right now, I’m guessing they’re going to want to make sure I have strong leadership skills and the ability to turn around struggling teams and programs. If you’re willing, I’d love for you to share some detail on the program we revitalized in 2014.”

Be specific, and also ask this direct question at the end of the call, “May I count on you to give me a favorable reference should the company contact you?”

Don’t assume your past co-worker or boss is going to sing your praises. You never know—she may be jealous of your opportunity here or feel like you dropped the ball on something last year. If you ask this question, you’ll either get a “Yes, of course you can count on me” or an awkward pause or waffle. Don’t list anyone who responds with the awkward pause or waffle. Lukewarm references can sink you in the home stretch.

Is There Anything I Should Provide My References With?

Ideally, provide them with a copy of the job description or an overview of the role and main responsibilities. If you can, also give them some background on the person you anticipate will be calling them, so that they can feel up-to-date and prepared for the conversation.

Also, if it’s someone you’ve used as a reference before (and you suspect would be fine being listed again), provide him or her with a heads-up. Don’t list people without giving them any indication that you’ve used them as a reference for this next opportunity. That’s rude, and it may annoy them to the point of not giving you a glowing review.

What Do I Do After They Are Contacted?

Honestly, you don’t always know when a reference has been contacted, but often times your people will follow up to let you know the conversation just took place.

What do you do? This one is easy—thank him or her, and offer to return the favor if it’s ever needed. And, when you land that job? Most definitely let each of your references know, and consider a small thank you gift, like a coffee gift card or lunch.

Get it right, take it the distance, and enjoy that amazing new gig.

By Brooke Jarvis

Marie Tharp spent the fall of 1952 hunched over a drafting table, surrounded by charts, graphs, and jars of India ink. Nearby, spread across several additional tables, lay her project—the largest and most detailed map ever produced of a part of the world no one had ever seen.

For centuries, scientists had believed that the ocean floor was basically flat and featureless—it was too far beyond reach to know otherwise. But the advent of sonar had changed everything. For the first time, ships could “sound out” the precise depths of the ocean below them. For five years, Tharp’s colleagues at Columbia University had been crisscrossing the Atlantic, recording its depths. Women weren’t allowed on these research trips—the lab director considered them bad luck at sea—so Tharp wasn’t on board. Instead, she stayed in the lab, meticulously checking and plotting the ships’ raw findings, a mass of data so large it was printed on a 5,000-foot scroll. As she charted the measurements by hand on sheets of white linen, the floor of the ocean slowly took shape before her.

Tharp spent weeks creating a series of six parallel profiles of the Atlantic floor stretching from east to west. Her drawings showed—for the first time—exactly where the continental shelf began to rise out of the abyssal plain and where a large mountain range jutted from the ocean floor. That range had been a shock when it was discovered in the 1870s by an expedition testing routes for transatlantic telegraph cables, and it had remained the subject of speculation since; Tharp’s charting revealed its length and detail.

Her maps also showed something else—something no one expected. Repeating in each was “a deep notch near the crest of the ridge,” a V-shaped gap that seemed to run the entire length of the mountain range. Tharp stared at it. It had to be a mistake.

She crunched and re-crunched the numbers for weeks on end, double- and triple-checking her data. As she did, she became more convinced that the impossible was true: She was looking at evidence of a rift valley, a place where magma emerged from inside the earth, forming new crust and thrusting the land apart. If her calculations were right, the geosciences would never be the same.

A few decades before, a German geologist named Alfred Wegener had put forward the radical theory that the continents of the earth had once been connected and had drifted apart. In 1926, at a gathering of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, the scientists in attendance rejected Wegener’s theory and mocked its maker. No force on Earth was thought powerful enough to move continents. “The dream of a great poet,” opined the director of the Geological Survey of France: “One tries to embrace it, and finds that he has in his arms a little vapor or smoke.” Later, the president of the American Philosophical Society deemed it “utter, damned rot!”

In the 1950s, as Tharp looked down at that tell-tale valley, Wegener’s theory was still considered verboten in the scientific community—even discussing it was tantamount to heresy. Almost all of Tharp’s colleagues, and practically every other scientist in the country, dismissed it; you could get fired for believing in it, she later recalled. But Tharp trusted what she’d seen. Though her job at Columbia was simply to plot and chart measurements, she had more training in geology than most plotters—more, in fact, than some of the men she reported to. Tharp had grown up among rocks. Her father worked for the Bureau of Chemistry and Soils, and as a child, she would accompany him as he collected samples. But she never expected to be a mapmaker or even a scientist. At the time, the fields didn’t welcome women, so her first majors were music and English. After Pearl Harbor, however, universities opened up their departments. At the University of Ohio, she discovered geology and found a mentor who encouraged her to take drafting. Because Tharp was a woman, he told her, fieldwork was out of the question, but drafting experience could help her get a job in an office like the one at Columbia. After graduating from Ohio, she enrolled in a program at the University of Michigan, where, with men off fighting in the war, accelerated geology degrees were offered to women. There, Tharp became particularly fascinated with geomorphology, devouring textbooks on how landscapes form. A rock formation’s structure, composition, and location could tell you all sorts of things if you knew how to look at it.

Studying the crack in the ocean floor, Tharp could see it was too large, too contiguous, to be anything but a rift valley, a place where two masses of land had separated. When she compared it to a rift valley in Africa, she grew more certain. But when she showed Bruce Heezen, her research supervisor (four years her junior), “he groaned and said, ‘It cannot be. It looks too much like continental drift,’” Tharp wrote later. “Bruce initially dismissed my interpretation of the profiles as ‘girl talk.’” With the lab’s reputation on the line, Heezen ordered her to redo the map. Tharp went back to the data and started plotting again from scratch.

Heezen and Tharp were often at odds and prone to heated arguments, but they worked well together nonetheless. He was the avid collector of information; she was the processor comfortable with exploring deep unknowns. As the years went by, they spent more and more time together both in and out of the office. Though their platonic-or-not relationship confused everyone around them, it seemed to work.

In late 1952, as Tharp was replotting the ocean floor, Heezen took on another deep-sea project searching for safe places to plant transatlantic cables. He was creating his own map, which plotted earthquake epicenters in the ocean floor. As his calculations accumulated, he noticed something strange: Most quakes occurred in a nearly continuous line that sliced down the center of the Atlantic. Meanwhile, Tharp had finished her second map—a physiographic diagram giving the ocean floor a 3-D appearance—and sure enough, it showed the rift again. When Heezen and Tharp laid their two maps on top of each other on a light table, both were stunned by how neatly the maps fit. The earthquake line threaded right through Tharp’s valley.

They moved on from the Atlantic and began analyzing data from other oceans and other expeditions, but the pattern kept repeating. They found additional mountain ranges, all seemingly connected and all split by rift valleys; within all of them, they found patterns of earthquakes. “There was but one conclusion,” Tharp wrote. “The mountain range with its central valley was more or less a continuous feature across the face of the earth.” The matter of whether their findings offered evidence of continental drift kept the pair sparring, but there was no denying they had made a monumental discovery: the mid-ocean ridge, a 40,000-mile underwater mountain range that wraps around the globe like the seams on a baseball. It’s the largest single geographical feature on the planet.

In 1957, Heezen took some of the findings public. After he presented on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge at Princeton, one eminent geologist responded, "Young man, you have shaken the foundations of geology!” He meant it as a compliment, but not everyone was so impressed. Tharp later remembered that the reaction “ranged from amazement to skepticism to scorn.” Ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau was one of the doubters. He’d tacked Tharp’s map to a wall in his ship’s mess hall. When he began filming the Atlantic Ocean’s floor for the first time, he was determined to prove Tharp’s theory wrong. But what he ultimately saw in the footage shocked him. As his ship approached the crest of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, he came upon a deep valley splitting it in half, right where Tharp’s map said it would be. Cousteau and his crew were so astonished that they turned around, went back, and filmed again. When Cousteau screened the video at the International Oceanographic Congress in 1959, the audience gasped and shouted for an encore. The terrain Tharp had mapped was undeniably real.

1959 was the same year that Heezen, still skeptical, presented a paper hoping to explain the rift. The Expanding Earth theory he’d signed on to posited that continents were moving as the planet that contained them grew. (He was wrong.) Other hypotheses soon joined the chorus of explanations about how the rift had occurred. It was the start of an upheaval in the geologic sciences. Soon “it became clear that existing explanations for the formation of the earth’s surface no longer held,” writes Hali Felt in Soundings: The Story of the Remarkable Woman Who Mapped the Ocean Floor.

Tharp stayed out of these debates and simply kept working. She disliked the spotlight and consented to present a paper only once, on the condition that a male colleague do all the talking. “There’s truth to the old cliché that a picture is worth a thousand words and that seeing is believing,” she wrote. “I was so busy making maps I let them argue. I figured I’d show them a picture of where the rift valley was and where it pulled apart.”

By 1961, the idea that she’d put forward nearly a decade before—that the rift in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge had been caused by land masses pulling apart—had finally reached widespread acceptance. The National Geographic Society commissioned Tharp and Heezen to make maps of the ocean floor and its features, helping laypeople visualize the vast plates that allowed the earth’s crust to move. Throughout the 1960s, a slew of discoveries helped ideas such as seafloor spreading and plate tectonics gain acceptance, bringing with them a cascade of new theories about the way the planet and life on it had evolved. Tharp compared the collective eye-opening to the Copernican revolution. “Scientists and the general public,” she wrote, “got their first relatively realistic image of a vast part of the planet that they could never see.”

Tharp herself had never seen it either. Some 15 years after she started mapping the seafloor, Tharp finally joined a research cruise, sailing over the features she’d helped discover. Women were generally still not welcome, so Heezen helped arrange her spot. The two kept working closely together, sometimes fighting fiercely, until his death in 1977. Outside the lab, they maintained separate houses but dined and drank like a married couple. Their work had linked them for life.

In 1997, Tharp, who had long worked patiently in Heezen’s shadow, received double honors from the Library of Congress, which named her one of the four greatest cartographers of the 20th century and included her work in an exhibit in the 100th-anniversary celebration of its Geography and Map Division. There, one of her maps of the ocean floor hung in the company of the original rough draft of the Declaration of Independence and pages from Lewis and Clark’s journals. When she saw it, she started to cry. But Tharp had known all along that the map she created was remarkable, even when she was the only one who believed. “Establishing the rift valley and the mid-ocean ridge that went all the way around the world for 40,000 miles—that was something important,” she wrote. “You could only do that once. You can’t find anything bigger than that, at least on this planet.”

Using someone else’s prescription medicine is a lot like playing Russian roulette – you might get away unscathed, and then again you might not. And it could have devastating consequences. Just because we see prescription medicines advertised on TV doesn’t mean they are safe for everyone. There are good reasons why you can’t buy them over the counter. A physician takes many factors into account before prescribing a medication for you, including your current condition, your past medical history, your other medications and the likely risks and benefits of the drug to you as an individual. After making this decision he or she will then explain how to take the medication, when to take it, how much and how long to take it, what else you can and can’t take with it, and what to expect after you take it – both the good and the bad. And after all that you’ll then get an information sheet at the pharmacy giving you all these details in printed form. Taking someone else’s prescription medication deprives you of all these considerations and leaves you vulnerable to a host of problems, some of which can be life-threatening or even fatal.  To learn more, in our next story, Emily reports on a deadly danger lurking in our medicine cabinets!  Studies show that 1 in 4 teens admit to have taken a medicine that was prescribed for someone else.   We hear from experts about seriousness of the problem.