Week 3 Reading Reflection

Something that really stood out to me in this reading was the section about the "dark side of entrepreneurship." I had discussed in a previous post how some of my fears with being an entrepreneur was the seemingly essential action of rejecting the traditional ways of life because of not being able to care for a family, or marry and settle down, to never have financial security. Talking about these risks in the book made them become more real and not so scary, even though there was no solution presented for the problems, documenting that these are problems that come with the job, and that many entrepreneurs experience them, makes it feel like they're not impossible issues to handle because so many people already do.
One thing that was confusing was how the book kind of contradicted a couple of characteristics, for example, on page 31 the book states that entrepreneurs have a low need for status and power, but then later on (page 42) states that entrepreneurs have an overbearing need for control, which to be, "need for control" is the same thing as "power," so that part was a little confusing to me.
If I could ask the author two questions, I would ask him, one, what are some solutions to the "dark side of entrepreneurship"? And two, how can one become and entrepreneur when some of the characteristics are more "born" traits than "earned"?
One thing I disagree with the author about is that entrepreneurs are people with a "low need for status and power," I think without that drive for power and success, what would an entrepreneur be working so hard for in order to become a successful entrepreneur?

Very Short Interview No. 1

The entrepreneur I talked to owns a art business in which she designs and creates different household products into beautiful pieces of art. From kitchen utensils, to candle jars and vases, she takes ordinary glass or stainless steel objects and adds stones, beads and wire to make these ordinary pieces gorgeous works of art and usually sells these at art shows or house parties.

What does it mean to be an entrepreneur?
"It takes something that I'm passionate about, an idea, and are able to make money from it."
What do you think I should learn in this entrepreneur course?
"How to stay focused on a goal... Learn how to work with other people towards a similar goal or end point. You need to learn how to read people, to communicate, to be aggressive when you need to be, and lay back when you need to."
What do you wish you had been taught in school before setting out on your own path as an entrepreneur?
"How to come up with a formula for an end price that includes my time in addition to the wholesale price of the product. I wish I had learned web design."

Reflection:
I realized that being an entrepreneur doesn't mean you're power or money hungry, or a business person- an entrepreneur can be anyone, whether it's someone who is a business mastermind or someone who is creative and artistically talented. Being an entrepreneur doesn't mean you're only one type of person, with a certain set of skills and interests, anyone can be an entrepreneur as long as they have a passion and are willing to work for it.

World's BIGGEST Problems

1. War in the Middle East
• The best way I can describe this is that this set of people thinks that this land is inherently theirs "by the words of God" and then this set of people thinks the same land is also inherently theirs "by the words of God." I think the best solution is, and I might be biased (most people are when it comes to world issues), that they need to determine a settlement to split the land, and actually stick to this agreement.
2. Oil drilling
• One of the big problems, in especially the U.S., is that we are supporting nations we don't necessarily want to support just because they "have the goods" (oil) and we "need" that good. We're also supporting harming the environment by trading with these nations and continuing to support oil drilling. A solution for this is to, one, look else where for oil so that we don't have to depend on nations that we don't agree with, and two, start looking for other power sources.
3. Fracking
• The simplest way to explain this is that we are drilling into high-pressure ground and releasing gas from these ancient and compacted rocks to use the gas as a power source. The problems from this are numerous, there have been reports of the gas leaking into water sources and contaminating people's water. This can be viewed via YouTube videos where people turn their faucets on and put a lighter under it and the whole things catches fire. I think a solution to this is to - shockingly- stop fracking! We need to sign petitions,  and keep pushing and voting for it to be made illegal. 
  
4. Styrofoam 
• Styrofoam takes over a million years to decompose... why would we even produce something with such a life? Especially when there are other options that take half the time to decompose. Paper products are the best solution to this problem. Paper is cheap and doesn't take very long to decompose and paper can be recycled to make more paper products; so their life itself is longer and their decomposing time is very little compared to styrofoam.
5. Climate Change
• People, especially where it snows, keep saying that "Global Warming doesn't exist" because it's still snowing and scientists have been talking about it for years now. But what many people don't understand is that things like climate change happen very slowly and very moderately so will be seen overtime and when Global Warming was first brought to attention, it was a prediction, not a statement saying the world overnight changed and we're all going to die. A solution to this is education, learning what exactly climate change is and that only together can we put a stop to it, and that it's not too late to make a change.
6. Underutilizing power sources
• The solution to all these problems listed above (2-5) are primarily just changing where we get our energy from, but not doing this is a problem in itself. Wind, water, solar- there are so many "green" energy sources out there that are more effective (and sometimes cheaper) than these other sources and cleaner on the environment. 
7. Politics
• Where to begin? First of all, a lot of the political world nowadays is corrupted and full of people guided by more of their own self-interest than the interest of the nation. We need to try to go back to the beginning of the nation's history and try to remember what our founders and citizens worked so hard for.
8. Education
• Education is expensive, more of a business than a place of self-betterment, corrupt, and also behind. I don't think the education system is teaching kids important and useful things, and anything taught that is useful, is being taught later than it should be. College is expensive, but we live in an economy in which without a college degree, you have probably under a 1 percent chance of getting hired. A lot of universities are more interested in making money for investors than the interest and pursuit of teaching their students and the advancement of education.
9. Discrimination 
• Racism, sexism, religious intolerance, etc.- there are so many ways to discriminate in today's modern society that you can almost laugh that we're still fighting about the same topics. Religion was a form of science in biblical times before there was much scientific findings on they ways of the universe and was created to explain the world, which is now what we have science for. Race just means you were born here, rather than there. Sex just means I was born with this gene, rather than the other. How are all these things still debatable when they mean we're slightly different in a world that thrives off of diversity?
10. Terrorism
• One of the saddest issues in today's world, terrorism. It's everywhere and life/world threatening. The scariest thing is we don't know how to handle it, unlike most issues in which the source of the problem is almost clear and the solution is somewhat clear. That's why it's one of the top issues in people's mind currently because unpredictable, unknown and unidentifiable.