https://www.harrisonbarnes.com/do-not-trust-appearances-my-visit-to-deep-springs-college/ [clicktosha] Harrison Barnes LOGIN [Type search ] What Are You Looking For: * Article Search [ ] Search [search] Featured Home >> Do Not Trust Appearances: My Visit to Deep Springs College Featured 16 Comments Download PDF Do Not Trust Appearances: My Visit to Deep Springs College Harrison Barnes By Harrison Barnes Jan 04,2023 Follow Me on Twitter, LinkedIn View Count: 40575 1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (21 votes, average: 4.24 out of 5) #Loading... X Close window View More Videos [videoicon] Watch Related Video | Read Summary Summary You should neither trust outward appearances, nor let them intimidate you. There is always a discord between the appearance that a person or organization projects, and their actual nature. For this reason, always be careful about the people and organizations in whom you place your trust. The first time I visited Las Vegas was in 1988. The city was far different back then, with an old Western vibe-not at all like the modern strip with all of the new casinos and so forth. Las Vegas, in the late 1980s, was more tired and run down; it was by no means the exciting city it is today. I am officially changing my license today and becoming a Las Vegas resident. Last night I found a condominium here. There is a massive amount of activity in Las Vegas, which makes it a very exciting place. There are high rises all over the city; there is a great workforce; there are great shows, and there are just so many interesting things to do. I am very impressed by everything going on in the city and think that a lot of work is going to be generated out of Las Vegas in the future. In fact, I think that with all the shows, people, and activity here, the place is likely to rival major cities like New York at some point in the not too distant future. In the next few days I am planning on moving to Las Vegas and spending at least half my time here starting up a few companies. In these last few days in Las Vegas I have realized exactly how much progress has been made here in the past 20+ years. The city is a completely different place and has become more of a modern metropolis than ever before. The Las Vegas I remember was a place where people went to gamble out West, which had some fun elements to it-but it was much different than the current Las Vegas. Back in the late 1980s, I had come here to visit Deep Springs College. This college was really a commune of sorts, which was in the middle of the desert, a few hours outside of Las Vegas. At that time, the school boasted the highest SAT scores of any college in the United States and it was very small. In fact, if I recall correctly, there were only about 25 students in the entire school, which was itself supported by an endowment. Tuition was free. In order to attend the school, the students were required to take on various jobs on a farm that the school had established in the middle of the desert. There, the school was supposed to teach its students important real world skills such as self-reliance and resourcefulness, among other abilities. According to the school's website: Deep Springs is an all-male liberal arts college located on a cattle-ranch and alfalfa farm in California's High Desert. Electrical pioneer L.L. Nunn founded the school in 1917 on the three pillars of academics, labor, and self-governance in order to help young men prepare themselves for lives of service to humanity. The school's 26 students, along with its staff and faculty, form a close community engaged in this intense project. Deep Springs operates on the belief that manual labor and political deliberation are integral parts of a comprehensive liberal arts education. Each student attends for two years and receives a full scholarship valued at over $50,000 per year. Afterwards, most complete their degrees at the world's most prestigious four year institutions. The experience I had with visiting Deep Springs College was very entertaining in many respects, and it is something I will never forget. Everything about the school was so unusual, so different from any other place I had ever been. Since the school was a two year college, students were required to transfer to other schools at the end of the two year period. The list of the schools that people went to after those two years was incredible: Caltech, Yale, Stanford, Harvard, and so forth. From my perspective, this made the prospect of attending the school extremely attractive. To hang out on a farm for two years and then transfer to a really good college, sounded like a great long-term experience. In addition, the sheer experience sounded incredible, if not magical. To top it all off, not having to worry about getting into real schools for the next couple of years sounded even more appealing. In order to get to the school, I needed to travel to Las Vegas from Detroit, and then take a bus to a place called Lida Junction, where I was told I would be getting picked up by a student and then driven for another hour out into the desert. Prior to visiting the school, I had filled out a very long application that required me to write something like 50+ pages of essays. The essay I spent the most time on was pretty bizarre. It had something to do with examining how to reform criminals in society, and I hypothesized in a long essay that a very effective treatment would be to lock them in a room and play subliminal music with all sorts of hypnotic suggestions, which would change their minds and force them to think like good people instead of criminals. I estimated that several years of this sort of treatment would be enough to permanently alter the criminals and make them fit to reenter society. Strangely enough, the people who read this essay at the school thought my idea was groundbreaking, and when I arrived at the school, they were eager to discuss this theory with me. As it turned out, t hey had actually spent a few days prior to my arrival, researching hypnosis, subliminal suggestions and so forth, and they all seemed to think I was some kind of an expert on these subjects. At least once or twice I walked into areas where a couple of guys were hanging out, and they had been discussing the theory I had come up with as a small group. As a high school student in my last year of high school, taking a trip to Las Vegas and then a series of bus rides had offered an exciting prospect. I could not believe my good fortune. My father had bought me an airline ticket and gave me $500 for hotels, buses, and other expenses. Plus, since I was taking the trip during a school vacation, I did not even have to worry about all the school I was missing. When I got to Las Vegas in the afternoon, I had taken a taxi to the bus station, and I also needed to purchase a ticket to Lida Junction--which was about a five or six hour ride. Las Vegas was so different back then. The bus station was a place where vagrants, workers from Mexico, cowboys, and others gathered. The town had a real Western flair to it and felt much different from how it is today, in all respects. I sat next to a cowboy when I finally got on the bus, after a few hours of waiting. The bus ride was a lot of fun. We meandered through the desert in areas where there were literally no other cars. Every hour or so, the bus would pull over at a small restaurant or store on the side of the road for everyone to use the bathroom. Many of the restaurants had small casinos inside them and were run down with tired looking dealers. There was a lot of smoke everywhere. Cowboys sat at a table with some beers and a few other people, leisurely placing their bets. You could tell that most of the people were local and just passing some time at the casino. Since I was relatively young at the time and I was traveling alone, several people spoke to me on the bus and they were all very friendly. When we got to one stop, I was standing out by the bus with a cowboy while he was chewing his tobacco. He had asked me where the heck I was going. I was wearing a blue blazer and khaki pants, trying to look as respectable as possible for the people I was going to visit at the college. I really stuck out and I knew it. "I know exactly where you are going. It's a rodeo college," he told me matter of factly. I never even knew there was such a thing as a "rodeo college," but he apparently seemed to think that was where I was going. At around 2:00 in the morning the bus finally stopped at Lida Junction. To my astonishment the only thing there was at Lida Junction was a brothel, the Cottontail Ranch. The brothel consisted of a series of mobile homes that were all connected with various passageways going between them. It was quite a sight. As the bus pulled up I noticed a Suburban with its lights on. It was the only vehicle in the entire parking lot. As I walked up to the car, the driver smiled and let me in. His name was Steve. [cottontailranchfinal1] He was about a year older than me and he was drinking a hot coffee. Since there did not appear to be anything else around for miles, I assumed that he had gotten the drink in the brothel. His hair looked a little messed up as well, and he looked a little nervous. The drive to Deep Springs College was over an hour long. We took a two lane highway through the desert and Steve was going over 110 miles an hour most of the way. As a passenger, I found the speed to be terrifying; however, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there was nothing around that we could possibly hit. We were surrounded on all sides by stark desert. We finally arrived at the college at about 3:30 in the morning. The campus was very dark, and it consisted of nothing but a set of small buildings in the middle of the desert. I was led to a room with a bunch of bunk beds and sleeping students, where I quickly fell asleep. At about 7:00 a.m. a kid with a giant beard came up to me and woke me up. He told me it was "time to work" and pointed me towards the showers. He then told me to put on jeans and a tee shirt. Once I was dressed he led me to a mess hall where a bunch of other kids were sitting around, eating. The group of kids looked like they were all followers of the Grateful Dead. Most of them had beards and they had all let their hair grow extremely long. Everyone seemed a little pissed off at each other and at the world-but I could not really tell for sure; I was not introduced to anyone. I found myself a seat at what looked like a picnic table, where I ate my lunch. None of the kids I was sitting near seemed all that friendly, but after a few minutes everyone started to loosen up. They all had to go to class, do work, and various chores and so forth that day. I was just there to play and have fun and see the school. Or at least that was what I thought. After breakfast, the guy who had woken me up walked me to a little Toyota pickup truck and started driving me towards what he called the "work site." We drove for several minutes. During the drive he told me how much he had enjoyed my essay about the subliminal criminal training. He seemed very enthralled by it. Finally, he stopped the truck in the middle of the road and told me that I needed to spend the day digging along the side of the road to create an area where water could go during rainstorms. He told me to dig as much as I could and as far as I could. Then he told me that this was a test to see what a hard worker I was. He seemed to be inferring that a large part of my admission to the school would be determined by how well I dug a ditch. He left me several jugs of plastic milk containers that were filled with water. I imagine it was around 8:00 a.m. when I started digging. I was already exhausted because I had not gotten any meaningful sleep the previous night. I worked as hard as I could, digging a ditch about two feet deep along the roadside as quickly as I could. The work was completely fatiguing and I had no clue where I was. Several hours into the project, it was really hot and my hands were starting to blister. The guy who had dropped me off came to check on me. "Looks ok, not bad. C'mon, it's time for lunch." When I got to the cafeteria, there appeared to be an argument underway. A guy wanted to leave the school for three or four days to go visit his girlfriend and the students were debating whether or not he should be allowed to go. If he were to go visit his girlfriend, he would be missing out on various work chores he was responsible for, and many of the other students were not confident that they should allow him to leave. In addition, this student had apparently left a few months previously to visit his girlfriend, so the students were not sure whether allowing him to leave again would be fair to the other students. As I watched this argument, it occurred to me that I probably would not enjoy this incredible amount of oversight in my life. These guys were being very closely micromanaged by other students, and they did not appear to have much say at all in terms of what they did with their own time. After lunch I was taken to the road and forced to shovel dirt and dig the culvert some more. However, after an hour or so I was picked up, told to take a shower and invited to a class. It was a literature class, but I do not remember much about it. I spent the next few days at the school not doing much of anything. I was not asked to do any more work and I spent my days wandering around the campus and climbing the surrounding hills. Most of the students were so engrossed in various work pursuits and classes, that they did not appear to have much time for anything. Most of the kids I had met seemed very quiet and for the most part, pretty withdrawn. Nevertheless, they were interesting kids. Most of their activities outside of studying and work seemed to involve self-governed activities relating to the farm and the campus. The evenings appeared to involve long, drawn out meetings about one thing or another related to the school and work that needed to be done around the campus. These meetings often dragged on for hours and I found them extremely boring and uninteresting. Moreover, many of the students seemed to take their various arguments quite personally. On my last full day at the college, I was told that I would be interviewed by the admissions committee at 2:00 p.m. and that I should report to a classroom at the school at that time. In the morning, someone came and told me that I should spend "every spare second" reviewing each of my essays prior to my interviews with the admissions committee later that day. At the request of the school, I had brought my essays with me. When I went into the classroom at the appointed hour, the 25 students were all there ready to interview me. They were all gathered around the classroom and each of them had portions of my various essays in front of them. They proceeded to dissect the essays, everyone going over one part of the essays or another with me. The questions that they asked me were very difficult and I really did not do very well in the interviews. One of the most embarrassing moments came when they asked me a question about Carl Jung, whom I had quoted in one of my essays. I had included a few lines about how Carl Jung believed this or that. "Have you ever actually read any books by Carl Jung?" one of the students asked me. "No, I've never read a single thing by him," I answered truthfully. "Then how can you possibly have a large quote from him in your essay, base an essay around his teachings and also lead us to believe that you know what you are talking about?" It was a really good question and he had a point. The rest of the experience and all of the questions went basically like this: I would say one thing and they would contradict me and accuse me of not really understanding what I was talking about. Several years later, I remember I was interviewing for a Rhodes Scholarship in front of a large committee and this entire procedure was much easier than the interviews with the Deep Springs kids. I simply did not fit in with this crowd; they were different sorts of kids from what I had ever encountered. For example, none of them were athletic, they were not clean cut and they all had a whole lot of intellectual arrogance. It seemed as if the kids going to the school had grown up in environments and attended schools where this behavior was accepted. In the high school I attended, this sort of arrogance would not have been tolerated, and it would have probably been beaten out of the kids. When I left my interview, after around 4 hours of questioning, one of the students said something I'll never forget: "I have one final question for you: Did you like the food?" The way he asked the question was layered with subtext. What he meant was: "Hey, we fed you for four days and do not like you. You were here on vacation and we hoped you enjoyed the food." The guy was a complete dick and I did not understand his need to say something so obnoxious. I did not realize at first that he was being rude; however, after he delivered the line I saw a lot of the students looking at each other and snickering, as if they were sharing an inside joke. My final thoughts about this place as I prepared to leave were that because I did not have perfect SAT scores, because I was not extremely intellectual, and because I was more of an athletic type than an academic type, I did not fit in. I had felt uncomfortable the whole time I was there. I did not understand how some guy could tolerate a 3 hour debate about whether or not he should be allowed to go visit his girlfriend. This just seemed intolerable. It really made the place seem like a prison. Another strange thing about the school was that it was several hours away from the nearest hospital. For this reason, they had to keep an airplane on the property at all times, in order to fly people out in the case of an emergency; the school was literally in the middle of nowhere. The bus that took me back to Las Vegas was passing through Lida Junction and was scheduled to pick me up from the front of the brothel at 4:00 a.m. There was only one bus that passed through each day. Steve woke me up at around 2:00 a.m. that morning and told me it was time to go. I had packed all of my bags and was ready to go. Five minutes later I was sitting in the Suburban. Steve seemed a little bit too excited to be hitting the road. He had just taken a shower, I could tell, and he smelled like too much cologne. Since these kids seemed so moral in many respects, the last thing I expected was that this guy might be interested in going to the brothel, but it was in the back of my mind. While Steve drove, I started asking him a lot of questions about himself. There was nothing that would be more interesting to me at the moment than getting him to talk about himself, and to find out his various likes and dislikes. I was also curious about his background. Steve was from a suburb outside of Palm Springs, California, from what I remember, and he had come to the school in a roundabout way. He had graduated from high school where he had not done all that well and then attended a community college for a year. He knew someone, or had a relative, who had some involvement with the college and they had urged him to apply when he was in high first year at the community college. Steve said he felt very grateful to be there and that, had he not been invited, he might have been an auto mechanic or something along those lines. I figured that he must have gotten really good SAT scores since the school seemed to emphasize the test so much. "Oh, I did horribly on that test!" he said. "I do not think I even got in the 50th percentile. As we zoomed through the desert at over 100 miles an hour, I asked Steve what he thought about the fact that the closest sign of civilization to the school was a brothel. He proceeded to launch into a long tirade about how prostitution was evil and how it exploited women. He seemed to feel strongly about this and he started reciting all sorts of statistics and random facts about the damage that prostitution does to people. We pulled up in front of the Cottontail ranch a little before 3:00 a.m. and it appeared to be completely open for business. It was pretty unusual that we were there so early. I was also pretty thirsty and after around 20 minutes or so I said, "Let's go in and get some coffee." We saw a guy in a semi truck go by and stop the truck for around a minute and walk out with a coffee, which looked pretty good. Steve argued with me for a few minutes about how buying coffee from the establishment was akin to supporting prostitution; however, after a few minutes he agreed to go in with me. When we got inside, we came upon this bar. An older woman was standing there, looking pretty tired. She looked like she might be in her 60s and she was wearing a sweat suit. When we asked for coffee, she told us to hold on and then disappeared in the back. We could see a kitchen area from where we were, and as we were standing there, a girl who did not look more than 25 walked by and checked us out. She stopped and looked directly at Steve: "Bulldog!" she exclaimed, running over to Steve with a hug. "You look so cute. You got a haircut and I love it!" she said. I could not believe what I was witnessing. "Bulldog" apparently knew this girl very well. He looked incredibly embarrassed, but started talking with her, eventually taking a seat at the bar. The two of them began talking and acting as if I were not even there. A few minutes later the woman walked out with our coffees. "You kids must be from Deep Springs College," she said. "I got a letter from the headmaster there a few days ago and he was very upset. The letter contains a lot of untruths. I am thinking about calling my lawyer." For the next several minutes, the woman explained that the headmaster had sent a letter to the brothel about a serious outbreak of a sexually transmitted disease, which a substantial part of the student body had gotten from frequenting the brothel. The headmaster had threatened to report the brothel to the Department of Health in the letter or something along those lines and had also requested that the brothel not service the students anymore. "These kids come here all the time," she said. "But they did not get their sex infections here. One of them must have gotten it somewhere else and infected the rest of the boys there. God knows what must go on there. My girls are clean. They are inspected by a doctor. You go back there and tell him my girls are clean!" The woman was holding a letter on Deep Springs stationary and I sat there speechless. We went back to our car and sat there in silence for a few minutes. Steve then said some intellectual crap about how he was morally justified in having sex with prostitutes instead of having sex with men at Deep Springs; after all, he was at his sexual prime. It was complete bullshit and I knew it. "Yeah, at least 12 or 13 guys who went to the brothel got a bad infection," he said. "The doctor has come out a few times and given them shots and stuff but it is not going away. There's a lot of pus involved and its pretty painful from what I understand. I think there was some talk about disciplining them, but how can you discipline half the school?" I sat there in silence not really understanding or comprehending the whole situation. For the past several years I have read one mention or another about Deep Springs College in major magazines and newspapers. Every article I read talks about how great the school is and how special its students are. A September 2006 article in the New Yorker relates: ABSTRACT: ANNALS OF THE WEST about Deep Springs College. L. L. Nunn was a short man with a stiff-collared Victorian habit of dress. A lifelong bachelor, he started investing in Western mines in the late 19th century, and grew rich from hydroelectric power. With his brother, P. N., he built the power station at Niagara Falls. Though Nunn, who died in 1925, never graduated from college, he devoted the last 20 years of his life to a novel form of education, a mix of Christian mysticism, imperialist elitism, Boy Scout-like abstinence, and Progressive era learning-by-doing, with an emphasis on leadership training and the formation of strong character. In 1917, he created a small men's college called Deep Springs College, on a working ranch in Deep Springs Valley, California. He limited enrollment to 25 men and restricted contact with the residents of Bishop, a town 40 miles away. Deep Springs is 5 hours north of L.A. The property, hemmed in by mountains, is 50 square miles. There are two basic rules: observe isolation, and abstain from alcohol and drugs while school is in session. The school is year-round and free, and it requires students to do several hours of manual labor a day. [Mentions the cattle operation] As a two-year institution, Deep Springs is technically a junior college, but its success in placing students at prestigious universities puts it in a category of its own. In recent years, about a fourth of each graduating class has transferred into Harvard, a fourth into the University of Chicago, and a few students have gone on to Oxford, Yale, and Brown. At the college, a committee of students, along with faculty members and the dean, hires teachers, based on their proposed syllabi. Uncanonical subjects, such as the Lusophone language, the writings of Ivan Illich, and auto mechanics, are offered alongside Shakespeare, Proust, and Marx. [Describes a small class on Emily Dickinson, taught by Katie Peterson] The Deep Springs boy is deliberate, thoughtful, studied. [Mentions dairy boys.] Most of the students are white, suburban, and upper-middle-class, and it's been a struggle for the school to diversify. The typical look-full beard, bandanna, half-unstrapped dungarees, dirty nails, etc. - is an emblem of retreat from mainstream society. The outre is accepted without hesitation and students generally detach themselves from knowledge of the outside world. Most of the ranch work is done without modern machinery and an exaltation of the past can create conditions for absurdity. [Describes Nunn's "homosexual problem"] His probable attraction to young men has been a source of some anxiety at the college. In 1911, he created the Telluride Association. The reactionary strain in Nunn is the one most evident at the school today. "Every major change at Deep Springs has been opposed by the students," said Christopher Breiseth, former college president. Deep Springs's all-male self-enclosure allows its students to feel wildly, hedonically free. The shock of returning to the world of social norms can be profound. In 1994, the college voted against coeducation, but the controversial subject has created a fissure in the school's relationship with the Telluride Association, where women have been members for 45 years. The Association lent the college $1.8 million in 1988 to renovate its main building with the catch that if it hasn't changed its all-male policy by 2019 it will have to start repaying the loan. [sic] Some fear that adding women to the mix might upset the college's already delicate balance. [Mentions Gareth Fisher and Dan Bockrath, student cowboys at the college] Bockrath said that being at Deep Springs was about "the last ages of youth, playing in the woods a little longer, being a cowboy." With much relief I finally got on the bus to head back home. As I rode away I looked out the window and saw Steve pull forward; then I saw his brake lights turn on, the Suburban coming to a complete stop. The last I saw was Steve getting out of the truck and walking back toward the brothel. This was about my last and final contact with the school. The school never sent me either an acceptance letter, or a rejection letter. I imagine that Bulldog went back and related to the other students what had happened, and that they were all simply hoping I would forget about the whole experience and never tell anyone. However, visiting the school was one of the most interesting experiences of my life. When I did go to college, I worked hard and did well. My experience of being humiliated in a four hour interview really showed me how little I knew and it taught me to always be ready to back up my facts and everything I said. I don't really consider myself an intellectual sort; however, I went into college at the University of Chicago with a tremendous amount of confidence because I knew and accepted that there were people out there who might try to shoot down any idea I had. I had the same understanding when I got to law school. The most important thing the school taught me, however, was that when you scratch beneath the surface of even the most prestigious people and institutions, you will find reasons not to be intimidated. I had no business going to interview at a school where the students had all perfect SAT scores (or at least said they did) because I was simply not in that league academically. But I did it anyway. When I got beneath the surface of the school, I found an environment where kids could not make decisions for themselves, where men let themselves go, where half the student body had caught a sexually transmitted disease, and where people portrayed themselves as being better than the rest of society. But in the end they all screwed around with hookers. Over the years as I have read about one sex scandal after another. Whether it has been former President Clinton, Eliot Spitzer, or others, I have come to realize that the models we have in society, who supposedly stand for something great-often when you scratch beneath the surface, they do not really stand for what they say. I watch intellectuals complain about the environment, complain about capitalism and so forth, and then, when I sit down with them and ask questions, I realize that they are mostly pretending to stand for one thing-while in reality they do not. My visit to Deep Springs College taught me, in no uncertain terms, to be extremely careful about trusting anyone. Whether it is trusting a leader, trusting the numbers an institution claims, or trusting someone who is making an argument to you about this or that. A substantial majority of the people, institutions, and others we encounter in our day-to-day lives are completely full of shit. Everything is a facade and you really do not know what is real and what is not. Everything is sort of like Las Vegas out there. Major financial institutions have crashed recently due to financial numbers not being what they once were. People have lost billions of dollars to people who they thought they could trust, such as Bernard Madoff. People have put faith in real estate and all sorts of other investments that turned out to be completely illusionary. People have gone to work for companies they thought would support them forever but did not, and they are out of work. When I graduated from law school at the University of Virginia, the commencement speaker was Jesse Jackson. His commencement speech was titled "Can You Be Trusted?" For an hour or so Jackson gave one example after another about how various people in society including politicians and others simply could not be trusted. He stated that the measurement of trust came down to whether our families could trust us and whether our coworkers could trust us, and he defined trustworthiness as the most important virtue. He must have said the phrase "Can you be trusted" 100+ times during his speech. It was one of the most powerful speeches I have ever heard. 5 years later I picked up the paper and saw there was a giant story about how Jesse Jackson had had a long-term extramarital affair. When I read the story I thought back on the Reverend's speech and realized that even he could not be trusted (at least not by his wife). These sorts of contradictions are everywhere. I have met people in business before, who appeared to be extremely powerful, and who acted as if they were better than me; they ended up going to prison for various reasons. I have seen one example after another of the inherent conflict between what something appears to be or wants to be and what it really is. In the end, what Deep Springs College taught me as a visitor in those few days was actually far more valuable than what I might have learned by actually attending the school as a student: Do not be intimidated by, or trust appearances. No one is better than you. Everyone has secrets. Go forward in your life like you belong anywhere you want to be. You can do and be whoever you want to be. It is your life. THE LESSON You should neither trust outward appearances, nor let them intimidate you. There is always a discord between the appearance that a person or organization projects, and their actual nature. For this reason, always be careful about the people and organizations in whom you place your trust. Related Articles: * Why You Need to Love Yourself and When You Need to Change Your Friends, Job and Life * Do Not Be Vengeful: Let Hurt and Anger Go Through You * Our Habits Determine the Outcome of Our Lives * Move Toward the Light * Nicholas Cage and Personal Leadership About Harrison Barnes Harrison Barnes is the Founder of BCG Attorney Search and a successful legal recruiter himself. Harrison is extremely committed to and passionate about the profession of legal placement. His firm BCG Attorney Search has placed thousands of attorneys. BCG Attorney Search works with attorneys to dramatically improve their careers by leaving no stone unturned in a search and bringing out the very best in them. Harrison has placed the leaders of the nation's top law firms, and countless associates who have gone on to lead the nation's top law firms. There are very few firms Harrison has not made placements with. Harrison's writings about attorney careers and placements attract millions of reads each year. He coaches and consults with law firms about how to dramatically improve their recruiting and retention efforts. His company LawCrossing has been ranked on the Inc. 500 twice. For more information, please visit Harrison Barnes' bio. About BCG Attorney Search BCG Attorney Search matches attorneys and law firms with unparalleled expertise and drive that gets results. Known globally for its success in locating and placing attorneys in law firms of all sizes, BCG Attorney Search has placed thousands of attorneys in law firms in thousands of different law firms around the country. Unlike other legal placement firms, BCG Attorney Search brings massive resources of over 150 employees to its placement efforts locating positions and opportunities that its competitors simply cannot. Every legal recruiter at BCG Attorney Search is a former successful attorney who attended a top law school, worked in top law firms and brought massive drive and commitment to their work. BCG Attorney Search legal recruiters take your legal career seriously and understand attorneys. For more information, please visit www.BCGSearch.com. Related Posts: * Waiting for the Prize Patrol * The Importance of Trust and Access to Information * The Importance of Environment * Be Content and Happy with Where You Are * First Class Airline Lounges and What Your Employer... Filed Under : Featured, Life Lessons Tagged: apply for a job, attorney search, bernard madoff, career advice, deep springs college, inherent conflict, job search, job search guru | a harrison barnes, job search industry, legal jobs, legal profession, matter-of-facts, mobile homes, sat scores, trust appearances * Canada View From Up North Athens, Sparta, America and Your Job Sea... * Meet the press How to Find Public Interest Jobs and Non... [INS::INS] Job Market Look at Your Job (or the Job You Are Seeking) from Your Employer's Point of View By Harrison Barnes on Jan 30,2024 Businesses who understand what their clients want, rather than what they presume their clients want, tend to perform much better than their competitors. You must view your service from your client's point of view. In a job search you must view your potential employers as customer. You must find out what is important to your employer or interviewer, and you will stand out in your job search. continue reading recent posts * Why You Need to Love Yourself and When You Need to Change Your Friends, Job and Life The secret to a happy career and life is realizing that we too need to love ourselves unconditionally. There is no other choice. Why the Best Executives Are So Highly Paid In this article Harrison discusses the reasons why the best executives are so highly paid. According to him the main reason for this is that exceptional executives are rare. A top executive has to make numerous decisions and calculations whilst taking every factor into account each day. There are very few people who have the capacity to organize people, increase productivity and profitability, all while facing criticism and driving a company forward. The survival and prosperity of a company depends on having people who can give good orders - and have them carried out by others. Those who can lead groups typically are the highest paid people inside corporations and groups. The highest paid executives are able to implement and get things done; the lowest paid typically are not able to do this. See Your Job and the World from the Bright Side and Not the Dark Side Avoid people with a negative worldview, and who are unenthusiastic about their jobs. Their negative energy will rub off on you if you allow it, and you will find yourself experiencing the same negative results and unhappiness as them. Seek out people who are succeeding and doing great things in their careers, and who love what they do. Learn to view your job and surroundings from the light rather than the dark side. Goal Setting In this article Harrison discusses the importance of goal setting. Goal setting is the single most important aspect of your career. When you look at people who are at the top of their game in sports, entertainment, business and other pursuits, you'll generally find they've set goals in an outstanding way. Most successful people manage their goals in a similar way. Whether you want to be President of the United States, a first class parent, the fastest runner in the world, the head of your organization, or you simply want to feel happy and fulfilled, there are certain scientific goal setting principles you can follow to take you precisely where you want to go. Goal setting is a profound discipline. Our success, the success of entire companies and even the success of entire countries comes down to how well goals are set. Do Not Be Vengeful: Let Hurt and Anger Go Through You Every thought you have ultimately brings you closer to something positive or negative; you must therefore learn to control your thoughts, and direct them towards something positive. Negative experiences happen to all of us, but the worst thing you can do is let these things control your mentality instead of moving on. Believe in the Possibilities In this article Harrison discusses that when you are inspired you can accomplish anything; you can create whatever opportunity you want. Inspiration changes everything and it will change your life-even more so than a new job. A new job is a good thing; however, being inspired is far more powerful and can help you to forever change your life for the better. Being inspired about what is possible can propel you to succeed in your life and career. Do everything within your power to better yourself. Be the best you possibly can be. But first you must realize that the power to do this lies within your own mind, and it is directly related to what you believe is possible. You will only go as far in your life as you think you can. Focus on Other Geographic Areas to Get Your Job Search Going In this article Harrison talks about problems one could face while planning to relocate for better job options. Many areas of the United States have been devastated by the economy, and there are fewer jobs available in those areas. You don't have an option but to relocate. Harrison believes that relocating for better job options to areas where your skills are in demand is extremely important. However, one needs to keep certain points in mind while applying for such jobs. Employers generally prefer people with a connection to the area to ensure greater stability. Hence it is advisable to show some sort of connection to the area you are relocating to. Harrison also cautions against conveying to an employer that you cannot get a job where you live. No one wants losers. To project yourself as a winner, you should convey that you are relocating for personal long-term growth objectives. Over Deliver Because It Is Not about You You are rewarded in direct proportion to the value that you deliver, meaning that you have to deliver in order to reach your full potential. You will provide more value to others when you are focused on giving. People who under-deliver view their jobs as being primarily about them, while those who over-deliver see their jobs as being about others. Strive to develop a reputation for delivering rather than under-delivering. Mutual Funds, Casinos, and Opportunities If you have considerable experience in something, then you can go much farther in this field than in one in which you do not have experience. Experience in a given line of work will always give you an edge over those who lack it because you better able to notice all of the intricacies associated with the work. You gain more when you confine your work and efforts to that in which you are most experienced. Look at Your Job (or the Job You Are Seeking) from Your Employer's Point of View Businesses who understand what their clients want, rather than what they presume their clients want, tend to perform much better than their competitors. You must view your service from your client's point of view. In a job search you must view your potential employers as customer. You must find out what is important to your employer or interviewer, and you will stand out in your job search. Learn to Confront Silence In silence, you confront your true self; when you are less active, you need more to confront your mind's inner workings. This is difficult for most people to do, as they frequently are more interested in distracting themselves than confronting silence. There is strength is being able to confront silence, and it is something that you must learn to live with and learn from. Don't get lost in distractions, or spend your time in activities aren't contributing to your happiness. You Need to Delay Gratification In this article Harrison explains how long-term enjoyment of life requires that we delay gratification until a later time. The most successful people in the world show the ability to delay gratification. Failure is the result of not delaying gratification. Not facing problems is something related to our ability to delay gratification. One of the most important things we can do is to confront a problem early. Ignoring problems is a simple expression of the unwillingness to delay gratification. Our problems will not disappear. The problems that we need to confront are a barrier to our future growth. It is in your best interest to delay gratification. The people who delay gratification are found to experience the most success in their careers and lives. Career Tests You need to discover your core skill set or those most compelling gifts you have that make you stand out. Being able to identify your gifts will help you transform your life and your career. I have put together a series of free career tests you can use... Our Habits Determine the Outcome of Our Lives Bad habits will cause you to fail at things at which you should succeed. Develop habits that empower you rather than hold you back. Habits make up the only real differences between those who succeed and those who fail at life. Habit separates those who achieve what they want in life from those who only talk about their goals. Move Toward the Light Life is all about the opposite extremes of light and darkness, and your likelihood of success directly correlates to the time you spend focused on the light and the positive. Every situation and emotion has its corresponding opposite. Do everything in your power to stay connected to the light, positive side of life, the more you do so, the more you become like the light. Maintain contact with the things that are good, positive, and uplifting in your life, and do everything in your power to avoid the dark. Do Not Create Too Many Rules It is important to establish rules for yourself that empower rather than frustrate you; creating rules about your goals prevents you from finding fulfillment in your current situation. Rules create the impression that your life is imperfect, and you will never find happiness in your life and career. Instead, make sure you have rules that motivate you to move forward rather than hold you back. Where to Find Government Jobs When I say I'm excited about government jobs, I mean it. They're better than many other jobs this day and age and often provide good benefits, pensions, and to some extent, employment security. In most cases, you'll be in good shape on many... Education Jobs and Teacher Jobs The field of education--including elementary schools, high schools, colleges, and universities--is a very exciting place to look for a job because of the tremendous number of jobs available. I'm excited to show you how to approach this sector.... Nicholas Cage and Personal Leadership True leadership comes from standing for the things in which you believe, even if you stand alone and others disagree with you. Taking charge of your life means acting and doing what others are afraid or unwilling to do; this is personal leadership, and will lead you to incredible results. You will reach your fullest potential by being the person you are capable of being, rather than the person that others say you should be. The Most Important Person You Communicate with Is Yourself Your happiness and quality of life depend largely on the meanings that your ascribe to the things around you, so you must communicate with yourself in a way that makes you feel positive, not negative. You must interpret your life's events in a way that makes you feel good about yourself rather than otherwise. Your Ultimate Goal: How You Can Find Job Security In this article Harrison discusses the importance of keeping one's job secured, and how external factors affect job security. It is crucial for job seekers to choose the right kind of job, the right kind of organization, and to have the perfect pay-package for enjoying job security to the fullest. Professionals in high positions in an organization are more prone to getting chucked off rather than those in lesser positions. The complexity of an organization also plays a crucial role in hampering or promoting a sense of job security among different workers in an organization. Competitiveness in an industry is also a harbinger of increasing insecurity in jobs, as there is constant push-and-pull with regards to resources. Try as Hard as You Can In this article Harrison discusses the need to do everything in your power to achieve what you want. Most people never try as hard as they can. Trying your hardest is about coming up against your limits and pushing through. This is how you achieve your dreams and this is how you live the life you want. The people who succeed in life and reach their full potential are the people who push all the way through their limits. Develop the habit of pushing yourself and always doing your best. People who always do their best are sought out by others, and everyone wants these people to work with them, and for them. By not trying your best you choose to live an average life and have average results. So try your hardest and do the absolute best you can with everything. Refuse to Acknowledge Setbacks and Intimidations, and You Will Never Fail Ignoring obstacles and setbacks will take you extremely far in life. The quality of your life will depend on how you deal with life's inevitable setbacks and the intimidation of others. Develop an unconquerable spirit that disregards life's setbacks, and you will experience massive success. Get up on time, and keep persisting when other people quit in order to achieve your goals Vitamins, Oprah, and the Importance of Taking Action Right Away In this article Harrison discusses why it is important to take action right away. For most people it is much more fun and interesting to sit around and dream and think about how they are going to improve, than it is to actually go out and make major improvements in their lives. The problem is very few people ever follow the course of action. It is like this for a great many of us. We would rather think and dream than act. The key to making the most of your career and life is making sure you act on what you are learning. Anyone can talk about, read about, or dream about doing something. The key is being able to take action and do it. The Old Man, the Radiator Shop, and Integrity Opportunity used the wrong way can destroy everything. Cheating, even in small ways, can add up to cause ruinous damage. You must account for every action you take with your employer and in your life, and realize that every action carries consequences. With so much invested in your job and career, you must act with integrity in everything that you do rather than risk the consequences of taking the easy way out. Interviewing Tips: The Five Musts of Interviewing I know people who seem to get every job they ever interview for, whether or not they're the most qualified candidate. But most people who interview don't get the job. This isn't surprising, given the number of applicants for each opening. But bottom... Get Dissatisfied In order to make substantive changes in your life, you must start with dissatisfaction in your current position, and leverage that tension to your advantage. Tension and dissatisfaction will push you forward, as they are the drivers of most of our everyday actions. By constantly creating pressure in your life, you motivate yourself to make necessary changes and bring yourself closer to your goals. Implement dissatisfaction in a way that empowers you to go in the direction you want. Be Interested in Others People naturally want others to be interested in them, and offering this interest is one of the most beneficial things you can do. The more that you display interest in others, the more that they will in turn display interest in you and want to help you. When in interviews, build rapport with your potential employer by demonstrating a genuine interest in the person and his or her organization; everyone loves to have other people interested in them, and like to hire such people. Einstein, Visualization, and Your Career In this article Harrison discusses the importance of imagination and visualization. Harrison believes that the most important skill any of us can master is creative visualization. Creative visualization is the art of creating pictures in your mind of something you would like to happen in the future. There have been an incredible number of studies that have confirmed the power of positive thoughts. You can get tremendous amount of strength and power from visualizing positive as opposed to negative results. Therefore it is crucial that you are able to visualize positive events and outcomes. Focus on the results you want to achieve. How to Network Informal networks can make a massive difference in the quality of not only your job search but also your life. Too few people take the time to understand the importance of informal networks and referrals when it comes to getting your foot in the door... The Importance of Being Well-Liked in Your Job In this article Harrison discusses the importance of being well-liked in your job. Being well-liked is necessary for success in any job and in advancing your career. If your co-workers or your superiors do not like you, your career in your organization may be doomed. If you are isolated from others within your organization, it is far easier to let you go in times of economic uncertainty. Harrison gives certain pointers to ensure that you are well-liked in your job. He talks about staying away from cliques, never saying anything bad about any co-worker, making your superiors feel important, listening instead of talking, participating in group activities and being non-confrontational. To advance, you need to keep out of trouble and be well-liked. Karma, Universal Laws, and Your Career Karma, or the universal idea that you reap what you so, governs your career and your life; the karma that you create in the world determine most of the events in your life. Understanding and accepting this universal law empowers you to take control of your life, because you directly control what happens to you. The amount and type of energy that you put into your life will always return to you in kind. The Greatest Secret of Billionaires, 95-Year-Old Attorneys and the Retirement Myth Do work that you love, and make it part of your life and identity. Success comes to people who love what they are doing, because their work becomes part of their lives, and there ceases to be a separation between work and pleasure for them. If you are not doing something that you could not imagine yourself doing into your old age, then you are probably in the wrong profession. The Inner Voices, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Your Life IWhen considering your capabilities, nothing is more exciting than imagining who and what you will become in life. To do this, however, you must quash the negative voice in your head telling you to compromise or take the easy way out. When you see the people who are in a perpetual state of unhappiness, they are most often the people who listen and succumb to the negative voices in their heads. Self-Help Means Helping Others True self-improvement actually has nothing to do with you, but everything to do with helping others towards their goals. Remember that nothing you do in your life is ultimately about you. Your goals and aspirations must be larger and greater than focusing solely on what you want; helping others will provide you with more spiritual, financial, and psychological benefits than any other kind of self-improvement. Related Posts: * Waiting for the Prize Patrol * The Importance of Trust and Access to Information * The Importance of Environment * Be Content and Happy with Where You Are * First Class Airline Lounges and What Your Employer... 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