VSTEP Reading Mock Test 08

TO GET A JOB IN YOUR 50S, MAINTAIN FRIENDSHIPS IN YOUR 40S

We hear it all the time: People who are over 50 take longer to find jobs than younger people. Connie Wanberg, a professor at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, had long heard gloom-and-doom stories to that effect, but she wondered how strong the data was to support them.

Very, as it turned out. According to a study by Professor Wanberg and others, job seekers over 50 were unemployed 5.8 weeks longer than those from the ages of 30 to 49. That number rose to 10.6 weeks when the comparison group was from 20 to 29. Professor Wanberg and three other researchers - Darla J. Hamann, Ruth Kanfer and Zhen Zhang - arrived at those numbers by analyzing and synthesizing hundreds of studies by economists, sociologists and psychologists.

But it is important not to jump to conclusions about the cause, Professor Wanberg said. “It’s not very unusual for everybody to think that the reason for the difficulty in finding jobs at 50s is discrimination,” she said. That can sometimes be the case, but the reality is that the behavior required to find work does not play to many older people’s strengths. Once they become aware of this, they can act to compensate.

In their study, the researchers found that older people on average had smaller social networks than younger people, Professor Wanberg said. This is not necessarily bad - as we age, many of us find that the quality of our relationships is more important than the quantity. But in the job search process, the number of connections we maintain in our professional and personal networks is often critical.

As people age, they also tend to stay in the same job longer, consistent with a pattern of wanting to put down roots. During that time, the skills people have learned and the job search strategies they once used may become outdated - especially as technology evolves ever more quickly.

The cure for these drawbacks is fairly straightforward. Once you hit your early 40s, even if you are not looking for a job, work to learn new skills and stretch yourself, Professor Wanberg said. Also, keep your networks strong by staying in touch with former colleagues and classmates, along with current co-workers and clients whom you don’t see regularly, she said.

Finding a job after 50 doesn’t have to be as discouraging as it is often portrayed to be, Professor Wanberg said. Just recognize that some of the obstacles you face are inherent to the aging process, she said. She stressed that her findings reflected only averages and that individual behavior varies greatly. Certainly, many older people maintain wide social circles and often learn skills. But in general, older job seekers must take more steps to find employment than younger ones, she said.

Once older workers do find a new employer, they can use their knowledge, wisdom and emotional intelligence - qualities that older people often possess in abundance - to thrive in their new positions.

MARY’S FIRST JOB

When I was just fifteen, my father purchased an old hostel in the country where we lived and decided to turn it into a luxury hotel. At the early stages of the hotel, he experimented with everything. None of us had ever worked in a hotel before, but my dad had a vision of what guests wanted. His standards were extremely high and he believed that to reach those standards the most important thing was work.

For a month that summer I worked as a waitress at breakfast and dinner. As part of the job I had to lay the tables in the dining room beforehand and clean up afterwards. This gave me the middle of the day free for studying because my school report predictably had not lived up to my father’s high expectations.

Like all the other waitresses, I was equipped with a neat uniform and told to treat the guests as though they were special visitors in my own home. Although I felt more like a stranger in theirs, I did not express my feelings. Instead, I concentrated on doing the job as well as, if not better than, the older girls.

In the kitchen I learned how to deal with Gordon, the chef, who I found rather daunting. He had an impressive chef’s hat and a terrifying ability to lose his temper and get violent for no clear reason. I avoided close contact with him and always grabbed the dishes he gave me with a cold look on my face. Then, as I walked from the kitchen to the dining room, my cold expression used to change into a charming smile.

I found waiting at breakfast was more enjoyable than at dinner. The guests came wandering into the dining room from seven-thirty onwards, staring with pleasure at the view of the sea and the islands through the dining room window. I always made sure that everyone got their order quickly and enjoyed getting on well with the people at each table.

In the evenings it was funny how differently people behaved; they talked with louder, less friendly voices, and did not always return my smile. However, that all changed when Dad created a special role for me which improved my status considerably.

I started by making simple cakes for guests’ picnics and soon progressed to more elaborate cakes for afternoon teas. I found that recipes were easy to follow and it was amusing to improvise. This led to a nightly event known as Mary’s Sweet Trolley. I used to enter the dining room every evening pushing a trolley carrying an extraordinary collection of puddings, cakes and other desserts. Most of them were of my own invention, I had cooked them all myself, and some were undeniably strange.

POTASH

Potash (the old name for potassium carbonate) is one of the two alkalis (the other being soda, sodium carbonate) that were used from remote antiquity in the making of glass, and from the early Middle Ages in the making of soap: the former being the product of heating a mixture of alkali and sand, the latter a product of alkali and vegetable oil. Their importance in the communities of colonial North America need hardly be stressed.

Potash and soda are not interchangeable for all purposes, but for glass- or soap-making either would do. Soda was obtained largely from the ashes of certain Mediterranean sea plants, potash from those of inland vegetation. Hence potash was more familiar to the early European settlers of the North American continent.

The settlement at Jamestown in Virginia was in many ways a microcosm of the economy of colonial North America, and potash was one of its first concerns. It was required for the glassworks, the first factory in the British colonies, and was produced in sufficient quantity to permit the inclusion of potash in the first cargo shipped out of Jamestown. The second ship to arrive in the settlement from England included among its passengers experts in potash making.

The method of making potash was simple enough. Logs were piled up and burned in the open, and the ashes were collected. The ashes were placed in a barrel with holes in the bottom, and water was poured over them. The solution draining from the barrel was boiled down in iron kettles. The resulting mass was further heated to fuse the mass into what was called potash.

In North America, potash making quickly became an adjunct to the clearing of land for agriculture, for it was estimated that as much as half the cost of clearing land could be recovered by the sale of potash. Some potash was exported from Maine and New Hampshire in the seventeenth century, but the market turned out to be mainly domestic, consisting mostly of shipments from the northern to the southern colonies. For despite the beginning of the trade at Jamestown and such encouragements as a series of acts to encourage the making of potash, beginning in 1707 in South Carolina, the softwoods in the South proved to be poor sources of the substance.