Khan You Dig It?

Read on if you can empathize with this - I hate math!

I had everything going for me from an early age; I was read to, I was the youngest, I had great friends, I was loved and I was also half-Japanese. It was upon the latter that I staked my stereotypical claim upon mathematical ability, and when it finally came time to cowboy up and take one apple away from a group of three I was ready! Sometime during 6th grade I even found myself in an accelerated math group, where a small group of us setup desks in the hallway and told jokes the way 6th graders do when they're unsupervised. As the bell curve goes, I was down in front and having a good time.

As Junior High gave way to High School I found myself getting pulled backwards along the curve, and much like a riding a backwards roller coaster, I was brought to look down the steep slope of mathematical decline (which slope I could not compute because I struggled in Calculus). By the end of High School I had replaced my childhood dreams of becoming a scientist, or the kind of engineer who builds remote control cars with the idea that "business," was the only real opportunity I had left.

With this new and unspecific direction I enrolled in college. After graduating from Utah State University with a degree in economics (where I took calculus twice and struggled through my econometrics classes), I went on to work in merchandising for an online retailer. After having worked for a few years, it has become clear that I'll need a masters degree to obtain the kinds of career advancing opportunities I dream about. For aspiring businessmen there's one obvious choice for a masters program, and that is to get a Masters of Business Administration degree, or an MBA.

Getting an MBA means that you have to take either the GMAT or the GRE and you can't get into the better schools without first getting good score on those tests, both of which rely heavily on quantitative ability. Knowing this to be the case and feeling slightly daunted, I began studying for the GMAT. I must have skipped three quarters of the quantitative questions during my first practice test because I just didn't have a clue and my score reflected it. I was frustrated by my score, lack of ability and the restriction that you can't use a calculator on the test. After some internal dialogue about whether or not this was actually what I wanted to do I determined that I could either get with the program or remain stuck in the lower ranks of management. I chose to move forward and that's when I discovered the Khan Academy.

The Khan Academy is an online repository for free, world class educational videos. It was born out of  Salman, aka Sal, Khan's efforts to tutor his 7th grade cousin Nadia. It wasn't long before others in his family came asking for help, so Sal began creating YouTube videos for each of his lessons. To Sal's astonishment, these videos gained wide popularity and praise. Sal decided to leave the fast paced and highly prestigious world of finance to dedicate his efforts to the Khan Academy. Eventually Bill Gates and Google got involved, contributing nearly 15 million dollars to the cause. The Khan Academy has become much more than just videos, and now includes a brilliant training system designed to build mastery in practically any mathematical competency.

After two weeks on the Khan Academy I was able to improve my overall score on the GMAT practice test by over 30%, and the next few weeks saw continued improvement. Not only has my math ability improved but my entire outlook on the subject is brighter to the point where I can now say that I enjoy math.

Create Your Own Foundation with GiveBack

Our goal with For Goodness Sakes is to challenge you, the consumer, to make educated decisions about how you spend your money, so that each dollar does more than just benefit you, but also the community you live in, the environment, or people all over the world. We write about companies and businesses that do more with your dollar. But wouldn’t it be cool if those companies were willing to let you decide what your purchases would help? What if I said there were over 400 well-known businesses that did just that? I couldn’t possible post about each one, but I don’t have to, because they can all be found at GiveBack.org.

GiveBack was started by Stephen Paletta, the winner of Oprah’s Big Give, a reality TV show that had contestants competing to gather and give the most amount of money to charities and foundations all over the nation. By being the “biggest giver” Stephen was awarded $1,000,000 – half for him and half to give back to causes he chose to support. After experiencing the great blessings of giving back, he wanted to find a way to help others give, too. Using part of his winnings, Stephen started GiveBack.org as a place where everyone can start their own foundation, make donations, and earn money for their foundation just by shopping online.  GiveBack has partnered with companies like Apple, Barnes & Noble, The North Face, and many more who will donate a percentage of your online purchase to your foundation. The best part: you choose to help the causes you care about! Check out GiveBack.org and see how easy it is to become a big giver!

What is it about traveling in South America?

I keep telling Scott, who co-authors this blog, that I'll be posting about the Bamboo Bike Project sometime soon. I think it's a great idea but for some reason I just don't find myself interested in doing it at the moment! Maybe it's the plethora of blogs already doing it? Maybe it's the fact that I don't live in San Francisco or New York where the majority of the bamboo biking scene is unfolding. Whatever it is, there will be more to come in the future.

Speaking of the future, it looks bright for the One For One movement, made famous by TOMS Shoes. The new introduction of TOMS Eyewear means that Toms can expand its charitable contributions to a much broader range of customers - assuming you're willing to fork over at least $135 for a pair of sunglasses. We hope you are, but there is an alternative just in case the high price tag of these hipster shades has priced you out of the market for charitable consumerism.

Toms founder, Blake Mycoskie, who got his calling while traveling through Argentina, has good company in a man named Charles Perry. Charles was also globetrotting through South America when he got the charitable consumerism bug, and he has created a company called World Minded.

World Minded's mission is to create eco-friendly clothing with a purpose, and they do this by donating 10% percent of sales from their humanitarian collection of 100% Organic Cotton Tees, and 1% of sales from everything else.


World Minded may just be a start up right now, but they continue to collaborate with artists and brand ambassadors to further their mission of doing good through consumerism. They may lack some of the big name prestige of Patagonia, TOMS, and Timbuk2 but their designs are aesthetic, refreshing and purposeful. Look forward to World Minded's fall line coming out in August, 2011 for a new assortment of great looking tees, hoodies, and accessories. I believe that World Minded can do well on the basis of their designs alone, but let's make an extra effort to vote for the changes we want to see in the world by supporting them, and everyone else on the frontier of clothing with purpose.