You should be an entrepreneur

Opinion

TECHNICIAN

PAGE 9 • MONDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2018

You should be an entrepreneur

What if you could spend your life doing what something you love, getting paid for it and doing it as close to how you want to while still making money? That’d be a pretty great gig, and it’s not too far from reality. Entrepreneurship has a number of fulfilling and practical benefits that can make your dream come true as long as you have the passion to make it into a business.

One of the biggest draws to entrepreneurship is the ability to pursue your dream. That may sound cheesy, but in 2012 there were 805,985 small businesses in North Carolina; that’s at least 805,985 passions realized.

And it’s not just North Carolina that’s beneficial, it’s our university too.

NC State has the resources for entrepreneurship. Just on campus we have two Makerspaces (one at D.H. Hill Library and one at Hunt Library) for you to create unique products using resources ranging from sewing and embroidery machines to help you create products by hand, to Raspberry Pi and Arduino circuit boards to help you craft electronic creations, to 3D printing and scanning to bring ideas into physical form.

The university also has an entrepreneur clinic and an eGarage available to students. Students can use the clinic to observe other entrepreneurs, helping inspire and create high quality entrepreneurs. The eGarage is a physical space reserved for students to lay out prototypes of their products and talk to other members of the garage, all you have to do is fill out an application and take a short introduction.

Lastly, NC State actively encourages that these resources be used to their full potential with the Lulu eGames (which are starting up this month) and Entrepalooza. The eGames are a start-up competition here at State with over $100k in prizes. Entrepalooza is an innovation festival known for its “Minute to Pitch it” event which gives students a minute to pitch their idea to an audience, with the winner receiving a prize. These events give those with limited resources financially a way to get past those limitations.

The resources at NC State, combined with the dreams of students has been an effective combination too. Startups like Cree (LED company), Xanofi (nanofiber company), Agile Sciences (biopharmaceutical company) and WebAssign can trace roots to NC State. Over 100 startups can trace their beginnings to NC State; the universitykeeps a list. NC State also keeps statistics on those start-ups, with a combined economic impact of $1.2 billion on NC. NC State is all for entrepreneurship; if you think your university is holding you back from achieving your dreams, it’s not.

But if you’re still not convinced, there are plenty of practical advantages to entrepreneurship you should know about too.

For starters, you get more flexibility in your hours and your location as an entrepreneur. Nothing can tell you that you can’t take the day off or go on a vacation except for your budget.

Beyond the flexibility provided by entrepreneurship, it has some benefits to college students particularly. Almost every job application has a section for experience and education, and companies of course take these qualities into consideration when choosing an employee.

Often times experience and education measurements fail to capture true potential and ability to work. Plenty of successful individuals lack a college education. Take Steve Jobs and Bill Gates as some of the more well-known examples: college dropouts who conquered industries. When you’re an entrepreneur, education means less and your actual ability means more.

Another of the largest practical benefits is the control over your fate given to you by entrepreneurship. If you want to earn more, you work more. Compare that to a regular job, where you would have to put in an extreme amount of work to get a

raise or a promotion, and your great work benefits your boss before it ever gets to you. Beyond money, though, is a control over your own worth. Consider the following scenario: you graduate and spend Joseph a few years in some industry. Then comes Rivenbark along a new technology and your field is Correspondent obsolete. You get laid off because your company wants to keep with the times and you can’t get a job for the same reason. This isn’t unlikely either; a study by PwC estimates that as many as 38 percent of U.S. jobs could be automated by 2030. But, if you’re an entrepreneur, you’re not the one getting laid off when the world changes, you’re the one changing the way your company works, and the one who lays people off if need be. Risk is a currency and taking a risk is like spending money: do it too often and you likely won’t be able to keep it up, but just like never spending money, never taking a risk means never getting what you dream of. Often times we get stuck in a pattern, working just to pay rent and going to class so that we can get a better job. Maybe you’re OK with that, maybe you just want to get by, that’s respectable. But a large amount of students, especially at NC State, have been proven to have the desire and the ability to take the leap. Why not you?

Stricter gun control is common sense

Seventeen dead, of whom 14 were students and three were instructors. Headlines like that have brought chills to my spine since Valentine’s Day, the day we supposedly celebrate love. On Wednesday, 19-year old Nikolas Cruz opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Cruz was known to be psychologically afflicted. We’ve barely made it through the second month of the year, and we’re already at the 17th school shooting that the United States has witnessed in 2018.

Not so long ago, on Feb. 10, 2015, three students were shot in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Two of them were NC State students, and one attended UNC Chapel Hill. The shooter, Craig Hicks, unsurprisingly, had a history of mental health issues, which were obviously neglected when he went to buy his weapons. He claimed that he had an ongoing parking dispute with his neighbors, but the victims’ father believes they were targeted because they were Muslims. Though we have rightfully honored Our Three Winners every year at NC State since then, it’s not going to bring them back.

The fact that horrifying events like these not only repeat time after time, but without any kind of action having taken place, is no less than gruesome. It pains me to even voice that gun violence is so common that I’m extremely scared it can happen to me or someone I love.

I don’t understand why a civilian — much less a 19-year-old kid — needs a gun. I also don’t understand how people can just walk into a store and buy a gun within minutes. According to the owner of a gun store a mile away from Douglas High, the whole process, including paperwork, of purchasing arms takes no more than 15 minutes.

Cruz, who had been diagnosed with mental illness and claimed that he heard “voices in his head” telling him to carry out the massacre, had legally bought an AR-15 rifle in Florida. He had posted something about wanting to be a “professional school shooter” last September. If this wasn’t enough, his teachers at school had mentioned that he had issues regarding erratic behavior. How could all of these warning signs have been ignored?

As the Second Amendment states, Americans have the right to bear arms. In my opinion, the best, most impactful solution would be to repeal it. It may sound extreme, but at the rate things are going, prohibiting guns will be more effective than strengthening mental health services and other weak methods like taxing weapons. Times have changed, and the common man does not need arms.

However, not everyone is for the movement of banning guns entirely for civil-

ians, so it would be a tremendous step to, at the very least, thoroughly check whose hands a weapon with the power to kill is landing into and ensuring that only those who are authorized can gain access. Mental illness can affect anyone on Shivani the planet, and it needs to be medically Shirolkar treated. The NC State Counseling CenStaff columnist ter on campus provides such services for students in need. Yet, for some reason, it’s only the U.S. that allows it be manifested into the deaths of other innocent people. For instance, in Australia, mental health issues among young teens are on the rise with about 22.8 percent of people aged 15 to 19 showing symptoms of being affected. But how many times do you hear of an unstable student shooting up a school in Australia? It took Australia only one major incident in 1996, when a man called Martin

Opinion PAGE 10 • MONDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2018 TECHNICIAN Staying well in the fluctuating weather is paramount

The weather in Raleigh has been pretty extreme and variable this year. This is the general statement of those who braved the weather. Since I come from a relatively moderate climate, this entire period was no less than an ordeal (and an adventure). However, it’s not all as adventurous as it would seem.

There are many problems associated with both extreme weather as well as rapid fluctuations in weather. In extreme weather conditions (in our case, extreme cold), prolonged exposure leads to adverse effects like fever and in some cases can have more serious effects.

This effect is more evident when a major chunk of the student population consists of international students. For example, while I have been to extremely cold areas, I’ve never had snow near my residence itself. And from what I have gathered after talking to the native population of Raleigh, it snowed rather frequently this year as compared to the previous years, which is itself an indication of the kind of temperature our city has withstood this year.

Aside from the direct effects, there are also indirect effects of drastic change in weather. For example, consider the recent flu outbreak. Raleigh faced an extremely cold winter season this time. During cold, the immune system of the body is at risk, which increases the chances of catching the flu.

The flu outbreak in the country has claimed many lives throughout the country, claiming 165 lives in North Carolina alone. The situation is grave, and the slightest negligence can have severe consequences.

The situation is worsened by the fact that the flu shot is only protecting one in three people this year, meaning that in six or seven cases out of 10, it won’t have much of an effect. (Note that the vaccine being ineffective does not imply that one will develop the flu. It only means that the probability of flu vaccine stopping the vaccinated from acquiring the flu is less substantial).

However, flu vaccines still can reduce the chance of getting sick and the severity of the illness. The NC State health department has done a commendable job by offering flu vaccinations and giving fliers and information about the outbreak.

I feel that the students need to be particularly cautious, because we come in contact with a lot of people and environments and the flu is contagious. It can be transferred by as far as six feet, simply by transfer of sneeze droplets (disgusting and dangerous). And it may be transferred by a person who has the flu but is unaware.

Precaution is better than a cure and since the success rate of the flu vaccine is not very encouraging, it becomes extremely impor-

tant to take the necessary precautions. The most basic prevention is avoiding any environment/contact where germs can get exchanged. A few basic precautions to prevent flu are to maintain cleanliness, particularly the hands. Pay close attention to your daily Paritosh Gaiwak routine, and if any symptoms like cough or sore throat exist, take immediate action. I also suggest that we take care of evStaff columnist eryone around us. If a person is seen with symptoms of the flu, they should be made aware of it. If one is sick, one should stay indoors as much as possible until the situation clears. I am living a great life at NC State and I am grateful for the experiences that I have had here and continue to have. The entire Wolfpack is my family and I will not hesitate to help any member of my family. Hence I wish to request all of you to understand the gravity of the situation, and not take it lightly. Remember, the strength of the wolf is the pack.

GUNS

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Bryant killed 35 people in a cafe, to step up and enact one of the largest gun reforms the world has seen. There haven’t been any mass shootings since. In the U.S., there have been so many such incidents, with many more casualties, that it’s hard to keep count. It has become normalized. The same cycle repeats itself time and again — a mass shooting occurs, social media blows up, the world sends thoughts and prayers and we forget about the whole thing until another one happens.

According to NC State Campus Police, a few of the safety tips for dealing with an active shooter on campus is to leave the area immediately, if possible, and to keep yourself out of sight or take cover behind concrete walls, thick desks and anything else that can give protection from bullets.

Gun reform is more than required in the U.S. today. Citizens don’t deserve to feel unsafe in their own country. If appropriate action isn’t taken, this will happen again, and like you have in the past, in no time, you’ll be reading columns similar to this one.