by Robert Oliphant
Columnist EducationNews.org

DearUnemployableCollege Graduate. . . . In post prosperity America some college graduates are bound to be less employable than others,nationally or regionally.Even if you have impressive grades and test scores, your major, say, in comparative literature or ethnic studies may not leverage you into a fun job as well it might have done a couple of years ago.Hence the desirability of exploring some of the new occupations now opening up, including anti-Alzheimer's achievement coaching.

Need and concern. . . . As opposed to two years ago Alzheimer's statistics are beginning to hit us more and more in the face.We now have 35 million cases worldwide according to WHO and 5.2 million in the USA, according to the NIH (twice as many as breast cancer).Even more to the point, 50% of us worry about it, according to a Harris poll (twice as many as worry about diabetes, heart disease, or stroke). Most important, now that pharmaceutical are losing credibility, more and more of us — even aging baby boomers —are starting to worry about their pre-Alzheimer's symptoms: (1) going blank on proper names, (2) going blank on ordinary words, and (3) lapses in concentration ("what were we just talking about?").

Concentration re-empowerment. . . . As an anti-Alzheimer's achievement coach, your primary focus will be upon rebuilding your client's concentration power via recommending and monitoring appropriate activities — just like a drama coach or music teacher.Memorizing foreign language or high tech vocabulary is an attractive option here, and so are various creative activities, e.g., composing and memorizing a personal-best poem, speech, or dramatic monologue.But the most flexible and practical is the traditional route to intellectual power that Lincoln and Churchill traveled, namely, memorizing "learner-friendly" mainstream poems.

Reality orientation. . . . The therapeutic authority for poetry memorization goes back to the anti-fantasy techniques developed by Dr. Joseph Folsom for use with senile dementia WWI veterans in our VA hospitals.This included constant reminders of what day it is and where one is, along with an emphasis upon factually verifiable statements and tasks, e.g., remembering lists of names and other concentration activities measurable via electroencephalography (alpha waves).Simply put, memorizing poems requires concentration (usually 5 words a minute) and can be evaluated by the AAA coach very, very quickly — just like a piano student spending a week on learning a short piece that requires only 3 minutes of listening time by the teacher.

Solitary achievement. . . . Piano teachers, drama coaches, golf pros, and sports tutors (a new career now) — they all emphasize the crucial importance of solitary practice and concentration, as opposed to group competition.This emphasis will strongly validate the personal-best satisfaction an AAA coach has to offer his or her clients, as opposed to the competitive emphasis of many senior programs today (spelling bees, crossword puzzle contests, sudoku, bridge, etc.).

Simply put, the underlying premise of Reality Orientation is that cognitive health and self confidence are solitary possessions, very much like our potential ability to survive six or seven months of solitary confinement in a prison; prison literature, incidentally, emphasizes previously memorized poetry as a survival tool (cf. Count of Monte Cristo).For Tiger Woods, as well as for our great scientists and scholars, it's concentration that produces long term results, far more so than natural talent or upscale family opportunities.

Public achievement. . . . Solitary achievement does not rule out the confidence building that comes from social interaction, especially on the telephone.If "nothing says you like your voice," as the saying goes, then any improvement in how a client comes across to a stranger in the first five minutes is money in the bank all around, far more so than reciting Shakespeare to a captive audience of restless grandchildren.Concentration re-empowerment and language-skills improvement — these are the ultimate goals of the client-coach relationship.

GETTING STARTED. . . . To take a new career seriously requires first of all building up our self confidence, especially with respect to what you want your clients to do.Hence the desirability of beginning with a ranked list of our nation's thirty most anthologized poems as listed in the Granger's Index® and published in William Harmon's "The Top 500 Poems,"along with click-accessible articles available at EdNews.org/authors/129.A couple of weeks spent on this material, especially the poems, will certainly give as aspiring AAA coach plenty of confidence in how an anti-Alzheimer's achievement program works and in yourself as an AAA-coach.

The nuts and bolts of getting started as a professional AAA coach are beyond the scope of this short pep talk, apart from noting that in my experience the big pre-Alzheimer's worriers are under 70, not over, and that most of them are still willing and able to pay $75 for a 40-minute coaching session every one or two weeks.Get your act together and let your enthusiasm show — that's usually the best place to start.

TO CLOSE. . . . Only someone who's actually been fired (I have) knows how worthless an unemployed person can feel month after month after month.So I have high hopes that even for the general public our anti-Alzheimer's achievement will infuse post prosperity America with a little energy and hope, especially the latter climate.By way of back up:the management guru Peter Drucker, who came to the USA from Austria during our Great Depression, was struck how optimistic Americans were (far more so than Europeans).I'm betting that optimism is still there, just waiting to bust out and do a big number for us.

Published Febrary 18, 2009