Tag: Growth

No Thank You, but Thank You

Posted on by [email protected]

Are flags red, or are they just reddish?

For my first relationship, I feel like, looking back, I wore rose-tinted glasses to hide all the red flags I didn’t want to see. 

I’m sure I’m not the only one who did the same thing when experiencing love for the first time. I was infatuated with the idea that somebody liked me, so I tried hard to make it work, no matter how terrible I felt throughout the latter half of the relationship.

It lasted nearly three and a half years, far longer than it should have, but I don’t regret it, as I learned many lessons. Like what I should expect from my partner, what makes me happy, and most importantly, how to love myself in the ways I needed rather than what I was told.

Initially it felt like I was reaching while he was settling. Along the way, however, I found myself settling, disregarding the beliefs I thought were important to me. Does he respect my feelings? Did my happiness matter? How were his relationships with his family? Did he take accountability for his finances and career? Does our future line up? Did he care about where our relationship was going? Were there more happy tears than sad? Does he smoke too much, drink too much? Why does his room always feel like a game of “The Floor is Lava”?

It didn’t occur to me that my disappointment stemmed from my moral weakness. I thought that since he had more experience, he knew more.

Until he said he wanted me to experience the “broken heart of life, now you should explore what else can hurt you.”

My first heartbreak

I was naive, young, a hopeless romantic, inexperienced. I was many things. But deep down, I knew better. All along, I should’ve known we just weren’t compatible, that I shouldn’t’ve tried to hold on because I didn’t want to start over. I shouldn’t have to put up with somebody who wanted me to “learn what love was” just so he could let me go.

Screw that.

But at the same time, and I truly hate to admit it, he was right.

My first big step

I did need to know what heartbreak felt like, to know that what we had was not ideal. I was tiptoeing around a field akin to a Minesweeper grid toward the end of the round.

The timing of our relationship ending was fortuitous. I ended up moving to a new city, and it felt like a clean start to truly find myself. The old adages of starting over! and rebranding yourself! became a sort of lifestyle for me for the following three years. I learned to love myself.

I threw myself into a new life of meeting new people, trying new things, exploring new places, and taking new risks. It was a truly magical three years of my life. I met so many amazing people and traveled to exciting places with them and on my own. Everywhere I went and everything I did added to me as a single, whole person. I was on my own, and I truly was content and peaceful.

Man and woman holding hands walking down the street, viewed from the back
(Image courtesy of Luwadlin Bosman via Unsplash)

It’s a full-circle moment

Eventually, I found myself ready to start a new relationship, so I began holding myself to higher standards and qualifications — which ultimately led me back to my first relationship.

It’s challenging to find better standards without considering your experiences. So, I thought about him a lot. I thought about how he hurt me, how it felt like my feelings weren’t validated, how it didn’t seem like he was emotionally available, and how I couldn’t picture a lifelong future with him. How much I cried out of sadness alone.

Yes, I still think about him a lot, but it’s because I’m always comparing my current relationship to my past one. I’m happier overall as my feelings, thoughts, emotions, wants, and needs are valued. I get to enjoy activities together with my partner rather than resign myself to doing what my ex had always wanted to do. We have a lot more common interests and travel goals. I’ve definitely cried more happy tears than sad. I’ve found my life partner. Ironically, it was because my ex-boyfriend helped reunite me with an old high school friend I originally had feelings for.

Now, I truly feel happy and blessed. I’ve learned to love myself, and I’ve found somebody who can add to my happiness — not take away from it. We’ve both continued to redefine what we needed in our relationship, what we should look for, and how we can work on our disagreements. 

I’d be lying if I said everything was 100% peaches and cream. But it’s a damn solid 92% in my opinion.

So, thank you for hurting me. It was because of you that I truly became happy.

Britain’s growth strategy needs training boost, expert says

Posted on by [email protected]

Britain will struggle to boost economic growth without investment in training and skills but this sector of the economy is getting little help from the government, business expert Nigel Driffield told The Sentinel.

   Britain’s left-of-centre Labour government, elected with a strong majority in July 2024, is trying to lift people out of poverty and provide better public services without sharp rises in the tax burden. It is looking to faster growth to close that gap, but that strategy has failed to bear fruit so far. Gross domestic product grew at only 0.1 percent in the third quarter of 2025, down from growth of 0.3 percent in the previous quarter.

    Concerns about the cost of living, coupled with worries about immigration, have given the right-wing populist Reform UK party a strong lead in opinion polls.

   Manufacturing in Europe has been lagging the United States and China, fueling a rise in populism, as The Sentinel has previously reported. Productivity is particularly slow in Britain, according to Driffield, professor of international business at Warwick Business School. 

    “We have a major productivity problem in this country, much more than an employment problem. We have a lack of investment in capital, and lack of investment in skills.”

     Britain issued its closely-watched annual budget statement in late November, delivered by finance minister Rachel Reeves. The government has provided an extra 1.5 billion pounds to help employers train young people. However, such money is often diverted for use for higher-skilled workers, Driffield said.

    “Businesses send people on an MBA, that doesn’t necessarily address the lower skills problem.”

    For university students from poorer families, the government said it would reintroduce small student grants. However, its plans to charge each university a levy of £925 per student for most international students are a counter-productive measure, according to Driffield.

     “Can you imagine a situation where the government says, ‘we are going to put an export tax on Jaguar cars’? Name another sector where it would do that.”

    Driffield said the latest budget was mainly about lifting people out of poverty. The government finally removed an unpopular cap on child benefit for families with more than two children, introduced by the previous Conservative government.

   The minimum wage was also raised in the budget by 4.1 percent to £12.71 per hour. However, campaigners argue that the minimum wage is still not enough to live on.

    “A very high proportion of people on benefits are also in full-time work, because they are on very low earnings,” said Driffield. “We are effectively subsidising low-wage employers. That’s why I advocate for investment in skills. If people working full-time on the minimum wage are still eligible to claim benefits, that tells you there’s something wrong.”

     Income tax rates did not rise in the budget, in line with a promise by Labour in its manifesto. But the government announced a further freeze to the income thresholds above which people have to pay higher tax rates, effectively meaning higher taxes for many in the future.

      The extra three-year freeze will cost the typical worker £220 a year, according to a post-budget report from the think tank Resolution Foundation, which focuses on living standards. Most workers would be worse off than if Reeves had raised income tax by 1p instead, the Resolution Foundation added. 

    The High Pay Centre, a think tank for fairer pay, was also critical of the tax strategy.

    “Given the scale of inequality in the UK, the government would have been better served by increasing taxes on a banking sector turning in its most profitable results in decades, or via a wealth tax on the very wealthiest in our society,” High Pay Centre spokesperson Paddy Goffey said.

    At the same time, in addition to the latest minimum wage increases, businesses are still smarting from the government’s decision in the previous budget to require employers to make national insurance – social security – contributions for lower-paid workers.

     “It wouldn’t surprise me if we start to see some impact on employment, given the weakening labour market situation,” said John Forth, professor of human resource management at City St George’s, University of London.

   Driffield said the extra wage costs would be hard for employers in some sectors to bear, for instance in the hospitality industry. 

    However, higher employment costs for more skilled workers, such as lab technicians, could encourage more investment in training by employers, Driffield added.

    Britain is behind other countries such as France in productivity and growth, due to low levels of public and private investment, according to the British government’s own figures. Britain’s GDP-per-hour-worked has grown by 0.6 percent since 2010, compared with around 1.0 percent in France, according to a report from Britain’s prime minister’s office in 2025.

      “One of the big differences between the UK and France is that the French labour market is great if you are an insider,” said Driffield. 

“Business will invest in you, but getting in is quite hard. If you are a North African migrant living in one of those banlieues (outer suburbs of Paris), you are frozen out. In Britain, you have a labour market that is very good at getting people into jobs, but not very good in training.”

A Moment to Breathe

Posted on by Jonathan

As the year comes to a close, a sense of panic and the need to hurry often rises in the air with back-to-back family dinners, unneeded arguments about pointless topics, and the occasional yet unavoidable political conversation. The tension is often inescapable. 

I would know, as my family is well-versed in participating in all of these topics, yet family is still family and nothing will change that. But for me, the feeling of a true change in the air occurs between the months of October and November. The excitement of summer is over, people are back in school, so for me it feels like the world is starting to slow down in the best way possible. 

Even though I’ve lived in Florida my whole life, I’ve never experienced a “true fall” before or a real shift in the seasons where the leaves turn from green to orange, red, and yellow. While we do have a “Florida winter,” it does not happen until the months of January through March, and there’s no surprise of snow. Without the seasons changing in the South, the air does change for me. I feel the summer heat go away after a while, and the air feels fresher in my neighborhood as well as in Central Florida where I grew up and still spend most of my time. 

This shift brings a sense of peace to me and makes me feel motivated to make lifestyle changes. Whether it be eating healthier, working out before the New Year, or wanting to finish a book that has been collecting dust for weeks, I only get this motivation towards the end of the calendar year. As the year is soon over and while all the craziness of Thanksgiving and Christmas is about to take place, I know I’ve got a few good weeks before that happens. 

A cup of latte on a wooden tray with scattered pumpkin-pie spices and ladyfinger cookies
(Image courtesy of grafmex via Pixabay)

During the months of October and November, it is usually the time for pumpkin-spiced lattes and reading scary novels. I am mainly trying to catch up on my extensive reading list and going crazy for all of the caramel-apple-flavored snacks. By this I mean my household will devour an entire bag of caramel apple flavored lollipops, while my Dad and I still talk about Robert Egger’s Nosferatu and how he is still amazed at Bill Skarsgård’s use of Dacian in the film  (now the Romanian language). 

With this sense of peace and even normality approaching, I can’t help but wonder why this happens at the end of the year rather than at the beginning. I think it’s because everyone knows that the year is about to end – good or bad – and that we all want to move forward with happiness and a new set of goals. 

Brrr!

While I don’t take part in New Year’s resolution’s anymore, I technically start them around this time because I know they’ll stick. This just adds another reason as to why I believe that the “ber” months bring a different kind of a reset to my life. I feel more motivated, energized, and even more fulfilled when I accomplish my goals during this time of the year. I’m so thankful to have this change happen within recent years. It feels like I can, as well as the world, truly breathe again. 

Even with all of the good food and much loved family time, there’s something so special about the months of September through November. But November feels the most chaotic, yet peaceful at the same time. I know that I can actually check items off my seemingly never-ending list that never gets any smaller since I graduated from UCF last year.

I no longer have that “holiday stress” of getting essays and other projects done within a short amount of time. I know that I can truly take my time with life, and I no longer experience that ‘burden’ of falling behind in life both personally and professionally. I know that I can dawdle on goals that I have set for myself or if my Mom wants to join in. November especially brings us the time to slow down and appreciate life in all of its chaotic neutrals to remind us what life is all about. Taking a moment for yourself and for family is what matters the most, so we have to enjoy it while it lasts.