Architect By Day & Artist By Night … from Melissa Noel on Vimeo.

While completing a degree in Architecture in Washington D.C., Dwayne Smith made a decision.

He decided that he would not choose between pursuing a career in architecture and his goal of making it in the music industry as an R& B singer.  So he didn’t.

Now almost two years since Smith got his degree, he is an Architectural Draftsman at KOR architects, a leading New York City firm. He also making waves as unsigned hype performing self-written R&B songs all over NYC and Washington D.C.

Each day this 24-year-old Bronx native goes from making blue prints to writing music notes. He often goes straight from the firm to the stage.

Smith is in the process of trying to get signed to a record label. He is also lead designer of gallery for a new arts institution in Manhattan. This is something Smith says is usually reserved for older, more experienced architects.

“I will not lose, failure is not an option” is something Smith says to himself everyday.

He may not lose, but many around him think that the day will come when he will have to choose between one or the other because each is so demanding.

Smith’s family equally supports both of his ambitions.  His  two brothers help promote and produce  his  music and he  has  made his mother the  C.E.O of  his company Crow Productions. The company will feature music as well as  a clothing  line Smith recently started called Vello Apparel.

He was heavily influenced by the strict upbringing and lover’s rock reggae music in his Jamaican household.

Smith just made his first music video for his most successful single thus far, “Illustrious” and will complete the art gallery  at the start of 2012.

“At times I do feel like I have  to choose between  architecture and music , but I try to keep the  drive for both.”

When I went about creating a jobs related survey for the blog I wanted to get a variation of responses from a cross-section of people on something that not only interested me about jobs, but that many people can relate to as well. I came up with a survey I named  “ How are you living with Loans”. My six-question survey included multiple choices, open-ended and yes or no format. I wanted it to take just   five to seven minutes for a respondent to complete the survey so I tested it out and it was fine. Making up the survey   was the easy part. Getting people to take the survey was harder than I thought it would be.  It was like some people did not even believe that the survey would take only   a few minutes.

Some felt like it may have been a gimmick in order to make them sit through a longer, more detailed survey. I found it a bit funny at first then it was a bit frustrating. I posted it on social networking sites Facebook and LinkedIn and found that I was more successful when I reached out to people individually by posting on their walls or sending a personal message instead of just making a general post. In all 24 people completed my survey, which I thought was   pretty good for the time it was posted.

I did try and target particular groups of people on these sites, but was not any more successful.  54% of the respondents had completed college within the last two years and  26% had been out of  college six years or more. More than half of the respondents   either had a job before graduating or found one within six months following graduation. While 79 % of respondents did not have to defer their loan repayment period, but 46 % will spend up to five years paying off that debt. In response to the question how has loan debt affected your quality of life all but five respondents have been affected negatively with many having to spend a large portion of monthly income on loan payments or not being sure what will happen once more than the minimum payment has to be made.

If doing a survey like this in the future I would add another question of two that would give me more data, remember to ask for contact information the first time around and send   out links for the survey individually. I have realized how much people like personalized messages.

The following list of jobs shows a definite sign of the times where the advancement of technology and the internet have created the need for full-time positions in companies to be dedicated to what they do. These careers are showing no signs of decline in these tough economic times.

1.Search Engine Optimization Specialist

The biggest thing for companies who have websites is to come up #1 in Google and other search engine results. The person responsible for getting sites those clicks is a Search Engine Optimization Specialist. An SEO specialist knows how to code a website, what keywords are needed on the site and how to get the most from other online content. A company’s SEO specialist makes use of this to so that a page will show up higher in the search results.

2.Mobile Application Developer

There’s an app for that and the reason why is because a Mobile Application Developer made it. These techies have programming, HTML, Flash and many other computer technology skills that allow them to be able to create the easy-to-use apps we enjoy on our phones each.

3. Online Advertising Manager

Do you want your next ad to have maximum page views online? Well an Online ad manager is the person who does this job. They may work for Web sites, selling ad programs and working with clients or for advertisers, running the online side of an advertiser’s business and tracking each ad’s performance.

4. Social Media Strategist

To navigate the ever expanding world of social media and have a presence the  position of Social Media Strategist  has become a necessity for many companies to have and brand an online presence. In this role a person would comes up particular ways to maintain a strategy and market that in efforts to drive traffic to and across all company platforms.

5.  Blogger

To navigate the ever expanding world of social media and have a presence the  position of Social Media Strategist  has become a necessity for many companies to have and brand an online presence. In this role a person would comes up particular ways to maintain a strategy and market that in efforts to drive traffic to and across all company platforms.

Hurricane Irene made landfall in the U.S. on Aug. 27, as it slammed into North Carolina and left a path of destruction up the East Coast and along the Northeast as far as Vermont.

Hurricane Irene will cost taxpayers about $1.5 billion in federal disaster relief, according to the White House. A blog posting by White House budget director Jack Lew detailed the costs and said that this $1.5 billion will be in addition to the  $5.2 billion already allotted for disaster relief for the 2012 fiscal year.

At least 20 fatalities in 9 states are being blamed on the storm according to FEMA estimates. That led to emergency declarations being signed by President Obama for Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and the District of Columbia.

The AP reported 4.5 million homes and businesses lost power, with two million of the outages being in the Tri-State area alone. Downed trees, power lines and flooded roadways made the task of restoring power to affected customers a difficult one for power companies.

The destructive threat of Irene caused officials to take unprecedented measures in the interest of the public’s protection.

9,000 flights were cancelled and the nation’s largest transit system, New York City’s Subway was completely shut down from noon on August 27, 2011 until the morning of August 29^th.

Hurricane Irene did not pack as powerful a punch as was first feared and was downgraded to a tropical storm shortly after hitting the East Coast, however it has left parts of the nation generally unfamiliar with this type of natural disaster reeling amid the destruction.