Working Toward What You Want

Throughout all of this, I felt really alone. I felt like no one else I knew was facing the same problem. Everyone seemed to be finding jobs. Everyone seemed to know what they were doing and where they were going.

For the first time in my life, I felt pointless. I had always been working toward something. I had always been striving to finish something. Books. Papers. School. Everything always had a tangible ending. But this did not. Joblessness has no clear end in sight. It’s a game of luck and chance. You are at the mercy of first impressions and well-written cover letters.

Career, Dreams, LifeJulia NusbaumMay 12, 2016Comment

I'll Wait: Why I Deleted Tinder

My relationship with Tinder is more off-and-on than any relationship I’ve been in with an actual human. Some weeks I’m all about it, and then some weeks I resent it. I go back and forth between the rationalizations of, “Well, how else am I supposed to meet people?” to “This isn’t natural, stop wasting your time.” I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve deleted the app from my phone (but not my actual account), gone without it for a couple of weeks, and re-downloaded it in a fit of loneliness.

But after all of the run-around with this service, I finally forced myself to really evaluate how it makes me feel: alone, isolated, more vulnerable to rejection. Is it really worth it? Aren't I better off just being alone with no prospects?

RelationshipsMeredith GalyonMay 10, 2016FeaturedComment

To Be Young and Not in Love

You know them. You may be one of them. If you have a Pinterest account you can see them rising from the depths of your home page, posting various mason jar and burlap-themed photos to boards with titles like “My Dream Wedding”, “Wedding bells!”, or the most infuriating of all: “Ever mine, ever thine, ever ours.” Come on, ladies! Everyone with a pair of even semi-working eyeballs has read, and most likely incorporated into their vows, this Beethoven quote.

Life, RelationshipsKelsey WorshamMay 5, 2016Featured Comment

Writer's Block

The truth is, I’m struggling and I’m a little lost right now. I don’t have a magic solution to make myself feel better, to make my bank account multiply, to magically gain five years of work experience in a day.

But I’m not the only one. Neither are you if you feel the same. It’s a strange time in life and it’s perfectly normal to have no idea what you’re doing and to cry and feel discouraged when things don’t go as you hoped. What matters is that you don’t give up. I had an interview this week that went terribly. I walked out feeling like a failure and never wanting to do another interview again. But I biked home, had a cup of tea with my roommate and went right back on my computer to apply for more jobs.

Career, Graduation, RelationshipsMegan HoeglerMay 3, 2016FeaturedComment

An Ode to Carrie Bradshaw

It’s discouraging when you work something up in your head for so long and nothing comes of it; the moment I put something in there, I can’t let it go for the life of me. And it’s even more discouraging when you realize that what you want may not exactly be what you need. But John Steinbeck once wrote to his sons: “I have discovered that there are other rivers. A great many never come to know that there are other rivers.” I over-analyze literature like I over-analyze everything else, but what I took from this is that sometimes, we try to cling so hard onto what we know, simply because it’s what we know. But you have to allow your dreams to change so constantly because you are changing so constantly. There are other rivers, and other cities, and other places to grow in. And often, they are the ones you would never expect.

Career, Dreams, LifeAlly WillisApril 28, 2016Featured, Archive 16Comment

More Than Okay

It will be okay, it will be okay, it will be okay.

As I lie in bed, wrapped in the safety of my blanket burrito, I religiously repeat these four words in my head like a nightly prayer. It’s my Hail Mary attempt to silence the 1001 future what-if scenarios racing through my mind.

What if I don’t find a job that I love? What if I have to go back to school? What if I have to live under my mother’s roof until I’m 30? What if I just pack up my bags and go?

What if? What if? What if?

Career, GraduationAngela SerednickiApril 26, 2016FeaturedComment

New Things, Better Things

It’s been a hell of a year, but in the very ordinary, nothing-too-tragic-has-occurred sense. You know, the kind of hell that has nothing to do with a death or an incurable illness or a divorce or an addiction, none of that. In fact, if you were to peer into the window of my life from the sidewalk a yard away, it would look to you like it’s been quite a rich year from last summer to the new one approaching us: adventures all around the country and even the world, a new job, a new house with a kitchen so beautiful it should be photographed and framed, a new kitten, by golly! So much new-ness. All good. Objectively, that is.

But I’ve been a mess through it all, a big ‘ole blumbering not-pretty-to-look-at, please-avert-your-eyes mess.

Dreams, Career, LifeAlly WillisApril 24, 2016Featured, Archive 16Comment

When It's Time to Move On

I had no expectations for what post-college was like, and I didn’t know what direction I wanted to take (and still don’t). I had built a life for myself that I wasn’t inclined to let go of just yet. At the time, every “option” I thought of didn’t seem right. Move back home? My parents had just moved to a place I’d never been, that wasn’t quit home. Go on to graduate school? I’d had my fill of academia for a least a year or so; at that point if I’d looked at one more Word document I would have lost it. Find a “real” job? Enticing, but near impossible to find and frustrating. Here I am a year or so later, and I think I know I need something new. I know I’m completely capable of starting over somewhere new this time around, but I had to let myself reach that point of “ok, it’s time for a few major changes.”

LifeAnna SpleanApril 21, 2016FeaturedComment

Perfectly Imperfect

It was a perfect Sunday morning: I had just set up my coffee table with freshly baked biscuits, bacon, eggs, peanut butter and a hot mug of delicious hazelnut flavored coffee (yes, breakfast is my favorite meal of the day) with the shiny new notebook in front of me, so I could test its ability to stream Netflix. I was about to press play when disaster happened.

One wrong move and suddenly coffee was all over the place: on the table, on my biscuits, my scrambled eggs were already swimming lanes and, of course, the liquid had spilled all over the fruit notebook. “Oh my gosh, what have I done?? They will fire me. Without hesitation. Just like that. Darn it, Viviane. This is like your second week and look at that mess,” poured out my anxious thoughts (plus some curse words) while I was trying to clean up my mess.

Career, LifeViviane SchmidtApril 19, 2016Comment

Tidbits & Tales from That First Year After College: A Collection of Essays

11 reasons you should definitely read this book

Career, Dreams, Grad School, Graduation, Health, Life, Money, Style, Travel, RelationshipsAlly WillisApril 17, 2016FeaturedComment

Learning to Be Happy for Others

When I was younger I was the kind of person that was never fully happy for my friends when something good happened to them, because I was jealous. I wondered why good things were happening to them and not me; I became bitter.

But this year I've grown, both as a person and a professional. I've learned what I want out of my career, and I've learned what it means to be a good friend. With that said, it's been a big week for the people in my life and I am so excited for them.

Career, RelationshipsJackie MundryApril 12, 2016Comment

Soon and Very Soon

Ally WillisApril 11, 2016Comment

When It Rains, It Pours

Not getting hired on full-time where you spent eight months working hard can be a pretty big slap to the face. It’s like breaking up with your long-term boyfriend when you still live together. It’s the whole bit of “it’s not you, it’s me…” Not an easy pill to swallow that you just weren’t quite good enough. I have and will always hold myself to a very high standard personally and professionally and tend to struggle with rejection. As someone who has such high standards for herself and who puts a lot of self-worth stock into her job, I had never experienced a heartbreak quite like this one in any of my relationship breakups (pretty sure a psychologist would have a field day with that fun fact). As soon as I heard the word “unfortunately,” a part of me retreated, wounded. What did I do wrong? What could I have done better? Was it something I said in the interview? I was riding a rollercoaster of emotions for the week following the news. I was sad, angry, confused, content, lost all at once. I am an obsessive planner and this was not following my post-grad plan at all. I was supposed to work my butt off in an incredible internship following graduation, get hired full-time for my first big girl job, move out of my parents’ house and live happily ever. Instead, I was eight months into the real world with not much to show for it and even more confused as to my life’s path.

Career, DreamsAlyssa RichardsonApril 7, 2016Comment

Let the Applications Roll: 5 Tips for Applying to Grad School

The moment has arrived. After months of near neuroses, you’ve narrowed down your options and you’re ready to submit your completed graduate school application(s). To anyone who has not reached this point, the idea of actually being finished with your GRE and having gathered everything to submit an application may seem too good to be true. It also might seem downright unrealistic. Our undergrad applications were essentially a joke, seeing as how Jesus Christ Himself gifted us with websites like Common App that made submitting applications into the distant memory it is today. However, forget everything you know about applying to college. Take those sweet, sweet memories of meeting with your high school guidance counselor out of that back slot in your brain and erase the files. You’re on your own now, friend.

Career, Grad SchoolKelsey WorshamApril 5, 2016Featured, Archive 16Comment

The 5 Stages of Deciding to No Longer Date Someone

I recently stayed on a date longer than I would have liked. The night began with dinner, a dinner that was three hours long. “That’s so great!” you the reader might be thinking to yourself. “Laurel really connected with that guy and they had so much to chat about.” I so wish that was the case. The dinner lasted three hours and then the after-dinner drinks lasted another three hours because the person I went on a date with moves/speaks/blinks at the speed of Friday afternoon. The pace is certainly friendly. But you don’t want to cruise in the speed of Friday afternoon when greater things pepper your horizon. So when he asked me if I wanted to tour art museums with him - (FYI this is a wonderful date idea. It’s classy and fun.) - I knew I had to say no. And my heart sank in my chest a little bit.

I go on a lot of dates. This is not meant to be a bragging right; it is a simple fact. As a young, social human in a vibrant city bustling with single people, dating is somewhat commonplace. And there are so many wonderful pieces of advice about how to recover from rejection or a breakup that could combine to make a world full of pies. And a world full of pies would be a better place. But what I have not heard/read/listened to on a podcast is how to let someone down and how not to feel a million emotions yourself. I feel everything all the time. So, since they (someone at some point said this) say feelings are best processed with others, I have decided to share them with you.

When I have decided I no longer want to date someone, I usually travel through 5 stages.

RelationshipsLaurel DicusApril 3, 2016Featured, Archive 16Comment

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