Paul Kimelman, a reader and sometimes inadvertent guest blogger over at Freakonomics, asks whether or not there’s a direct correlation between kicking ass academically and then going on to achieve success in the real world.

It’s a great post and it made me think about the tremendous value we tend to place on the paper measures of success, i.e., grades achieved or money earned. Rarely do we look at the whole person and quantify their levels of happiness and contentment, or how many of their own goals they’ve achieved to determine how successful they are in life.

I myself am a recovering overachiever, and I therefore try very hard to not put insane amounts of pressure on my kids. It’s a fine line and I’m still working out the kinks in the system. I have to somehow get it through to my first-grader that completing the homework assignments are expected and required, while allowing her to do said assignment in her own way.

I don’t want her to obsess about perfection, but I do need her to understand that no one gets to waltz through life avoiding the drudgery entirely and sticking with only the super-fun bits. As a human in the Race (be that Rat or Great) she’ll be expected to contribute. But I would very much like to avoid beating the coloring-outside-the-lines instinct out of her; I love it that she prefers to do things a little to the left or right of center.

How do you instill in a person a solid work ethic and the concept that her own goal of using every color in the crayon box is just as important as completing the illustration assigned in the homework? There’s no paper measure or value in society for turning in a meticulously colored homework assignment. Her Mom and her teacher may think it’s cool and may appreciate it, but it’s not like there’s an extra point column for enjoying the assignment and using every color. A correct and completed assignment and some stellar test scores are the only proof of success available to school kids.

So will thirteen years of primary and secondary education form her for her higher education career, in which GPAs and test scores will be her personal-value metric? And what happens after college? Will she do what most adults do and transfer her success-pursuing energies immediately from grades to money? How do I instill in my offspring the idea that doing one’s best in school and in the professional world is important, but that a 4.0 and a million dollars are by no means the be-all and end-all?

Dammit. This is one of the drawbacks to being a thinking higher mammal cursed with the ability to ponder oneself into oblivion: you can think yourself into a sucky little dark corner wherein false optimism and pure, unadulterated denial are the only way out.

Well, I think my work here is done. I’m sure I won’t screw my progeny up too badly and that they will have a higher-than-average chance of growing up happy and then blossoming into well-adjusted, deliriously happy adults who wake up every day just bursting with excitement for the day ahead.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

photo: bookgrl

Regardless of who you are or what life situation you find yourself in the midst of, there are bound to be some misery-infested moments. School, work, and just plain day-to-day life have wretched bits that bring on the urge to shake your fist at the sky and demand some answers.

If every day, all day is like that for you, then I would suggest some changes. But if the unpleasant moments are just threads running through a solid, generally happy and contented life, you’ll be fine and can take the advice of Sergeant Felipe Perez (Williams College ’99) to “Embrace the Suck.” You can read his post on his blog, The Accidental Soldier, at his Alma Mater’s blog, EphBlog, or below.

Army port-a-potties the world over (I can speak to the US, Germany, Kuwait, Qatar, and Iraq, at least) are full of some of the crudest, funniest, and wisest graffiti ever. My personal favorite, scrawled or scratched into at least one potty in ever place I’ve ever been, is “Embrace the Suck.”

“Army Strong,” “Army of One,” “Be All You Can Be” aside, “Embrace the Suck” is the real Army motto. The wisdom is simple and powerful. War sucks. Soldiering sucks. The Army sucks. Deal with it. Get over it. Accept it. Embrace it.

I think I’m close.

Just came back from 5 days in the woods. Slept in the dirt. Got rained on. Tore my hands up taking machine guns apart in the dark. Got real stinky. In short, it sucked.

But on day three or four (we lose track), we had hot chow trucked out to the woods. It had stopped raining. The sun was setting behind the North Carolina woods, through a break in the rainclouds. The truck was blaring 80’s R&B as they pulled up, and we convinced them to open the doors and turn it up. Before long, plate full of lukewarm spaghetti in hand, funky buddies at my side, and bad music in background, I was as happy as can be. It wasn’t long before our pint-sized First Sergeant started screaming about something or other, but it was wonderful while it lasted.

Better yet, last night, our field days over, we rolled back into the FOB. I’ve never been happier to see broken showers, a crowded tent, and a dining hall full of bland food. I’m learning to embrace the suck.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

image: Bryce Muir

Catch-22 is safely ensconced in my top ten books list; it’s been there since I read it over a decade ago and I can’t imagine that it will ever be demoted. It’s such a perfect, perfect description of being caught in some bureaucratic, red-tape moment wherein the powers that be are unmoved by your pointing out of the obvious, utterly effed-up impossibility of your situation. You’re screwed because you’ve managed to find a special little corner of Rule Hell in which the guidelines contradict themselves and now there can be no forward or backward motion that might enable your extrication from the situation.

The job-hunting process can definitely be heavy on the Catch-22 nuances. This is especially true for the newly graduated. Your brain is packed full of (mostly) worthwhile information, but you lack any real job experience. Employers would prefer not to hire someone who has ridiculous amounts of knowledge but few real-world job skills. This realization usually makes the young job applicant scream (on the inside) something along the lines of How can I get any job experience if I can’t get an effing job, you freaks!

And there it is: you can’t get a job without experience and you can’t get experience without a job. Right out of college, you pretty much have a diploma and some summer job experience to bullet-point on your résumé.

And that is why god created the internship: the unpaid, coffee-fetching rite of passage that won’t make you much money but will teach you how to do the job you want so badly that you’re willing to work for free to learn how to do it. Internships are also invaluable networking venues; connecting with pertinent individuals in your field will be beneficial to future job searches and career moments.

Searching for internship opportunities is pretty similar to the job search process: search for “internships” on any job search site and a list of possibilities will magically appear. Alternatively, you can apply for an actual job, and note on your résumé that you’d like to be considered for the little- to no-pay internship version of the available position. What fool employer would turn down someone who’s willing to work for free? (This may not work in the law, medical or air traffic control fields).

If you’re still in college and are financially fortunate (or are really good at being poor) you can use the summer to do an internship. It’ll give you an extra bullet point on the résumé and will give you a better idea of what a job in your chosen field entails and whether you actually want to continue pursuing this career. Colleges and universities always have some informed person (librarian, career advisor, department secretary, etc.) who can hook students up with internship links, info, ideas and lists.

Further reading:

Internships a ‘win-win’ to help get job

Resources:

The Benefits of Volunteer Work
Top Eight Tips for Finding an Internship
How to Become a Volunteer to Gain Work Experience
Idealist.org

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Pep talks should include a concrete bit of take-away advice. Here are two posts and a book by Lindsay Pollack in which she dispenses advice similar to mine (i.e., rarely will forward motion take you in the wrong direction), but she somehow manages to dispense her wisdom in a manner several degrees kinder than mine.

Two posts about job-searching in a recession for the newly graduated:

How Part-Time Work and Volunteering Can Help You Find a Job

Finding a Job After Graduation

Ms. Pollack’s Book:

Getting from College to Career: 90 Things to Do Before You Join the Real World

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Yes, the recession sucks. For everyone. Not just for the newly graduated who are spending their first few post-college moments wondering why they spent four years and an obscene amount of money earning a degree that won’t, as it turns out, guarantee them a job so they can pay off those student loans. Reality, as I have learned after 35 years on the planet, is rarely subtle. It almost always comes in shockingly large, crotch-kicking doses that we coddled human beings tend not to be prepared for.

Which is to say, suck it up, grab onto those boot straps, keep using your brain, and just find a damn job. The job you find will almost certainly not be the career-launching moment you’d envisioned for yourself four years ago. Too bad. Times are tough. Aim for any job that falls under the general category of your dream career, make some money, accrue some experience. Don’t be sad and whiny and pathetic and sit on your (parent’s) couch and bitch about how effing brilliant you are and how heartbreaking it is that no one will hire you.

No one is hiring anyone, and any companies that are hiring have a whole slew of recently laid-off, older, educated, certainly smart and definitely experienced, people to choose from. And that is not you. You, my adorable little newbie, are still wet behind your brilliant little ears, and even though your brain is packed full of ridiculous volumes of facts and knowledge, and even though you were a technology whisperer when you were still pooping in your pants, you have no experience in the real world. Which is why you’re crying on your parent’s couch and don’t yet understand how to buckle down and get it done (as it were).

Again I say: most humans do not enjoy reality. Animals probably don’t either, but they have always resided in the nasty, brutish and short state of nature and don’t have the questionably useful levels of higher thought that we humans are so fortunate to possess. If animals sat around pondering the suckiness of reality, they’d be off their guard and would get eaten by all the bigger, less-thinking animals.

The moral being: It’s okay for humans to employ higher thought and ponder the crapshoot that is our reality, but while pondering and thinking, keep moving forward and get a job—almost any job will do at this point—so you can survive in a down economy. Worry about sculpting your career to a state of sublime perfection later; at the moment the fittest will be surviving by adding interesting bullet-points to their résumés.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image source)

It’s June, and the air is awash with the distinct scent of college graduates sweating in their rented caps and gowns. Here’s my positive spin on having the bad luck to be a college graduate looking for your first job when no one is hiring: the pressure’s pretty much off. Getting any job will do, which means you won’t have to leap any tall buildings right off the bat. Seriously, your parents will be stoked as long as you don’t end up back in their basement.

Going back to school is always an option. I mentioned previously that research has been done (I do love data) on college grads in the early 1980s who hid out in grad school instead of trying to find a job in a recession, and their future career trajectories and earning potential were in no way harmed.

If you’re sick of school (how is that even possible?) and don’t feel it’s necessary to add to your student loan tab, then by all means get to it and find a job. Here’s some advice (which you’ll be needing).

Further Reading and Resources:

100 Best Lifehack Lists for Recent College Grads
100 Useful Job Search Tools for Recent College Grads
About.com: Job Searching
Found Your Career
Jobs for College Grads and Career Changers
New Resource for Recent College Grads & Entry Level Job Seekers
One Day One Job: Entry Level Jobs for New College Grads
One Day One Internship
Stimulus Jobs for New College Grads
Teach for America Attracts More College Grads
The Best Job Markets for Recent College Grads
Tools for a Tough Market: 100 Resources for College Grads
Why Your College Grad Doesn’t Have a Job Yet…& 10 Things You Can Do to Fix That

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Theoretically, the whole point of engaging in higher education is to move (at whatever time frame suits you) from childhood to career-having adulthood. My own personal—and impossibly dreamy–life path would involve never completing the education portion and really just avoiding the career part altogether. (Stupid money-necessitating reality. Why won’t anyone pay me to be a perpetual college student?) This is all by way of explaining that it’s because education and career are usually linked that I sometimes ditch higher education topics and stray over to the career side of the yard.

Dyske Suematsu wrote this essay pondering exactly what I’ve been mulling over in my noggin for years: Why is it that some obviously talented individuals can’t seem to succeed to the degree in which anyone who has seen evidence of their talent, thinks that they should? I had always theorized (as had Mr. Suematsu, as it turns out) that those less-than-successful types either weren’t able to pull themselves together and go out and seek their fortunes, or that they could just never find that one career niche that fit their talent and allowed them to blossom (as it were).

So what about the people who do kick ass on the career world? Are they more stupendous in their talent? What is it that separates them from the talented folks who don’t, erm, blast off into the clouds or whatever? Dyske Suematsu has a profound nugget of an explanation that makes a huge amount of sense to me. I’m simplifying, but basically his theory is this: Talented individuals are of two types, the ones who excel at Everything Else, and the ones who fear Everything Else.

‘Everything Else’ being all the other crap one has to put up with depending upon which career an individual has found themselves swimming in, i.e., a musician can’t play in a vacuum and become successful; he has to work all other aspects of a career in music (and work them really well) in order to get gigs, get paid, promote himself and his music, get a record deal, interview with the press, deal with masses of life-sucking people, etc. If he’s no good at Everything Else, or if he fears Everything Else, then his chances of success in his area of talent dwindle hugely.

So, to be blunt (that’s my special skill) we’ve all got some bit that we’re really damn good at. The trick to achieving success and happiness is to figure out your talent/special skill, find a career that utilizes it, and figure out a way to kick Everything Else’s ass. Alternatively, if you’re just not someone who is ever going to conquer your fear of Everything Else, then either accept the possibility that there will probably not be any super-freaky success in your future, or find the version of your talent-utilizing career that involves less of the Everything Else, like being a studio musician instead of a rock star.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image source)

Jason Seiden has written a compelling piece about the concept of college education as we know it, and the vision he has for its future (hint: things are not going to stay the same).

I’m an old-fashioned, pen-and-paper loving girl who adores education in all of its forms, and I’m especially enamored of the halcyon days of the traditional four-year college degree. Which is to say that I am not the most receptive audience for Mr. Seiden’s proposal that college’s days are numbered.

However, since I’m now 35 and am officially an adult (and society makes you act like a grown-up whether you want to or not) I’ve been trying to open my little noggin up to new thoughts and ideas. So, with much wishing it wasn’t so, I must admit that his ideas have merit and I can see logic in his argument.

Hey, college: you’ve been put on notice. My kids will probably not experience you the way I did. My guess is, by the time they get there, a college education could have some of the following characteristics:

–College will be less about the four years that follow high school than about a lifelong commitment to a learning community.

–College degrees may be staged. One of the first areas of focus for many out of school will be basic professional skills, which in many cases will be taught in blended study/work environments.

–Northeastern and Drexel already use this model, where internships are part of the program. Some professional grad schools use this model, too. This will get students into the working world and earning an income quicker.

–Math and science will also get early billing in the curriculum. Not knowing how to divide isn’t cute, it’s dangerous. Our economy today requires incredible specialization, which in turn requires more detailed, and higher level thinking. That means math. From my experience, people are a lot better at math than they give themselves credit for. Their issues aren’t about manipulating numbers, they’re about the teachers they had[link]. We’ll get over it.

–The liberal arts education will become a lifelong endeavor. People will take ongoing courses in English, the arts, history, and the humanities. Knowing something of the world around you will be a status symbol… and for businesses, these ongoing courses will provide tremendous networking opportunities.

That last paragraph is a good one. He makes some good points, yes? Even so, change kind of blows. On the inside, I’m sticking my bottom lip out in a preschooler pout and I’m kicking the ground like a three-year-old who doesn’t want to use her words.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

hat tip: Lynn Mattoon

image source

The Frugal Duchess has a guest post from Consumer Credit Counseling Service up about graduating seniors and the financial wisdom it behooves them to know. Learn it. Know it. Live it. (Or there will be no home-owning in your future and your student loan debt will pale in comparison to your credit card debt and you will be crushed like an insignificant bug under the weight of it all). Am I over-explaining? Do you over-stand yet? Don’t be one of those idiot college grads who got an ‘A’ in calculus but can’t grok how money works. For anyone who still isn’t sure: if you have some, you can spend it, if you don’t have some, you effing can’t.

I have a theory that financial literacy and parallel parking are the modern-day tests for Survival of the Fittest. Back in our life-in-the-state-of-nature days, keeping the fire lit, surviving the winter without four walls and heating ducts, and avoiding being scarfed down by a wild animal were the tests for survival. Now we’ve got parallel parking and not ending up on the street because you spent money you didn’t have.

Further Reading and Resources:

Consumer Credit Counseling Service
Ramit Sethi: I Will Teach You To Be Rich
Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy
Consumer Jungle
Council for Economic Education
Money Smart
Financial Literacy Through Video Games
Push for Financial Literacy Spreads to Schools
Reuters: New Young Adult Financial Literacy Curriculum
Newsweek: Clues for the Clueless

Posted by Alexa Harrington

image credit: Alex Nabaum

Reading this article in the Wall Street Journal—while being informed fully of the situation —will make you want to beat your head against a wall. The job market has pretty well reached mythical status for recent college graduates; the “job market” was a place other generations did some minimal step-following in order to slip their educated way into a spot seemingly reserved for them. “Them” being the twenty-somethings who had followed procedure: graduated with decent grades in high school, taken all required standardized tests, gotten into colleges and universities, graduated with one or more degrees, etc.

I can’t imagine how pissed off the current generation (are we still on Y? When do we get to Z?) must be regarding their financial futures. They’ve been jumping through academic hoops since middle school in order to secure their spot in Careerland. And now, things don’t seem to be progressing according to plan. If’n I were a Gen-Yer (I’m Gen-X) I would be so done with adults and jobs and school and rules. There are going to be a lot of twenty-somethings living off the grid, far away on tropical islands, telling society to perform expletive-y things on itself.

Here’s the teensy smidge of silver lining…at the end of the article, there are a few lines that give recent grads another option (besides smashing their heads repeatedly against the Job Market Wall:

Others are opting to ride out the slump doing public service. At AmeriCorps, a nationwide community-service network, applications more than tripled to about 48,500 between November 2008 and March compared to the same time period a year earlier. Teach for America received 35,000 applications this year — 42% more than last year. About 70% of those were recent college graduates. Among the most common reasons people cited for applying, according to Teach for America, were poor job conditions and President Barack Obama’s call to public service.

Another alternative to unemployment or a low-paying job: Stay in school.

Graduate applications for 2007-2008 were up 8% nationwide compared to the year before, according to the most recent numbers from the Council of Graduate Schools. Schools such as Northwestern University and Harvard are already tracking double-digit increases this year.

College grads who went to graduate school instead of the job market during the early ’80s recession didn’t suffer the same wage losses, says Ms. Kahn, the Yale economist.

I love school, so I see no downside to sticking one’s head in the proverbial sand (grad school) and waiting the economic slumpiness out. There will be more student loan debts, but maybe there’s a way to keep the course load manageable enough to also work at the lame job you’re ridiculously overqualified for but it’s the only job you could find after months of searching. And, really, isn’t being in school the perfect excuse for having a crappy job and a cash-flow problem? I’m not kidding, I think I’ve found the perfect hiding place to wait out the Recession Boogeyman—a nice, long PhD with a crappy job on the side. It’s perfect.

Posted by Alexa Harrington