Is This Woman ‘Too Pretty To Work’?
Could President Obama Have Avoided Umbrella-Gate By Asking A Female Marine To Hold His Umbrella?
Women Need To Stop Hugging At Work And Start Shaking Hands
Sitting Is Killing You, So Obviously You Need A Personal ‘Posture Guru’
Millennials Now Bringing Pets To Job Interviews, Because YOLO
Check Your Network: How Networking Perpetuates Racial Discrimination
Dear Introverted Bullicorns,
We’ve been getting a lot of questions about how to network when you hate networking, don’t know anybody, and feel awkward making chitchat with strangers. (SeeBullish: The Nerdy, Reflective Person’s Guide To Networking). More
I am an avid reader of your column on The Gloss and The Grindstone for quite some time now, but never before had I been in direct need of your advice. Here it is: you have mentioned several times in your columns that you are a tutor in a lot of subjects. I have just started tutoring students myself. It’s maybe not really the same situation: I am employed by the teacher of a class that I have taken three years ago, to supervise the exercises part of the course. I have 24 students, engineering freshmen, at once, for one hour twice a week.
To preface: I have short hair, very short on the right side and gradually increases in length to form an array of curls on the left side, no longer than right below my jaw. It’s very trendy, and I love it, especially after so many years of boring hair.
The problem is that now that I’ll be getting interviews (optimism!) I’ll be applying to architecture firms. I worry that my hair will send the wrong message about me. More
I cannot emphasize enough that the only constant in life is change.
It’s a cliche, to be sure. So is the idea that women are all about finding “security,” be it financial or romantic.
But “security” is relative, at best. Even if you pledge to spend the rest of your life with someone, one of you is going to die first. Even if you have a very nice place to live, there are kinds of natural disasters you can’t even buy insurance for. If you are an employee, with all your advancement pinned on one job, it is only a matter of time before your manager moves on, you are transferred to some new manager, conditions become unbearable, your job disappears entirely, or — good times ahead — the opposite of one those things happens.
More
Question from a college senior: I am considering dropping an undergrad honors thesis in order to work a full-time employment (along with classes) in my last semester. Am I screwing over future-me by not finishing the thesis? I have no PhD plans.
Hi there!
No, I don’t think you’re harming yourself at all. I didn’t do an undergrad honors thesis. I was a philosophy major, and in philosophy, there’s no point in getting a masters unless it’s a bump on the way to a PhD and you want philosophy to be your entire life. More
Throughout 2012, Bullish and TheGrindstone published articles about starting a business (out of mere flashes of fancy and shiny pennies!), negotiating for more money, succeeding despite backstabbers, bullies, and less ambitious life partners, getting your first job or internship, coping with deadlines, networking despite being an introvert who’d rather stay home and write business haiku, developing unstoppable tech skills, and otherwise making your life more awesome than the lives of the lazy people all around us. More
Where do business ideas come from?
I’ve got hundreds of them, like a pair of ovaries full of tiny, dormant ideas, some of them awesome and some of them terrifyingly defective — and many, many more than anyone could ever bring to fruition. (This is a pretty good metaphor, except that you’re actually born with all the eggs you’re ever going to have, and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t born knowing that “Treelivery” would be the world’s best name for a Christmas-tree delivery business.) More
Here is a letter I received shortly after Hurricane Sandy. I had evacuated to my fiancé’s parents’ house and was going a bit stir-crazy (I did discover that you can make a pretty decent fake espresso with half a mug of hot milk and about ten times more instant coffee than the package suggests.) More
Even if you have studiously avoided all religion and twelve-step programs throughout your life, as I have, you’re probably familiar with this:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
The “God” part is sort of superfluous here, isn’t it?
More
Faith Hill's Braces Are No Excuse For Her Dramatic Weight Loss
Guess Which Movie Star Knocked Up His Girlfriend?
5-Year-Old Girl Led Police To Kidnapper Who Dressed As Her Mother & Stole Her From School
The Inspiring Note Every Woman Should Read
20 Men Who Get Emotional Over Dogs
Today, we have two questions about underlying rules and structures that you have to figure out to keep from constantly banging your head into a wall.
I wrote in Bullish: Social Class in the Office about how my high school debate coach not only taught me to properly shake hands, but explained to me why it was important to cordially shake hands with your enemies (hint: so observers you hope to bring over to your side don’t think you’re an asshole before you even start talking!) More
Are deadlines chasing you like fiery hell-demons? Do they thump from under the floor like Poe’s tell-tale heart? Do they watch you like the all-seeing eye of Sauron?
If you have an impossible deadline, here’s a quick read (it should be – you have a deadline, right?) with a few ideas, and some important questions to ask. More
Today I’m answering two letters from women I’ve renamed Charlotte Whitton (she who said, “Whatever women must do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.”) and Flo Kennedy, who once protested a lack of women’s bathrooms by holding a “Protest Pee-In” in Harvard Yard.
“I will be turning 24 soon, and feel as though I’m getting a late start, particularly because the fields I have chosen are notoriously difficult to break into and it will take a few months, minimum, and am intimidated by how much experience and competence everyone else seems to have. I am currently contacting everyone in my network to see if they have any advice or connections and am starting a blog, but I feel like this is not enough. Do you have any advice for how to make up for lost time?”
Practically every woman I know lives in a state of near-constant guilt for not getting enough done.
Of course, I have ambitious friends.
When you look for advice on a problem like this, your ambitious friends typically say, “Me, too!” and sometimes try to compete with you about who is the most behind on their goals. More
How formal should you be in your career? Check out this letter from a writer I’ve called Elizabeth Alexandra Mary, which I discovered is the full name of Queen Elizabeth II. Apparently titled royals do not have surnames, although the Queen sometimes uses the name Windsor, because honestly, having three female first names and no last name kind of makes one sound like a very pretentious stripper. More
