7 lessons in building a career from favorite on-screen characters
We are encouraged at an early age to declare what we want to be when we grow up. Some of us followed that path through college: we picked a corresponding major and a post-graduate career goal. If you were a liberal arts major, chances are you ended up doing something you had no idea you could or wanted to do. I am a big supporter of self-discovery as long as you are progressing with direction. In an era when young people average 2 years at a company, many are unsure of what’s next. Whether or not you’re at that crossroads, these 7 on-screen characters inspire career lessons that may push you to take your next step.
Why you need to add Stephanie Simons’s All’s Fair in Love & Wardrobe to your shopping cart immediately
If you love The Devil Wears Prada, read Vogue religiously, or know every episode of The Rachel Zoe Project, you MUST pick up this book. Written “to all the girls who’ve ever wanted to shop, dress, eat, party, travel, and Instagram like a fashion editor; now you can date like one.”
With a crash course on how to date like a fashion “editrix” (“channel a front row state of mind—don’t settle for being a back-row babe who’s constantly shuffled around and buried out of sight under the proverbial exit sign”), guides to the 7 phases of waiting for him to call and throwing the pity party of the season (“do create a stellar guest list; don’t open less than three gift registries”), a history of the relationship between love and fashion, how to master the “signature walk” of shame, a collection of closet confessions (assumedly Simons’s own dating anecdotes), and over 100 cheeky rules, All’s Fair in Love & Wardrobemakes you want to makeover your wardrobe, your romances, and your life to appear as casually cool and easily put-together as an editor off-duty. Here are 5 points why you should pick up a copy, read, reread, and personify All’s Fair.
I consider myself a fairly good conversationalist, but in the last couple months I’ve met girls who are extremely chat savvy. What struck me was their ability to be natural and to put a complete stranger at ease… it’s that charisma that also makes someone a great interviewee (or interviewer)—both on camera and off. Superb conversationalists don’t try too hard to leave you with a certain impression. They open up enough that you want to find out more. They speak to you in the same voice they use with their close friends. They charm you. I am fascinated by the magnetism, so I turned to The Real Housewives of New York for tips on the art of conversation when meeting someone new.
Your spring trend report and an exclusive Q&A with Cara of Steps to Steelo
Spring is in the air, and we’re excited to change up the pile of clothes we reach for every morning. With a little help from Cara Ramos, owner and founder of fashion truck Steps to Steelo (they’re celebrating their 1 year anniversary this Saturday in San Diego!), we are getting a healthy dose of springspiration to get us up and at ’em. Read on for your spring trend report, plus a Q&A with this savvy fashionista about the lessons she’s learned from building her own business.
A friend and I were talking about people’s different thresholds of “busy.” She has a full-time office job and teaches fitness classes 3 to 4 days a week. A colleague of mine has a full-time job, teaches an extracurricular class once a week, oh, and has a husband and four kids to care for. I attest my own desire to fill my days to my early training in elementary school. My mom had my sisters and me in after-school activities galore—from ballet to swimming, speed reading (an excuse for me to spend more time at the library) to student council. Once I left school for the real world, I felt the need to continue being “involved”… I became my high school alumni association’s class representative, joined my sorority’s alumni chapter and took on a leadership role, then found other ways to use my marketing knowledge by joining my sister’s company’s team part time and decided to get back into writing by launching The Single Diaries with Jen.
The only sure thing is that we have 24 hours in a day and, when you have an inflexible office job, you have to wake up at a certain time every morning. For someone like me who can stay up all night, it is a challenge to stay committed to a bedtime when I can find other things I want to do but didn’t have time to earlier in the day (write or edit a post, read a book, watch Melrose Place). There were evenings when after work I thought I could do it all: run off to an early barre class, stop by a book club meeting, then finish editing a post scheduled to go up the next day. Other days I had to make sacrifices. Instead of organizing a boozy brunch (one of my favorite pastimes), I committed to a Saturday work session at a local cafe.
Jen recently wrote about taking up a side hustle, which is great in the years after college when making money needs to be your priority to pay for student loans and to get your feet off the ground. In those years, most of us need to work a traditional full-time job to learn the value of a paycheck and to garner experience to build our resume. A side hustle is a way for you to find your passion and develop the skills you need to make your dreams a reality. But what happens when your full-time job and your side hustle leave you with little to no free time?
