In honor of the GOP’s War on Women, I present to you, Ms. Sarah Haskins:
What Kittens Can Teach You About Your Career
I know, you’re thinking to yourself, “What the f*ck do kittens have to do with my career?” I would answer: Everything.
On Mother’s Day, I adopted two female domestic short hair kittens: Godiva and Djoser. They are cute. I mean, really cute. They are so very cute, words cannot even describe their extremely gnarly awesome cuteness. Here is the catch: They are a pain in the ass!!! They try to jump into the dishwasher when I am loading it. They just love to climb both the furniture…and my body. They crawl into teeny tiny dangerous crevices, so much so that I have to rearrange my entire apartment and completely vary my routine in order to accommodate them. In 4 days, they have attempted to eat the following things: my shower curtain, my bed spread, the rug, my feet, power cords, my hair, my iPod, my iPad, every dust bunny they find…and my face as I am sleeping.
I knew all of these things going in. They’re babies, for Christ’s sake. They are supposed to be a pain in the ass. Young mammals require near-constant care and consideration and they are extremely labor-intensive to take care of. If you think kittens are bad, I hear puppies are worse. And if you really want to f*ck up your life, bring a human baby into your apartment. I accepted the fact that being a Kitten Mommy was going to be inconvenient for a few months. What frustrates me is when people take on responsibilities where it is obvious that it will be extremely difficult, or a gigantic time-suck or really expensive and are surprised when they have to deal with the aftermath.
Generally speaking, anything that is going to provide you with an enormous amount of joy or money, is going to require a lot of work. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. The same thing goes for jobs. Because of a combination of factors (the fact that I did not graduate in the top of my law school class, didn’t go to a top tier school and graduated at the beginning of a recession), I was never afforded the option of practicing law at a large corporate law firm. I did, however, work as a contract (temporary) attorney for a mid-size outfit in Washington, D.C., a city known for a very intense work environment. I made money hand over fist, but I was chronically stressed, wasn’t sleeping well, and I dreaded going into work every day. After about 6 weeks I decided it wasn’t for me and left the job. I knew the hours were going to be long (12-16 hour days) and the work would be challenging. That part was not a surprise. But since it was not a permanent position, I knew I could leave anytime if I desired. So I did. I am grateful that I had the experience because now I know precisely what kind of work environment that I will not tolerate.
The lesson here is this: If it offers ridiculous money, ridiculous perks or prestige, odds are there are going to be one, usually several things about the job that are going to be really annoying or really difficult…usually both. Whether it’s inhumane hours, an obnoxious type-A boss, or just seemingly impossible mind-bending work, it’s going to be something. If you need the money, or if the job is so great that it would give you so much pride or joy to do it then absolutely…take the gig, but only if you are truly prepared to deal with the consequences. So unless this new job you are considering is really a “kitten”, i.e. so totally freakin’ awesome that the downsides of it will be worth the struggle, I would think seriously before I accepted the offer. Unless dealing with the drama is a necessary path you must take in order to advance your career in the way you want or need to, take the gig that will give you the best quality of life, and not just the best paycheck. They are not always the same thing.
Why Are We So Afraid of Strength?
Here is a rarely seen image of Marilyn Monroe. She is doing something that we seldom
associate with 50s pinup gals: she is lifting weights. Of course she lifted weights. How do you think she got that body?
A growing amount of research in exercise physiology is beginning to show that no exercise gives you the best bang for your buck when it comes to both preventing disease, injury, and staying lean more than weight lifting. It’s the best, bar none. Body builders and those who play sports with the word “extreme” in front of the title have known this for years. The average gym goer, however, is still figuring it out. There is a very pervasive myth among women that lifting weights will make you look “bulky” and unfeminine. If you just open your eyes and look at women who lift weights (aside from women training for muscle and fitness competitions), this could not be further from the truth. This is dumb enough, as refusing to train with weights, particularly heavy weights keeps many of us both weak and fat. I have only recently let go of this myth and while two of my female relatives (who are skinnier and therefore assumed to be “healthier” than me) have seriously injured themselves doing basic household tasks, I have not been treated for an injury since I played college sports. I believe it is due to the fact that I lift heavy weights twice a week.
But there is an even more bizarre trend that I have been noticing: Men who are either afraid to lift weights or just have zero interest in it. Some of them (even the heterosexual ones!) have no interest in building mass or strength. They, too, fear getting “bulky”. Whaaatt? Two men that I have spoken to recently do cardio up the wazoo. In all fairness, one is training for a distance run. However, studies also show that shorter but more intense sprints and weight training also help your distance performance. This is the way marathoners train in Kenya, where running marathons is a national industry. They want to be skinny, these men. But roll up to a dude and call him a p*ssy and the threat of being accused of weakness will drive him to fight. It seems these days that people not only have no interest in being strong, they don’t even want to look strong. But they get upset when they are perceived as being weak.
I happen to think muscle is unisex; it looks great on everyone. But particularly when you are a man. I associate visible muscles with strength, which I then associated with masculity (and femininity as well). I may be reaching here, but I think these anti-dumbell attitudes are indicative on a larger cultural problem.
This used to be associated primarily with women. We are socialized that strength is not feminine and so we temper ourselves in order to make sure that we don’t look too strong and powerful in a way that we think will threaten a man (especially if we are trying to have a relationship with him). But even men seem to fear stength these days. And the ones who don’t are these corporate war criminal oligarchs who want to bomb Iran just so that we don’t “look weak”. But is “being stong” the same thing as “not looking weak?” I don’t think so.
I think we need a cultural shift here. We need to focus on both looking strong and being strong, rather than only having the fear of looking weak. A strong person doesn’t have to consistently posture and make bullsh*t dangerous moves to prove their strength. If you are truly strong, you won’t have to do that. It’s like the writer Elbert Hubbard said:
Strong men can always afford to be gentle. Only the weak are intent on giving as good as they get.
My advice? Look strong. Be strong. That way, you’ll rarely have to do much to prove it.
Posted in Beauty, Career, Family, Health, Life in General, Relationships, Religion
Friday Funny: “News” Edition
The Rude Pundit’s thoughts on President Obama’s recent public support of gay marriage:
Of course it was political. The nation, as whole, has shifted towards supporting gay marriage. Actually, let’s be a little more cynical about this. The Rude Pundit believes that when you see a poll that says, as a recent Pew one does, “65 percent of college-educated white women and 68 percent of whites under 30 backed the idea,” what you’re really seeing is that large swaths of the population just don’t give a jolly rat shit about who’s marrying who. The Rude Pundit talks on a regular basis to voters under 30 and to college-educated white women. You know what most of them say about gay marriage? “I don’t care. If you wanna get married, get married. Now, pass the bowl.”
If you are not reading the Rude Pundit, slap yourself on the wrist with a ruler…and start reading him.
Jezebel discusses this slightly freaky Time Magazine cover story:
Wow...just...wow.
A comic book artist asks what would happen if male superheroes posed like the female superheroes do.
Strike a pose, boys!
If you haven’t joined Team Uterati, you need to. Love how the uterus graphic on the website looks like they are all wearing teeny tiny boxing ovaries. Sweet.
Turns out Douchenozzle 1%-er GOP Presidential Candidate Romney was a bit of a bully in high school. Who would’ve guessed?
And finally…there’s nothing us gals want more than to have the government all up in our vaginas! Happy Friday!
Posted in Humor, Life in General, Politics
My Law Degree is Worthless
Yes, you read that right. I believe that my law degree is pretty much worthless. I blame no one but myself. Law schools are selling a product, pure and simple. I just wasn’t discerning enough at 25 years old to see through their marketing bullsh*t. My bad.
When trying to recruit students, law schools are very fond of telling applicants that even if you don’t practice law, having a law degree will make you more valuable in the job market than people who do not have one. This is the biggest lie I heard in law school. Well, actually that’s not true. The biggest lie was the one I told myself, that at 25 it was time to “get serious” and “get a career”, i.e., go to law school.
Law schools graduate about 45,000 students every year. However, there are less than 30,000 legal jobs available every year for those graduates. Frankly, I think these numbers are rather generous. What I would really like to know is how many of those 30,000 jobs are “entry-level” legal jobs, rather than mid-level associate or senior assistant DA jobs that require 3-5 years of experience before they will even consider you. So there aren’t even enough jobs for the licensed attorneys we already have, not to mention the new lawyers law schools churn out annually. Every year there are more and more lawyers with more and more student loan debt, and they end up working jobs that they could’ve been qualified for with a bachelor’s degree. And those are the lucky ones. Many are still unemployed more than 2 years after graduation. I read a news story recently about a lawyer who is on food stamps.
It’s a disappointing and humbling thing to realize that after 3 years of studying and internships, over $100,000 and 2 bar exams later, I would’ve been a lot better off financially and professionally if I had stayed at my executive assistant job in New York City that paid me $40,000 per year. In 2003, I had a rent controlled apartment in Manhattan and about 1/8 of the debt I have now. It’s actually kind of funny. I went to law school to escape the pink collar ghetto and ended up in the heather grey-collar ghetto of document review. Three more years of work experience would’ve been much more valuable both to me and to potential employers than my JD ever will be. The problem that many law grads face when they apply to nonlegal jobs is that employers feel they are overqualified and are reluctant to hire them. They think that the moment the economy improves, they’ll be gone. What they don’t realize is that for most of us out there, this is as good as it gets. Those fancy firm jobs aren’t coming back. The legal job market game has completely changed. Consider this bubble burst. It popped sometime in 2008.
But what can I do about it now? I can’t go back for a do-over. What’s done is done. Only thing left to do now is deal with the aftermath.
