Curse of the Smartphone

I love my iPhone. I mean, I really love it. It's rarely more than a foot from me, whether I'm working (texting back and forth with writers), playing (taking pictures) or sleeping (until the alarm wakes me). I say with complete earnestness that having that amount of access to information, leisure and high-quality photography has changed my life. But for all of the good things it brings, it also creates plenty of negative impacts to on life. Here are a couple of tricks I've learned to help manage the blessing and the curse that is the smartphone.

Make Your Gratitude Memorable

In the professional world, there will always be an occasion when you will have to thank someone for putting in a word for you, for giving you a reference, or for recommending you for a job or a project.

If the case is that you are working your way up in your career, and you are completing an application for a post graduate program of any kind, then you will find yourself asking former supervisors, or professors for favors; just make sure you remember to say thank you.

Turn Your Internship into a Job

In terms of getting and keeping your dream job, I’m definitely fortunate. I was hired at a magazine company in my early 20s and in just over a year became its top editor. My interns ask me frequently for advice about landing a similar situation. The simple answer is that I was in the right place at the right time and had enough luck and energy to stick it out… which isn’t much help to them. The more complex answer is that I took a small opportunity – as an unpaid, undergraduate intern – and managed to turn that into a career. Here’s how I did it.

Brave-as-Hell 20 Somethings

Recently, I’ve been thinking about how our lives as busy-as-hell 20 somethings are so distinctly different from others of the same demographic. Just as we have made the choice to write, chain ourselves to a desk, and pursue ever-higher degrees in education, so have our troops made the decision to commit their 20s and beyond to the military service. 

Landing the Unlisted Job

     I'm all about creating and finding the best kind of opportunity out there: the unlisted job!  Over half of the positions inside some of the world’s most sought after companies are unlisted due to internal hiring and employee referrals.  So how does one break and enter into a company, brand, or agency to score a dream job?  It’s simple: stop spending so much time applying for the jobs that are listed and focus in on some specifics:

Need Motivation?

Sometimes motivation cannot be found no matter how hard you look. There are distractions everywhere, especially if you're on the internet. Whether you're a writer, a student, or a professional, you might need some help once in awhile to get that boost of motivation. In my search for motivation I have found two websites that might help with productivity. If that doesn't intrigue you enough, one website involves kittens and the other involves punishment.

Free Apps That Save My Grades

It’s Thursday afternoon. I’m on the subway and I have a 50 minute commute ahead of me followed by a 4 hour class. I could easily zone out and enjoy the live theatrics of public transportation. In fact, two seats down from me, a woman has begun irately screaming into her cell. Just as I’m about to settle in for a good show, my iPhone pings. It’s my ScatterBrain app reminding me that I was supposed to have read a stack of articles for class. Of course I set the reminder, hoping that all I would have to do was review my notes, but until this moment, they’ve escaped my memory.

Please Stay Home

"Are you okay?" I asked my coworker as he filled up his water bottle in the kitchenette. His voice was raspy and his nose was all plugged up.

"Yeah, yeah. I thought it was allergies but it turned into some kind of freak cold that won't go away," he explained. "But don't worry; it's not contagious anymore."

I should have known better.

Getting Along at the Office

We all know the saying "Misery loves company," and it's easy to figure out why that statement rings true. When something bad happens, it makes us feel less bad about it if the people around us are going through the same thing. 

"My annual bonus wasn't nearly as high as I was hoping."

"Neither was mine."

"Sucks, doesn't it?"

Wawa: Fueling the 20-Somethings

Morning is my favorite time of day. I rise with the sun and greet the day nearly every morning at 6 am, much to the bewilderment of my other 20-something roommates. There is nothing I enjoy more than waking up to a quiet house and sitting on my back porch with a good book and fresh cup of coffee. But not just any coffee.

Take a Nap

photo by Eric McGregor

I find myself coveting preschool children and their nap time. Those tots don’t appreciate the precious value of a good revitalizing nap— all they want to do is play. Ha. One day they too will long for the days of the hour nap, the comfy cots, the time-out from a hectic day of coloring outside the lines. They don’t know how good they have it.

If your day is anything like mine, then you too are desperately in need of a nap. I’m out of the house from 6am-11pm between work and grad school. When I get home, I can’t just fall asleep because I’m still keyed up from a long day, which means I’m not falling asleep until 12:30. And just as soon as I’ve fallen asleep, it feels like ten minutes later the alarm is ringing at 5:00 am. I’m over worked and tired. I need a nap.

Websites to Make Your Morning

There are mornings that start off badly. I'm talking about those mornings you wake up late because you slept through your alarm. The mornings you're late and you run later because the person in front of you tries to pay their train fare in Sacagawea coins. Or how, morning after morning, your Starbucks barista can't understand that you're happy about the prospect of coffee, not conversation, and that you'd rather not discuss whether your last name sounds more Portuguese or Scandinavian. On these mornings, I take to the internet for a quick laugh and the comfort of delighting in absurdities other than my own. 


Check out two of my favorite (and highest rated) humor websites:

An Ode to the Lunch Bag

For those of us with 40+ hour workweeks in the city, it’s always tempting to dine out for lunch rather than dine in. Who wants to plan tomorrow’s lunch in advance when there's an episode of True Blood to watch and a bottle of white wine that's giving you bedroom eyes?


Well, I’m here to tell you that the benefits of planning your lunch ahead of time outweigh the tiny annoyance. I’ve come to learn that packing my lunch the night before a workday not only saves me time and energy come noontime, but also saves me money and encourages me to make healthier choices.


How, you may ask, did I make the switch?

3 Ways to Make Extra Money Over the Summer

Since I have a little extra time this summer, I started to look up ways I could earn some extra money. I found three things that have earned me money and also lets me decide when, where, and how much time to spend on them.

3 Tips for Summertime Interviewing

Use these tips to create a professional look that’s cool, crisp, and cost-efficient.

When dressing for a summertime interview, you want to appear appropriately formal, without feeling hot and bothered. Nothing will shoot your confidence like sweaty, wilted clothing or blisters from too-tight shoes. Achieving a balance between fashion and function will boost your confidence and help you land that job, internship, or promotion. Consider the following:

1. Stick to basics to achieve a classic look. Select simple styles in breathable, cotton materials. Pair a simple dress with a light sweater, stretchy pants or a pencil skirt with a cool button-up blouse. Keep colors light with shades of white or beige, or add a subtle splash of color with pale pink, powder blue, or mint green.

Dress ($98) and sweater ($14) Urban Outfitters

Keeping fit at work

Some of you might recall the Tufts Health Plan commercial chronicling the excuses a couple comes up with to avoid working out day after day. Excuses such as “My mom called” or “I forgot my ponytail holder” are funny both for their irrational reasoning and the fact that they are just so true.

Who hasn’t come up with a crazy reason not to workout? On days like these, when you just can’t muster the motivation to make your way to the gym, here are some simple exercises—that you can do without leaving work—to make you feel less guilty about being so lazy.

Turn your office chair into a piece of
gym equipment.

1. Wall sits: Stand and lean against your office wall; slowly crouch down into a sitting position (as if there were an imaginary chair). Your palms should rest on your thighs. Hold the position for 60 seconds; repeat three times.
2. Stairs: Next time you have to run an errand on another floor, take the stairs.  Do this several times per day.
3. Shoulder press: This is a good one to do while on one of those long conference calls. Bring a couple of 5 or 10 pound weights to work. While sitting at your desk, hold one in each hand and slowly raise them—meeting in the middle directly above your head. Do this 10 times for three reps.
4. Glut squeeze: While sitting in a chair, squeeze your gluts as tightly as you can and hold for 10 seconds; repeat three times, and do several sets per day.
5. Abs: Got a swivel chair? You’ve got an ab machine. Sitting up straight with your hands holding the edge of your desk and your feet flat on the floor, use your abs to twist your chair 45 degrees left, then back to the starting position; next twist 45 degrees right, and then return to resting position. Do 30 reps several times per day.

T and Sympathy

My T commute to work, from Brookline to downtown Boston, used to be a twice-daily preview of my personal hell. Shrieking children egged on by equally high-pitched parents (“Can you say ‘star,’ honey? Can you say ‘star’?? SAY STAR FOR MAMA!"). Raving homeless people who always want to sit right next to you even when there are plenty of other seats available. Hordes of Red Sox fans at various levels of drunkenness. People who wedge themselves into an already packed car and then proceed to curl around you from behind like it ain’t no thang to spoon a stranger in a public transportation setting. Individuals who think clipping their nails is an acceptable commuting activity.

The T is rife with abomination. It’s just a fact. Yet this all pales in comparison to the single episode that induced my T paradigm shift.

In general, I don’t object to people eating on the T. We’re all busy and hungry, and the odd bagel or sandwich or candy bar is fine. It’s a little gross when someone’s Chinese takeout makes the whole car smell like General Gao’s, but okay. I can still roll with that.

However, let me tell you this: it is NEVER acceptable to eat sardines on the T, especially if your preferred method is straight from the can and without utensils. 

As pictured: HORROR

Chocolate Therapy

When I go to the library to study or write a paper, the scenario is generally the same. I sit at the same desk near the window, with a steaming cup of coffee (black) in my ceramic to-go mug, and a piece of Dove dark chocolate. I extract my treat from its foil, place the smooth square on my tongue, and commit the same fatal flaw: I bite. Disappointed once again my indelicacy, my chronic sense of urgency, I read the inspirational message printed within the Dove wrapper: Let yourself melt in life's goodness.