I ran a study at Harvard and published a paper. But my best finding is sitting on Harvard’s server, unpublished. So I’m embarking on a furtive rescue mission. To start, here’s the finding: Read more
The worst criticism I’ve ever received from an editor is “it sounds like ChatGPT wrote this.” But as soon as Melissa told me that I thought: she’s right. Unfortunately, she said this about the post I wrote about my son getting into Duke. So I’m trying again because I need to tell you that he was homeschooled since first grade, and he had a traumatic brain injury in high school, and I’m completely thrilled for him that he got into his first-choice college. Read more
Surgical Ceramics by Beccy Ridsdel
Women who are really good at school think a great way to celebrate that is to go to medical school. People admire you! It’s great money! And there’s flexible hours for moms!
Americans have an unwavering belief in economic mobility. Most people in the U.S. think they can work hard to get ahead, even though economic mobility is lower in the U.S. than in other industrialized countries. Read more
Porcelain Pencils by Katharine Morling
The FBI just announced a sting operation that caught 50 rich and famous parents paying millions of dollars to bribe and cheat to get their under-qualified kids into top colleges (and, mysteriously, some not-top colleges). Last year a magnet school in Louisiana, which had been celebrated for getting poor minority students into top schools year after year, admitted to lying and cheating to get the kids in. Read more
Business school applications are due at the beginning of January. Now is the time to withdraw your application.
Because you should not go to business school. If you want to start a company, you should start a company. And if you want to climb the corporate ladder you should do that. An MBA does not help you with either of those goals. Read more
It used to be that internships were just for college kids. But today, the internship is for anyone who wants to do work they have no track record for doing. The internship is learning ground and proving ground for any age. It’s true that kids in college absolutely must get work experience to be employable after college, and an internship is a good way to do that, at any age.
My favorite internship story is when my eight-year-old son got an internship as a stylist and found himself dressing a model.
People in their 30s get internships to make up for lost time in their 20s. And also to land hipster jobs that are impossibly hard to get—this internship at Versace, for example, went for $3200. That’s right. Some internships are so cool that you have to pay for them.
The advice I’ve given to new grads in the past is to marry rich so you have more options. And don’t go to grad school to get out of difficult choices. Consider moving home with your parents to save money and don’t do what you love.
This is all really good advice. You should go read those posts, but this year, my message to new grads is that you should make the mistakes I made when I graduated. They were good mistakes to make.
1. Ask for too much in the interview.
The first job interview I ever had was for the number one children’s book publisher at the time, Harper Row. It was a long shot, but I sent my resume to their New York City headquarters, and I ended up getting an interview – my ten years running our family children’s bookstore was worth a lot more than I realized.
When I got to the interview I didn’t understand that it was my job to sell myself. I thought that had already been done, and that’s why I got the interview. Read more
One of the things I love most about the advice-to-grads motif is that you learn a lot about the advice giver from the advice. When you force yourself to give short, smart advice, you end up focusing on the stuff that matters most to you.
Sheryl Sandberg, for example, gives amazing graduation speeches, but she always touches on how more women can live the life she is living, and they should aspire to that. That’s what’s important to her. JK Rowling focuses on feeling okay if you fail. It makes sense: she has spoken of how she was on public assistance and suicidal before she was queen of all publishing.
My advice focuses on challenging your preconceived notions. I think this is what I do best, so, of course, I tell people to go out in the world and do this.
Who you take advice from is important. I hate people who are snobs about career advice. You can get great advice from people who are terrible at life. And you can get terrible advice from people with grand successes. The trick is to understand where the person is coming from when they give the advice .
I have been railing against grad school for a long time, and I’m starting to believe that you should leave grad school off your resume if you are not working in the field you studied.
Here are five reasons why putting grad school on your resume makes you look bad. (And at the end of this post, there’s a game plan for what to do with any gap you’ll have when you remove grad school from your resume.)
1. Grad school on your resume is a formal announcement of a mistake.
If you are working in the exact field that you went to grad school for, then this advice does not apply to you. But most people do not get jobs that are directly related to their graduate degree. Most people did not need to go to grad school to get a job.
Which begs the question, “Why did you go?” For most people the answer will be that it was a mistake. It was a lot of time and money spent for a degree they didn’t need.
Other people will say they love to learn. This is not a good thing to say because it is not remarkable. At least, not among the people you need to be better than to get hired. Those star employees are learning all the time and do not take time away from work to go to grad school. Are you so stupid that you cannot learn without getting grades? Because this is what it looks like if you say you went to grad school because you love to learn. Read more