If I Was a Comedienne (Part 17)

The Tender Knob

So I'm relatively new to San Francisco, and everybody is excited all the time... "Ahhh! What a great city to live in! It must be great!" and it's pretty good. I have to say that the city has treated me pretty well so far.

When I first moved here, my "relocation coach" took me around to see a bunch of different apartments and... as someone who has grown up for a large part in the Bay Area, I was really surprised at how much renaming has happened in the city. So we went to all the normal places, like the mission and the marina and we looked at Noe Valley and all those good places. But then we finally got to my apartment that I live in now, which is on Van Ness. But it's in this weird place on Van Ness-- it's not quite the Hayes Valley, it's not quite Civic Center, not quite in the Tenderloin....and my realtor has the balls to tell me that I live in "The TenderNob". I mean, I don't know much about the city I suppose-- it's been awhile since I last lived here, but I'm 125% sure that she just made that up. It's like a bunch of realtors were sitting around a table one day and asked themselves, "How can we make the Tenderloin a less scary place to live? I know... let's add "Nob" on the end of it".

Don't get me wrong, I have no problems with living in the Tenderloin, I mean, my sister lived here when she first moved out too. But to be honest, The TenderNob sounds strangely sexual. I mean, it's called The. Tender. Nob. Run that through your brain for a second. Don't overthink it, but just take a second to enjoy it. Let it roll off your tongue. Not literally. But you know.

San Francisco Neverland

I read a great article today on the inter webs about how San Francisco is slowly shifting away from being the Neverland that people always think about when they think about Silicon Valley. It was written from the perspective of an artist hear in the city, but I was thinking the whole time-- Hey this isn't only for artists, bro. The struggle is real and it's hitting everyone. I might be that tech parasite that everyone's talking about, but that doesn't mean our lives are easy.

Granted, I've only been here for a little bit. A hot second in the grand scheme of life, but in San Francisco time, I'm practically a lifer. There are two very divided camps about San Francisco as a city, and tenure is only one of the hotly debated topics that are shunted around like sad beach balls during pretty much every party I go to. There's (generally) two camps. Pro-SF and "People Waiting to Move Away" aka "Disgusted Former SF Folks". Digusted Formers also sometimes take a mutation to the "Here Only for a Nobler Cause" folks. Those guys are here only because they want to teach english to starving children for a couple years before they move back to [fill in blank of other big city here] to continue working as an executive director at a non-profit that they founded with a friend in college. Every now and then you get a "I'm Here for My Fam" (I kind of count myself in that bucket), but mostly the first two. More generally I suppose you could just lump them into "optimists" and "pessimists", but these labels are more fun. So, for a roll up of the topics that keep coming up again and again, let's get started:

1. Cost of Rent: Yeah. It's really f-ing expensive. That should be the title of my memoir from my times in San Francisco.
1. Pro-SF: That's just the cost of living here! But look at the great things that SF has to offer. The culture! The parks! The sunshine! Where else can you brew your own beer, have a farm to table meal and then go to a museum for their new exhibit on the seduction prints of Japan in one day?! 
2. DFSFF: It's too expensive. And it's all those stupid tech companies' fault. If they didn't inflate the average income so much in this geographic area, we wouldn't have to deal with it.
3. My Take: Shit is just expensive yo. It's what you get when you combine basic economics + small geographic area (limited supply) + great weather + more jobs in the area. Plus, California, especially northern California, is just generally a nice place to live. It sucks, but it's not the employee's fault. We just want to have jobs.
2. The Traffic: Especially if you commute to the south bay for work. This is your life. This would be the subtitle, so I could mimic Dr. Strangelove. My memoir, for the record, is titled (so far): "Cost of Rent: Yeah. It's really f-ing expensive OR "The Traffic: This is mein kampf". Though I don't know why I decided to go german with that last part.
1. Pro-SF: It will get better- we just need to make better transportation! We have a growing population so it makes sense.
2. DFSFF: Again, totally the fault of all these damn tech companies. Without them, we wouldn't be pumping all these cars on the road-- all friggin' hipsters driving their racing-striped mini cooper from SF to Cupertino every day. Have you SEEN the 280 recently?!
3. My Take: This one is probably mostly to the fault of the tech companies. There are a lot of people (especially younger people) who are moving to the bay area for jobs, but don't want to live in the burbs. So we commute. Usually we use buses, but some of us don't. Sorry about it.
3. Adults Acting Like Kids: or, Never never land syndrome. And not the creepy Michael Jackson kind.
1. Pro-SF: That's the magic of SF! You have the freedom and the youthful energy to pursue those things that you WANT and no one is going to tell you that you CAN'T do it or that your ideas are silly. We live and think out of the box here! There are no lines to color out of!
2. DFSFF: But seriously. Living with roommates when you're in your 30s? And what about the dating scene? No one is ready to settle down, everyone just keeps dating....forever. In a flaky way.
3. My Take: Boo on living with roommates (though seriously that's the only way to afford anything decent). I live in the tenderloin because I just couldn't do it for my first year here. I needed my space. Dating is actually good out here because there's so many good options. But it's true, if you're looking to settle down, it's hard to find someone on the same wavelength as you.

There's many more, but I wanted to throw out those three to begin with. Each of those three could be broken down into tirades all on their own, but you have to start somewhere. Coming back home has been a little of a mixed bag, but I'm back. And writing again, so I'm sure we'll see more of each other again in the future :)

Sonder

Where Mobile Payments Meets Life

Me and a couple of my really cool friends are into mobile payments (I'm not alone!). So, when we have life crises that we need to talk about we often revert to where we are most comfortable. It's the best way for us to express our emotions. Well, not actually, but we tried to imagine what it would be like if that really was how do conducted ourselves in life... and I thought ensued was pretty funny. They even suggested that I should make a new blog that would be "Ms Cleo meets mobile payments"...Some excerpts:

J:  no no

tomorrow is fine

also I need to ask your opinion on some stuff

not mobile payments related

me:  oh ok

are you sure?

becuse i do have an opinion on that

im sure.

 J:  ha

it would be funny if you turned it into mobile payments

"So I'm really having a hard time with my life. I don't know what to do."

"Well J...merchants didn't know what to do when they couldn't afford a credit card processor."

"Then square came along."

 Sent at 12:10 AM on Thursday

 me:  lol

i am totally going to do that

 J:  "Ninny. I don't know what to do. I'm totally in love with this girl, but she is married and has a kid."

"You know what that sounds like?"

"Paypal"

"Ebay was in love with PayPal although PayPal was already tied to other systems, but Ebay did what it thought was right and married PayPal."

 Sent at 12:14 AM on Thursday

 me:  lol

omg

ISIS

"sometimes shit just doesnt work out in the beginning, but then, you know, you keep the right partners around you and before you know it, well-- it still maybe wont work out, but you'll feel better"

 Sent at 12:16 AM on Thursday

 J:  haha

I'm going to email this convo to [our other friends]

 

 And finally our response from our friends was:

 

"I'm trying to make a better life for me and my kid but the past keeps coming back to haunt me. How do I move on?"

"You know P, when I have those dark moments and I need direction, I always think - what would Google Wallet do? Would they partner with a couple banks to try out their product in the mass-market, or would they make it an Android-exclusive service that's more focused on helping you manage your loyalty cards than replacing the plastic in your wallet? If you think about it like that, life makes a lot sense."

"Um...ok."

 

I don't know if this is there way of telling me I'm heartless, or if they're just excited that I'm nerdy like them. Regardless, I am constantly reminded about how lucky I am to have people like this in my life.

I Am Wiser Now and Stuff

And I'm back... haha after a little hiatus. A lot has been happening-- with graduation and all that good stuff, and a lot of life changes. Here are some things I've learned over the past couple weeks:

• There is a direct, inverse correlation between the amount of time left in b-school and the number of social engagements that happen. This is due to a couple of things:
• People suddenly realize that they might have messed up "the best two years of their lives" and are desperately trying to rectify that. Desperately.
• People suddenly realize they have a lot of money and by money, I mean debt. Lots of debt. But, on the upside, this is debt that has already occurred, so even though we've learned about sunk cost, we want to get the most "bang for our buck" by "spending it optimally" (read: "bang for your buck" = "as fast as possible before we graduate and loans are not something that just happens every quarter anymore and "spending it optimally" = "buying rounds of fireballs much against your better judgement")
• The school also plans a couple of these things, but I think we take it upon ourselves to make it more epic every single time than it needs to be. Because. #YOLO.
•  Breaking up kind of sucks. It brings out the worst in everyone, and it has lasting effects. It's kind of like that awkward picture of you as a tween-- you try to keep burying it (because I deal with my emotions in a healthy way) but it keeps popping up at inopportune moments like you birthday, your wedding and your funeral (yeah I just Up-movied you). Luckily, there's websites like Single Steve that assures me that I'm not alone.
• Cats know when you're sad. And then they sleep on your face and cuddle you so hard that they wake you up. It's the most adorable thing and the most annoying thing all rolled up into one. Which actually explains cats pretty accurately.
• The real estate market in San Francisco is insane. Seriously, insane. We're talking first born child in exchange for a 200 square foot efficiency studio (which is code for: sometimes you have to share a bathroom). Also, the Tenderloin district in San Francisco is not as sketchy as I remember.
• Chelsea Clinton is killin' it. She's definitely part of my generation, and she's been able to take approximately a million different roles (PhD, McKinsey, campaigner, Wall Street and more) and she's been able to handle it with grace. Now she's dedicating more of her time to her parent's foundation (now rebranded with her name prominently in the title) and she makes no excuses and has no regrets about all the changes and decisions she's made. Especially right now, I find her ability to pick up, move on and start over really inspiring.

To new beginnings.

Life Is Not Exactly Rocket Science

What should I be doing right now? Sleeping, doing homework, studying for my finals or writing my final papers. What am I doing right now? Ordering new glasses (because I lost mine), doing half-ass yoga (I haven't talked to my best friend in like, a month, and she doesn't mind it when I mouth-breathe into the phone as long as I can recap how my life is) and reading about loggerhead turtles. Why? Because, well. Turtles. Also, because I'm a second year business school student. Which, if I may make such a bold statement, is pretty much like having senioritis in high school, except you can drink now.

So you can't really laugh and lightheartedly call them "senioritis spasms" or whatever. Because, technically, they're really more like, "well-intentioned benders" or "brief expressions of your love of drinking" if you're feeling particularly artsy about it.

ANYway, I'm late to the game but Wired released their "101 signals" list late last year (August 2013, I know, I know I'm stretching the definition of "late last year", but it makes me feel better) which covers the 101 most interesting blogs and channels for a variety of categories like science, design, government, etc. I'm a big fan of most of them, I think it's a pretty effective way to get my news and learn new things, and I've remembered now how much I like Digg.

Also, I have it to thank because now I know that, until recently, baby sea turtles disappeared for years between hatching, crawling into the ocean (palm sized) and then re-emerging years later with shells that were up to 2 feet wide. And now we've chipped them with solar-powered, acrylic-sealed adhesive GPS locators, and now we know that they potentially hitch rides on floating temporary landmasses. So. Yup. Turtles. At my new favorite blog: Phenomena: Not Exactly Rocket Science.

I'm An Adult, I Swear.

Ahhhh.... admit weekend is finally behind us. After three exhausting days of way-too-early mornings and far-too-late-for-me-because-I'm-a-grandma nights, the admits have gotten to sneak a peak at what makes Booth, Booth, and I've gotten a small reminder about why I love going to this school.

Admit weekend is a funny thing, because it takes a ton of planning so you'd think that it would come across as very forced and contrived, but because of the sheer amount of people who help out to make it happen (over 200) it really takes on a life of its own. On Sunday night though, as I scrambled to finish my cases in financial management midterm that I'd put off all weekend due to the festivities, I realized just how strange it was that people came to the school and saw the second years and first years as people that were somehow "more knowledgeable" than them. The first years because they had gone through a whole year of business school already, the second years because not only had they gone through a year and a half (holy crap, does that year make a ton of difference *sarcasm*) of business school, but they also had finished recruiting and *hopefully* have figured out what they're going to do with their lives.

Well let me destroy some myths. You think I'm an adult but:

• Instead of working on my take-home midterm on the impact of hedge funds and the technology bubble in the winter garden, I'm actually looking up the best ramen places in Chicago. Why? Because. #2ndyear #ramenisyums that's why. And there's a lot of new contenders this year! Check it out: Best Ramen in Chicago Revisited
• Instead of fretting over who's going to take over co-chair positions next year, I'm really just looking at the million "top X lists" on Buzzfeed. These usually have deep, meaningful impact on my psyche like "Top 10 Ways You Can Tell Your Cat Hates You" or "What Game of Thrones Character Are You?" or, my personal favorite today, "17 Things Only a Hyperactive Person Would Understand"
• As a side note, all co-chairs are really in it so they can hang out with their friends and pass it off as work. We work hard organizing conferences and things, but most of the time, we just genuinely like each other and want to hang out. Therefore, all co-chair meetings are really just meetings to eat food, laugh at each other and catch up on life
• When you argue about stupid things in public places, I laugh at you. When I was a real adult and I worked for a living, I would stifle my laughter behind a coffee, newspaper or my computer screen. Now I give zero. So if you're sitting in the middle of the Winter Garden arguing about how the reading room shouldn't be called "the reading room" and instead should be called "the studying room", or how you don't like it when your group members won't brainstorm with you during study group meetings, I'm just going to laugh at you. And maybe point
• When I'm typing furiously in class and you think I'm taking very meticulous class notes. I'm really just writing on my blog. No seriously. Or I could be chatting with my friends through Facebook. Depends how ambitious I feel

#2ndyear #concentratingishard

The Top 5 Things That Suck About Business School

So, Admit Weekend is upon us again. For those of us who are not part of the bschool cult, Admit Weekends are actually a pretty big deal in our world and they take months of relentless planning (at least at my school) to make sure that everything is properly laid out and ready for our bright-eyed prospective students. Here's how it works: a prospective student somewhere in the world gets a call in the early winter time (usually around December, depending on the school) telling them that they are awesome, probably one of the smartest people in the world because they got into one of the biggest-deal bschools on the planet and congratulations. A few weeks later they get invited to an admit weekend, where they can come to visit the school and learn more about the culture.

They come for a weekend and current 1st and 2nd years (usually) are brought in to show them around campus, answer questions, talk to them about what it's like to go that school and participate in "late night events" to show them how fun that particular school is. Usually, it seems like all the big schools have their weekends the same weekend, so we are quite literally competing against each other for the minds and hearts of prospective students.

I participate in this now since I felt like it helped me make my decision when I was a prospective student, and I went to training last night which covered all the basics I would expect: don't trash talk other schools, please don't have sex with the prospectives, please don't assume it's always the male in a couple that has been accepted (nowadays its almost more likely it will be the female), etc. Basically, don't mess this up. I started thinking about all the reasons I love bschool (they're not ground-breaking: the people, the experiences, the opportunities, the alumni network, etc.), but then I realized that there were a couple of things that I didn't like about it. Bschool really skews your perception of what is real-life, and I think sometimes it pushes you toward some kind of irrational thinking. Some examples:

1. You hear conversations that are ridiculous (and that may make you a crazy person). Particularly around recruiting time. Walking around the halls, you'll hear the inevitable, "He only got an interview invite from McKinsey and Bain? What about BCG? He must have really messed up". Dude. You got invites from two of the top consulting companies in the world, calm it down. Or, another of my favorites once signing time comes around is, "Can you believe I got a signing bonus of only $15k? That means this year, my salary will only be like, $120k. You may think that's a lot, but it's not. I'm living in San Francisco!". Okay, true that. San Francisco is expensive. I get it. But there's lots of people who live there that live on a lot less than that. And are less of a jerk-off than you are.
2. You live in a constant state of Fear-Of-Missing-Out (FOMO). Damn right we made it into an acronym. And we use it freely, because it's just so damn common on campus. "Man, I'm FOMO-ing like whoa right now", "Come to the party this weekend! FOMO!". Yup, these things happen. So you live in a constant state of "Yay! I didn't miss out on all of these things" instead of a "Proud of myself I did all of these things". I feel like that just can't be healthy.
3. You do more than any sane person should do. Especially as a second year, you would hope that your life issues are pretty much condensed into whether or not you watch an entire season of Revenge or an entire season of Breaking Bad on weeknights, but in reality, you still have a lot to do. There are clubs to run, first years to help, big school events (like admit weekend) to participate in, and, oh yeah, don't forget to hang out with your friends/significant other when you have time (aka when you're sleeping). If you decide to be one of the crazy ones that works part time, good luck and god speed to ya.
4. You are constantly hyper-aware that you are probably behind in something. You want to be a high performer-- do all of your homework, analyze all the readings, prepare all of your cases thoroughly. But sometimes life doesn't work out that way (see 3 above). For example, (at least at my school), it is more likely that you're in a silent competition with your group mates to be the first person to put their first draft into the Dropbox. You don't want to be the last one, lest your group thinks that you're a complete slacker, so start accepting that for every first draft you turned in there's at least three others you missed the boat on. It all balances out in the end, but for those super-prudent folks who organize and plan everything, we just need to let go a little bit and accept that, hey, sometimes you'll be the late one.
5. You pretty much disappear from your non-bschool friends lives. There are a lot of workarounds to this one, but I feel like I'm never budgeting my time appropriately between bschool and non-bschool acquaintances. And that makes me feel bad. I feel better that I try my hardest to make sure I carve out at least a little bit of time, but....FOMO.

Stuck In Love Soothes My Woes

I've been on quite the Netflix binge recently. Due to the absolutely ridiculous weather that we've been having (Seriously?! A 40 degree swing in less than 16 hours? Really?! Highs in the negative degrees? What IS this place?), I just hang out mostly and watch movies that are streaming on Netflix. I recently watched one called "Stuck In Love", which I actually really liked.

I want to caveat by saying that I have very low expectations of Netflix, since I'm usually stuck watching ridiculous things like "Biozombies from Outer Space Part 5" or something like that (usually it's recommended by Max, which I think is absolutely ridiculous because they sunk a bunch of money into this thing that is very unlikely to actually tell me what I want to watch, especially because the most recently watched list is probably so crazy varied that it would be hard to pin down anything I like to watch). ANYwho.

So Stuck In Love focuses on a man who is a famous author. He has two children, an older girl and a younger boy, who he is desperately hoping will become authors as well some day. He has recently divorced his wife (~1 year ago) and is sleeping with the (married) neighbor down the street while not so secretly hoping that his wife will come back. From the children's perspective, it's a movie about growing, trying to figure out who you are and, in the son's case, learning just how freeing/awesome/terrifying it is to be a young adult and actually be able to make your own decisions for the first time in your life. Watching it as a 28 year old, I felt strangely torn between the two main roles in the movie. Was I supposed to relate more to the guy's kids? They're growing and maturing and trying to figure out their lives much like I am, but at the same time, I'm a little too old to try to pretend that I'm as naive as they are. Yet, I am too young to really relate to the man in the movie-- I'm not a divorcee, I don't have children, I'm not left pining over a life of what could have been (okay, I lied, I am constantly agonizing over the decisions I've made in my life and trying to figure out if I made the "right" ones, so I guess maybe I am more naive than I think). But there's something about his life that calls me to me as well-- he's lonely because he is thrust into an unfamiliar situation where he just isn't sure what to do, he is constantly feeling adrift by not being able to relate to those that he's supposedly closest to, and he feels like he's in limbo between what was and what could be. I can relate to all those things, and I haven't even had my mid-life crisis yet.

Regardless, I would highly recommend this movie. It's filled with the happy parts that make you long for your family, sad parts that make you think back to the first time you fell in love (I heard the first cut is the deepest, or so the 80s tell me) and some truly awesomely awkward parts that make you miss those weird growing years while silently relishing the fact that those are behind you. It does have a happy ending.

Just Chicago Things

So there is this site out there called "Just Girly Things" on Tumblr (http://justgirlythings.tumblr.com/) which, does not amuse me directly, but amuses me greatly through the many spoofs that happen (What can I say? I'm bitter about love.)

So, I was inspired to do "Just Chicago Things". Here's my first attempt:

4 Lifeguards Make More than the $109K Median Income in Newport Beach, CA

 I read this article on Bloomberg today.  It made me depressed that the MEDIAN INCOME is $109K and that the normal home price there is $1.5M. Seriously?!

And I'm over here like a shmuck trying to pay for business school at the lousy tune of $160K for two years. It's practically a deal! Or, on the flip side, two years of school could have been foregone to provide me with ~1/12 or the way to a smaller bungalow in Newport Beach. Poor life choices.

They keep making it sound like privatization of municipal services is some awful thing, but I'm actually okay with it. Privatization has been proven to result in overall increases in efficiency, lower costs and higher quality of services.

Also, how the hell are we saving 800 people a year on the beach?

Happy New Year!

Ahh... it's the new year... a whole season dedicated to me making promises to myself to eat better and exercise more and then eat my sorrows away indoors because it's (literally) -36 degrees outside. I don't know how I feel about this whole Polar Vortex thing, but I know for sure that it's definitely cramping my style. With the new year comes the realization that I really only have about 6 more months of school before it's time for me to pack up my bags and literally move my life across the country so that I can be a big kid and pretend to have one of those... what are they called again... oh yeah, careers.

Anywho. The best thing about winter break though is that there is a set amount of time put aside for me to read and listen to music and catch up on magazines and basically do all those "normal people things" that I never actually have time to do. I read a lot during this break because I had lots of downtime between airports and layovers and generally pretending that I'm retired (my favorite thing to do on my vacations) by pretending that I have an unlimited amount of time to do leisurely activities. I read Dan Brown's new book, a Jack Reacher novel, the new Superfreakonomics and this book called 1Q84. I gotta say, 1Q84 really blew me away.

I didn't know really what to expect, but this is, from now on, going to be the bar by which I'm going to measure all other authors, but specifically Japanese authors against. There are a lot of Asian influences in the book, top being the fascination with the concept of time (What is time? Does time flow linearly? What if it didn't? Does time mean different things to different people?) and the idea of fate or destiny. SPOILER ALERT In the story, a serial killer, Aoname, reeling after the loss of a good friend finds a new friend with which to have orgies with strangers. Meanwhile, Tengo, a budding author decides to ghost-rewrite the story of a young, 17 year old girl and submit it for a writing contest, which they win. The young 17 year old girl, Fuka-Eri, is the product of a cult lifestyle and may not be fully human. The cult tries to kill Aoname after they find out she has killed their leader because he is a raging pedophile. Aoname becomes pregnant with Tengo's child even though they've never met. Yup, this story gets strange, but it's a great read to get weird with. Seamless story-telling and a haunting story leaves you asking fundamental stories about what you, the reader, believes. Is there such a thing as fate? Do the ends justify the means? Does true love exist? What is true love, anyway?

Highly recommend. It's kind of an epic read, so make sure to set aside the time, but it's well worth it. I can say that this book has changed the way I think!

In Other News.... Don't Fake Sign Langauge

I don't know how I missed this, but apparently someone thought that they could volunteer to be the sign language translator at Nelson Mandela's funeral (yup, you hear this right) without actually knowing any sign language. So that's embarrassing. Don't do that.

After multiple sources from different countries confirmed that all of his signs were gibberish and he wasn't actually signing anything, he blamed it on a schizophrenic episode and said that he had started hallucinating during the presentation (which was why he was just waving his arms about, essentially, instead of, you know, helping deaf people).

Things I've Learned from Working

 

I was in a deep discussion the other day with one of my friends around what our worst and best jobs were. We thought deeply about what makes a good job a good one and a bad job a bad one.

All the normal characters were brought out-- a bad job? Well that would entail that you had at least one weird coworker who was always strangely (or outrightly) inappropriately sexual in the workplace, or a boss that tried to use the common approach of feedback ("Hey! Let's grab coffee, I want to hear about how you think that went") to be a truly awful person ("Is that soy? Did you order that with soy?", "Yes, I'm lactose intolerant...", "But soy is so fattening! Do you really think you need that right now?").But we soon realized that it was actually much easier to pinpoint what our favorite (best) job was then our worst ones, because even our worst ones taught us something about this crazy life we live. So I'm not going to comment any further on which one is my favorite or least favorite, but here's my list of things I've learned from each of my jobs:

1. "Street Marketer". Nope, this isn't code for "took her clothes off for change", though, in California that's entirely a possibility. No, what this meant was that, for a summer, I was that annoying person that snuck around car parking lots and put little flyers on your window for when you came back. The flyers advertised a pizza place on Main Street in Huntington Beach that you probably would've gone to anyway. But hey, it paid $20/hour, and that was a lot when you're 13! Things I learned:
• Car alarms are surprisingly sensitive, particularly around the windshield area. You're actually much more effective if you tuck it into the window on the drivers side because then i won't slip down and they'll see it as they get into the car
• You might think that parking your car in a garage might give you a little added safety, since there's a person sitting there taking money and watching people come in and out of the garage. That person is usually some high schooler who couldn't give less of a crap about someone coming in and touching your car. I'm sure it helped because I was a 13 year old girl in a jean mini, but don't hold your breath that I couldn't grow up into a 27 year old miscreant in a jean mini
2. Basketball Coach. This one is kind of self explanatory, except that it was for 9-11 year old girls. 
• This age group is confusing as hell. They're beginning to understand that they are supposed to be holy terrors in about a year or so, but they're figuring out (slowly) how far they can push their boundaries without getting in trouble just yet. Best bet is to treat them like you would a younger sibling
• This age group also hasn't figured out yet that sports are good! They're cool! They keep you in shape throughout your high school (and if you're lucky) college years and beyond! The answer to this misconception is to make them run suicides
3. Secretary and Counselor for the Boys and Girls Club. This was kind of awesome. Check in the kids, answer the  phones and then go help them with their homework or play kickball. 
• I got a little metal stool that I could sit on behind the desk, which changed my life. Would highly recommend this as sometimes the parents just want to chat when they pick up and drop off their kids
• You get sick a lot more when you're around this many children of all different age groups. Because. Well, children are just walking biohazards really. You also develop a favorite age group (mine are the 5-6 year olds because they still think you're cool and they still love you and will listen to you)
• You realize that the idea of having children is terrifying. So this is the perfect job for a teenager
4. Student Worker at the Local Cafe on Campus. This was kind of awesome because, well, free food that wasn't cafeteria food. And, it was right across the street from my dorm
•  Uh free food? Awesome. Making random new types of food with the given ingredients? Awesome.
• Not awesome was the mandatory over night shifts we had to take a few times a semester and cleaning up puke during this overnight shifts because it always happened on the weekends
5. Summer RA. For girls dorms. For sports camps, alumni reunions and whatever else happened on campus
• Adults, when put into dorms, turn back into students
• Young girls, when at sports camp and away from their parents, turn into squealing psychos (seriously, they terrorize each other)
• The best type of people to RA are nuns and priests that are here for what I assume are nun and priest conferences

 Then I graduated and got a "real job". *sigh* I guess you can't have it all....

Jon

When I was young, my parents owned a small deli in our tiny little town. Every day, Jon would come in. I was probably 4 or 5 when I made my first memory of Jon, but apparently he had come in to my parents deli every day since before I was born.

Everyday, he would buy a pack of Camels. Which I always thought was fitting since he always had a grizzly, blond, 5 o'clock shadow and kind of looked like what I imagined a camel would look like. His specialties were talking about the weather, wearing a different colored (but same) flannel shirt every day, making Donald Duck noises and telling me inappropriate life truths for someone of my age. My mom was always nice to him, and would always give him a free cup of coffee for his 3 hours of out-loud pondering (while he chain smoked at least a quarter of his pack-- everyone smoked inside back then, it was the thing to do), because I think we assumed that he didn't have anyone else. Any time that we tried to ask him about his children, he would always change the subject or just brush us off with something like, "Well, they're much older than this little one here. Enjoy her while you can! They grow up, and then they forgetcha."

I remember that, once, I asked him why he worked, because in my mind, my parents didn't work. This was just their life. They were born into the making of sandwiches during lunchtime and providing candy to kids on their way home. That was just science. As usual, when I asked a question that maybe struck Jon in an unexpected way, he paused in his blowing of smoke into the general cloud that surrounded him and stared hard at me like I had just materialized in front of him.

"That's just what you do." He said.
"Is it fun? Do you get to be with your friends?"
He laughed. "After awhile, even if they're not your friends, they're your friends."
I stayed quiet because I sensed I was about to be exposed to an inappropriate truth, which in my mind were just "adult secrets".
"Some people work because they want things. But don't you ever fall into that trap. You don't actually need things. Most people need very few things. You should stay away from people who try to tell you that you need a lot to be happy. They're just trying to make themselves feel better because things are the only things that make them happy."
"But I want things." (This was true-- I really wanted that Little Artist Set at the craft store that my mom told me repeatedly was too expensive.)
"Try giving some of the things you have to someone else." And then he made a Donald Duck noise and went back to making a cumulonimbus (or at least a very heavy fog) around himself.

I did end up getting that Little Artist set that year. I used it once but quickly lost interest. For my birthday, I got a very similar "art for kids" set. I told my mom to donate it to someone else since I already had one.

Now, every Christmas season, I think about Jon. He's probably long gone by now, but I still think about how simple his life was, and how much perspective he brought to my life-- even today.

"The Logic of Stupid Poor People"

Came across this article and had to share it.... Super interesting.

I'm A Leaver!

I'm a little nervous because of my friend at school, P. He's kind of the best guy ever-- one of those people that you meet and you feel an instant connection to, so even though you've only known them for a short time (like 1 year) they feel like family and you can't really imagine what life would be like without them in it, now that they're in it.

I was sitting in the Winter Garden yesterday doing coffee chats (there's a lot of those now, as my poor first years begin to realize the horrors of what it means to be in full-on recruiting mode). It was probably my 5th or 6th one and I was running out of ways to explain why strategic roles don't necessarily always have the word "strategy" in the job title. As I finished up, P came bouncing up to me in the adorable way that he does (he usually bounces everywhere actually), and proclaimed "I want to hang out more. Like, now. Well not now, but soon. Because you're a leaver! You're going to be leaving me soon!". I was kind of confused at first. At first, I thought he meant "a lever" and so I pantomimed my arm being a lever and then giggled in a stupid way as I waved my lever arm around.

It struck me though that he's right. I've been so focused on "the next thing"-- the next LEAD event, the next dinner I had to make, the next planning meeting, the next time I had to go to work, the next final, etc. that I hadn't stopped to fully realize-- holy shit I'm going to be leaving Chicago in six months! In the beginning of fall, I think I realized it because my thoughts were still on all the paperwork I had to fill out to get ready to leave Apple/go back to Apple full-time. Now, because of how busy I've been, I've forgotten to keep that in mind and forgot that my big focus point for this year was to make the most of me living in Chicago.

Granted, a lot of my time has been taken up by dealing with a ridiculous (I mean it, ridiculous) roommate situation, but I really need to reprioritize my life.

In other news, I also noticed a few days ago that when I have to wait in a standing position (like, in a line or something) for any extended period of time (2 minutes) I do this weird thing where I tap my right and left feet. Not like, tap dancer style. But like I'm trying to communicate using Morse code with my feet. I can't remember when I started doing this weird thing, but now that I've noticed I can't stop. I'm such a strange person.