Category: Career

Where You Go To College Does Matter

It’s finally over. My son Alex chose the college he’ll attend next year.  I paid the deposit.  It took less than 10 minutes

My son knows he’s lucky to have parents who can juggle resources to send him to the top private university he chooses.  As the daughter of an immigrant and the first in my family to attend college, I didn’t have those choices and I get annoyed when I read those stories that tell you that where you go to college doesn’t really matter.  I know it matters because I got lucky, too, and I know that for kids without money, connections, or privilege, where you go to college can sometimes make all the difference in where you end up.

How did it happen?  In my middling Miami high school of 3,000 students, my counselor, who had about 600 on her watch, invited me into her office one day and told me she had met an admissions rep from New York University and assured me that I’d most likely get in with a scholarship.

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Washington Square Park

So, it was a random event that led me to NYU on a full ride until the end of my sophomore year when a family crisis forced me to give up my scholarship, move home, and transfer to the state university. Only in my junior year, sitting in classes with hundreds of students, did I realize what I had given up. In an incredible act of generosity, NYU took me back and returned most of my scholarship for my senior year.  During that critical period I held an important magazine internship and built a relationship with a professor who became a mentor and friend.

Of course, I could have succeeded in my career with a degree from the state university; many of my friends in other fields such as accounting did very well. But my opportunities would have been quite different and the truth is that my NYC experiences impressed the editors in Florida who hired me.

I’m always on the lookout in the classes I teach for students who may be first-generation, who need a little extra attention and I’m thrilled when they reach out to me.  As an attorney and child advocate in Baltimore, I saw few young adults make it to college without intensive support from mentors and outreach programs that identify scholars.

Every year we read amazing stories about those rare high school seniors accepted to all the Ivies but I prefer articles  about counselors guiding a new first generation of students, living much tougher lives than mine. In a high school in Queens, NY, a counselor, assigned by the non-profit College Advising Corps, urges her students to dream bigger than the local community college, to state universities, private universities, and the Ivies. Her salary, a modest $35,000 a year, is partly paid by NYU.

 

 

Why Work Friends Become Real Friends

Why do we still feel connected to some work friends from our past and not to others?

I thought about this yesterday when two random events brought this home to me and I realized I was closely linked to two women because sometimes colleagues become confidantes and real friends.

At Starbucks, I ran into Jean, a journalist I used to work with at The Sun in Baltimore.  After we hugged, we spent an hour catching up about our kids, our lives, and our current careers – in that order – because at this stage that’s how it usually goes. What I most remember during our time at The Sun many years ago was that as her star rose and mine fell, she remained loyal. It wasn’t the most political choice for her and I was grateful. As we were leaving Starbucks, we noticed another former colleague busy writing on his laptop. We didn’t stop,

Around 10 that evening when I scanned my Facebook feed, I was stunned to see a post from Charlyne, sharing that it was one of the worst days of her life. Her husband Carter had died at home with hospice care. We had started our careers as journalists at The Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale and then, as things often happened, she had come up to work at The Sun a year or two after I had.

There’s been a lot of conversation lately about the public/private disclosure of the most personal health information and Charlyne had chosen the private way. For years – and we had not seen each other for many years after she moved back to Florida – she has been one of my favorite Facebook friends, always congratulating me on life’s milestones and my family, and sharing great articles about journalism.

I woke up crying this morning thinking about Charlyne and the death of her husband. I woke up thinking about her friendship during my illness when I was 30 and single and trying to keep my illness private. I also remembered how thrilled I was when she met Carter. She deserved all the happiness in the world.

Real friends step outside the workplace. I think of Jean and Charlyne as two women who stood by me when I was vulnerable. They changed my life and made me believe that kindness could be found everywhere, even at work.

 

Is “Younger” The Best Fantasy on TV?

I am obsessed with “Younger,” the TV Land comedy about a 40-year-old divorced mother from NJ played by  Sutton Foster,  who passes herself off as a 26-year-old because that’s the only way she can get a job in NYC’s publishing world.

Let’s for a moment forget the most ridiculous aspects of the show: She has a best friend in Williamsburg, Brooklyn with extra room in a spacious loft; a thrift shop/hipster wardrobe that only a stylist could throw together; and, get this, an adoring twentyish tattoo-artist boyfriend.

OK, it’s all fantasyland, but there is also something of substance here that goes to the heart of how hard it can be for a woman to reclaim her career after she gets off the merry-go-round to care for her children. So many women I know – from 40 to 60 – are still trying to figure this out: How to balance career and family. Every woman’s story is different. I’ve tried it lots of ways – on and off the merry-go-round through three careers – but I never thought to lie about my age. How could I? I could never get away with it. There’s Facebook and yearbooks and everything else to give me away.

Although the show is mostly played for laughs – Liza Miller must be the only 40-year-old who doesn’t know what Twitter is when she starts her job – there are some ugly stereotypes. Her boss, Diana, a severely made-up, divorced (and possibly childless) woman in her 40s, is a bitch from old school drama, and one who stands in the way of Liza’s success. And the male head of the publishing house is crushing on Liza and ignoring age-appropriate women like her boss.

Yet, the show is clever, and as Emily Nussbaum, the TV critic for The New Yorker observes, “The goofy premise suggests an alternative view of the generation gap.”  So, it comes as no surprise when a few of my students tell me they’re watching “Younger,” too. Why?  It’s all about Hilary Duff; they grew up with her. Hilary plays the perky, ambitious Kelsey, who is loyal to her sometimes clueless colleague Liza.  And also cries on her shoulder whenever she screws up. Only a few years out of college, Kelsey is creating the successful life my students can only dream of. She’s already getting her own publishing imprint for millennials.

Perfect. “Younger” is a fantasy for mothers and their daughters.