Yeah, that's my life savings right there.

Because I’m making six pennies a year in my job after taxes, I follow a very strict budget that allows me to afford a moderate amount of food and a moderate amount of fun. There is no room for a savings plan in my budget so I just figured if I was extra careful nothing would ever go wrong.

Then last week everything went wrong.

I spilled sangria (or water according to the troubleshooting report I made to Apple) on my laptop, I dropped my straightener one time too many and it broke, and I found out my parent’s insurance company is onto me no longer being a student and has dropped me. For those of you non-accounting majors out there, that’s about 5 billion dollars worth of problems.

I had a minor panic attack. And by minor I mean I opened my window, stood on the ledge for a few moments, and thought about who I would haunt if I came back as a ghost. Then logic hit me and I realized that because I’m only one floor up I would just break a bunch of bones, sending me to the hospital and making my lack of insurance problem even worse.

So instead of jumping I thought of my other options. Luckily my grandparents who live in the city had a laptop I could borrow until I figured you out what to do about my laptop-turned-coaster. Unluckily it was designed for the partially blind. I’ve seen desktop computers more portable than this laptop. Hell, I’ve seen elephants smaller than this thing. The screen was about a football field long and the font was visible from space. This proved to be more than an inconvenience when I was blogging at WiFi cafes.  I was writing about STDs for one blog and let’s just say the employees at the cafe did not enjoy being able to read about gonorrhea while serving coffee. So not only did I have to blog from home all week, but I’m pretty sure I’m on a sex offender list now. Read More »

Halloween in NY brings out all the freaks.

I despised Halloween in college because I refused to be a sexy nurse or a sexy goat or a sexy window-washer. Instead of buying those bagged costumes I would put hours into brainstorming and creating a witty costume only to have it fail because no one “got it.” I figured that the one good thing about graduating was that I would never again have to enter a crowded, sweaty frat party and be stared down by 150 sexy firefighters.

As I was stuffed into a subway car this weekend (that was at least 200 people over capacity) and stabbed in the eyes by fairy wings and other assorted accessories that do not belong on public transportation, I realized Halloween never ends. I will have to spend the rest of my life dressing up in costumes and pretending to be charmed by men who at 45 years old still think it’s funny to dress as a gyno. Read More »

Working in the real world is harder than I ever thought. I remember older friends telling me that they would come home exhausted and barely have the energy to pull together a dinner sandwich. But I blew them off and just assumed that for some reason their jobs involved intensive physical labor that made them so tired. And since I was never on the construction job track I figured that I would end my days full of energy and zest.

Turns out I was wrong. I’m so dead by the end of the day that I can barely keep my eyes open when I crawl into bed at sunset. Truth be told, I cannot figure out why. I possibly have the least physically demanding job in the entire world. As a freelance blogger I spend half my days in bed on the computer and half my days on a couch on the computer. Sure my fingers are getting a work-out (ever seen a thumb with biceps?) but the rest of me might as well be sold off for spare parts. If anyone knows how much legs (partially shaved) are going for these days, please leave me a message below.

And it’s not only the exhaustion that’s taking a toll on me. It’s also being responsible for the work that I do everyday. In the past I’ve had part time jobs doing things like working at an ice cream store. But if I didn’t bring my A-game to work it wasn’t that big of a deal. All it meant was that some kid had an allergic reaction because I wasn’t paying attention when his mother asked if nuttybutter-walnut ice cream had nuts in it. Same with internships. I could make a million mistakes and then shrug my shoulders and be like “sorry, I’m just an intern, I didn’t know that pressing backspace would delete a year’s worth of work.” Read More »

Every once in a while I’m faced with making a big adult decision with huge consequences. I’m at the point where I’m spending my own money and should technically be able to handle life on my own, yet that doesn’t mean I have any idea what I’m doing.

This past week I went apartment hunting (much more fun than job hunting, but slightly less fun than duck hunting) and I learned that Realtors are not only the most desperate/clingy people ever to walk this earth, but they’re also willing to take advantage of anyone who doesn’t know what’s going on.

And that someone was most definitely me.

I toured Manhattan with my Realtor and nodded my head to everything he said. I wanted him to think I knew what I was doing. I should have noticed that the more I said yes to his requests, the more he was taking advantage of me. By the time I got to the last apartment he had me convinced that it’s standard procedure for doormen to fondle me as I walked in to different apartments and that my rent was actually going to be 1.5 what they said because he got half of my rent check every month. Read More »

No, that is not me. I'd never get drunk enough to wear a belly shirt.

I went back to Syracuse for homecoming weekend and effectively destroyed any part of my liver that was still functioning. While I had an amazing time reuniting with friends and walking to the bars while shivering in the pouring rain (man I’ve missed that Syracuse weather), I also learned that I’m officially not a college kid anymore. I honestly don’t know how I spent four years drinking every. single. weekend. on little to no sleep.

By the time Sunday afternoon rolled around I was curled up in fetal position nibbling on saltines and sucking on ice chips. All I wanted to do on the drive home was shut my eyes — which I would have done if the passengers in the car I was driving hadn’t objected so strongly.

The drunker I got, the more tired I got of having to answer the question, “what are you doing now?” So I began telling people I’m a graduate student at DeVry University and handing out a playing card as my business card. It didn’t take too long for people to stop asking me about my employment status. I did almost start a fake pregnancy rumor about myself but then refrained just in case karma hit me hard and I actually turned out to be with child. However, the pregnancy rumor would have explained why I threw up in the morning. Morning sickness sounds a lot more mature than a hangover. Read More »

The dating life was so simple in college… and that’s mostly because it was nonexistent.

There were more consecutive sunny days in Syracuse then there were couples during my four year stay. Most guys would sprint and leap into oncoming traffic before they would admit to dating a girl and relationship terms like “committed” came to mean a situation in which the guy you were hooking up with (NOT dating) would be a gentleman by driving you home instead of making you do a walk of shame through a subzero blizzard.

However in the real world things are a little different. Guys not only call you back during daylight hours but they also take you on dates to crazy places like sit-down restaurants and the movies. I’m not going to lie, that’s a concept I had begun to assume was made up by Hollywood and the liberal media to sell movie tickets. And the craziest thing of all is that a lot of these guys are looking for relationships and commitment.

Unlike college, there’s a much wider range of men here in the city and it’s much harder to figure out who could be your soul mate and who could take you home and kill you. I’ve learned there’s a big difference between a guy asking you back to his dorm and a guy asking you to get on a train to New Jersey with him because he lives just right outside the city. A guy from class offers to pour you a beer from his pitcher and you chug it down; a guy in the city offers you a drink and you have to send it to toxicology labs first to make sure it isn’t Roofied. Read More »

I got a job!!!

All my tears, temper tantrums, panic attacks, stress-induced friend fights, and violent rages towards my parents turned out to be totally worth it. I’m on my way to getting a full time job. And by that I mean that I’m now working three freelance blogging jobs and making enough money to support myself for at least one to three months depending on how long I can sustain myself on a water and table scraps diet.

One blog is about the postgrad realty market, one is geared towards men’s humor, and the last is all about liberating and embracing a woman’s sexuality. So by the time I get done with a week of writing all three, I’ll be the only certified realtor that can make hilarious fart jokes while imparting the seriousness of bra burning. If that’s not a pick-up line in a bar, then cat’s got my tongue (I’m aiming to write for a blog entirely composed of idioms if anyone’s got a lead). Read More »

If I’ve learned nothing else since graduating (I’ve learned nothing else), I have learned that everyone turns into Dear Abby when they meet an unemployed person. I’ve gotten enough advice to write at least fourteen whole blogs on this topic, but don’t worry I’ll contain myself this time.

“Look on the the Internet for Jobs” – Esther Rosenwiezencrantz, age 85
Oh really, the internet? Is that where they are? Well darn, I can stop circling help wanted ads in the newspaper and turn on that new-fangled computer that sits in the corner of my room. I guess I just turn on this internet thing and a million jobs appear.

“Go to Grad School” – 10 +People in Grad school
Actually, I’ll tell you what, that advice isn’t applicable to my situation. I want to start making money, not go to grad school for something I’m not interested in and leave in more debt… and still unemployed. Read More »

"We're fine! We've got diplomas!"

Yesterday, President Obama urged students to stay in school.  He said that you can’t drop out of school and expect to drop into a good job. Well, apparently, you can’t drop into a good marriage either.

According to National Affairs, there is a higher divorce rate in non-college-educated couples vs. those who earned a degree. I wonder why that is? My personal opinion is that after four years of whoring around school and testing the waters, college grads were finally able to pick their favorite brand of life-partner.

Alternatively, maybe they honed their patience skills after spending four years battling academia. Years of exams, presentations and thesis papers have made marriage look like a piece of cake, comparatively.

Yet maybe college grads have a lower divorce rate because after sharpening their minds and taking a logical look at the institution of marriage, they opt not to marry at all. Saving themselves from expensive weddings, shared checking accounts and intrusive in-laws all together.

Most likely, though? Those divorced non-college grads probably never made it to college ‘cuz they got married at 18 before they knew any better and realized too late an X-box-playing husband isn’t so adorbs after all.

Whatever the reason, stay in school, people. You may not be able to get a job right now, but at least you’ll nab yourself a husband. For life.

I remember crying as I packed for college a gazillion years ago and freaking out that I would never really be coming home again in the same way. But, the second I got home for Thanksgiving break, I realized exactly how wrong I was about that. My house was just as I left it (minus a few things my sister borrowed, stretched out, and left in the trunk of the car) and despite being insanely more educated, my family didn’t treat me any differently. I still fought with my sister over the remote (The Nanny reruns, really?), I still was expected to help with the dishes (ugh), and I still had to tell my mom in excruciating detail where I was going when I left the house.

However this past June when I left to go to New York I went through the exact same emotions, overly dramatic arm flailing and unattractive tears galore as I packed up. And once again, I proved myself wrong. I went home this past week to take a break from adult responsibilities, such as job hunting and obsessively updating my Linkedin and I discovered that still nothing changed. Read More »