Three words that are thrown together more often than we realize in today’s society. Whether it be a news story about an anorexic woman, a magazine ad telling readers how to go about getting a bikini body, or a blog post about the double standard that exists for women, it’s safe to say that our culture covers women and their weight pretty heavily. (No pun intended.) But has anyone ever actually bothered to question why exactly society is so concerned not just with “fat people” but “fat women”?

Kim Brittingham, author of Read My Hips: How I Learned to Love My Body, Ditch Dieting, and Live Large has. And what she realized upon further exploration was so troubling that she wrote a memoir about it, chronicling not only her own struggles with her weight, and accepting herself for who she is, but also an exploration of the reasons why she, and so many other women, have these troubles. The result? An inspiration and heartfelt memoir so worthwhile that we just had to share it with our readers. So keep reading to find out why she is against the idea of dieting and how she learned to love her body as it is.

What gave you the inspiration to write Read My Hips: How I Learned to Love My Body, Ditch Dieting, and Live Large?
I feel like I wasted a lot of precious time as a younger person worrying about the size, shape and texture of my body.  It makes me sad to remember how passionately I used to plot these physical overhauls for myself.  So much energy and planning went into these self-transformation campaigns – and they were motivated by stupid things, like a desire to lessen the curve of my hips, or eliminate that little nugget of chub where my armpit meets my upper arm.  You know that chub?  I used to want a smooth line there so badly!  None of those grand makeovers had anything to do with health, strength or longevity.  It was about whittling and sculpting myself into somebody else’s image. And the things I did to change those physical details – like dieting, for example – were the very things that made me fatter in the long run.  I wish I’d invested that energy in discovering more about myself and the world.  My life could’ve been a REAL dream come true, much sooner.

Why do you think plus-sized women are treated differently than model-sized women in society?
Americans love to pick on fat people – and what qualifies as “fat” seems to get smaller every year.  All this fat stigmatization might have something to do with the fact that our culture tolerates fewer and fewer prejudices as time goes on.  It’s not nearly as socially acceptable today to spout ignorance about blacks or gays, for example, as it might have been even just 25 years ago. And people are no more secure today than they’ve ever been – maybe even less so.  So they’re looking around for somebody to dump on, and fat people are a favorite target.

Why do you think people, especially us women, struggle with their body image so much?
I think girls and women specifically are taught to focus on their looks, at least in American culture.  We’re taught to constantly doubt ourselves and seek ways to fix what’s “wrong.”  And those fixes almost always involve giving our money away to someone else for a treatment or cure.  Corporations don’t make money when women are happy with themselves.  And big corporations are really holding most of the money in this country, and thus they can afford to give their messages the longest, most persistent reach. A lot of what you hear in a day is the result of someone trying to sell you something.

You wrote that “we live in a culture in which the phrase ‘lose weight’ causes a Pavlovian response in almost anyone born with a vagina.”  Would you say more about that?
The promise of being able to lose weight is more appealing to females in our culture than anything else.  We’ve been conditioned that way.  If someone wants to sell a product to lots of American women, they’ll look for a way to link that product to weight loss.  Why else do you think almost every women’s magazine on the newsstand has something about weight loss on the cover?  Look for words like “lose pounds,” “shed pounds,” “weight loss secrets,” “slim down,” “get fit,” “lose two dress sizes,” etc.  You’ll see them everywhere.  Watch any television show geared towards women and count how many commercials refer to weight loss.

So with all that influencing us, how did you learn love and be confident about your own body?
For me it was a gradual process.  One thing that helped a lot was taking pictures of myself in my underwear.  I wrote a chapter about it in “Read My Hips”;  I did it in private, in my apartment with a camera on a tripod, with the timer on.  I took a lot of time to study those pictures.  I really made an effort to be non-judgmental about the images.  Over time I started questioning why we’re supposed to think certain things about human bodies are ugly.  Take cellulite, for example.  Everybody’s taught to loathe cellulite.  But think about it – it’s just a texture.  It kind of looks like a pattern on wet sand, like when those tiny bubbles on the edge of a wave leave patterns behind.  What’s so awful about that?  Who makes these things up about what’s ugly and what’s beautiful?  And why are we letting them be right?

Are you against dieting? If so, why?
I am absolutely against dieting.  Dieting makes us fatter.  Diets are temporary,  and when we go off of one, we eventually regain all the weight we lost, plus extra.  I think the smarter alternative is to focus on adopting healthy habits, and stop watching the scale.  If you need to gauge your progress, try setting exercise goals, like reaching your target heart rate in your cardio activity, or sustaining it longer, or increasing weight or reps if you’re weight training.  Make goals to incorporate more fruits and vegetables into your diet.  Body weight really doesn’t tell you much about how healthy, strong, or beautiful you are.  But it CAN mess with your head in ways that are distinctly unhealthy.  So ditch the scale.

What advice do you give to other women struggling with their body image?
I might tell them to spend some time looking at their bodies, really looking, without judgment.  Whether they take pictures of themselves like I did, or just look in the mirror.  Stop dismissing what you see right away as unattractive.  Look at features of your body that you think are ugly and ask yourself, what else in nature looks like this?  As a shape or a line or a texture, is it really that awful just by itself?  Why should it be so ugly just because it’s part of your body?  And try thinking of your body as a vessel that carries your essence, your heart and soul, rather than just some superficial object.  Bring beauty to the world in what you do, in the positive feelings you create inside yourself and other beings.   That’s where your true power is.  Besides, your flesh is temporary.  It’ll rot in the ground someday anyway.

Inspiring, right? You should read the book. Actually, you should WIN the book. We’re giving away one signed copy of Read My Hips: How I Learned to Love My Body, Ditch Dieting, and Live Large. How do you win?

1. Tell us one thing about yourself that you love most. That’s it. You’re automatically entered to win the book if you do that.  Oh, and make sure to use your real e-mail address so we can contact you if you win.

2. Contest closes at 11:59 PM on May, 8 2011

3. Please note this giveaway is only open to US and Canadian residents. Please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery.

Good luck!

Instead of glitzy night club scenes with boring conversations, Downtown Girls actually shows the lives and friendships of Nikki, a boutique owner, Gurj, an Atlantic Records digital marketer, Klo, a bride-to-be, Victoria, an aspiring lawyer, and last but not least, Shallon, a Glamour.com blogger.

In a world of plastic reality show Barbie dolls (i.e: Heidi Montag), seeing young women working, living on their own, and trying to figure out their 20-something lives was refreshing. With each girl offering her unique individual style and perspective, it was impressive seeing MTV tackle real people, doing real everyday things for once.

Although Downtown Girls chronicles a group of friends, Shallon Lester steals the show with her outspoken and funny personality. With a larger-than-life persona that makes Shallon seem like everyone’s best friend, her energy is contagious. Who wouldn’t want to be her friend?

With one co-written book under her belt, Hot Mess, and a collection of memoirs chronicling her dating life coming out in 2011 called Exes and Ohs, expect to hear more from Shallon. So, consider this an inside look beyond the MTV cameras…

Five Questions We Ask Everyone:

1. What’s your favorite college memory /most trouble you’ve ever gotten into?
Riding a bull freshman year of college. I went to Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, which is way out in the country. Everyone takes rodeo—yes, it’s an actual class—and you learn how to rope and ride and brand. Our final was to ride a bull, and I went last because I was a coward. I’ve done a lot of risky and scary things in my life, but I’ve never been more frightened than when my instructor was tying my hand to the saddle and riling up the steer with a cattle prod. The chute opened and I lasted 2.7 seconds before it bucked me off and kicked me in midair, like a volleyball spike. I still have a lump on my lower back from it. Wicked.

2. What are five things you cannot live without?
Hockey, lip gloss, Tim McGraw’s greatest hits album, my mom, my Google alert on “Zac Efron shirtless.”

3. What is your motto/advice you live by?
If you trust your dreams more than you doubt them, you will get everything that you want. You don’t always have to know how you’re going to achieve it, you just have to believe that it will. It’s like Christmas morning; you don’t know the schematics of how Santa got into your house, but you knew he would.

4. What is your favorite song to belt out at the bar/car/karoke?
“Baby Got Back” by Sir-Mix-Alot. If you saw me in boy shorts you’d know why.

5. Ten years from now you will be …
Married to an NHL player, overseeing the movie adaptation of my latest novel, and explaining to my friends why being voted “Sexiest Woman Alive” by Playboy five years in a row isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Signing autographs is exhausting, you know.

Five Questions specifically for Shallon:

1. What is most essential to a good friendship?
Loyalty. My life is pretty weird, so I can’t have a friend who will jump ship the moment I do something offbeat. Because “strange” is pretty much my only setting.

2. You seem so confident in who you are. Was there a defining moment that made you say “You know what, I truly accept myself for who I am.” If so, what was it?
When I started writing the sex and dating column for my college newspaper at Cal Poly, girls would come up to me and say “OMG that happened to me too! I thought I was alone!”  I realized that all of my experiences were pretty relatable, so why pretend to be someone I’m not?

3. After watching yourself on Downtown Girls, did any moments make you cringe or uncomfortable to see on camera?
Oh Jesus I looked so fat. I’m actually quite irresistible in person. And it’s never high on your list of goals to be caught crying over your ex on national television, but eh, at least my mascara didn’t run. The boy was a different story.

4. What was your worst break-up experience and how did you get through it?
About three years ago I fell deeply in love with a boy and was 100% sure that he was The One, and I knew he felt the same way. And he did…about someone else. A stripper, actually. He left me for her and I spiraled into a severe depression for seven months. I can’t tell you how many pro athletes I had to bone to pull myself out of it. But I finally did, and at the end of it, I’m wiser and stronger…and all he has is a scorching case of Chlamydia.

5. If you could go back and tell your 20-year-old self one piece of advice to hold onto for the future, what would it be?
At 20, I was so concerned about what people thought of me—boys, my sorority sisters, family—that I never asked “What do I think of myself?” When your goal is pleasing yourself first and foremost, having fun and attracting the right kind of people is inevitable.

Wanna see more awesome interviews? Check ‘em out right here.

Boston’s Boy is blowing up now in a big way, booking dates all over the place, and his party jams and special way with the ladies are creating major buzz.  With summer coming up, there is no better time to throw his EP, “Boston’s Boy”, into the car or blast it at a party. But first, you lucky CollegeCandy readers, get to know the guy behind the rhymes.

5 Questions We Ask Everyone:

1. What is your most ridiculous college memory?
Pretty much all of freshman year.  Nothing stands out in particular, but that whole year was crazy.

2. Well, if you can remember anything (or Freshman year at all) let me know.  Five things you can’t live without?
My Macbook, friends, music, weed, family…

3. Any motto you live by?  What’s the Sam Adams creed?
Have fun, I guess [laughs]. No motto really.

4. What’s your favorite song to belt out in the bars, in your car, or for karaoke?
Wait, what’s that song… It’s Michael Jackson. [Yells to friend] Yo, what’s that song from Rush Hour?  Chris Tucker…It’s Michael Jackson?  Don’t Stop Till Yet Get Enough!

Ah great song!  Would you sing it at shows at all?
No [laughs]. That would be good though.

5. What about in ten years?  Where do you see yourself?
On an island, hopefully doing nothing.  Not caring about anything.

In ten years?  That’s so soon to be just on an island!
[Laughs] I don’t know, I mean, I don’t really know where I’ll be then!

5 Questions Just for Sam:

1. How did this whole thing, this “meteoric” rise of Sam Adams, start?
Well it started in Boulder – I was there visiting some friends, played some shows, and it just kind of blew up.

2. You’re a big Boston Boy and your song played at Fenway during opening day. How was that?
That was crazy.  We weren’t there when it happened, but everyone was calling me and we were freaking out.

3. What’s the craziest thing about this whole rise to fame? Is it the fans? On your Facebook and Twitter pages they are definitely showing the love.
Yeah, I love the fans, man; they are crazy.  Like at the shows, when they’re singing along to the songs, it’s the craziest feeling.  But sometimes it gets weird, like when they get my phone number.

They get your phone number? What do you do when that happens?
[Laughs] Try not to pick up?  Sometimes people will call, and just be like “Is this Sam Adams?” and I’ll just hang up.

4. What other artists are you dying to work with?
We’re going to be doing some stuff soon with Wiz Khalifa, and I’d love to work with artists like Drake.

5. So what’s next for Sam Adams?
Well the Stoolapalooza tour already kicked off, so I’ll be touring this summer.  I’ll be playing with Snoop Dogg in Indiana soon, and I really want to meet him.  I just want to hang out with him, he seems like the coolest guy ever [laughs].  I’ll also be recording – in Boston, New York, kind of all over the place.  I’d like to get on vacation sooner than later, but if we keep booking dates, I’ll probably wait till later on in the summer.

Fingers crossed that vacation somehow involves me, romantic dinners and cuddling on the couch.

The following post is courtesy of our uber fashionable friends at CollegeFashion.net!

As we get closer to the end of the school year, many of us are going on internship/summer job interviews- myself included. On College Fashion, we have already covered How to Dress for a Job Interview and How to Get the Internship of Your Dreams. However, in addition to dressing to impress, your makeup and hair needs to look natural and polished for interview success.

Interview beauty can be tricky because you want to make sure you’re making a good impression, while still looking natural and chic. This post will help you achieve the perfect interview look to help you score the job/internship of your dreams!

Do: Wear Natural, Light Makeup!
Although makeup is a great way to your express yourself, no matter what type of interview you’re going on, it is best to remain conservative with your makeup. You want your natural beauty to shine through, so keep the makeup light as possible!

Need some product recommendations? Check out my picks below. I chose these products because (with the exception of the foundation and perhaps the lipstick), they are universally flattering for all skin tones and types. These are all gorgeous, natural colors that will help your true beauty shine!

Product information: Foundation: Clinique Soft Finish Foundation ($21.00), Eye Shadow: MAC Naked Lunch ($14.50), Nail Polish: OPI Dulce de Leche ($8.50), Lipstick: Revlon Colorburst Lipstick in Rosy Nude ($8.99), Blush: NYX Powder Blush in Angel ($5.00)

Don’t: Go All Out With Makeup
I know you want to look your best for your interview, but when it comes to beauty in the workplace, less truly is more. Here are some products I’d recommend you stay away from for a successful interview.

Avoid:
Heavy eyeliner
Bright colored eye shadow
Heavy, caked-on foundation
Overly glossed lips
Brightly colored nails
Anything with glitter in it

Read the other major interview dos and don’t right here.

Ben and Lauren, the brains behind TFLN

It used to be that I spent a good chunk of my day stalking my friends (OK, my exes) on Facebook, but all that changed the minute TextsFromLastNight came into my life. Now most of my time is spent LOLing at my computer and emailing my latest faves to my friends. And I know I’m not the only one. TFLN, a website born out of a drunken weekend in Detroit, gets over 15,000 submissions a day and 5 million readers LOLers a month. It’s even been nominated for a Webby award, a huge honor in the Internet world, especially for a site that documents drunken debauchery. (Go vote for it!)

Since my very first TFLN encounter (“I used a bag of wine as a pillow last night”) I’ve been determined to meet the geniuses behind it and kiss them on the mouth shake their hands. And I finally got my chance… to talk to them, at least. Last week I got to sit down with Ben Bator and get a behind-the-scenes look at TextsFromLastNight: how it started, where it’s headed, and how they choose which texts will earn a coveted spot on the site.

I also got his direct number so I could send all my drunk texts directly to him, but I’m gonna keep that one to myself.

CC: Tell me how this happened.

Ben: We had a lot of fun in college. Lauren and I were friends in college and then we became better friends when she was in law school and I was about to go. We would hang out around Detroit and we’d go out with our friends, and we’d be texting our friends who were in Lansing and Ann Arbor and, you know, all the different colleges. And as the nights went on they kind of sent back more and more ridiculous things and we just had the idea of, like, what if we just took all of them and put them online? It didn’t take any crazy planning and we never thought, “OK, this is going to change the world.”

CC: Were you drunk when you thought of it?  Because I think some of the best ideas are born out of intense amounts of alcohol.

Ben: We definitely talked about it when we were drunk. [Pauses.] Yeah drinking played a part, I’m pretty sure.

CC: So, your plan was really small – just sort of make people laugh?

Ben: Yeah, it was just funny.  I mean, it was just a fun escape from law school, from real work [laughs].  So it was just kind of one of those fun things that reminded us of better times, you could say.  And yeah, I guess a lot of other people thought the same thing.  It was around finals week in most colleges when we redesigned it, and we made it really easy for people to post their own, and almost instantly, it just blew up.

CC: When did you realize that this was going to be huge?

Ben: I remember one day, we were getting more texts for some reason, and we knew people were talking about it; we saw it on Twitter and we saw our fan-page was growing. And I remember taking a break and going to my friend’s pool , it was the first nice day in Michigan, and all of a sudden I was sitting there and I look at my phone and I got four emails: one was from Penguin, one was from Harper Collins, one was from MTV and one was from a publication in New York, and I was just like “Someone’s messing with us.”  And it was only a few months after it started, it was just unreal.  It still doesn’t feel real.

CC: Wow, it happened so fast! Why do you think it’s so successful?

Ben: Well, you don’t have to watch a video, you don’t have to do anything.  You can read TFLN at work or on your phone. It’s something sneaky that can keep you entertained.  You can do it in class or whenever, and it’s really fun.  I guess you can even be inspired by [the texts] too [laughs].

CC: How do you decide what’s going to make it on there and what’s not? It has to be hard to choose.

Ben: Here’s the thing, people get upset when their text doesn’t make it, but it’s because we have to take it out of context.  So obviously I don’t know your friend Rachel, and it might be hilarious that she never gets drunk and she got hammered and slept with, like, half of, the Chicago Cubs… OK, actually that might make it anyway. [Pauses.] That was a bad example [laughs]. That would more than likely make it.

CC: Well, now I know what I’m going to do on Friday.

Ben: Right, now you’re going to be on a mission [laughs].  So a lot of the times people will send something in, and while it might be really funny to them, it doesn’t really translate. We don’t know what it means. It also has to be able to exist on its own, be funny on it’s own.  And we like things that are more open-ended, where the person doesn’t need to figure out what the situation was that set up that event.

CC: Sometimes I’ll read the site and think that there is no way on earth some of those texts are real. How do you know they’re legit?

Ben: We can really tell when people make them up. They’ll submit it three different times and they’ll write something different every time – like they’ll change an exclamation point and we can see [the changes] each time.

CC: So they thought grammar was the problem!?

Ben: Right, we’ve gotten some weird emails like, “Do you guys not accept the text if it’s not like grammatically perfect?”

CC: So what’s your favorite thing about TFLN?

Ben: [The commentors] get into arguments over how something happened and if it’s believable. And there’s always one or two people that are like “No, no, no, that’s possible…I’ve been there.” [Laughs.] It comforts me.

CC: Why did you guys decide to turn this into a book? I’ll be honest, I was skeptical, but then I got it this morning and I opened it and the first text I saw was, “There’s paper in my puke” and I kind of lost it.

Ben: I’ve read through this book so many times – as it was being made, as we were picking out what was going to go in it – and seriously, I got the book in my hands and when I read it through the first time I couldn’t stop laughing.  Me and my brother and my friend Ryan, who is like one of the most cynical people I’ve ever known, nothing can really make him laugh anymore and if it does, it’s really funny.  So we were looking through it and we were crying we were laughing so hard.  And I think it’s more fun because you can’t really do that on the computer – you can’t all huddle around the screen really giggly.

CC: Yeah, but I feel like having it online makes it more appealing to most people. You can’t bust this book out in class.

Ben: I don’t know I think there’s something amazing about having something so “digital world” in kind of an analog experience. I think that makes it way funnier.

CC: True, and I can read it in the bathroom, which is way safer than bringing my laptop in there. OK, that was a little too much. Uh, so, your job is to aggregate texts of really drunk people…then put them on a website. Do you ever think about that?

Ben: Yeah, it’s actually funny. I’ll talk to Lauren about it and we’ll be like “Is this really our job?” And you know, sometimes it actually does feel like it. You’ll wake up and, as much as it’s a fun job to go through really funny text messages, it’s something you have to do every day.  So if you’re really not feeling like it, or really didn’t have a good night the night before, it’s kind of difficult. But yeah, it’s ridiculous – I just can’t even pretend. It’s just the best job EVER.

CC: Is there any truth to these rumors that there might be a TFLN TV show?

Ben: There’s…truth.  We actually are in production.  Happy Madison, Adam Sandler’s production company, is producing it.  And fingers crossed, it’ll work out, But we’ll see.

CC: So before this all went down, both you and Lauren were planning on becoming lawyers. I assume that’s impossible now?

Ben: Well we kept ourselves a little bit more low-key at first [to protect our reputations], then there was a post on the Wayne State Twitter account: “Did you know the creators of TFLN are WSU Law students?” So they really like that.  And we talked to some people that were at other schools and they were like, “Well if you’re ever in law school, you could still apply here…” So it ended up being one of the most amazing things; it’s managed to open doors that we were completely convinced were shut.

So you’ve got less than two months left of the school year and zero plans for a summer internship. Crap?

It may seem like it’s too late to find something fantastic to pad that resume, but there are still plenty of internships out there just waiting to be filled. You just need to find the one you want and then make sure you set yourself apart from the other internship hunters as the best person for the job.

With all that competition, scoring that coveted internship can be hard, but there are a few key things you can do to help. We sat down with Colleen Sabatino, Internship Coach over at Internships.com, to find out exactly what you need to be doing to land that dream summer internship. Keep these things in mind and you’ll be interning in no time.

Know What You’re Applying For:
“Most students don’t take the time to carefully review the internship description and requirements before submitting an application. If you spend time matching your education and experience with the requirements for the position, you’ll go a long way towards getting the internship.”

Tailor Your Cover Letter:
“Express your enthusiasm for the company & position and highlight the education and experience you bring that are a match for what the company is looking for in an intern. Use the company’s internship description and position requirements as a guide and try to include keywords that are company or industry related.”

And Keep It Simple:
“Your cover letter should highlight only those items that support your candidacy for the internship – don’t mention background/experience that the company isn’t seeking.”

Edit and Focus Your Resume:
“Include your educational and work history – start with whichever is the best match for the internship. For example, if you are applying for a marketing internship and you’re studying marketing in school but have never worked in marketing, start with your education and include courses that relate to the position. If you DO have work experience in marketing, then start with your experience and follow with your education.

Also, include any outside activities (volunteer, association, project, etc.) that support your background for the internship. In our previous example, if you’re a member of the American Marketing Association, include that – it supports your qualifications for the marketing internship.

Don’t include every project or assignment you’ve ever done at school and work. You want those items that match the company’s needs to stand out – keep the resume focused on those items.

Follow Up:
Prior to submitting your resume, do your research. Know the company’s industry, the products/services it provides, where it’s located, etc. If the listing you’re applying to doesn’t give a company contact, track one down! Call the company and ask for the name of the Human Resource Manager or the most likely hiring manager depending on the internship (e.g. Marketing Manager, Finance Manager, Sales Manager, etc.). Once you have a contact, take the initiative and use them as the first point of contact for follow up – if they aren’t the correct contact, chances are they can put you in touch with the appropriate contact.

For more internship tips and tricks, check out the Internship Coach on Internships.com. And if you’re still looking for a great opportunity for the summer, they’ve got over 20,000 to choose from!

Another week has passed and we’re all one more week closer to graduating. This simple fact may send some of you into a depressed-chasing-shots-with-pints-of-ice-cream-alone-in-your-bedroom sorta funk. But put down the ladle, take a deep breath, concentrate on the hotness of Taylor Lautner and relax.  (Usually that helps me anyways…)

As we leave our colleges we’re generally expected to do one of the following steps after graduation: get a job, go to grad school, or travel the world to find ourselves.

Most of us will fall into the first category: the job. Just saying the word makes me shudder. The only thing scarier than a 9-5 job to a soon-to-be-grad is actually getting one.

The job hunt can be intimidating, frustrating, and downright difficult. In today’s market, jobs are hard to come by and a degree from a top university no longer guarantees that you’ll instantly land your dream job or that you’ll even be the best candidate for it. But there are steps we can all take and advice we can all use that will better prepare us for the job hunt and make it seem a lot less intimidating.

Will you be getting this job hunt advice and tips from yours truly? No. Why not? Because I don’t have a job and things could get real awkward if you found out you were following the advice of a fellow unemployed senior. (Hint to all prospective employers: Hire me. Do it. I dare you!)

So instead, I’ve compiled a list of great resources about everything and anything the job hunt entails from people who’ve actually had real jobs and are professionals at more things than beer pong. Summarized with advice and points from powerhouse President of Hearst Magazines, Cathie Black, here are a list of tips and advice about resumes, cover letters, networking, interviewing and more! You’ll definitely want to bookmark this post for later!

Networking
1. Calling cards. Get them. Just because you don’t have a title to put on a business card doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have one. These are vital for any and all networking opportunities.
2. Be aggressive. Introduce yourself to any potential contacts. Gaining contacts in your industries no matter how high or how low will help you in the long run. When you meet someone and have a conversation, make sure to give them your card and follow up with an email saying how much you enjoyed meeting them.

LOTUS&ASH Calling cards: This exquisite, intimate paper company by paper genius Ashling Loh-Doyle makes the best calling cards and stationery around. Her fine and warm touches can transform the personality of every client into the most classic yet eccentric paper products, whether that be greeting cards, calling cards, or stationery.

Cover Letter
1. Don’t forget the cover letter. Without one, it just says you’re lazy. Don’t know how to put one together? Take a gander at this handy guide or visit your school’s career development center. It’s there for a reason, people!
2. The best cover letters express three things: why you’re good at what you do, how you’ll help the company, and your enthusiasm for the job.
3. Close your cover letter by saying you’ll call them and then actually call them.

Resume
1. Keep it simple. One page, simple font, no crazy graphics, and keep it focused, including just the information that will show an employer your relevant skills and qualities.
2. Spell check. Spell check. Spell check.
3. Tailor your resume to the job you’re applying for. This is key! Have several versions of your resume, tailored to different types of job that will match your skills with the different employer’s needs.
4. Don’t exaggerate – and never lie. This could lead to disaster, especially in today’s world when we’re all Google-able.

Never written a resume? Try these resources on for size:
The Resume Handbook: This is the ultimate resume how-to guide stacked with tips, advice, and formats.
Career Perfect: These people make a business out of knowing how to get people jobs.

Landing and Preparing for an Interview
1. Be persistent. Show initiative and be aggressive. Don’t hound potential employers with tons of calls, but it is okay to call them and ask if the company is in its hiring process or whether there’s anything you can do to help move it along.
2. Do research on the company and the person interviewing you. Interviewers want to know that you want this job, not just any job. Show your interest by learning about the company so you can both ask and answer questions. Think about your ideals, what you want out of this job, and why you are simply the best for this position.
3. Explain all of your weaknesses as strengths. For example, when asked what your weakness is, say something like “I sometimes overwork myself” or “I spend too much time trying to perfect my work.”
4. Look great. Dress appropriately for the job you’re applying for. Even if most people dress casually in your industry (this is the case in advertising, marketing and journalism), dress up. Ladies, no cleavage. Look presentable and respectable.
5. Bring resume, cover letter, list of references, paper and pen.
6. Make sure you ask questions. Most employers at the end of the interview will ask if you have any questions. Have some things prepared. This is not the time to ask how much money you’ll be making but it is the time to ask questions about the company as a whole, where you will fit into the organization, and what all of your duties will be.
7. Be yourself. Actually though, be yourself. Be the best version of yourself. Obviously your behavior will be more refined as you’re in an interview, but still be yourself.
8. Follow up by sending a thank you note or letter. On nice stationery!

Want to brush up on those interview questions so you’re not blindsided? Here are a few of the more common things you’ll be asked in interviews.

It’s internship hunting season and, thanks to the economy, it’s more competitive than ever. That means it’s more important than ever to make a really good first impression. Being that I spent the past week alone sifting through over 100 applications for CollegeCandy’s summer internship positions, I know a thing or twelve about what makes a successful application.

If you want to spend your summer beefing up your resume, learning the ropes and, most likely, getting someone else’s coffee, take a few of these things into consideration:

Stand Out.
Most internship coordinators receive a lot of applications, making it incredibly difficult to remember every single one they looked at. If you want to be remembered, you gotta stand out.

Resume Do:
Move away from the traditional/boring resume format and try doing something a little different. (You can find ideas online.) I once received a resume that had a great pop of bright green on the top and a very simple green line down the left side. Three years later, I still remember that applicant.

Resume Don’t:
Say something stupid. My friend was recently reading through internship applications for a position at her advertising firm. Under “interests” one applicant listed: “Facebook creeping, collecting bar wrist bands, and beer pong.” Not only was she under 21, but she was completely unprofessional. Yes, she was trying to be creative and stand out, but this was clearly the wrong way to do it.

Cover Letter Do:
Writing cover letters is annoying, yes, but they are incredibly important. Don’t just copy and paste a generic cover letter and send it out to every job you are applying for. We aren’t stupid and it makes us feel like you really aren’t that serious about the position.  Take some time and think about the company, the job and the industry, and tailor your cover letter accordingly. Also, a little anecdote at the beginning can go a long way in getting someone’s attention.

Cover Letter Don’t:
Reiterate everything that we already saw on your resume. If we wanted a list of your accomplishments, well, we’ve already got that. Also, don’t send it without spellchecking first. Seems obvious, but I can’t tell you how many cover letters (for writing positions!) I’ve read with glaring errors.

Be Professional:
No matter the company culture, you must act and dress professionally. My advertising friend (again) recently interviewed a potential intern who showed up wearing jeans and Uggs. UGGS! While the ad industry may be more laid back than most when it comes to attire, it is totally unprofessional and disrespectful to show up in the same clothes you wore to class.

Prepare for the Interview:
Beyond just coming up with your biggest personal flaw and memorizing all the skills you’ve acquired from previous positions, spend a bit of time learning about the company and all of their accomplishments. This not only shows the interviewer that you are genuinely interested in the company, but can also be very flattering for them.  While most people won’t admit this, flattery often does go a long way.

Send a Thank You Note:
We don’t want anything sappy, cheesy or fake, but simply dropping a quick thank-you email a few days after an interview not only shows us respect, but also gets you back fresh in our minds. And after interviewing 6 other people since we spoke to you, that could be the difference between getting the coveted internship and ending up in the forgettable pile.

Me too. And that song was Break Even by The Script. Which I downloaded. And replayed 22 times in the first two days.

I was obsessed with this new band discovery and told everyone I knew about them. At which point I discovered that they are not new at all. In fact, The Script has been wildly successful in Ireland and the U.K. for years; the U.S. was just a little slow on the uptake. But better late than never, right? Especially with a band as talented, adorable and humble as this one. I got the chance to talk to (well, email with – these guys are busy traveling the world right now!) Glen Power, the man behind the drums, about The Script’s rise to stardom. Then, obviously, I listened to Break Even a few more times as I wrote this up.

I just can’t get enough.

The 5 Questions We Ask Everyone:

1. What’s your most ridiculous memory from school/most trouble you’ve ever gotten into?
Me and my friends started up our own society called T.F.A.T.A.J which stands for THE FEDERATION AGAINST TRUTH AND JUSTICE! We used to write anonymous stories about our teachers and the Principal of the school and photo copy them and plant them all over the school. We were never caught!

2. Name five things you can’t live without.
Definitely my iPod, my MacBook Pro, my Blackberry, tea… and my toothbrush.

3. What’s your motto/advice you  live by?
Don’t follow ur dreams, chase after them. There’s no such thing as no.

4. What’s your favorite song to belt out at the bar/in the car/for karaoke?
Mack The Knife.

5. Ten years from now you will  be….
Older than I want to be!

5 Questions Just for Glen Power

1. How’d you come up with the band name, The Script?
When we call each other up on the phone we would usually say, “Hey, whats the story for today?” or sometimes, “Whats the Script?”  We also started the band in LA where everyone is looking for the next movie script or the next big thing and our songs are stories so we decided to run with that name for a while. Then it just stuck!

2. You’ve seen great success in the U.K. – why was it so important for you to be successful in the U.S.?
America has always been on our minds. We have all been heavily influenced by American music and it’s always been a dream of ours to go there and win over new fans and see what would people think of us as a band.

3. You have been featured in many TV shows and even opened up  for U2; what has been the biggest moment thus far for you guys as a band?
Opening up for U2 in Croke Park and opening up for Sir Paul McCartney in Citifield, New York. [These are] moments you can never imagine or forget when they happen to you for real.

4. What do you think it is about your band and about you guys specifically that has allowed you to become so successful?
Good  songs, hard work, more hard work, and being nice to people no matter where we go.

5. What’s the difference between your U.K. fans  and your U.S. fans? Who is crazier?
When it comes to live shows everyone is crazy! We’ve been very lucky with our fans all over; when they come to a show they come to enjoy themselves. There’s not a minute in the show where nobody is singing along.

[Wanna read more interviews with really awesome people? Check 'em out here!]

But what’s different about Rebecca is that she has more than just advice. She has real answers about your future and your past.  As a professional psychic medium she communicates with spirits on a regular basis – you know, dead people. Loved ones and spirit guides who linger around to provide advice and offer relief to the living.

As a Medium, Rebecca has wowed packed houses time and again with her gift.  I had the chance to attend a reading back in 2003. Having never met Rebecca before, and in a room full of hundreds of strangers, I was astounded and admittedly a little freaked out when she hit the nail on the head with incredibly accurate details 99% of the time.  And I was in shock when I realized without a doubt that my own grandfather had came through.

Ever since that reading, I have become intrigued by her work and the spirit world. I know not everyone is a believer, but for those who want to know more about life beyond death or how to communicate with our loved ones (be it for closure or for guidance when you hit that inevitable mid-senior year ‘what do I do with my life now?’ phase),  Rebecca wants everyone to know that we all have the power to connect to our loved ones on our own. She says the only difference is that she’s mastered a skill that we haven’t developed yet. In her new book, Spirited (hits stores Feb. 2010), she teaches us how to tap into our own intuitive knowing, as well as recognize and interpret spirit energy, a support system available at to us at any time.

I was able to pick Rebecca’s brain about what exactly she does and how this gift came to be and was so intrigued that I ran way over 5 questions…

The Five Questions We Ask Everyone:

1. What is the most trouble you’ve ever gotten into?
I was such a good kid; it was my older brother who got in trouble. The most trouble, honestly, and this is going to sound pathetic, is when I was in high school and I lied to my parents and told them a few of my girlfriends were sleeping at one girlfriend’s house and we were actually at a guy’s house with all of our boyfriends. So I got grounded. That’s the only time in my life I’ve ever been grounded.

2. What are 5 things you can’t live without?
Well, my husband and my boys. I love my morning coffee. I would also say I can’t live without my yoga and my good girlfriends.

3. What is your motto or advice you live by?
Everything happens for a reason and there’s a gift in everything

4. What is your favorite song to sing while in the car/shower/at karaoke?
Oh god. I don’t sing; so not my gift. I have to be honest I don’t think I have a favorite. I love Pink. Anything by Pink.

5. Finish this sentence: 10 years from now, I’ll be…
I think I’ll be doing a lot of the same, but more so teaching people how to develop their own intuitive gift.

Five (or ten – this gal is intriguing!!) for Rebecca:

1. How did you discover that you had this gift? And were you freaked out at first?
I was in college. It was my sophomore year and I was going through a mild depression.  Food was my drug of choice and I would sleepwalk and start eating and I would wake up a minute or two into it saying ‘what am I doing?’ And this started happening every night and I was really freaked out that I couldn’t control it. So I went and saw a doctor and got on anti-depressants, but I got off of them after six months. I felt like it was making things worse and I was desperate for help. Because [it happened] every night, I gained 40 pounds. I was miserable.

I was miserable, crying every night to sleep and praying for someone or something to help me. So that’s when I started journaling and through my writing one day my grandmother starting coming through talking to me saying she didn’t want me to suffer the same way she did from her depression and she was here to help me and she was here in response to my cries at night.  She basically said I needed to start healing myself from the inside out, loving myself and to stop looking outside for validation, approval, etc. So basically she said I know you think you’re making this up and that you’re crazy- call your dad and ask him these 3 things. I did and my dad freaked out because sure enough of the things I asked him, 2 of them he had never told anybody, including my mom. So he knew for a fact it was his mom.

2. Tell us the amazing story of how your Grandma sent you your soul mate.
So for about 18 months she (my grandma) was there to help me and every day I would journal and connect with her and I really did the work on me, loving me, feeling me. And in that time she told me she would send me my soul mate and his name would be Ryan, he would give me a rose, and his birthday is  9/24.

Alright so fast forward: I’m 18 months into this, I’m feeling a whole lot better, and I had an advertising internship lined up in Chicago. I was driving from Gainesville to Chicago and on the drive I got a call saying my living arrangements fell through. It was an unpaid internship, so my parents said you have to come home because we’re not paying to support you in Chicago. So I was devastated, but I went home and my mom set me up with this guy, Bryan, she had met a few months earlier.  I was really hesitant, because I didn’t want my mom setting me up. But I trusted her, so I went out with him and sure enough it dawned on me that maybe Ryan was Bryan and his last name was Rosen so I thought Rose= Rosen. So I went home, before I said anything to him, I dug through journals and I found the birthday and I called him and I said is this your birthday? He obviously thought I was stalking him, but it totally was his birthday and that’s when I was so flipped out only because then I knew without a shadow of a doubt I was talking to my dead grandma.

3. How did you know you could connect with other people’s loved ones who have passed on?
My grandma told me, because she said I’m done with you, you know you found your soul mate you healed yourself but now you need to go help other people. So that’s about a year before I started, because I was so in denial I did not want to come out of the closet and tell people I did this.

4. Where you nervous people would think you were crazy?
Yeah, oh god yeah. I thought I was crazy. I mean I questioned my sanity; I think I finally embraced it when I was in yoga one day and I kept hearing Papa Morry, Papa Morry and I was like “who the hell is Papa Morry” and I started seeing a vision of my friend breaking up with her long time boyfriend. And the next day my friend and I went to dinner and she starts crying and the first thing she says is,  “Craig and I broke up.” And I’m like “Oh my God is Papa Morry your Grandpa?” And it was. So that’s when I was like, fine, I’ll play with this. So out of a West Bloomfield, Michigan coffee shop I started doing readings on the side just for fun, just for friends of friends. Sure enough, I was blowing people away. I was blowing myself away.

5. What exactly is it that you see? Do you see an image? Do you hear a voice?
No, because they don’t have bodies anymore, I don’t see their body and I don’t hear voices because they don’t have them. So it’s as if thoughts and feelings are pressed into my mind and body. The soul is energy; it’s like light so sometimes I see sparks of light around somebody or streaks or flashes, that’s the spirit or the soul. Some mediums see ghostlike apparitions, I personally do not. So it’s very subtle. It’s in my own mind’s voice I’m hearing things or in my own mind’s eye I’m seeing things. So it’s kind of like a day dream. It’s very subtle – it comes very fast I have to then take the information and then have to accurately interpret what the spirit is trying to say. That’s why it’s so challenging; it’s like a whisper and you want to tell them speak up but you know you’ve got to work with what you have

6. How do they know when to come to you?
A lot of people say it’s not good to summon the dead and I don’t. They come to me, I don’t go to them.  I believe anybody that comes to me for a reading or any person that crosses my path, I think the universe has brought them to me for a reason and the spirits are behind the scenes orchestrating.  That being said, it’s easy. Because if they’re in front of me – whether it’s for a personal reading, a group reading, or just at a party and I start hearing in my head “their mom died” or “Ellen Ellen Ellen” – I trust.   I’m always mindful of boundaries if I’m not in a professional setting, I always ask, “Are you open,  is it OK to share this with you?” So then I trust the spirits and 9 times out of 10 it’s correct

7. So can anyone channel these spirits?
Anyone can channel or connect with a spirit for themselves. Not everyone can do it for other people. We can all go within and connect with our own intuition for daily guidance, we can all pray and meditate and connect with our dead loved ones and our spirit guides, we can all do it for ourselves. I think there’s a very select few who are meant to be doing it for other people.

8. What kind of advice would you give in coping with depression?
I think bottom line is this: first and foremost you need to decide what kind of depression it is; if it’s mild, moderate, or severe, and if it’s severe you definitely need to go to a doctor and get treated. I found that out the hard way with my dad. He was bipolar and he got off his meds and, sadly, he took his own life. So you know you have to decide. For me it was a mild depression. All of us have a drug of choice – some us choose to numb our pain with alcohol, drugs, sex, compulsive shopping. Mine was food. I really think, bottom line, that you need to find a way to go within. For me I was going with-out and I was trying to find the answers there. So go within; that means meditation and prayer and remembering that we are not alone. We have this guidance – intuition available to help us stay on the right track. Learn to tap into it.

9. How do you advise going about tapping into it?
It’s so simple.  It’s breathing, focusing on the present moment. It’s like “The Power of Now” (Eckhart Tolle); everything else is creating anxiety about the past or future. Living in the moment, being present. To do that you close your eyes, sit still and breath, and try to let go of all the mind thoughts.

10. Do you believe in that everything is destined or in concepts like the law of attraction, where we can choose our own fate?
I believe so much in co-creation and that not everything is set in stone and that you have the power to change things. So while in my readings I do offer psychic information if it comes through, I always tell people this is bound to change based on your choices, so if you keep going with the flow this is what is going to happen.  You have freewill and if you decide “I don’t like that I’m going to change it” then sure enough you are going to.

For more information on Rebecca Rosen check out her webiste: RebeccaRosen.com