Question?! Answer: Ask Tuffy Luv.

Dear Tuffy Luv,

I’m graduating with a degree in nursing. Where should I move?

Ready to start life

Dear Ready to start life,

Wow. Well, that depends. I found this nifty little site: fabulousnurse.com. According to fabulousnurse.com, the best city for a nurse is Austin, TX, followed by San Antonio, TX and Salt Lake City, UT. Seems to based on a number of factors, including basic number of job openings and salary. I also found nursinglink.monster.com, which claims based on cash per hour, California and Hawaii are the top two. Um, I think I’m going with that one.

You’re obviously looking for an adventure, since you’re willing to relocate any flooping place based on your question. So open up your options by eliminating some, yes? First you need to think about what you’re going to do with that nursing degree. Do you want to work in a hospital? Or do you want to be a psychiatric nurse? Or a nurse educator? Or a school nurse? You can search that way and find really interesting jobs in other cities that you would never have found if you just searched “nurse.”

You could also be a travel nurse or disaster nurse and help by traveling to the people who need you most. Aunt Tuffy will worry about you, because it’s dangerous and scary, but I’m sure it’s also incredibly exciting and rewarding. On the other hand, you also have to think about other things. Like?

(1) Your family. Do you want to be close to them? Far from them? Make sure you know and consider it!!

(2) Starting your own family. Do you want to do that eventually? Think about the general time-line you’d like to set and pick your location based on how steady or not steady you might want to be.

(3) Do you like cities? Rural areas? Suburbs?

Girl, you need to visit some places. Take a roadtrip and figure out what the floop you like in a place. And then find a job and move there.

Hearts & Skulls,

Tuffy Luv

[Lead image via Supri Suharjoto / Shutterstock]

This past Saturday  I finally moved into my new apartment with my old best friend. We started out apartment hunt June 1^st…looked at over 20 apartments, and finally found one we liked. It’s a work in progress.

Before June I knew nothing about looking for apartments, we had no idea what to expect the first time we saw one. It was pretty frightening. It didn’t help that we both grew up in the suburbs and had no idea what it was like to live, let alone rent an affordable apartment, in a city.

Needless to say I’ve learned a thing for two about hunting for apartments that I wish I had known about a month ago, like research neighborhoods before you drive to them and waste gas money.

So in order to help all of our readers I thought I would put together a few things I’ve learned along the way to help you all in search of your first (second, or third) place:

Oil vs Electric vs Gas Heat: Luckily this was one of the things my ex-boyfriend told me early on, “Make sure you get gas heat, it’s wicked cheap” however, I ended up finding an apartment with oil. But regardless, and for the most part (well depending on where you live), the price of heat goes like this: electric is the most expensive, oil is the second most expensive, and gas is the cheapest. Just something to keep in mind when looking at non-utility inclusive apartments.

Neighborhood: Just because it’s a wicked cute apartment, does not make up for the fact that someone was shot outside of it a week ago. Be smart about where you chose to live, and remember you’ll have to sleep there at night. It’s kind of funny, because almost all of these guidelines I’m giving you I did the opposite. We ended up moving to Brockton, which doesn’t have the best rep, that’s not to say we’re in the worst part of it (thankfully avoided that) but we’re also not in the best part either..more like on the fringe of both in no mans land.

Listen to your gut: If you have a bad feeling about the apartment..doesn’t matter what it is, listen to it. Your first instinct about a place is usually right,  even if the price is perfect, location is great..if you just have a bad feeling about it, run…well walk to your car and then drive away. We knew the moment we stepped into our apartment that we were home, it even had a connecting door between the two bedrooms (a big seller for people who have shared a room for three years)

Be open: You will not, repeat, will not find your dream apartment. Carrie’s apartment from Sex and The City was a set, I know because I looked into it. You will find something cute as long as you refuse to settle for something that smells like cat pee and may or may not have a blood stain (or three) in the closet. But you need to keep your options open. Just because something it’s disgusting and needs to be updated on the outside, doesn’t mean it isn’t adorable and waiting to be loved on the inside.

Bills Bills Bills: I know this is going to make me sound like a complete air head, but I had NO idea how many bills there were when renting an apartment. I highly suggest finding an apartment with utilities included, it will make your life so much easier. Right now we have to deal with a bill from the electric company, Comcast, oil company (which we have to find and set up ourselves), gas company (our stove is gas :\)..it’s endless. And that’s not including our other bills like Netflix, cell phone and car insurance..yay to growing up.

Off street parking: is so freakin’ important. If you can find an apartment building in a city that has off street parking..count your blessings. It’s so important to find off street parking, not only does it guarantee your car not being hit by on coming traffic, but it also guarantees you will not have to move it for street cleaning..which if you forget about sucks.

Find a good landlord: When you are looking for an apartment, it’s important to also look for a good landlord. Your landlord should be someone you can get along with, trust to come over and fix something in your apartment, and  depend on when things go wrong. You can usually get a pretty good sense of how one will be from your first meeting, and if not just ask what they are willing to do.

Hopefully these tips help you on your search! Let’s turn things over to you guys: What other tips do you have? What was the worst part about apartment hunting? What was your favorite part? 

As you may remember in May, I decided I need a change of pace and new scenery after graduation, which lead me to the Golden Coast of California. While so many good things happened for me out there (especially in the midst of LSAT prep), it wasn’t what I was looking for. In fact, a lot more was pushed upon my plate than I ever intended or imagined.

While a lot of people in my day-to-day life think I’m crazy for the flip-flop, and many people think “Why would you move away from being so close to LA to go back to the Southeast?” I have to do what is best for me – like any post-grad, college student, or human being should. When I tell people that I’m moving back, they immediately think “It didn’t work out for her” or “It was too hard.” And then some think this was just some minor decision I’ve made without any consideration at all.

Surprise! It’s not. There’s always more to the story.

Just as most post-grads do, we dream up our lives after college. And then if those dreams and ideal images don’t fit into the picture perfect box of hopeful life-after-college expectations, we do what we can to alter them. While I have done everything I can do to keep up with my dreams and expectations, I’ve had a lot of other stuff I never asked for fall onto my plate. See, I moved in with my dad – who is an alcoholic. And with that came tons of things I wasn’t prepared to handle. Every day it seemed like something new would happen or some kind of drama would ensue. Every day I find myself worried about what could happen. And I’ve had enough.

We live in an age of Intervention, Lindsay Lohan’s rehab stints, and constant talk about addictions. It’s life – seriously, who doesn’t know someone who is struggling or once struggled with an addiction? But like anyone who has ever loved someone with an addiction or some kind of life-altering problem, it’s not easy trek – and I’m done. I’m 22, and as much as I want to fix and help my dad, I can’t.

So with the New Year to look towards, I think it’s time for me to put my best shoes on and hit the road once again to see what else is in store for me (especially once those damn LSAT scores come out – yes, I’m still waiting)!

I really hate it when people ask me where I’m from. For me, it’s not so simple.

I was born in Quincy, Illinois. I moved to Abilene, Texas when I was eight years old when my mom was offered a huge promotion from the company she worked for. I moved to Austin, Texas for college when I was eighteen, which is where I am now. And then a year ago, the company my mom had worked for for 21 years laid her off (damn recession). My parents were born and raised in Wisconsin, and since I was the youngest of three kids and we were all out of the house, they decided to move back to there.

I can’t really blame my parents for wanting to move back; my mom was especially miserable here in Texas. She HATES hot weather so you can imagine how much she complained during, well, 80% of the year out here. And neither of my parents really had friends in Abilene. The one close friend my mom had relocated for her own job and then there was really no one left. Back in Illinois, I remember my parents having a bunch of friends over for their birthdays. But in Abilene there were no parties; just the family having a quiet dinner with cake.

My parents sacrificed all of that, though, because they both had great jobs and were giving myself and my siblings a good upbringing. But once we were all out of the house, I can see how bleak Abilene must have been for them. How lonely. So when my mom called me last August telling me that she’d been laid off, it wasn’t really a surprise that she followed that statement with, “Your father and I are going to move back home.”

But while I’m really happy that my parents were finally able to go home, it’s sort of left me without one.

There are tons of weekends were my friends will go home and I get insanely jealous. I would do anything to be able to go home and have my mom cook me dinner whenever I wanted. Or to spend a day just hanging out with my parents. Or just get away from campus for a little while. Basically, I miss them. A lot.  I haven’t seen my family since last November, and I’m not going to see them again until January.

It’s especially hard because I can’t see them on Thanksgiving or Christmas anymore – I just don’t have the money to fly across the country. I miss making these cut-out cookies with my dad every year around Christmas. It’s my great grandmother’s recipe and became my favorite tradition of the year. Last year, however, was the first year I made them all by myself. I remember pulling the first batch out of the oven and I just started bawling.

In some ways it’s flattering that my parents think that I’m old enough to live completely on my own, but in other ways I still feel like a little kid who’s lost her parents. I may be 21 paying my own rent and car payments, but I still feel like I need them around. I don’t really like facing the fact that I’m an adult.

I know I have to grow up sometime – it’s just happening a little faster than I would’ve liked.

Any of you CollegeCandy readers ever deal with this? How do you go home when you don’t have a home anymore?

As much as I love being single (and I promise I do. I mean not THAT much has changed since last week), I do have to acknowledge that there are a few aspects of being single that suck. Do they outweigh the greatness that comes with having a bed all to yourself or not shaving for weeks at a time? Maybe not, but there are loads of little things that make the single girl’s life less than perfect.

1. Unreachables.
Whether it’s sunscreen for a day at the beach, aloe after a sunscreen-less day at the beach, or just lotion for those scaly days of winter, no boyfriend = no way to reach your back. And that equals sleeping on your stomach for a week as you wait anxiously for that crispy skin to peel.

2. Moving.
It’s a lot harder to find someone to help with the heavy lifting when there’s no guaranteed nookie in it for him.

3. Sick Days.
See #2, but replace “heavy lifting” with “bring me a bowl of soup.”

4. Crappy Days.
See #2, but replace “heavy lifting” with “bring me cookie dough.”

5. Creative Dates. Or not.
Living in Chicago, the amount of creative dates that can be found are more or less unlimited. With new Groupon and Living Social deals, I am always seeing some really cool opportunities at a steep discount that would be make for great date adventures….if there was someone to go with. Yeah, I could go with my girlfriends, but something about a midnight sailboat cruise to watch the Navy Pier fireworks just doesn’t seem as fun when there’s no one to snuggle with.

6. Sunday Nights.
No matter how content I am with my single status, come Sunday night I couldn’t be less happy. I don’t know what it is, but Sundays just make me want to cuddle.

7. Explaining.
I don’t know why people feel this is an appropriate thing to ask girls that they barely know. It happens all the time to me… I’ll be home for a break, and run into parents of a friend of a friend at the grocery store. So I’ll be talking to the mother of this person I barely know, and she’ll ask me how college is going, and oh yes, do I have a boyfriend now? I hate when people seem to think that being in a relationship is necessary for me to be viewed as a successful college woman or that my relationship status defines me.

8. Creepers.
Walking into a bar with no man on your arm is like an open invitation for creepers to creep all creepy on you. And it’s not the end of the world to do the whole “I’ve got a boyfriend,” but I hate having to lie, even to random strangers. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I give my number out like free t-shirts during freshman move-in week, but I’d rather avoid the “Hey baby, come here often?” if I can.

What do you hate most about being a single lady?

Does anyone else find it highly disturbing that it’s not even August and the networks are rolling out the “Back to School” specials and commercials? Maybe I’m just in denial, maybe I want summer to stretch on forever, but it definitely seems too soon to head back to school.

Unfortunately, I’d be wrong. Next week I have to head back up to school a few weeks early to enter the wonderful world of sorority recruitment (another post in its entirety).  Don’t get me wrong, I’m so looking forward to catching up with all my sisters about their summers. I can’t wait to watch Pretty Little Liars with running commentary from my 2 wittiest friends. And I’m sure as hell excited to raid their closets for all the great new clothes they bought for the new semester.

But, resuming my estrogen laden lifestyle means saying so long to a certain boyfriend of mine. I get so sad knowing that in a few short days I won’t be coming home to the man I love, our little home, and quiet, peaceful snuggle sessions. I’m dreading knowing that the only guy I’ll be sleeping with is my teddy bear (not that my twin size bed could fit David even if he were allowed to sleep at the house). And I am absolutely depressed that the only action I’ll be getting on a consistent basis will be with my vibrator.

I’m def not looking forward to getting back into the swing of an LDR …or the 6 hour trips home every other weekend (if I’m lucky).  But, I learned some stuff this summer (whaddya know!) and especially writing this column, so I figured I’d share my Favorite Coupled Lessons Learned.

1. Living together means double the laundry…and I’m most likely going to be the one doing it. Especially after David tried to help with it…and shrunk all of my workout gear.

2. Finding TV shows that you both love = relationship bliss. Mostly.

3. Don’t be over-confident about your crock pot skills. Leaving it on high all day will only result in bad things. Which reminds me- it’s not the end of the world if you f*ck up dinner.

4. Keep the sex dirty, and the fights clean. Even in our worst fights, I always realized that our relationship was worth fighting for…and we usually made up within the hour. And then had really hot, really dirty sex.

5. No matter what, always take time to realize how lucky you are. I found out that putting pen to paper (finger to keyboard?) and sharing with the most fabulous readers in the world why I was so in love made me fall even harder for David. And if I ever start to take him for granted, I know how important it is to stop and reflect on what a great other half he is.

Thank you guys  for sticking with me through the good, the bad and the strange.  I’ll be on hiatus (at least until December), but I can’t wait to hear your Coupled moments and stories. Keep sharing the love (just not with your single friends-they probably don’t want to hear about it).

I don't know what to do!

Looking back, college didn’t require a lot of serious decision making – even though I thought it did. For the most part, I made decisions about frivolous things such as: Should I wear pajamas to class today? Should I stick to rum and Coke or go for the Jager bombs? Should I go out tonight or should I spend time working on that eleven-page term paper? I know at times these choices sure stressed me out, but looking back, they really didn’t matter the way post-grad decisions seem to.

A lot of difficult decisions have come my way recently. There was me deciding where to live. Atlanta, Georgia or Southern California? It was not an easy choice to make, and many factors played into my choice to move to California. Then there was the decision of what to spend my time doing. Should I reapply to graduate schools for next year or pursue my other dream of becoming a lawyer? These questions required a lot of long-term thinking, and I’m glad that I had the time and the options to choose from. However, now that life is moving full speed ahead – more life-decisions are coming my way and many of them are giving me a day to decide, instead of a month or two.

So, you know how I was running my mouth last week about no jobs being available and how awful it is trying to find something? Well, that very same day, I received a call back from a marketing firm wanting to hire me for an entry level position. A real adult job. One with benefits and a respectable first year salary. One that requires business professional attire from 8:30am to 5:30pm. A marketing firm with connections to major Fortune 500 companies.

Sounds great, right? Well, they could only take me on as a full-time worker Monday-Friday, with a lot of events that I would be required to attend on the weekends. My initial reaction was whether or not I could balance my LSAT prep course and study time in the midst of having a blossoming career path. Could I do both? Maybe, but I’m not someone that does things half-assed, so a balancing act possibly could jeopardize my work experience and hurt my practice for the LSAT.

So, I had to make a tough decision – which is more important to me right now? A job that could have me making some serious coinage with benefits, while offering me an interesting perspective, or sticking to my long-term plan of becoming a lawyer? A lot of people I talked to told me to basically take the money and run with the full-time job and that I could always go back to law school a few years from now. Although I want to have lots of money one day and be successful, I didn’t feel like making a decision based upon money was the right way to figure this debacle out.

In the end, I decided to stick to my plan to attend law school next year. Although I think taking something so spur of the moment like that job offer could have been good, I feel more secure with my plan of prepping for the LSAT, taking the exam in October, and applying to law schools during the fall. My decision to reach for law school (and in the meantime apply for part-time jobs and internships) definitely makes me feel secure with my ambitions to work in the profession of law one day. I could have easily sold myself out and said “You know, the LSAT and the application process to law school sucks – this could be an easier way out,” but instead, I decided to challenge myself and look to the future.

Even though I have not been able to find a part-time job anywhere (since when do waitresses need three years experience to serve?), I have to admit – the call backs I have received (all from full-time positions, of course) and the interest from a major marketing company makes me feel pretty good about my resume and career prospects in the future. And luckily, I’m starting to hear back from some internship programs that will overlook me not being able to get class credit!

So, here’s looking to the future and holding out for what I truly want!
…Let’s just hope it all works out.

Surprise! I haven’t even graduated yet, and nothing has gone the way I thought it would or how I want it to, and with graduation next weekend – it’s time to come up with a game plan for the ominous future.

Originally, I thought I wanted to attend graduate school and work towards a higher degree in English literature. I spent the entire fall semester working on taking the GRE exam, filling out graduate applications (and spending major money on sending them out!), and writing the most intense essay of my undergraduate career to send along to my program choices. In the midst of all this, I spoke with my academic advisor who told me “Charlsie, don’t worry about it – I think you’ll get in wherever you want, you’ll have the option to choose where you want to go. You’ll do great.” Despite the stress and pressure I felt from all this, her reassurance told me to expect the best and relax about my future.

Oh boy, did I ever expect the best – but only got slammed by the worst: I exhausted the bulk of my spring semester receiving rejection letters and reading online news articles highlighting that universities across the nation received more graduate applications than in years before – making those already-hard-to-get seats for English M.A. and PhD programs even harder to get into (most programs only accept between 12-30 students per year anyway).  Recognizing that graduate school wasn’t an option (I started thinking that maybe graduate school wasn’t what I wanted to do the more I worked on my thesis, anyway, but that’s another story for another time), I knew I had to figure something out.

Trying not to be too disheartened (this is really hard to do), I moved on to publishing and publicity job positions in Atlanta, Georgia (my hometown). Nearly every place I contacted never responded back to my voicemails or e-mails. If I did hear back, they usually said they weren’t accepting interns or hiring this year due to the economy. The few places I did apply at rejected me. Ouch! After spending the last four years with endless internship acceptances, this came as a huge shock for me. I was never rejected by an intern program before!

I think Kelly Cutrone sums it up best in her book If You Have To Cry, Go Outside: And Other Things your Mother Never Told You: “Often the problems is not that parents didn’t encourage their kids to dream, but that parents were so encouraging that those dreams became their children’s expectations.” All my dreams have always been my expectations – and realizing my dreams aren’t as straightforward and accessible as I once thought truly feels like a slap in the face, especially after completing four years for an undergraduate degree, which almost seems useless right now.

Many people, when faced with extreme confusion, go home to sort things out. Unfortunately for me, though,  I don’t have a place I can call home. My family life is a little disjointed, something I’ve been used to since I was a pre-teen; it is just how things are for me, whether I like it or not. Although I haven’t lived with my dad since I was ten (and I haven’t even seen him since June 2008), I think moving out and living with him is my best option, and I’m lucky he is welcoming me with open arms.

So, I’m packing up my Toyota Corolla after graduation and I’m setting out for the Hills of California. I will be moving to Orange County with no job to look forward to. No internship to plan towards. No career prospects to expect. No friends to meet up with. Awaiting me is just a room in my dad’s Newport Beach apartment and some time without too much pressure, so I can figure out exactly what I need to do and how I need to do it – to get to where I want to go.

A lot of doors may have closed on me, but I do have goals – and some hope left.

This column is not only going to follow my move to California, it will follow me as I take a new direction towards my future: Law School. I am planning to spend the summer studying for the October LSAT, so I can apply to law school in the fall. This journey is going to be tough. In fact, it’s going to be really, really hard – and I know there are going to be bumps along the way, whether it is with my family, my personal life, or my ambitious plan to attend Law School for the 2011-2012 school year.

With that said, I’m not moving to California to become friends with our favorite girls from The Hills, and I’m not moving out West with the notion of being a celebrity. I am, however, moving out there – like many people do– to make my dreams come true, whatever they may be.

Won’t you join me along for the ride?

"OMG! I forgot I packed all these empty Bacardi bottles!"

At the end of senior year I shoved all my belongings into boxes and garbage bags without using any kind of rational order or logic. Whatever could fit in my boxes went in — and whatever couldn’t fit got thrown away.

Perfectly good pots and pans ended up in the dumpster (and soon after in a dumpster diver’s kitchen) while perfectly useless items like homemade off the shoulder t-shirts got rolled in bubble wrap and packed away.

This past weekend I moved into my new apartment and began unpacking all my boxes. It was like 8 nights of Hanukkah all rolled into one. I had forgotten I owned half of that stuff so each time I reached into a box and pulled something out it was like winning a raffle. The kind of raffle where you win prizes that are good for a laugh, yet have no purpose…a broken shower radio, a dirty mug, stolen freshman year dorm posters, a lime green shoe bag, 75,000 dryer sheets.

Basically nothing useful or even decorative for my new apartment. But they come from college and even though they should have been thrown out months ago, I can’t bear to part with them now. I held up every item and explained to my mother what each one meant to me. However she was increasingly less entertained as my stories got more personal. She finally cut me off at  “oh here’s the pregnancy test I – I mean my roommate – used one time she thought she was pregnant.”

My inability to throw anything away made me realize that I’m officially one of those old people who won’t ever get over college – or anything related to it. If I can practically sing the praises of a pregnancy test that originally gave me angina, there’s no hope left. I’m a few more trips-down-memory-lane away from tattooing the Syracuse fight song onto my face. Once I do that there’s even a chance I might actually follow the basketball team’s season.

Will I ever be OK with real life? Will I ever start stories with something other than, “This one time in college….”? Will I ever understand the concept of “Just one drink”?

Who knows, but in the meantime I’m trying to find space in my jail cell of a room to fit all my Syracuse memorabilia. NYC apartment bedrooms are roughly equivalent to a fourth of the space of dorm bedrooms. I have my bed on risers on top of my dresser on risers on top of my underbed storage box. So it’s an understatement saying it’s going to be hard to fit everything from my old life along with everything from my new life. Especially with the giant box of costumes I unearthed this morning.

“I can’t get rid if it, mom! You never know when you’ll need orange rubber wading pants in NYC.”

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.

It wasn’t until I went out with another Realtor that I found out that it doesn’t cost extra to get running water in your apartment. Needless to say, I felt like an idiot. However I was relieved to find out that i didn’t have to give up my first born in exchange for cable. One Realtor led to another and before I knew it I was signing a lease and committing myself financially for an entire year.

And from there it only got more expensive. I spent four years at school finding my furniture in dumpsters and my decorations in the dollar store. That doesn’t fly in New York; you have to pay for everything. Who knew mattresses cost so much? Answer: not me! And bed bug covers, the must-have accessories of 2009, cost about 10 dinners. Don’t even get me started on the bathroom…toilet paper, shower curtains, and soap. I’ve been surfing Craigslist trying to find good deals but at what point is it worth it to buy a new toilet brush?

But don’t worry. I’ve done a little re-figuring of my budget and if I never go out for the next year AND sell my extra kidney, I’m completely set to live the NYC life!