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]

There are times that the pressures of school and work just get to be too much and I find myself itching to just get out of town. However, my schedule and my budget don’t really allow me to do that as often as I’d like.

I’ve found that an easy way to satisfy the travel bug is to explore new places in my city! I love visiting new restaurants, museums, nature preserves and other local tourist attractions I might not normally visit since I live there. And one great resource to help me find cool places to explore is Trazzler.

Think of Trazzler as a sort of traveler’s guide, except for your hometown. Trazzler‘s “experts” review all sorts of attractions, nature preserves, historical sites, bars, art galleries, beaches and more, and their micro-reviews detail exactly what makes each place unique and awesome. Of course, since Trazzler features guides for a range of cities, it can come in useful when you’re actually planning a real vacation as well. Trazzler also has an awesome iPhone app, so you can explore your town (or the world) from just about anywhere. Read More »

Planning on getting away for spring break?

While I love to travel, the one thing that I don’t love about it is planning the flights. Trying to find the perfect flight on the date and times you want, without too many layovers, at the lowest price possible amidst the sea of flight options out there is enough to drive a person crazy.

But with Hipmunk, booking flights is now a whole lot less stressful.

Hipmunk is an airfare search engine that, like other similar sites, lets you search multiple airlines to find the right flight for you. However, it stands apart from the competition with its clear, easy-to-understand interface. For example, while Kayak also searches multiple airlines, it still generates multiple results pages. With Hipmunk, you’ll get only the best results on one page. Read More »

After becoming a flight attendant, I’ve learned a little bit of something about spontaneous adventure.  In one week, I spent half a day in Jamaica (bought Roasted Ground coffee and coconut rum candies), I explored nearly every edge of New York City (found a killer pizza parlor, took mock pictures at Tiffany’s and ate cookies from Bouchon Bakery) and I sunbathed next to a clear pool in Florida while sending Twit-Pics of the palm tree-clad view.

I’ve learned a lot about myself through all of this exploring. I’ve learned that I love not knowing what I’m going to be doing next week. I’ve learned that I love taking photos of new things at different angles and color schemes. I’ve learned that I love hotel beds and being alone for at least an hour a day. I’ve learned that I will ask for help if I need it. Or directions. Read More »

Was Jen drunk at the People’s Choice Awards

Lady Gaga’s latest outfit is just dumb

Get ready for a oujia board movie!

20 best foods for weight loss

Adam Levine is super sexy

Justin Biber’s mom is gonna yell at him

The new science of human attraction

How to travel the world

The Huffington Post recently published a list of 10 places every child must visit. On the list: The Smithsonian, Yellowstone and Ellis Island. I remember when I was a kid and my parents somehow found it in their souls to take to all of those places.  We were a big traveling family and my parents wanted me to see (and learn about) everything. Unfortunately, instead of taking in the beauty of the Grand Canyon, I sat in the dirt and cleaned up my Tamogotchi’s poop.

In a nutshell: I didn’t let it all sink in, learn something or enjoy it.
And I’m sure I wasn’t the only one.

However, now that we’re all grown up in college, we are presented with the perfect opportunity (and maturity) to do some exploring and really experience some cool things.  Some of these things we couldn’t appreciate entirely when we were little munchkins not old enough to play beer pong at a real, living, breathing frat party.  And some of these things we won’t be able to appreciate to the same extent when we’re out of college.

So while our minds are human sponges and we’ve got loads of time, it’s time to explore the top ten places every college student must see. Read More »

Even though it’s been a full week since I returned from my adventures in Europe, I’m still on a high from my trip. (Although that might have more to do with the sheer volume of coffee I’ve been consuming to combat the jetlag….) It seemed like the chic little Parisian hotel we stayed at was in the center of everything I wanted to see and do. There were tons of shops, little brasseries with beyond delicious food, and impressive monuments nearby.

With so much to do, whenever I came back to the hotel, I was exhausted. So I’d plop in bed and watch BBC or CNBC, the only two English channels the hotel offered. On one particularly exhausting day, I kicked up my feet and watched a show about entrepreneurs who made their dreams come true on which Sara Blakely, the inventor of Spanx, was featured.

The entire thing was fascinating. The woman started with an idea for shapewear and ended up creating a multimillion dollar business, changing the lives of women around the world, and getting tight with Oprah in the process. (Editor’s Note: And that little hole that allows for quicker bathroom trips….BRILLIANT!)

I’m in awe of Sara, and she’s proof that if you believe in a great idea and really push for it (in the beginning, she walked around on the street, quizzing random women about their underwear insecurities and getting the word out!), great things can happen. So, of course, that got me thinking… Read More »

Oh air travel, how I despise thee. All flight delays/massive airport navigation/stinky seatmates aside though, I am actually very (very) excited to be flying into DC tomorrow. I’ve never been, and I’m so pumped to explore our nation’s great capital. Plus, I’m staying at a sweet hotel in Virginia, so I get to add another notch to my “States I’ve actually been in” list. Yeah, I’m a nerd.

The part I’m least excited about (besides having to turn off my CrackBerry until the flight attendants tell me I can turn it back on) is leaving David behind. Alas, he doesn’t get to accompany me on my awesome trip (it’s for business) and all week I’ve been getting ready to leave him all on his own for 5 whole days.

As he’ been so lovingly, gently reminding me all week, he is in fact a full grown man capable of taking care of himself. He did it for 20 years before he met me, and according to him he’s still got the hang of that. While I do realize that he’ll be fine while I’m gone, after living with him and taking care of our home (and his dirty laundry…) I can’t help but think (OK, hope) he’ll feel just a teeny bit lost whilst I’m gone.

After all, this will help him come to the realization that I’m totally indispensable, which has been my master plan all along. But, I don’t want to leave him high and dry, so I did fully stock our freezer full of a weekend’s worth of man-food (aka microwaveable and artery clogging). And I am leaving him a “HoneyDew” list, both because I freaking love the name of it and because it’s got all kinds of unpleasant things I’d rather not deal with on it. Hopefully, I’ll come home to a clean home with new air conditioner filters, a newly installed printer and no more laundry to do. Read More »

I did it! I graduated. Although the moment of hearing my name, walking across the stage, receiving my diploma, and turning my tassel went by incredibly fast, the road to Commencement has been an unforgettable eye-opening four-year journey.

It’s been made up of classes I’ve loved (like Arab-American literature) and those I’ve hated (Computers 100, I’m talking to you and your Microsoft Word projects). There were those endless papers analyzing literary theorists, ethical dilemmas, Shakespeare’s couplets, and acts of radical feminism. I worked on and cried over hundreds of math problems and graphs, all while reading books that would forever change me and the ways I think about the world around me. I wrote and edited poem after poem for numerous workshop classes, while expanding my poetry vocabulary from e.e. cummings and Emily Dickinson’s collections to the voices of Lorine Niedecker and Naomi Shihab Nye. All these academic experiences led me to learn things I would have never known if I strayed off on a different path.

Outside of school, I interned – a lot. There were the internships I learned a lot at, and the ones that failed to utilize their internship programs to the full extent. There were the people in the business world I met that I admire and respected, and then there were the ones that made me promise myself “I will never end up like that.” I traveled, whether it was from the Upper East Side to SoHo in New York City or from London to Paris for a weekend. Honestly, I even spent most of my time in college traveling to and from other colleges around me (this was part of my college’s campus culture – especially at such a small all women’s college), which convinced me that a two hour car ride is nothing but a quick ride down the road. Read More »

Let’s face it: we all make stupid decisions. Like choosing a fifth over a review session, or bringing that guy home…who stole our iPod in the morning. That’s part of college life… and a big part of what makes it so memorable. But there are some choices that have longer lasting repercussions; things we do now that will haunt us later.

So here are the 11 things from your 20’s you will most definitely regret when you’re 40. Read More »