Guest Posts | There From Here

Generation Y: Welcome Back Home?

August 22, 2011 By Chanelle Schneider 3 Comments

The following is a guest post by Cristin McGrath.

I’ve always been proud of my independence and ambition. I never thought I’d consider moving back home. My senior year of high school was the last time I lived with my parents for more than a few days. As of August I’m back for a return engagement.

Society has attached a nasty stigma to the notion of adult children living with their parents. After college it seemed most of my friends flew right back to their comfy, cheap nests when the job market was still poor, when their dream firms didn’t extend offers, when their chosen fields and expected salaries didn’t materialize. I, on the other, less frugal hand, took an internship that didn’t pay me nearly enough to afford my studio apartment in West Philadelphia (or life alone, in general). While I was technically living under the poverty line, I saw stars – literally and figuratively – during my stint as an intern with the Philadelphia Eagles. The brand recognition I earned from working with a professional sports team was too impressive to pass up.

After the internship’s honeymoon phase wore off, I realized student loans didn’t care about brand recognition and whether or not I saw literal or figurative stars. My loan obligations were steadily piling up while I earned less as a literal and figurative star-seeing intern than a Burger King cashier. Something didn’t add up. I decided enough was enough and began the stressful and disheartening task of finding a new job. The figurative stars later aligned perfectly as a contact I met via Twitter told me of an opening with an agency. I’d finally found a new job and a spot above the poverty line.

Three unpaid college internships and countless student loans did their damage, however. My new salary and benefits still don’t allow me to save money and continue with my lifestyle, already something less than extravagant. Asking my parents for help was the last thing I wanted to do, as my independence has always been important to me. Fortunately, they both recognized my struggle with poverty-ridden pride and offered the move home as a temporary solution (the “temporary” is my addition).

I have established a January 1, 2012 deadline to move out (again), to reestablish my independence. By then I will have a nest egg and be ready to kick myself out of my parents’ nest. A timeline for my departure is the only way I can mentally prepare myself for my return to the nest. I wanted to do it all on my own, and will, but us GenY’ers must know when our time in the wild has proven too dangerous to continue alone. The global economy is in distress. Debt – the country’s, our parents’, ours – is threatening our ability to take flight. So don’t be discouraged if the nest beckons. It’s warm and welcoming there.

The preceding was a guest post by Cristin McGrath.

Cristin McGrath is a creative and passionate communications specialist with experience across both traditional and emerging media. Her young but vibrant career has focused on building brand images for impressive organizations across the music, entertainment, technology, and sports industries — her expertise in the fields of social media and events management has enabled her to successfully aid in the operation of press departments with the Philadelphia Eagles, Sony Music Entertainment, MTV Networks and Dell. Most recently, she has transitioned into the world of agency PR with Vault Communications.

Cristin graduated in 2010 from Temple University with a BA in Strategic and Organizational Communication. She will be living (temporarily, of course) in the Poconos with her parents until January 2012.

Filed Under: Guest Posts, Stories Tagged With: generation Y, GenY, linkedin, living at home

What’s the ROI on that Degree Now?

July 25, 2011 By Chanelle Schneider 2 Comments

The following is a guest post by Liz Funk (bio below)

We’ve all felt buyer’s remorse. That lime green sundress that looked great in the fitting room looks putrid in the natural light. You decide to splurge on a dinner out, ordering an $18 entrée. When you finally eat it, it’s good, but not $18-good. You buy a bag of clearance clothes from the Gap, get home and deeply resent spending $60 on non-refundable clothes. It happens to everyone, every now and then, and you move on, because hopefully your buyer’s remorse isn’t on items worth more than a few hours’ pay.

But, what if you have buyer’s remorse for a major investment you made that will take years of income to pay off? And, without the resources to pay off such an investment, it seems like it was a terrible idea?

The “crap economy” and the devastating impact that the 2008 economic crash has had on young people has caused widespread unemployment among 20somethings. Because young people don’t have jobs, a) many young people don’t have the money to repay their student loans, and b) many young people are wondering why they went to college in the first place, if they’re unemployed!

While some “quarterlifers” miss college and want to go back to a simpler time, others are thoroughly resenting their college experience. Here’s how to reconcile this:

How to find value in your degree

1) First and foremost, be nice to yourself. Before 2006, there were relatively few people who had an idea that the economy was going to go so far downhill, and odds are good that you weren’t one of them. There’s nothing you can do to change the fact that you did go to college (i.e. a time machine), so be compassionate and nice to yourself and don’t beat yourself up.

2) Write down everything positive that you got out of college, whether it was a few really good friends who you still keep in touch with, some awesome memories (write each of them down!), or classes where you read some life-changing books.

3) Be critical of the system. There is definitely something messed up in that our society encourages entering college seniors to take out loans to go to the best college they were accepted to, but many take out a Range Rover’s worth of student loans, picking majors that will not help them pay off these loans. This isn’t to say that you should major in engineering if you aren’t interested in it. Rather, we should encourage students to consider alternate paths. Rather than rushing from high school straight into college, students should consider taking a gap year or two to work, travel, or intern so they have a stronger sense of what they might want to do professionally. Then, if they do take out student loans, they’ll be investing in an education that will help them pursue their passions, rather than going to college because that’s what you’re supposed to do, without much of an endpoint short of graduating. On that note, give yourself a break from job hunting, worrying, and stressing. This will ensure that you have some mental and emotional energy to brainstorm both where you want to go from here and how you can tap into what you learned in college to help you carve out a career!

But, overall, be nice to yourself because you can only move forward to a place that’s more positive if you’re really rooting and advocating for yourself!

Your turn! How do you come into your own when the first years of your adult life are marked by joblessness, instability, angst, and incessant money problems?

Coming of Age in a Crap Economy is the brainchild of Liz Funk, a New York-based freelance writer, author, and college lecturer. Liz has written for USA Today, Newsday, the Washington Post, New York magazine, the Christian Science Monitor, CosmoGIRL!, Girls’ Life, the Baltimore Sun, the New Jersey Record, the Albany Times Union, Lemondrop.com (AOL), and the New Humanist (UK). She is the author of Supergirls Speak Out: Inside the Secret Crisis of Overachieving Girls, a non-fiction look at how today’s young women feel that they must be constantly improving themselves if they want to be loved. She regularly speaks at colleges about how young women can overcome perfectionism and about breaking into journalism/publishing, and she has been a guest lecturer at Columbia University, Cornell University, Duke University, New York University, Boston University, Emerson College, Rice University, Whitman College, the University of Iowa, the University of Missouri, Mississippi State University, the University of South Florida, and Penn State University, among many other colleges.

She graduated from college in 2009 with high honors in English literature and has yet to be extended a single full-time job offer. She lives in upstate New York with her collie, Buddy (who she’s pretty sure has figured out the meaning of life), and her parents, of course.

Filed Under: Gen-Y Goal Stars, Guest Posts Tagged With: career, generation Y, get there from here, linkedin, living at home

A New Soviet Model for American Education Part III

July 15, 2011 By Chanelle Schneider 1 Comment

The following is a guest post by Benjamin Daniel of WriteRight Publications. Benjamin is really big on education research, measurable metrics, improved education outcomes and education reform. He has successfully lobbied for increased funding for early childhood education funding, done field work and led teams as a community organizer. Benjamin also led nonprofit and community development initiatives in underserved communities.

This post is continued from A New Soviet Model for American Education Part I

Motivation

These three groups suffer from what I’ll call a lack of collective communication and advancement. They have different, though related, reasons for wanting success (we assume they all want success) but none seem to have anything to do with one another. Does it make a difference if they want the same thing for related reasons, you ask? Why yes, it does!

Say a teacher wants to earn more money by helping her students produce better results as measured by their performance in the classroom and test scores. Students need to understand how it helps them to perform well. Scholarships to colleges for good classroom performance or paid training for careers that don’t require a college degree are strong incentives for success. Teachers and students now have a shared financial incentive to perform well.

Parents who aren’t certain about why they should motivate kids to excel or who don’t care whether a teacher buys a bigger house also need incentives. Circumstances will dictate the kinds of rewards they receive but low-income families, for example, might receive vouchers to local grocery stores to purchase food (in addition to whatever aid they might already receive). Schools can form partnerships with area businesses to help promote improving education for students and teachers and, by extension, the lives of everyone involved. It’s also a great opportunity to promote the idea of community-based education, where everyone involved has an incentive to ensure the other does well.

I Know How We Can Change

Ultimately, people will probably act in their own self-interest. The trick is to make their self-interest behave in such a way that it promotes and supports the other people’s self-interest. Here’s how:

Parents: get your kid to school on time, attend your parent-teacher conferences and come to an assembly when you’re asked. You can earn yourself perks and rewards at local businesses.

Students: work with your parents and teachers to do well in school, respect authority and earn money for college or vocational education.

Teachers: get involved in your school’s neighborhood, learn something about your kids’ parents and families, work with them to improve classroom performance and maybe earn the kind of bonus that could mean a remodeled kitchen, a longer vacation or a new house entirely.

Collectively working to advance the other’s agendas, then, is a great idea for everyone involved and can dramatically improve per-student performance, teacher success and parental involvement.

Your turn: What do you think of this proposed solution? Can it work? What can work?

Filed Under: Advice, Guest Posts Tagged With: motivation, service, smcedu

A New Soviet Model for American Education Part II

July 14, 2011 By Chanelle Schneider Leave a Comment

This post is continued from A New Soviet Model for American Education Part I

So, what does work? How do we fix our middling American education system? I’ve often wondered if we haven’t given the Soviet Communist collectivist model a bad rap. If you’re aware of the “it takes a village to raise a child” saying, you know where I’m headed with this.

We (Don’t) Live Together

One of the biggest and most difficult problems we need to overcome in education is that often each of the actors involved (teachers, students, parents) brings different agendas to the classroom. Teachers have a curriculum they have to follow; the state and school requires that a lesson be taught in a specific time frame. These lessons help teachers prepare students for both the next grade level, long-term, and mandatory testing, near-term. These tests, if students perform well on them, help schools earn congratulations from other educators, parents (hopefully) and legislators which, in turn, could mean more money or, perhaps, a successful bond issue for another school in the district or improvements to existing schools.

Some districts are paying teachers more money if students perform at a certain level both in the classroom and on standardized tests. There’s a financial incentive to get as many students as possible doing well enough to not only pass classroom and standardized tests, but to pass them at a certain level. These bonuses can help teachers pay their bills, buy a bigger house, improve their existing homes, buy another car or take vacations. Of course they want to do well.

But wait, you say. What about students and their parents? Students are getting a couple different kinds of lessons in school: intellectual, or thinking, lessons (we’ll call them practical since they’re supposed to put kids on the road to college and a college degree which, in turn, is supposed to help them earn more money over the course of their lives than they would without it) and moral, or personal, lessons. Codes of conduct, rewards and punishments for good and bad behavior and for good and bad classroom performance are designed to teach personal lessons. Students, then, depending on the school and its reward/punishment structure, have an incentive to do well and behave. Their reasons, however, are not the same as or even in line with those of teachers.

Finally we have parents. It’s easy to say, “That kid’s mom and dad obviously don’t spend enough time with him/her. See how poorly he/she does in school? Look how disrespectful toward other students and teachers he/she is!” This, of course, both oversimplifies and reduces a parent’s role in a child’s education. Some parents send kids to school to learn, to have opportunities for better jobs and to stay out of trouble. Other parents don’t care how their kids perform and just want them away from the house for the time they’re in school. Parents, then, don’t have the same motives for helping their kids be successful students as the kids or the teachers.

To read what will motivate us to change, please come back for Part III to be published later this week. Until then, please leave your comments below.

Filed Under: Advice, Guest Posts Tagged With: family, motivation, service, smcedu

A New Soviet Model for American Education Part I

July 13, 2011 By Chanelle Schneider 2 Comments

In a quiet suburb of a large, major American city, on streets with loud, laughing, child-filled environmentally friendly parks and whose homes feature two-car garages, whose two-parent, racially-diverse, middle-class, college-educated mothers and fathers make sure to recycle paper and plastic and use energy-friendly lights for lamps, who water well-maintained, landscaped lawns during off hours to help conserve water and who have between two and four well-read and attentive children, there is daily, violent fighting. The fighting is political and, therefore, personal. The fighting is over the present and the future of American public education. But I’ve skipped a step or two.

By 1918 every state in America had passed laws requiring children to receive an education. America was changing from a country where most people were farmers and worked schedules tied to planting and harvesting crops to a country where most of the people worked in factories and were moving to heavily-populated cities on its coasts. Education was becoming increasingly important in these cities.

Unfortunately, the education laws put in place in 1918 set varying, inefficient guidelines. The new laws did not specify what kind of education children should receive, what was important to learn, why it was important to learn it, and, depending on the state, set different limits on how long children had to attend school and how old they had to be upon starting and finishing. Until the United States Department of Education was formed in 1980, states set their own rules that involved a lot of guesswork and were based on different kinds of research with no unifying ideas about effective policy. America still lacks a clear and effective national education policy and hasn’t agreed on a national curriculum. Many of the countries now found ahead of us in world rankings have instituted universal education standards and policies and done well as a result, improving education outcomes for students across socioeconomic and racial strata.

Still, for a long time we managed as the stick stirring the global education and innovation pot. America was ranked at or near the top of so-called “first world” countries for education. Now, however, America ranks as “average” according to the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD). On a 1,000-point scale, America rates around 500 in reading, math and science. OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), meanwhile, says that, of the 34 countries studied, American 15 year-olds rank 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math, in the middle or near bottom.

The Purpose of an Education

We’re fighting over American education because we can’t agree on what an American education is. We’re fighting over American education because too often a quality education depends on how much money a family earns and where that family is allowed to live. We have a mismatched group of education policies that are different for each state and, in fact, are different within states. I was raised in a state, New Jersey, where the quality of education varied wildly within a 10 square-mile radius. Politicians and educators are proposing solutions from vouchers to small classes to paying children to get good grades. None of these work consistently, if at all.

To see what solutions will be offered, please come back for Parts II and III to be published later this week. Until then, please leave your comments below.

Filed Under: Advice, Guest Posts Tagged With: motivation, parents

5 Realistic Reasons to Find Summer Internships Now

October 25, 2010 By Chanelle Schneider 7 Comments

In my youth, I was an intern. But as I often do, I went about the whole thing backwards. I originally received a degree in graphic design and immediately started with a firm in my home town. After just a few months, I realized that sitting behind the computer ever day rearranging page numbers for a parts catalog was boring. I left that job and went back to school to find myself. So, although, technically, my public relations internship did not lead to my first job (Nordstrom & Hot Dog on a Stick do not count) when I finally got around to interning, it launched what has been a fascinating and rewarding career. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Advice, Guest Posts Tagged With: advice for starting my internship, generation Y, internship, linkedin, success

From College to the Real World- A GenY’er Learns Sacrifice

July 26, 2010 By Chanelle Schneider 12 Comments

Blake McCammon, is an intern at Xceptional HR. Connect with Blake on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Blake is a recent grad of Northeastern State University with a degree in Business Administration. During school he created and managed his university’s social media strategy.

Every week, I hear someone comment on the topic “Is a college education worth it?” or “Is it all about the money?” These two topics are referenced in the media, in real life, and usually during any action you perform during the day. We live in a world that has been consumed by the need for cash. How much will the groceries cost? Will we have enough money to pay the car insurance this month? Since the time we were old enough to get an allowance to the time we start living on social security (or lack thereof) we will always be thinking of money. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Advice, Guest Posts Tagged With: get a job, job search, linkedin, living at home, saving money

I Got My First Job Through Networking

July 21, 2010 By Chanelle Schneider 8 Comments

Yasmin is a Singaporean Gen Y, 7 months into her first and current full-time job. She studied in Germany, majoring for 3 years in psychology for Bachelor?s and 1 year in business for Masters. Her boss only knew about these degrees after hiring her. When Yasmin is not handling operations, sales and marketing at work, she uses social media to advance and promote her company. Yasmin values the insights she gets from #genychat every week, enjoys meaningful conversations with friends, family and strangers, and loves a good laugh whenever possible.

The Job Search Searching for a job is like looking for someone to settle down with. You could go at it with a rational mind, listing and prioritizing criteria. Or you could be caught unaware. The latter was how I came upon my current and first full-time job – accidental and unexpected. Like most graduates, I started my job search 6 months before graduating from business school. It was a somber, almost soul-less routine: log on to jobsite portals, click on posts that were appealing, mass-submit my resume, attach custom-fitted cover letters, all bearing a carpe diem complex. The mindset I had then was to aim for a job in a multi-national corporation (MNC) or brandgiant. Typical, right? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Advice, Guest Posts Tagged With: don't quit, genychat, get a job, get there from here, job search, linkedin, quicksand

Guest Post: How I Used Facebook Ads to Get a Job

July 13, 2010 By Chanelle Schneider 12 Comments

Marian specializes in social media for job hunters, sometimes gets paid to write, and works with authors who want to build up their personal brand. She blogs over at http://www.marianlibrarian.com and usually features posts under the “uncategorized” tag but likes to pretend it revolves somewhat around Gen Y careers that don’t fit in a box. She founded the Pajama Job Hunt, a crazy cool program that teaches recent grads, job seekers and freelancers how to use social media as the ultimate career tool. Follow her on Twitter.

In a #GenYChat about innovative ways to get a job I was intrigued by Marian’s story about advertising herself and getting employers to come to her. Here is her story. I hope you find it as inspiring as I did!

How I Used Facebook Ads to Get a Job I feel like I’ve told this story a thousand times, and each time the same story gets told, I rag on the resume process and spew my love for social media. Then, maybe you’ll check out my blog and we all go home happy. I’d really like this post to be different. I’d really like you to go home not just inspired but motivated to do something about your job search. (And by “do something” I mean, stop sending out resumes and cover letters since, well, they don’t really work.)

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Advice, Guest Posts Tagged With: career, genychat, get a job, get there from here, job search, linkedin

Guest Post: Hey, Gen Y, Are You Afraid To Network?

May 7, 2010 By Chanelle Schneider 6 Comments

I’m a Gen Y job seeker. Unemployment data tells me I’m not the only one. A recent Pew study shows that 37% of 18-29 year olds are out of work! But the career and networking events I go to tell a different story.

Networking, networking, networking. We’ve all heard endless times how it’s the best way to get a job.

So I get out there. I go to mixers, seminars, and job search support groups. And no matter the venue, I notice one thing in common among all these events. With the exception of events targeted to young professionals, I’m often the youngest person in the room. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Advice, Guest Posts Tagged With: career, fear, generation Y, linkedin, networking, Pew Research, professional