Could You Be Any Ruder, Commuter?

Days like Patriot's Day, aka Marathon Monday, in Boston remind me of why I think there should be an etiquette handbook printed on the back of subway cards and tickets, or a crash course in politeness before you can enter a train station. Most YoPros have to take some form of public transportation in order to get to and from work each day, and the bozos we're forced to ride with daily are bad enough. When you multiply that with a Red Sox game and the Boston Marathon, you have a regular idiot convention trapped in Park Street station. This problem isn't confined to Boston, and exists in DC, New York City, and in other cities. For those of you moving to the big city when you graduate or for those who drive to work but catch the subway to see the occasional sports game, here are the 10 Commandments of Public Transportation:

Quarter Life Crisis On the Set of HBO's "Girls

HBO and just about every media outlet out there has been promoting the new show "Girls"for the last couple weeks. The show, created by Lena Dunham and produced by Judd Apatow from 40-Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up fame, takes a brutally honest look at the life of a quartet of underpaid and overprivileged girls living in Brooklyn two years out of college. The show has drawn comparisons to Sex and the City, but with more beer and fewer cosmos, and tackles issues of money, jobs, sex, relationships, and the respective lacks thereof.

While its refreshing to see an honest look at how unglamorous life after college actually is, many of the audience reactions after the first three episodes called out the "Girls" for leeching off their parents and blaming the economy two years after it imploded. I also get the feeling that the sex and relationship depictions are pretty realistic in their awkwardness, but pretty degrading in the way these girls let guys kick them around. This might be part of the reason why a lot of critics are panning "Girls" for lacking a sense of "joy." As a young semi-professional and a person with a solid amount of friends in Brooklyn (and comparable places like Somerville in Boston, Columbia Heights in DC, and The Mission in San Francisco), I can identify with the daily struggles of trying to figure out what the f*ck I should be doing with my life, but I also know that there are a few small victories sprinkled in there that perhaps "Girls" doesn't capture. What are your reactions to this depiction of the quarter life crisis?

Tech Ability and Access: How YoPros Have An Edge and Why We Need to Give Back

In my New Media and PR class last week we touched on the corporate trend of establishing highly responsive customer service teams on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Several classmates shared examples of how they tweeted to various companies like JetBlue about flight delays or booking issues and were responded to within minutes; they even occasionally received additional perks and touchpoints from those customer service reps. It's an amazing innovation in customer service, and as someone who has used Twitter to praise and bring up issues with companies like Zappos, Comcast, Peter Pan and Greyhound Bus lines, and HootSuite, it is refreshingly satisfying to receive a direct response (even if it isn't a solution) from an identifiable person. But when I think about the hours I have wasted on the phone to get someone at Sprint to pick up the phone and then get transferred to eight different departments, I began to wonder if other people are still forced to endure that lack of customer service because of the mediums they utilize? Does (unintentional) discrimination exist for communities that either don't have the tech literacy (e.g. the elderly) or access (e.g. low-income families) to use social media?

Plugging In and Bugging Out: Addendum

This was too good not to share. I heart me some Portlandia (who doesn't want to be Carrie Brownstein?) and this "Did You Read?" sketch was spot-on about our culture's demand to keep up with today's headlines and the two-fold pressure to be culturally superior and more well-read than our peers. My friend Julia over at PR Sugar shared it with me and said "If this is the future of PR, I don't know if I can keep up!" Amen, sister. A PR YoPro's job now requires constant news monitoring in addition to a million other responsibilities to juggle and sometimes I feel like I can't keep up. But I think this is indicative of YoPros in general. It reminds me of a particular set of friends from back home who had subscriptions to the New Yorker by the time we were 13 and another set of friends from college who are in the music industry who love to casually mention obscure bands and their reviews on Pitchfork. And like I mentioned in my previous post, my classmates at school are dominant at reading every article, seeing every video, and sharing every meme in the book and I'm sure they get personal satisfaction every time they can say, "Did you read? Oh you haven't?" Hoping I can keep up!

Facebook Buys Instagram for $1B: Is Tech Worth It?

The times they are a'changing. On Monday, it was announced that Facebook was willing to pay $1 billion for sepia toned photos of hipsters in fields. The actual announcement was that Facebook forked over $1 billion to buy photo-sharing platform Instagram, specifically its active, passionate community and its dominance with mobile users. The Internet caught wind of the news in some pretty delightfully funny ways, but a general consensus emerged that digital/mobile technology and social media have undeniably changed, and will continue to change, how our world operates. These digital innovations took down former corporate giants like Kodak (which filed for bankruptcy filing in 2011) and may be taking down other media behemoths such as the New York Times: Instagram's $1 billion valuation edges out the NYT's $970 million. Yet some Instagram users fled and deleted their accounts to stay out from under the thumb of Mark Zuckerberg and many questioned whether users' photos were now the property of Zuckerberg and Facebook. It seems digital innovations may also be taking down our levels of privacy (whether we like it or not). While I am holding on to my privacy for dear life, I've been pretty cooperative being swept up in the tide of tech. But this deal made me think-- is Instagram really worth that much? Was Groupon worth that much? And what is the mark that these tech companies plan on leaving on the world?

Kids These Days: One Direction

This past Saturday, the new "It" band, One Direction, played on Saturday Night Live. Apparently in pre-teen girl land, this was a momentous occasion, so I decided to see what the hype was about and why these lads were bringing back the boy band craze with a vengeance.



After watching their two performances, I was a bit underwhelmed. Well, a lot underwhelmed. Admittedly, they're cute, and it seems like they can all carry a tune. They're screwed when they hit puberty though because I don't think any of their voices have dropped. They have the antics of 15-year old boys, which was pretty refreshing, but could get annoying right quick (cheek poke? fake mustache in the end credits?) But I didn't quite understand the mix of modern-day Newsie with Bruno Mars ensembles, the lack of choreography beyond switching places on stage and the hand clap, and the kid who kept flipping and shaking his hair at the end of every performance. You're not the Biebs, not by a long shot. And the Biebs' hair looks clean. Yours looks like a Gremlin adopted by the Lost Boys in Neverland.

I grew up on the tail end of NKOTB and right in the thick of BSB and NSYNC. Now these guys wore floor-length duster leather trench coats, space suits, rhinestone track pants, matching denim with Brit Brit, and corn rows and ski goggles, but they OWNED them. And they danced in them. Hard. Who doesn't remember the choreography to "Oh oh oh-ohhh" from The Right Stuff or the hand chomp in "Bye Bye Bye"? Those were boy bands. That was music. And I want it that way, not One Direction. Kids these days...

Why Didn't I Land That Job?

A friend and I were chatting over beers this week about the frustrations of our internship hunt this summer. We heard a whole lot of nothing back from the 10+ internships we each applied to, with the exception of my mass BCC email I received saying that I didn't get it (not even a first-round interview). The whole experience was a little demoralizing because we had no idea what criteria we didn't fulfill for the employers and what distinguished our friends who did receive interviews from us (because on paper, we have more professional work experience). I understand that hiring is a very subjective process and there are a lot of factors that go into it, but not receiving any contact or feedback had our minds running wild about all the reasons we didn't land those internships.

It's OK to Be Squiggly

Just got some heartening career advice from my professor: "Its ok to be squiggly." Lord knows my career is super squiggly and probably will remain so- and that's ok. I've started rethinking it and now view my varied experience as an asset. I know the fundamentals of my industry but have a more diverse background to better inform my worldview and help me relate to more ppl, audiences, and situations. Bonus points: my professor was an AmeriCorps VISTA

I'll Know I'm An Adult When...

I polled a bunch of friends and asked them what milestones constitute an official transition from adolescence to adulthood, or full-blown YoPro-dom. Here are a few gems:

Plugging In and Bugging Out

As a person who just got an iPhone 6 months ago, I am a little late to the smartphone party. Full disclosure: the only reason I got it was because I thought I had lost my trusty flip phone in a cab and had been told by Verizon that they didn't make my phone and battery anymore. Now that I have one, I cannot imagine going back to my dinosaur days sans email/Internet/app access. I would probably be lost in another cab if I didn't have GPS on my phone.

The one regret I have with my iPhone is that I am now perpetually plugged in. I check and recheck my bag before I leave the house to make sure that my phone is with me. I have stopped taking the Metro paper from the friendly guy outside my subway stop because I'll be getting my news from Twitter. I research restaurants on Yelp for the weekend, check flight deals on my lunch break, and text and email while walking. I don't even use my digital camera anymore because I have the camera in my phone. And my phone charger is the first item on my packing list when I go away on a trip. Panic levels escalate if I don't have my phone.

These panic levels may have something to do with the fact that I feel perpetually overwhelmed by the amount of information at my disposal, and the added task that I have to sift and synthesize all of it.

The Curse of the Online Footprint

I was uploading photos to Facebook this morning from St. Patrick's Day and was suddenly struck by an overwhelming feeling of "miffed." It wasn't because Struggle City, population iPhone's Facebook app, sucks at uploading multiple photos (but seriously, let's get on that Facebook). It was because I had to be so damn picky about which photos I uploaded. They were pictures of St. Paddy's Day, so let me be the first to spill the beans that there were snaps of drinking and drinking games. But my friends and I are all well over 21 and the games were helping some non-acquainted friends get to know each other. No one had their head over the toilet or was drawing inappropriate things in Sharpie on anyone's faces. It was good clean Irish fun. But I didn't post any of the photos that contained a Solo cup and I didn't tag anyone in the photos. My Facebook photos are on lockdown-- only my friends are allowed to see them and I have a list of people who are excluded from seeing anything personal I post. I even worried that some of my friends wouldn't want the pictures posted just because they might be associated with a St. Patrick's Day party. It made me miss the days when Mark Zuckerberg designed Facebook to be a social network among college students. Back then it was ok to show a person blowing off some steam with a friendly game of Beer Pong without thinking that they were a horrible alcoholic lacking in morals or public decency.

I recently attended BU's PRSSA PR Advanced conference where a panel of young PR professionals described what it takes to land a job and chart a career in PR. One of the panelists mentioned the importance of being authentic. He used to have two identities-- work Mike and real Mike-- and he never let the two intersect. After realizing that this was a) exhausting, and b) didn't let people get to really know or trust him, he merged the two personalities into just Mike. It was pretty refreshing to hear someone say this and demonstrate that you can be successful being yourself in the workplace. But when a conference participant asked him if that same rule applied to compromising Facebook photos or candid Tweets, he said that you probably shouldn't be a person who takes those kind of photos or Tweets those things to begin with.

I agree with him to a certain extent-- if I'm an employer and I see that my potential Director of Communications is still participating in wet t-shirt contests 10 years out of college, I might have some reservations about hiring you or letting you be the face of my company. But it seems like young professionals are being hyper-critically judged by their actions and their Internet histories. Right now, it's ok for me to host a "wine tasting" at my house because that's considered classy, but drinking a beer out of a Solo cup on a porch at a BBQ makes me a philandering party animal.

Wedding Bills Will Be Ringing

Wedding Guest by yoproblog

The second a YoPro turns 24, a big bag of mail gets dumped on your apartment steps. You think it's your loving family and friends wishing you a happy birthday, but no: it's the start of a wedding marathon that will not let up for the next 10 years of your life. Suddenly everyone and their mom decides that they are getting married (no joke, my mom is actually getting married in 2 weeks) and they want you to grace them with your presence.

You start hearing your friends saying "I'm going to 4 weddings this summer." It sounds far-fetched at first, especially when they start saying "I'm IN 5 weddings this summer," but then you get to the day where you utter "I'm IN 6 weddings this summer and 2 of them are on the same day" when you realize that the wedding cyclone has seized you too. Suddenly you're not in Kansas anymore, and you're paying for an expensive hotel room in the Hamptons that costs almost as much as the money you forked over to buy the matching ruby red slippers the bride requested that her bridesmaids wear.

What no one tells you when you get that first disgustingly cute invitation is that while weddings can be quite romantic and a great excuse to party, they're also a money trap.

Must-Read for YoPros: Millennials paralyzed by choice

My friend Akhila posted this amazing piece from Priya Parker on CNN's Global Public Square (GPS) blog about the pressures Millennials face in making career and life decisions (Millennials Paralyzed By Choice, 3/8/2012). It struck really close to home because a) I have had countless conversations with friends about the Catch 22 that is being a young adult, and b) It was pretty appropriate coming from Akhila because she's beyond badass and I'm jealous of that quality of hers. Parker analyzes a generation that is presented with seemingly limitless possibilities, and yet no decision they make in career or life stands out as that golden ticket or silver bullet to success and happiness. She makes a really astute observation that I have also recognized about how this phenomenon has intensified because of social media. 

How To Land A Job...On The Set of "Pretty Woman"

YoPro: What Not To Wear by yoproblog


I attended a conference over the weekend with the usual panels, Q&A, networking session, and obligatory post-event happy hour. What was unusual was the choice of outfits among my fellow attendees that seemed to pass for business casual. Emphasis on the casual. 


Their attire struck me as unusual not because I could have babysat most of them and therefore am generationally sartorially out-of-touch, but because the school that I attend is very career-oriented. It encourages students to obtain internships and attend networking events within the first weekend on campus. Consequently, the undergraduates with whom I attend school are networkers on steroids. So it surprised me when I walked into the conference center and the first two women I saw were wearing blazers, but had decked out their lower halves with shorts and a mini skirt respectively. Granted they were wearing black tights, but when you see hemlines that high, they turn heads. 


Most of the young men women at the conference nailed it and looked every bit the yo-pro, but there were certain minor things that I felt compelled to tell my young friends are still not appropriate at a professional event. Things like "hooker heels"-- 5 inch heels representing every color of Tropical Skittles that sound so plastic everyone knows you bought them at Forever 21-- or shoulder-grazing earrings and ironic hairbows. I love me some early Madonna and fully believe that you should "Express Yourself," but there is a fine line between personal self-expression and just too personal. 


Bro-pros, you don't have much to worry about in this department because it's pretty hard to screw up your uniform (unless you have a thing for deep Vs or don't own an iron). So here are some of my biggest (female) offenders:

The 30 Under 30 Bucket List

I live by to-do lists, and by virtue of this habit, one of my guilty pleasures is tinkering with my ongoing bucket list. I have a perpetual fear of not "carpe-ing the diem" while I have time, health, and freedom, so I like to curate my bucket list in order to remind me to get off my ass and live my youth to the fullest.

I was introduced to two "Life Lists" in high school during the college admissions process (and during a Leadership class taken to fulfill a "practical art" requirement: go figure), and while they're about as cheesy as the "Wear Sunscreen" speech, they had a lasting impact on how I think about how I should spend my days on this rock.
Hugh Gallagher's College Essay
John Goddard's Life List

One of the fears that I think a lot of yo-pros have is that your life suddenly becomes a failure if you don't have your act together by age 30. Oddly enough, another fear is that you die at 30-- poof! life becomes not worth living and all you have to look forward to is the slow descent. I have put a stake in the ground that these fears are without merit, especially because 1) I will certainly not have my life together by 30, and 2) A lot of the kick-ass yo-pros in my life are 30+. Most of them are just getting started, and precisely because they're on the wrong side of 30, they're more knowledgeable, articulate, confident, well-traveled, and yes, even more attractive. Heck, Bethenny Frankel told me tonight on Bravo that she finally "made it" at age 40. So while the fear of my coach of youth suddenly turning into a pumpkin still lingers, I'm confident that life will in fact go on when the clock strikes 30.

But in order to light a little bit of that fire under my ass, I polled my friends and colleagues to give me one item from their to-do list before they turned 30, and the end result is the 30 Before 30 Bucket List.
(Video after the jump)

What's In a YoPro's Bag?

Recently I’ve been wondering why no young professionals have been advocating for mandatory chiropractic coverage in the universal health care debates. While common wisdom would cause one to think that our nation’s elderly would be most in need of chiropractic care, I beg to differ. As any YoPro knows, as a species, we carry our lives with us. Once we’re up, we don’t stop going until 8pm at the earliest and we need a survival kit to tackle the day’s adventures. This survival kit is damn heavy, and our shoulders and backs are paying for it dearly.

We carry these gigantic backpacks and messenger bags like we’re hiking the Appalachian Trail for the next six months. It takes five minutes for us to find anything because we “know it’s in here somewhere” and another five minutes to assemble everything in it just to put the thing on. Once we have it on, it’s too much work for us to take it off, so we just pretend like you’re the one in the way getting on the subway or passing through the lunch line rush.

Because I am secretly mortified that I’m taking out small children, dogs, and tall buildings when I pass, I try to use Fridays to prepare to carry less stuff with me. This is especially necessary on Fridays, because once you’ve tried to squeeze your gigantic bag into a crowded happy hour, you suddenly realize the asinine amount of crap you carry with you. I once tried to meet up with friends on the Frying Pan—a floating dive bar that is literally a boat at Pier 66 in New York City’s West Village—and carried a backpack, laptop case, and purse with me through one square foot of available space among 200+ YoPros. I’m lucky I didn’t get tossed overboard.

Let’s analyze the typical arsenal of essentials I carry with me on a daily basis:

To Wear or Not to Wear

I had a bit of a Claudia Kishi moment when I got dressed this morning. For those of you who don't get the reference, you clearly were not a girl growing up in the 90s with an unhealthy obsession with The Babysitters Club (P.S. Best blog ever). To paraphrase the great novelist Ann M. Martin, "She was wearing a canary yellow oversized silk men's shirt with skinny jeans and flats, with a stack of bracelets halfway up her arm that combined a silver cuff, periwinkle, yellow, and peach resin bangles, and delicate silver hoops." While I didn't think I would snag Scott Schuman's eye, I did think that I had pulled something relatively cute together. But I couldn't help but pause in the mirror and wonder, "Should I be wearing this?"

Networking: A Necessary Evil

Networking.

Is there any word that strikes more dread in the hearts of young professionals everywhere? Apparently not, because last night I attended a young professionals in PR networking event where more than 70 students and young professionals RSVPed "yes" to the invitation. There was a veritable cattle call on Eventbrite when the email hit our inboxes and came through our Twitter feeds. I generally consider myself pretty hip and with it, someone who has her finger on the pulse of what's cool, but I don't get the young professional bloodthirst to attend these types of events. Truth be told, I didn't want to go at all. There was not a bone in my body that felt, "Heck yes I want to walk into a room full of strangers, eat finger food touched by too many fingers, and force awkward conversation with people for three hours!" And yet I showed up at 6:30pm sharp with my business cards at the ready in my pocket.