I fully admit to tending toward a type-A personality, but I really think there’s something to be said for having a plan B (and C, and maybe D, E and F, too) in work, school and life. I realize it can be a lot of planning for nothing if The Plan goes great the first time around—and, of course, I always hope it does—but if it doesn’t, which we know is pretty darn common, the lack of a back-up plan can cause unnecessary panic, scrambling and allover stress.

And I’ve had a lot of chances for practice lately:

The Plan: To do my MPH master’s project (basically my thesis) on a very specific topic with a very specific connection and a pretty specific data collection and analysis plan.

The Problem: Logistics. Communication problems. Time, time, time. The fact that despite my fabulous school allows seven years for an MPH program, I would like to get out of there as soon as possible (read: I have senioritis).

Plan B: When things on my original project started smelling fishy, I started looking for other options. What I’m working toward now, fingers crossed, will end up to be a better, more manageable project that just happens to sit at the exact intersection of my interests.

The Verdict: TGFPB (thank god for plan B).

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The Plan: To get a way-cool part-time job at a way-cool company that just might have some way-way-way-cool full-time positions up for grabs right around the time I’ll be donning the ol’ cap-n-gown.

The Problem: Great conversations, great sort-of interviews, great (I thought) cover letter. Thinks looked good…until the company decided not to fill the position right now, for a good reason.

Plan B: After clicking “submit” on the application, I came up with all of the things I would do if I didn’t get the job—the most important of which cranking out a bunch of credits in the spring and finishing up both of my master’s programs and projects earlier than I’d planned.

The Verdict: TGFPB.

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The Plan: To run the Twin Cities Marathon like a champ (or, well, just to finish)!

The Problem: Injury. Which you may remember. ‘Nuff said.

Plan B: None. I was going to run, and I was going to finish, and it was going to be the best moment of my life. Duh.

The Verdict: I bawled. And moped. And moved on. And starting practicing a heck of a lot of yoga. And survived. But it was miserable for a while there—and I should have had a back-up plan, even if it was a mental one.

-----

So I’m currently planning what to do if: another master’s project falls through, I can’t find a job after graduation, my right hip decides it only likes me if I’m not running—and about a million other things. Maybe it makes me crazy, maybe it makes me smart, maybe it’s a combination of the two. But having a Plan B always makes me feel better, especially when I end up using it.

Photo by gingiber

I got all pumped up to blog – about something totally different than what follows – and brought a bag of jumbo marshmallows to the couch with me. As I popped a big fluffy thing in my mouth, then another, I realized how funny this scene would probably be to my public health classmates and professors, my running buddies, my fellow yogis, the 548 people who follow health_nutty on Twitter.

And, probably, you. (No judging on the marshmallows, by the way. I blame my mother for my strange sweet tooth. Hi, Mom.) But as I starting thinking – and laughing out loud – at the disconnect between someone who studies, lives and breathes health stuff shoveling marshmallows directly from bag to mouth, I realized it’s actually pretty common to not walk the talk.

Let’s face it: We know accountants with all kinds of credit card debt, hair stylists with terrible hair, event planners who can’t schedule their afternoon and public health students who eat marshmallows. Why can’t – or don’t – we practice what we preach?

I’m going to guess it’s because we’re burned out. Now I’m no financial planner, but I’m guessing if I was one the last thing I’d want to look at when I got home from work is my own bank statement. We put the vast majority of our energy into our careers, so when it comes down to it, we don’t have much left for ourselves. And I think it’s really sad that I could work my butt off all day trying to get people living in poverty the resources and education they need to eat fresh fruits and vegetables, and then come home and have a frozen pizza for dinner.

Luckily, I think there are exceptions, and I had the immense pleasure of living one for a summer during college when I interned at a health and lifestyle magazine. We had a free gym and were encouraged to use it and ate in a mostly local, organic, highly subsidized cafeteria. We wrote about health and talked about health and lived health, and for some reason, all I wanted when I got home from work was to go for a long run and eat a big salad.

Do you walk your professional talk? What would make it easier?

Photo by Vali...

First, and really encouraging -- several people I know who have been job-hunting have been landing interviews lately. Hopeful for these folks, hopeful sign for the economy.

But the question of how to "ace" an interview always comes up, especially because there are so many types of interviews and interviewers. There's a lot of good interview advice available, but let's start with some important, but easy things you can do:

1. Prep, prep, prep. You really need to know everything about the company that you're interviewing with -- who they are, what they do, how they do it. Anything you can't easily find out, consider that a question you should pop at the interviewer.

2. Defend without being defensive. If there's anything in your resume that's at all out of the ordinary, be prepared to talk about it. Maybe it's a question about being laid off, or a question a big project you said you coordinated. Again, prep, prep, prep.

3. Consider the opportunity. The questions (from a good interviewer, at least) will be designed to expose your strengths or weaknesses -- what have you been doing since the layoffs, other than job-hunting? Did the big project overwhelm you? Your answers will say something about how motivated you are, and your body language (as you digest and answer the question) will say a lot more about attitude.

A while back, after being caught up in some massive layoffs in the tech industry, I was in a second round of interviews with an interesting tech company. As we finished up, the interviewer told me something which stuck with me. He said that -- unlike most of the interviews he had been conducting with folks who had been laid off -- there was no tension, bad body language, no deer-caught-in-headlights feeling in the room. He said it felt like a couple of people just sitting there, talking normally, and it made him feel very comfortable (not a bad thing in an interview).

4. Leave an impression. Usually I hear that you're supposed to get the interviewer to talk as much as possible during an interview, which makes sense up to a point. Yes, you want to get a better feel for the job, the manager, the company, and yes, you want the interviewer to feel as comfortable as possible (who doesn't feel comfortable talking about one's self?) But the key is still to leaving an impression (hopefully positive).

If you don't make the hiring manager understand who you are and how you're different from all the other applicants, then you've likely missed your chance to get the job.

Sorry to be MIA – I’ve spent the last week-and-a-half in a fog. Like that commercial where the (cartoon) woman has medicine head and her head lifts off like a balloon. Yep, whatever evil, nasty cold that’s been going around finally caught me. And it was as described.

And while my Minnesota it-could-be-worse mentality still peeked through to some degree, I can think of few things less pleasant than basically not having a functional head for a week-and-a-half of grad schooling, working and Halloweening.

But there’s good news! I made note of my brilliant coping strategies to help you survive what’s bound to be a gross cold/flu/etc. season. Good luck (and wash your hands)!

Take advantage of couch time. I spent a whole lot of time chillin’ in my PJs, on the couch, with a box of Kleenex within arm’s reach—but my laptop wasn’t any farther away. Because I didn’t want to leave the house (felt like crap AND didn’t want to be a germ-spreading machine), I finally had the time and motivation…sort of…to just sit down and get all the tedious homework things I’d been avoiding done.

Be nice, and take one for the team. Especially with the H1N1 freak-outs going on, I found that people were very understanding of anything I had to cancel, miss, reschedule or adjust. My best strategy was being very nice and apologetic and really, really stressing the fact that I don’t want to get anyone else sick. Once people picture themselves in your shoes (see description above), they’re usually pretty quick to let you off the hook.

Suck it up. Now I realize resting is ideal, but sometimes that’s just not possible. So I—a usually super anti-medicine person—took my DayQuil every four hours, drank a lot of water and just pretended I wasn’t sick when I had to get something done. I admit to having a relatively miserable day at work, class and lab, but I did what I had to do and felt much less stressed out later knowing I didn’t miss anything.

But know when to let go. While I do believe in sucking it up to some degree, there are times you’ve just gotta let your body take over. For me, that meant sleeping a good 12 hours one day…then going back to bed a few hours later. It’s hard for me to let myself do it, but sleeping, relaxing and not trying to push a recovery can be the best medicine.

[Update on our user poll -- as expected, stay away from friends and family to avoid getting sick. And twice as many of you said work or school were the most likely sources of contagion.

[Unfortunately for you if you're reading this, an equal number picked "reading this blog" as the most probable way to contract the flu. Sorry! ]

Photo by blisschan

Do you hate or fear change? Most everybody does, it seems, unless they get to decide what changes. As a witness to change the other day, I was amazed to watch it happen. Here's what I saw:

I wandered into a small store when the store owner received a call from a customer. He and his wife had been shopping there several months earlier, spotted something they (meaning his wife) really liked and he wanted to buy it as a surprise.

Problem 1 -- he was in Tennessee, the store was in Maine. Problem 2 -- he had been in the store several months earlier, and it was kind of a stretch to believe that the shopkeeper would remember him, or what he was looking for. Problem 3 -- he was trying to describe the item over the phone, and the store owner had a number of similar items.

The shop owner's solution? She took a few close-up photos with her iPhone, e-mailed them to the customer. He looked at the photos, decided which one he wanted. They talked, they haggled, they negotiated a price over the phone. She took care of the credit card transaction online, and promised the gift would be shipped out that afternoon.

Now a couple of things came to mind immediately. First, once you see it done, it seems like such an obvious solution. But the reality is that this shop owner was really smart. She was willing to push herself to find new ways to make the transaction actually happen. And it did work. And it was the first time she had ever done it, she told me afterward.

Second, she discovered a creative solution that could generate (there's that word again) a whole new way of doing business. Watching her, I was struck by what she did -- so easily -- and how difficult it is for many of us to make that leap. I'm not just talking about technology, but about learning how to adapt.

Every time I've ever changed schools or jobs or cities, there have been new problems, new challenges, but also new opportunities. Obviously this shop owner learned something about how to problem-solve in a new way.

What about you -- what's changed for you lately?

photo by Pink Sherbert Photography

Kate, what are you going to do with yourself when you're not in school/not so busy/not juggling so darn much stuff?

Really -- do you want to hang your identity on a label that somebody slapped on your back when you weren't looking? If you do, here are some of the common traits attributed to Gen Y:

• trend-conscious
• Idealistic, optimistic, and flexible
• Socially responsible; particularly concerned about the environment
• Very comfortable with technology; like to multi-task
• Have a hunger for feedback and rewards

Likewise, for Gen X, you'll see none of those characteristics. Instead, substitute:

• Cynical,
• Media savvy
• Individualistic and self-reliant
• grew up during economic downturn
• work ethic

So let's dump the term "generation" -- just for a minute. Let's say instead that you've been out of school for 2 years. OK, do you have that picture?

Now, let's think 12 years out of school. What's changed? Do you still frequent Taco Bell for your dinner? Do you still make the same mistakes on the job, and off the job?

All right, leap through time another 10 or 20 years.
Do you have a longer view of careers, family, politics, work ethic, important technology vs. gadgets?

I'm betting you do, and that it has continued to change and mature you, and will continue to do so. I'm also betting that this difference in maturity levels is what causes generational friction. Sometimes, you want to learn from other people's mistakes, and not repeat them. And sometimes you want to make your own mistakes.

I say again -- Gen Y doesn't exist. People do exist at a different level of maturity, people who have learned different things, perhaps, from others' mistakes. Perhaps from yours.

You can agree with me if you wish. But if you disagree, you run the risk that I'll decide that you don't exist, either.

Tell me off, if you think I'm wrong.

Photo by Ha-wee

P.S. Speaking of levels of maturity, I was fascinated by some major trending topics on Twitter this past weekend -- #balloonboy and #Sue Sylvester (look it up!) as well as #bostonisbetter. Doesn't this sound like "normal" times?

Sharing some Twitter conversations (in my Twitter alias -- ExperienceLive) with resume experts from around the country lately has been illuminating for me, since the topic of what makes or unmakes a great resume is like a bad traffic accident -- you just can't turn away.

Some of the "controversial" resume advice that I saw:

• one-page vs. two-page resumes (it depends)
• functional vs. chronological resume (it depends)
• objective vs. personal brand statement (it depends)
• not enough vs. too much information (it depends)
• hard skills vs. soft skills (both)
• keywords (yes)
• expertise, not responsibilities (yes)
• love of iguanas (no -- please, no!)

A few things are pretty clear -- there's a lot of confusion and a lot of differing opinions out there about resumes, how they should look, what should be included or excluded. How do I know this, personally?

True story -- I met with some members of a respected outplacement firm a while back, and they analyzed and helped me revise my own resume. Here's the kicker, though. After the first meeting with one analyst, I revised my resume exactly as she suggested.

The next day, I met with a second analyst, who also recommended that I revise a number of items. Fascinating, since I showed him the version with the changes I had made based on the first analyst's advice. More fascinating, since many of his recommendations involved deleting or changing some of the items suggested by analyst #1. (Note: afterwards, I went back to my original resume -- sometimes you just have to trust yourself!)

OK, aside from the question of who is really an expert, here's an alternate question: how much do you really know about good resume writing? After a lot of conversations about resumes and other things, I've concluded that most people -- regardless of the amount of career experience -- know more about Vampires than about resumes. And, despite its lack of depth in career guidance, you're probably far more interested in seeing a new vampire movie (Vampire's Assistant opens next weekend) than a webinar on resume writing.

What about you, where do you get your resume advice from? Career experts or Vampires?

[Vampire Poll update -- friends and experts tied for sources of resume advice. Twitter came in next, and Vampires did score 1 vote (let us know how you did with a Vampire-approved resume, OK?)]

photo by wonderferret

I [usually] do [more or less] my best to stay focused on work when I'm at work--but I'm gonna go ahead and admit that it happens with varying degrees of success. (And I say a silent little prayer of thanks each day that Facebook is blocked; if it wasn't I'm sure my record would be worse.)

A classic Facebook question -- addressed in a NY Times blog post -- asked the question, what to do if your boss sends you a FB friend request. It's awkward, because you want to keep your private space, well, private. But, this post asks, what to do if you also don't want to offend your boss (never a good idea, particularly these days) by declining?

Good, no, GREAT question. The blog suggested several things. One of these was setting up specific privacy lists on Facebook to control who sees what. Other ideas ranged from sending a polite note while declining the invitation to the idea of suggesting LinkedIn to your boss as a more professional alternative.

Are all these ideas good solutions? Yes, but I think they don't address the bigger issues. Social networks have evolved so quickly that most people have to struggle to deal. The first big site -- Friendster (anyone remember that?) just made its presence known about six or seven years ago. Now, people struggle to juggle FB, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace and Skype in their private lives. As more businesses try to reach a certain demographic, their use of all of these (well, maybe not Friendster -- sorry Friendster fans) is increasing.

We're constantly writing about being careful what you have on your social network pages -- especially if you're job-hunting. Prospective employers are always interested in the person behind the resume, and are smart enough to check your network pages to find out what you're really like.

A lot of people are outraged by this, and understandably so. One of our posts last year addressed this very issue. But I suspect some things have changed.

Yes, online networking has become such an integral part of our society, and especially the workplace (or the work hunt), that it has turned into a real dilemma -- both ethically and functionally. I think that there continues to be a gray line between work and private life (which I think is the same line you cross every time you work late, or on a weekend, or check email on vacation).

Should your employer stay off your wall?

Photo by avlxyz

I think, by now, you get the idea that I'm a Very Busy Girl. If you think I wake up early, juggle work and school and life constantly all day, go to bed late and start all over the next morning, you would be correct. And I like to think I make it look easy--or, at the very least, not nearly as hard as it is. So if I had you fooled, great! :)

How old is old? Apparently, not all that old, according to a friend. The bad part, though, is that it apparently makes you a bad risk.

Let me back up. A friend is "exploring new career directions" and was interviewing for a job in a different field, but one that was more junior in required experience. OK, but she was starting over, and was perfectly willing to do what it takes.

Cut to the interview. The hiring manager asked a few routine questions -- "why did you leave your last job?" (because they laid off half the staff?) And then asked the zinger -- "Why are you looking for something that you're overqualified for? Won't you just leave when the job market improves?"

So my friend is facing long-term unemployment in a field that's shrinking. She's interested in moving onto something new. She has a flawless track record, staying at each of her previous employers for several years. And she's staring across the desk at a hiring manager who equates her desire to bring HER work ethic to HIS company to that of a newbie, with no track record of loyalty. Sorry, but I really don't get it.

Until the job market tightened up, many young professionals saw job-hopping as the route to follow to sure-fire career success. Work for a year, maybe year-and-half at the absolute most, then jump to the next rung on the ladder. The HM (hiring manager) was ready to pass on my experienced friend (who had never jumped after a year) to hire a totally untested recent grad.

And that's what he did.

We're still shaking our heads, not comprehending the logic. (And we're trying to figure out where the line for age discrimination really lies). This, by the way is not the first time I've heard stories like this. So if anyone can enlighten me on how this makes sense, here I am. Please tell me. I'm not unsympathetic to recent grads, I assure you, but some hiring practices baffle me.

Photo by joi

Anybody else ever lose their brand? Did it hurt?

We lost our Twitter brand temporarily, thanks to some twhackers who made many people's avatars disappear, to be replaced by the default l'il tweety bird. Not the worst thing, but our ExperienceLive symbol is pretty distinctive, and we're proud of it (not to mention all the great info that gets tweeted every day -- check it out!), and want it back.

In a greater sense, though, brands -- whether corporate or personal -- have become pretty important in our marketing-driven society. So what, you say? What it means for you is that without your own personal brand, you could easily get passed over for a job or a promotion.

Or not. I've spoken with many recruiters over time, and they all say the same thing -- they're looking for someone who stands out from the crowd, not the play-it-safe, non-descript candidate. They're looking for somebody with a real brand.

I'm not telling you to make things up, and I'm not advocating that you present a shallow marketing image. If you don't think you need to sell yourself as somebody unique, somebody extraordinary, who can make a difference, then go ahead -- tell me I'm wrong! But you better have a good counter-argument ready for me if you do.

On a somewhat related note, congratulations to Jenna, a former contributor to this blog, who has just landed a new job at a new company with the title all marketing people secretly covet -- she's going to become the Director of Buzz. Yes!

I got an interesting mass email last week from the coordinator of my summer internship program with The Government. She told The Interns, most of us in our 20s, about a conversation she had with a professor of public policy about generational differences in the workplace.

He, a baby boomer, argued that Gen Y-ers are terrified to make mistakes. As in, so scared we’ll avoid giving our opinions or going out on any sort of limb…or maybe even going near the tree.

She, a Gen X-er, argued that maybe it’s because boomers aren’t very tolerant of mistakes, that they don’t give the Y-ers the freedom—and forgiveness—to make mistakes freely in the name of learning and growth.

She asked our opinion, and I found it difficult to answer.

My gut reaction was to defend my generation. No! Of course we’re not scared of making mistakes! Then I thought, hmm, maybe it’s not a terrible thing to be scared of making mistakes. Yes! We are scared! And, definitely, those mean, mean baby boomers are being big and scary! Yeah!

But when I really thought about it, I realized that a) I don’t know if it’s as much a generational difference as a difference in where people are in their careers, and b) that I made too darn many mistakes to be classified as a scared-of-mistakes kind of person.

Don’t get me wrong—I hate screwing up. Like really, really hate it. Like beat-myself-up-over-it-forever hate it. Like play-everything-back-in-my-mind-and-list-all-the-moments-I-could-have-avoided-screwing-up-but-didn’t hate it. But I like to think that as I move forward in my career, two things will happen: I’ll eventually screw up less (I hope), and neither I nor anyone else will care as much if I do.

I don’t know that it matters so much that we’re Gen X or Y or Z—isn’t everyone just starting out their careers eager to please and in need of some good references?

More on my actual mistake-making to come. That’s much more exciting, I know. :)

I haven't been on vacation this week, but I am feeling the aftereffects of Labor Day. Which brings up a pretty popular topic -- four-day work weeks.

First, a definition (or at least my definition -- you do what you want). A four-day work week crams five or more days into four, with no reduction in total hours or loss of productivity.

For some companies, actually closing one day a week can mean an energy savings (we've talked about this before). For some employees, a savings in commuting time (PLUS a three-day weekend every week). The craziness starts as you decide whether a company stays open, but splits the fifth day among employees (e.g., some work on Friday, some on Monday). Then, employees -- are you used to working 10-hour days?

A little perspective -- I've worked four-day weeks in the past (also 3-day weeks and 6-day weeks, but those are stories for another time). I loved it, would love to do it again. But there is a concern now that didn't exist before -- a big concern in these days of fewer people working longer hours to increase productivity. How do you accommodate an increased workload as needed when you're already working 10 hours?

When we talk about transitioning to a flexible workplace (yes, it came up at a Labor Day barbecue), four-day weeks always pop up in the conversation. I don't know that it's really all that simple. And if you add in a season's worth of H1N1 virus decimating the workforce, we could be in for a lot of mixed ideas about how to keep a company going.

What's your best idea?

photo by tziralis

Yes, I realize 3Gen is dedicated to the working world.

Here's another one of those old technology tales. Once upon a time I had a clunky metal bin filled with index cards.You may remember them, some of you even owned one -- they were called Rolodexes. (No, not Rolex, Rolodex!)

The cards had all the pertinent business and/or personal information of everybody I had any reason to contact -- ever. The cards were attached to a spindle, arranged alphabetically and I could thumb through an entire life's history of people I knew from work, from home, the plumber, the plumber's kids' names, the DMV. If you had the private phone numbers of some of these people, they were worth their weight in gold.

At one point I had hundreds of cards, all neatly spindled. And then cheap electronic data came along, in the form of a Palm Pilot. I could take it anywhere, I could beam my info to another Palm user -- all kinds of cool things. Well, that evolved into my cell phone -- it doesn't have much in terms of people's work backgrounds, but I can always try to call folks I worked with six or seven years ago, and maybe they'll still have the same number. Maybe not.

In the past few weeks, the process of reconnecting with a lot of friends and former colleagues has made me realize -- isn't LinkedIn the new Rolodex? Not with phone numbers, but with so much else.

I can send email anytime from anywhere, and be sure they receive it. I can ask a lot of people at once for advice or other connections. I can see where the've worked or are working or went to school (much like the online Portfolio offered by our company, Experience.com). I can keep up with what people are doing, or what conferences they are attending, without having to wade through the Facebook adventures of the family dog.

So when people talk about LinkedIn becoming the online network for professionals, yes they're right. But I'm just happy to no longer carry around an 8-pound Rolodex.

What's your preference for staying organized -- Facebook or LinkedIn? Or a Rolodex?

Photo by TOKY Branding and Design

Last week, I wrote about balance -- and I can't let it go quite yet. Right now, I'm conducting the ultimate experiment in balance. Or, maybe, the ultimate challenge. Or, I suppose, the ultimate balance boot camp.

Whatever it is, it's big: I have two weeks off. Like, really off.

I've been thinking about working remotely. No, no, don't give away my desk just yet, I'm actually talking about working with people who are nowhere nearby, which is an ever-growing trend these days.

We talk about this a lot, sometimes even face-to-face. In our office, we have a core group that shows up pretty much every day. But if Amy or Prashant or Katrina instant-message me, I don't always know whether they're at their desks one floor down, or at their desks at home. If Brian needs to attend a meeting, but is on the road, we'll Skype-video him in, and see/talk with him at his laptop "office".

Even my good buddy Kate, who I've known for a couple of years now, shares thoughts on email, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Yet she is a colleague who lives half the country away -- and we've never met, never even spoken on the phone.

Now I'm not going to go all retro on you, insisting that in the good old days (2007??) there was less remote interaction, and work/life was better. Nor am I going to say that the new version of the "virtual" workplace is ideal (have you ever phoned into a large meeting/conference call?) Things have changed, and we are all continuing to adjust in many ways -- partially because of the economy, partially because it's just a newer way of working.

I love that people are embracing some new ideas, and that others are working very hard at figuring out better ways to stay in touch -- at work, in the education community, so very many places. How you are figuring it out? Get in touch, let us know.

Photo by Kristin Wolff

I got a one-liner email today from the one-and-only Ken, who 3Gen readers know well:

“Miss your 3Gen writings …. :)”

My first thought: Wow, I do, too!
My second thought: Crap.
My third thought: Ken is so nice. Who else would say get-your-blogging-butt-in-gear in such a nice way…with a smiley face?!

So first, to take care of No. 2 and No. 3 – I’m very sorry to readers and The Boss for slacking. It will never happen again (well, until the next time I have jobs, classes, training, life, etc. all piled up on top of me…which will probably be soon…but I will try much harder next time to stick a hand out of the top of the pile and type out a post…I promise). :)

Now, No. 1. I love writing for 3Gen – and I hate letting it slip through the cracks. But with my crazy-busy life, I’ve found things slip a lot more often than I’d like. Which brings me to a topic I’ve been thinking a lot about lately: BALANCE.

I’m most certainly a multi-tasker. And a go-getter. And a can’t-say-no-er. Which makes for a nasty combination when I’m trying to, like, relax. Or focus. Or just finish one darn thing without being distracted by another. Maybe because I’ve been living this way for years now – probably since middle or high school, constantly – I’m starting to feel the beginnings of burn out and, thus, am craving a little more balance up in here.

During my year “off” between college and grad school, I worked a 9-to-5 nonprofit office job though the AmeriCorps VISTA program – and having few other real commitments was a total shock to my system. Likewise, when I started two fulltime master’s programs, two jobs (one fulltime and one parttime), marathon training and the exciting role of dog-mom, my system was shocked again.

And although I’ve learned to juggle all of those things over the past year, I’m definitely an amateur juggler who can barely toss three scarves up and catch two. You won’t catch me with 10 flaming things in the air anytime soon – but I’ll probably try (and perhaps accidentally catch on fire).

So I’m trying to streamline.
To make connections between what I’m doing personally, academically and professionally so that my brain doesn’t have to switch gears 180 degrees many times a day.
To not bite off more than a hundred of me can chew.
To take a few minutes each day to breathe, practice yoga, watch some trashy TV, whatever.
And, of course, to blog religiously.

Are you pulled in a gazillion different directions daily? How do you cope? How do you take it down from a gazillion things to maybe just a million or two?

[Update: In the course of writing this post, I had a great phone conversation in which I turned down a fabulous professional opportunity in order to focus on the fabulous opportunities I'm already knee-deep in. I might be making progress!]

Thanks to NCinDC for the great photo -- I gotta learn me some moves!

For a couple of years now, the most prevalent workplace generation gap issue I hear about is the "Tech Gap". It goes like this -- if you're a Gen Y'er, you're always struggling to help Baby Boomers understand how to use technology. If you're a Baby Boomer, you can't get GY'ers to use technology for serious business.

How does this translate to the workplace? It looks to me like there is a wholesale shift to technology that's taking place across the three generations that share office space. Remote users everywhere. Everybody has an iPhone, nobody wears a watch anymore. Lots of changes as everybody learns to deal with each other, with business problems and solutions. If this is happening using online resources, that's a game changer.

Imagine a company -- your company? -- sharing and collaborating online, and then moving on to solving marketing gaps with social media. They can be remote users, they can be using new media, they can be using shared spreadsheets. Doesn't matter, because each generation is bringing its own special tech knowledge to the table.

Who knows, if that keeps up, maybe we won't even be talking about generation gaps any more -- is that possible? What do you think?

Photo by Wili Hybrid

Now I'm the first one to gush about how thankful I am to have a job -- a good job -- but as unemployment seems to be the norm these days among my 20-something friends, I daresay it's becoming...glamorous.

Really. Sure, the unemployed Twitterers I follow complain about cover-letter writing and pulling together interview outfits, but they also talk about rolling out of bed at 11 a.m.. Walking around their neighborhood in search of a leisurely lunch. Getting a nice, long workout in at the gym before the after-work crowd rolls in. Jetting off for a long weekend to visit a friend. The list goes on.

And the more jobless there are, the more they can do these fabulous things together.

Like shop all day. (Not sure how that one works out monetarily, but it sounds fun to me.)

And I can't help but wonder whether recent grads -- such as those profiled in a recent New York Times piece -- are being picky about jobs because they like, or at least don't mind, the idea of the unemployed life.

As someone who works a fulltime job and a parttime job, is a fulltime student in two master's programs and is training for a marathon, I can't lie -- it intrigues me.

But, of course, the grass is always greener, and I'd undoubtedly stay on the side with the, um, actual green. Props, though, to those making the best of an unfortunate situation!

Are you unemployed? Are you loving the vacay or antsy to get back in the game?

It's not totally a laughing matter, but we can't really help ourselves sometimes. This week it's been the lawsuit filed by a 27-year-old unemployed graduate of Monroe College. Her claim? She paid the college $70,000 in tuition and she says she hasn't received the job leads that she feels she was promised by the school.

Knowing how tight the job market is, it's surprising this hasn't happened before. For many students and alumni, the frustration of not finding a good job in a bad economy has them worked up. Maybe it's all about blaming someone, or in this case, maybe it's about recovering some money from the school to keep the job-seeker afloat for a while.

Couple of questions here.

First question -- schools, are you in the business of making claims that you will find jobs for grads, or are you in the business of educating them -- not only in academics, but also in the "science" of careers? Simply having a career center on campus is not the same as getting the students (and alumni!) involved on a REQUIRED basis.

Second, for grads, are you still assuming that old (from 2 years ago) myth that a degree is a guaranteed ticket to a job? Wouldn't the reality be something different -- more like, it took me years of work to learn the basic skills to prepare me for my chosen career field. Why should the process of finding a career be more intuitive?

So I wish the suing graduate all the luck in the world finding a career, but not necessarily in pursuing a lawsuit. I do hope that they can take advantage of all the career resources available -- such as those Experience.com provides, as well as those provided by their schools.

And maybe we've all learned a lesson or two from this. What do you think?

Photo by Diego Cupolo

This morning, I took a deep breath, held it, and walked through security at work after three days (and a weekend) of vacation in toasty, toasty Texas.

I'm back. To the grind.

And I was bracing for it to be baaad. But much to my surprise, I sat down, listened to some voicemails, sifted through my inbox, made a to-do list, then headed off to a meeting relatively calmly and more or less collected.

Now this is not normally how I come back from vacation. It's usually more akin to a tornado-hurricane-tsunami with a shirt on inside-out and backwards and mismatching socks. But today, I think I pinpointed the difference: I didn't do any work on vacation. I actually -- gasp! -- took a vacation! And, what do you know, I'm feeling pretty refreshed.

The agency I work for is strict with telecommuting stuff, and my supervisor and I decided it wasn't worth the hassle to get me remote email or server access for a three-day vacation. So I sort of crossed my fingers that nothing would come up and hiked out of here on Thursday afternoon -- and honestly hardly thought about work at all because there was nothing I could do about it anyway.

I know that's not possible for many people in many positions, but boy, would I recommend it.

Do you really take vacations, or are you glued to your email/phone/'berry on the beach?

Thanks to Nils Geylen for the photo. Yeehaw!

Not to turn this into another never-ending social media analysis diatribe blog, but when this study popped up the other day, it turned some heads.

What did it say? Simply, that 77 percent of office workers in the study had Facebook accounts, and of those, two-thirds accessed Facebook for at least 15 minutes a day during working hours.

Has Facebook's foundation really been built during work? Has it become huge as the result of a zillion users jumping on it during work/school hours, and in work/school settings?

Equally provocative, the study found that Facebook is used as an alternative messaging and collaboration platform (instead of Outlook, Gmail and other tools). Which puts it outside the protection of traditional office tools, and their security software safeguards. So you have people on FB instead of working 1.5% of their work time, and using it without any protection (Safe Social-networking, anyone?) Whose worst nightmare is this, anyway?

If you constantly hear, as I do, that companies are scrambling to find ways to establish a presence on Facebook, and Twitter, and other SocNet sites -- then something's upside down here.

Should we all take care of our FB updates and Tweets during work, and assume that we're doing exactly what companies really, really want. I think so, don't you?

photo by Jacob Botter

Of thank-you cards, that is.

One day, I went to Target, bought a 50-pack of cute little cherry-blossomed letterpress thank-you cards intended for a budget wedding and promptly shoved it in the corner of my desk drawer, convinced it would probably remain there, unopened, until I pack everything up at the end of my summer internship and take it home again.

I was so wrong.

Those little buggers have been oh-so-handy in the past few weeks. Now I’m not a huge suck-up gushy person, and I’ve always felt weird about some of the super-traditional tips I’ve heard about job searching and networking. That being said, I’m also a nice person, and I do think people should be thanked for going above and beyond what they’re paid to do (and, of course, the sucking-up quality of it couldn’t hurt).

My summer internship is part of a real internship program—one that “strongly recommends” we take major advantage of the networking opportunities within a large state agency. At the beginning of the summer, each intern got a binder full of names and contact information and instructions to do at least 25 informational interviews with interesting people. Now last I checked, no one had even made it to ten, and I certainly don’t plan to hit the target.

But I’m in the midst of these meetings right now, and I have to say they’re fascinating, educational and definitely good for my career. Some have been within my own department, some in totally different areas of the agency and a few not within my agency at all (think other state agencies, counties, etc.). They’ve already produced some job and master’s thesis leads, which is fabulous. They’ve helped me understand what’s out there, what I might want to dabble in someday, what I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. And they’re helping me build my network—something that just seems more and more important every day.

And, really, how could I not thank a person for that? I have no idea whether anyone will remember my precious little cherry blossom thank-you card the next time they have a job opening in their department, but it couldn’t hurt—and is probably the right thing to do career-wise and person-wise.

Thanks to Fern R. for the thank-you card photo (I daresay they might be cuter than mine...)

I think we're back into the generational thing again, comparing the media coverage of the passings of two "celebrities" -- Michael Jackson and Walter Cronkite. We were talking about it in the office this morning.

Over the past weekend, you couldn't find a newscast (local or national) that didn't contain multiple tributes to Cronkite, and his lasting effect on news, on television, and even on the U.S. as a whole -- e.g., President Johnson's lament that if he'd "lost Cronkite('s support for the Vietnam War), then he'd lost the country. President Obama talking about all of us losing a great friend.

But I suspect that the eulogies will end pretty quickly -- now that the weekend is over, and the funeral will not be a televised marathon. Compare that to the frenzy over Jackson's death, running non-stop for days, with the "live" televised funeral services bumping regular TV programming.

Did Jackson have that much more of an impact than Cronkite? Or was it only a demographic thing, where Cronkite is remembered pretty much only by Baby Boomers (or pre-Boomers). In fact, considering those demographics, would there have even been as much to-do about Cronkite if Jackson's hoopla hadn't set the stage (sorry!) for it?

I think not, and I think that there's a definite reflection of values transitioning from one generation to the next. So if 1969 was a watershed year for the Boomers (moon landing, Woodstock), then this year might mark the closure of their era.

What do you think, are Baby Boomers officially a past-their-prime generation? Do they realize it yet?

Right now, the media loves two things: unemployment and social networking technology. Combine the two, and they really go nuts. LinkedIn will score you a job. If not, Twitter definitely will. No? Well, Facebook or YouTube will totally nail it.

[UPDATE: Check out this list of the top employers recruiting on Twitter. Very interesting. Thanks, Ken!]

I keep seeing these stories in the news, and sure, I think it’s cool that we have these new-ish tools at our disposable, especially in such a crappy time to try to find a job. But I’m a little skeptical. Are people really getting jobs through Facebook?

I thought I’d try it out. There’s a specific company that just might be the keeper of my dream job, so I sent a tweet out into cyberspace to see if anyone who follows me on Twitter might have a friend whose boyfriend has an uncle who has an ex-girlfriend who went to middle school with the CEO or anything. I just wanted a connection for an informational interview – not even a real job or interview – and I got nothing.

Social networking is cool. It’s trendy. And it seems like a great idea to apply it to the job search. But I don’t know anyone who’s gone from sad and jobless to ecstatic and employed because of a tweet or two.

Has anyone out there had job-search luck in the social media world?