Happy Graduation: Now Go Out There and Fail!

This being graduation season, the other day I asked the over-achieving rockstars in my senior journalism capstone class what they’d most like to hear from a commencement speaker. Thankfully, I heard no references to roads not taken nor endings-versus-beginnings.  (Though I would have enjoyed a quick reference to that four-word piece of advice from the […]

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Fail Thee Well

What if the surest indicator of your future success–of living a happy, meaningful, and productive life–is how good you are at failing? Brace yourselves, perfectionists, because the evidence is mounting: in order to fly, you’ve first got to fail. And (worse!) how well you fail may be one of the biggest predictors of success. Bigger […]

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In Praise of Failure

So, here’s a scenario. You, single, lookin to meet someone. You’re perusing the offerings at Match.com when you come across an attractive stranger whose specs are all to your liking. Then, let’s say, he describes himself: “Big Ol Failure!” …I’m guessing you’d pass? You’d hardly be alone. Success, after all, is a virtue in our […]

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From Delhi to D.C.: What We Can Do in the Fight Against Gender Violence

It’s easy to be appalled by things that happen elsewhere: the brutal, horrifying rape of the 23 year-old Indian student, so violent that she died of her injuries. Malala Yousufzai, the 15 year-old Pakistani schoolgirl/activist who was shot in the head by the Taliban. It’s easy to feel a sort of removed pity in the […]

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Could Women Against Guns Be As Powerful as Mothers Against Drunk Driving?

Do not let the outrage die. In the wake of the horrific mass murders in Newtown, Conn., we’ve read plenty of newspaper articles, listened to numerous TV commentators, read hundreds of Facebook posts, all with the same message:  we need to talk about gun control. And yet. My biggest fear is that, once the grief […]

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How The Pursuit of Happiness Makes Us Crazy.

The last time our family got together — finding all of us in the same zipcode at the same time is a rare and wondrous feat — we hunkered down in a suite at the Holiday Inn Express (Backstory not important). With no bar or restaurant in sight, our family of foodies trekked to the […]

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Feminist in High Heels

I confess: I love shoes.  Especially when they’re high.  Until they wore out, my go-to faves were a pair of black leather ankle boots with dangerously high heels. They were actually pretty comfortable, but I would have worn them anyway because they looked damn good. I’m also a feminist. I bring this up because I […]

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Think Negatively!

So, you know that special brand of squelched eye-roll/mini-smirk you trot out whenever you find yourself cornered by your Positive Thinking-evangelizing sister/friend/coworker? Turns out, raining on her parade might be the best thing you can do for her. In a comical opinion piece in Sunday’s NYT that’ll make the cynic in you chuckle, Oliver Burkeman […]

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What Girls Can Learn From Olympic Grrrrrrrrrrrl Power

The other day after I got home from my run (I use the term advisedly), I got a call from the local NBC affiliate asking for a quick interview on the overall impact of “girl power”  in this year’s Olympics.  Within ten minutes, the reporter and her cameraman were on their way. While dashing around […]

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The Mother of all Conversations: Where The Chatter About Marissa Mayer Went Way Wrong

Now that the chatter about Marissa Mayer has started to grow cold, let me admit that the whole conversation has pissed me off. In case you’ve spent the past few days under a rock or — same thing — totally unplugged, Marissa Mayer is the former Google superstar who was annointed CEO of Yahoo on […]

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