The Treadmill, Redux: Good-bye, Adolescence

If developmental psychologists have it right, that adolescence is the time we lay the groundwork for the grown-up we will someday become, and if they also have it right that adolescence now extends well into the twenty-somethings, what’s up with the new plan to usher kids out of high school in two years? Well, not […]

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Fire Up the Treadmill!

Quick! Stop what you’re doing for just a second, and take a seat in the wayback machine. Try to picture what you wanted to be when you grew up, back when you were a kid. A ballerina? A rockstar? A zookeeper? The first girl to crack the Major Leagues? A Power Ranger? (True story: That’s […]

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Fear Mediocrity? Five Reasons Why

Is mediocrity the last taboo? The question came to mind a while back when I spied a column by Thomas Friedman, who suggested that in our global economy where work gets done cheaper overseas and where, here at home, technology is eating jobs in a rapidly accelerating pace, only the strong  will survive.  His overall […]

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Burn Me Up, Burn Me Out?

The other day, I got a ping from a former student who sent a link to a recent piece she’d read over on Forbes.com.  “Have you seen this?” she wrote.  “It reminds me of Undecided!” The topic? Burn-out.  Apparently, it’s rampant among high achieving millennial women. At least that’s the skinny according to a piece […]

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Praise

A partial list… From reviews: “One new book does offer a more promising road map for women stuck on the ceaseless treadmill. Written by Barbara and Shannon Kelley and published by the feminist Seal Press, Undecided is a helpful, funny, winsome guide to navigating through both perfectionism and its close cousin, ‘analysis paralysis.’ I enthusiastically […]

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The Fix is In: F-words Galore.

As F-words go, Fix might be one of the ugliest.  As in, if your life measures low on the perfection scale, just go for the fix.  Change the externals.  Happiness to follow. It’s enough to make you drop an F-bomb of an entirely different sort. This all came to mind Wednesday when our morning paper […]

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Wherefore Art Fall?

Quick! How many shopping days left? Wait. Before you answer that, I have a point to make. (By which I mean: I have a rant to… rant.) Am I the only one who’s still digesting the last of the turkey leftovers? Who’s still in possession of one final, lonely slice of pumpkin pie? These are […]

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Four Years of College For, Um, This?

You bet your mortarboard. Stick with us, you’ll find out why. But first, backstory: Last month, New York Times writer David Leonhardt slapped the debate about the value of our American college-for-all ethos smack-dab on our collective kitchen table. Ever since, knickers have been in a bundle all across the interwebs as readers, reporters, students, […]

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Helicopters Gone Wild

This just in: parents take helicoptering over the top. To wit, this post on the NYTimes Motherlode blog that links to a CNN story on moms who quit their jobs to help their kids get into college. No joke. According to the piece, these are highly educated, professional women who take a “college prep leave” […]

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Salon Chair Wisdom

So I found myself at the hair salon the other day — sans the folder of work perennially tucked under my arm (Trust me, I really did forget to bring it along). And thus I found myself with no other option but to dive into the stack of women’s magazines beside my chair. And hooray […]

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