Tuesday, March 2

3 Things I Learned From My "Self-Helping Ourselves" Book

So this assignment, I have to list three things I can do as a result of my book by Chaz Kyser called Embracing the Real Work: The Black Woman's Guide to Life After College. I will be tracking in future blogs my progress on these three things. I think I will actually add a fourth...an extra treat to my Bloggers!

The first thing I need to do is to come up with a Life Plan. As I find all these “fun” things to do, I often get distracted with my true purpose. Lots of things are good ideas, but what is my great idea? And how do I get to my great idea? Of course, I should keep my options open, but it is far too late in the game to “wanna be a lawyer, firefighter, and a doctor” like we all said when we were knee-high to a grasshopper.

The second thing that I need to do is find a Career Mentor—or a Life Mentor. I need to find people to surround me who are where I want to be. This idea follows the purposes found in shadowing or interning. Seeking out people who have another angle on my great idea will alleviate most or all of my unreasonable expectations about the field, give me a road map to get to my great idea, and encourage me as I walk on that path to get to my great idea. Then, Kyser said to make sure that you give your Career/Life Mentor updates on your progress—you don’t want to be an advice moocher.

Thirdly, I need to practice budgeting now. I disagree with 50 Cent. I won't be abiding by his new hit "Baby By Me" which says "...Have a baby by me, Baby, be a milllionaire." I agree with my friend Andre "Skinny" Foster here at Murray State when as his status de Facebook, he said the lyrics should actually be "Have a baby by me, Baby, Be on WELFARE!!" I did sin and should prolly go to confession for skimming over his very heathenous lyrics so I wouldn't recommend anyone to skim over them. Trust me...it's bad. I do wonder how many ladies are thinking that they'll actually get his alimony check if they let him do Verse 1 and Verse 2 of his song on them. Alas! This pop culture is CRAZINESS! But I digress...

Since money has a magical chemical characteristic called disappearing, it’s quite important to at least have an idea of where it went. My mom is queen of this. She can balance her checkbook to the penny—if I’m within $50 and not in the red, it’s EPIC success. I don’t think this is a good idea when I am on my own. Since I have a miniscule amount of dinero now, it should be a lot easier to manage the amount and get the principles of wise money saving, spending, and tracking.

FOURTHLY, I have to be willing to be an entry-leveler. I can't expect to have a dream job or summer internship without digging through the trenches of monotony. I have to suck it up, grab the salts, and walk through the mud. Mud is thick too--and really messy, but necessary to build bricks. (Deep thought!) So although paper-filing, running errands, and other various office work duties may seem like it's conflicting with my dream of greatness, I gotta pay my dues and keep hope alive for my job of being in charge of people and having someone/subordinate/intern go get my Venti London Fog with decaf chai, soy, and sugar-free hazelnut from Starbucks because A: I don't have to, B: "I don't want to, and C: I served my time getting my bosses drinks.


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