The Linear Path

If you’ve just graduated or are close to finishing college, you’re probably feeling at least a little bit of anxiety regarding the direction of the rest of your life.  Or a lot.

One moment, you’re happily procrastinating on midterms, flyering on Bruinwalk for your org event, and convincing first years to swipe you a free dorm meal, and the next, you’re clutching a graduation program, staring around in bewilderment at a sea of caps and gowns, and barely remembering to smile for the endless pictures that present themselves because you can not process what is happening.

“Congrats, grad!” Your family and everyone else beams and asks you what you’re going to do now that you’re in the real world and you frantically try to come up with the right answer but all you can think is "Huh?”

There is a pretty simple explanation for our confusion and our anxiety.

It’s called the linear path. 

What is the linear path?  …Well, most of us have been on it since we were very, very young.  Let’s see if I can better explain through illustration.

When I was a wee 3rd grader, it was very easy to figure out my goals and priorities (aside from beating the Elite 4 on Pokemon Yellow and digging up beetles at recess).  These were already set for me:  getting good grades, and passing the Sat 9 test to qualify for 4th grade honors.  Through all of elementary school and all of middle school and high school too, there was never a question of what the next step was or what my short term goal was.  It was always about getting good grades, passing tests, and going to the next grade level.  In high school it also became about scoring over a 2100 on the SAT and taking up as many leadership positions as I could in order to get into a good college.  Then I got into a good college.  At UCLA, my goal became about acing all my classes to look good for grad school and build up an impressive resume with extracurriculars for future jobs. Post-college, I took the next step and underwent a summer associate program and a temporary job in public policy.

This is the linear path we’ve undergone for our entire lives, kind of mindlessly in a way, because the next step is always highlighted in neon yellow in front of our faces.  There’s no question of what comes after. 

Now, the next step suddenly isn’t a complete no-brainer.  Ahh, our twenties. 

There is so much anxiety in the twenties.  Because for the first time in our lives, the next step isn’t obvious to us.  And instead of being okay with that, we panic.  We feel so much pressure to know what that next step is, RIGHT THE FUCK NOW.  To have a satisfactory answer to the question so often posed to us: What do you want to do with your life?

What’s next?  People ask me.  Grad school, right?  A job as a legislative staffer or field organizer?  

Well, of course you’re going to go to grad school soon, my mom informs me. You’ll be more competitive and it’ll look good to future employers.

Well yeah, that seems to be the sensible next step.  Definitely is according to the linear path.

But why does it have to be this way?

Why do we need to follow a linear path?  Why do we need to know what career we want to go into RIGHT THE FUCK NOW?

Why do we have to go to grad school to be successful? And why is everyone assuming that we’re gonna work for someone else?

Why does no one encourage us to start something unconventional and to pave our own path?

Most importantly, what quantifies as “greatest level of success”, and why is no one talking about “greatest level of happiness”?

Because I think that’s what it’s all about, in the end.  How happy we are with our careers and our lives in general.  And what concerns me most is seeing so many people who just graduated college hasten to seek the next step without first really stopping to find out what it is they they TRULY want to do with their lives.  I want to be a political advisor and then a professor, they declare, and then set off to public policy school.  How do you know you wanna do that and blow $100K on grad school without experience in political advising?  How do you know you wouldn’t rather do something else? 

I think sometimes we purposely do not ask ourselves these questions because it’s easier not to.  It’s very daunting to ask ourselves questions that we may not have the answers to. 

And we follow this formula because we’re so scared of being failures and being poor and we need some kind of guarantee that that won’t happen to us.  And honestly, who can blame us, because we’ve been conditioned to accept this ready made process for years.  Pick a good school, pick a major, go to grad school, go into a sensible and conventional sounding career.  We don’t really know HOW to choose our own unique path. 

But we can’t let our decisions be dictated by our fears.  Because what kind of life is a fear-driven one?

I think we should take risks in our twenties.  Exploring the private sector.  Taking a campaign job on an issue we care about a lot.  Attempting to start our own business.  Traveling.  Experimenting with different fields and having adventures and experiences that will challenge and grow us and make us learn about who we are and what we ultimately want to do. 

Because what better time than now to be daring, while we’re not tied down to a family and a house and a job we can’t leave?  We have the rest of our life to build a stable career. 

What do you want to do with your life?

I used to BS this question and make up answers on the spot (lobbyist, civil rights attorney, non profit consultant), but now I’ve started to answer it truthfully.  "I don’t know," I confidently reply.

I am rewarded with many dubious looks for this, but I think it’s completely acceptable. In fact, I think it’s incredibly exciting.

So here’s to officially stepping off the linear path.  Here’s to starting your business, to throwing your major out the window, to teaching English in whatever foreign-ass country you want to go to.  Here’s to uncertainty.  Here’s to learning.  And growing.  And living.

How to Become the God of Bars in 5 Easy Steps (Straight Female Edition)

DISCLAIMER:  Please don’t take offense to this post, it’s all written in good fun and is meant to empower women, not disenchant males.  Happy reading!

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Girls, we all know the scenario- we just spent a grueling two hours in front of the mirror slathering copious amounts of paint on our faces and product on our hair.  If someone threw an object at our face it would probably crack.  We then got dressed in mini-skirts so short they can only be described as “confrontational” and teetering heels so high I’m sure there are several policy reports warning of their health ramifications.  Then we spent half an hour taking downward angled iPhone pictures of ourselves with the “teacup arm”-cellulite-reducing pose and another fifteen minutes picking out the most flattering Instagram filter. 

Photo credit: the miniskirt-bearing, teacup arm-wielding girls of Instagram

We are then self-proclaimed ready to go to the most crackin bar/club in the city to meet some super hot dudes.

Except we don’t.  We stand around and wait for them to meet us. 

Sure, we might make eye contact and smile suggestively and dance and even get our friends to introduce us, but we rarely just straight up approach a guy we really want to talk to.

This phenomena is so interesting to me, when you compare the enormous effort you put into looking good to attract guys and the ensuing incredibly feeble attempts you made to actually seal the deal.  Think about that weird incongruity, and then add on top of it the fact that because we are females, we have a very, very slim chance of getting rejected!  No guy is going to get creeped out by a female who starts a conversation with him.  No guy has ever snubbed and straight up refused to talk to a girl who went up to him at the bars.  Did you know that?? If you’re a girl, congrats!! You just discovered a superpower! 

Backstory: As a recent college graduate, I’ve realized that I have become increasingly more and more proactive in meeting random people around Berkeley and SF.  It’s kind of what you have to do when you’re new to a city and have as weirdly urgent a need for constant social interaction as I do.  But it wasn’t until my friend Lida and I took a roadtrip to Seattle and Vancouver that I really started to utilize this “female-in-a-bar superpower”.  It was really easy, and in 2 nights we had our strategy fine-tuned.  Both times we managed to successfully locate, approach, and (insert desired end result here) the hottest guys at each bar we went to.  

It’s an approach that has completely changed my going-out experience.  The tables have literally figuratively turned.  Now my friends and I are empowered to approach the guys that we actually want to talk to, instead of passively sitting back and wishing this random weird dude with questionable hygiene would go away.  Now, we are the Gods of Bay Area Bars.  And now, you can be too.

5 Easy Steps to Become the God of Bars 

1.  YOUR ACCOMPLICES

What did we toast to again? Oh yeah, 100% success rate 

Your approach will vary depending on who accompanies you.  I’ve found that the most effective method by far is to go out with just one other female friend.  Taking more than three friends discourages meeting new people, because a), it’s easy to stick to yourselves, and b), even if you’re chickening out, guys don’t approach large groups of girls in general because they find them intimidating. With just one other girl, you two can do a tag-team effort with two or three guys, and conversation will never be lacking.

Going by yourself is also a definite possibility if friends are unavailable- you can still approach people, and when they ask where your friends are, you either say you lost them, or say “they’re over there” and vaguely gesture to a large crowd of people. 

2.  BAR-SWEEP

When you first get to the bar, don’t bother getting drinks (pre-game if you need a confidence boost, but don’t spend any money!).  Your first action needs to be a bar-sweep, aka walking through the entire bar and identifying your target(s).  AIM HIGH.  Don’t go for the lonely guy in the corner that you think will talk to you, go for simply the hottest guy in the entire bar.  That’s the point of this entire post- to conquer all mortals catch a hot guy. If you can’t find any, more on to the next bar.

3.  MOVING IN

Once you’ve identified your target, immediately take action.  It is important to do this fast- it is scientifically proven that the longer you wait, giggling with your friends and psyching yourself out (“oh my gawd, should I do it?”), the less likely it is that you will follow through.  

Your opening line can vary depending on how bold you’re feeling.  But honestly, it doesn’t really matter what you say, because 95% of guys will just be stoked that for once, the girl is the one that approaches him.  From my experience, no matter how attractive the guy was, he was always down to talk and usually said how cool it was that I went up to him.  I’ve said something as simple as “Hey, how’s it going?” as an opener, but the most fun line is this: “Hey, I think you’re really cute!”  When guys hear this, they act as if they’ve never received a compliment in their entire life.  They are stunned.  Flabbergasted.  Unsure if anything in life anymore is real.  Trust me, it’s awesome.

4.  SCORE A DRINK (OR SEVERAL)

I’ve been debating over the best method for this for a long time.  And I’ve finally concluded that there are only two types of guys that exist at bars:  The kind that will willingly offer to buy you a drink, and the kind that are too cheap to ever do it, even if you’ve been talking for an hour and you keep hinting at your sobriety.  If getting a free drink is your top priority and you’ve been talking to someone for over ten minutes without results, you must accept this guy is a type 2 and move on. 

However, from my experience, 85% of guys will be very willing to buy you a drink if you were the one that took initiative to approach them.  So this is good news. 

Another way to ensure your free drink is to talk to someone who is already at the bar or very close to it.  Bonus if they are just about to order.  Your chances of getting a drink using this method go up about 95%. 

5.  WHATEVER YOU WANT TO DO NEXT

This next part is up to you and is quite easy.  Want to make out?  He’s not gonna refuse.  Want his number? Get it.  Just want to be friends? That’s fine too.  I trust that this all will come naturally.

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I am a straight female, so this guide obviously isn’t applicable to everyone.  I’m thinking of letting my brother guest write on how straight guys do it, because he has fine-tuned his approach and it would be very helpful to a lot of dudes, but it would also be weird because he’s my brother so I am not sure how I feel about that yet.  Any LGBT folks are also welcome to guest write on their best practices! 

Remember, essentially in the end it’s not about how physically attractive you are as a female.  It’s about confidence.  Your confidence is killer, and it’s what will define your experience.

Now go out there and catch some hot dudes.  Because you are the God of Bars!

Internet ADD, Disney Songs, and Little Kids

I have really been lagging on writing blog posts and I recognize that I need to step up my game.  Partly this is because I have been out socializing and doing things, so I don’t have much time, which is actually good for my blog in the long run because now I have more exciting things to blog about as opposed to “so today on Pinterest”. 

But partly it’s because I have the growing suspicion that I’m developing ADD.  The internet is fucking with my ability to concentrate on one thing for more than 5 minutes at a time because there’s so many goddamn notifications andupdates and stupid news articles that some unknown force compels me to click on, and it’s actually a serious problem because I can’t get anything done at work either, not just blog posts which wouldn’t be as bad.  That’s partly why I got a blog in the first place- so I could re-learn how to concentrate on something for more than five minutes at a time. 

(No, I don’t actually have real ADD, and I know this because I took Adderall once to get rid of a hangover -advice from my sometimes shady subletter at the time- and instead of making me function like a normal person, it GAVE ME SUPERPOWERS.  It felt exactly like how Harry felt when he took Felix Felicis in the 6th HP book or how Bradley Cooper felt when he took that pill in the movieLimitless, like every possibility in the world was suddenly open to me.  I was suddenly smarter, wittier, friendlier, and more awesome.  In fact, I almost got fired from my internship that day for being too awesome, but that’s a story for another time.)

Anyway, now to the actual post. 

So last weekend I decided to put on a swimsuit and lay on a blanket in the sun in the hopes of soaking up the last bit of fading summer for myself (it ends so much sooner up here!). 

I was innocently playing with my iPhone and minding my own business when suddenly a person lied down right next to me in the grass and said, “What are you doing?” 

My immediate instinct was to feel threatened, because usually when strangers intrude on my personal space and ask me blunt questions like that they are usually drunk creepy men on the BART at 12AM. 

But this wasn’t a beer-stained Cheetos-consuming douchebag dude - it was a little girl with pigtails and overalls with flowers on them.  Not exactly the epitome of a threatening image. 

I said, “I’m…. listening to music and lying in the grass?”, feeling a little foolish for giving such an obvious answer but I figured she probably wasn’t old enough to figure out how to judge people yet. 

"What you listening to?" She stuck her face right above my iPhone and peered at the screen.  Normally, this question causes me a lot of anxiety, because usually I am listening to either Nsync or Disney songs (it’s gotten worse with the whole Spotify thing, where now everyone on Facebook can see that I am listening to Nsync and Disney instead of some cool underground alternative band shit), but it so happens that this genre is a perfect fit for a pre-schooler. 

"Disney," I said.  "Wanna listen with me?"

She grabbed the phone and to my surprise, deftly hit the back button, scrolled down the list of songs, picked one, and turned up the volume.  Jesus.  My dad can’t even figure out how to do that with a smartphone yet. 

Her friend came over at this point (they were part of some playgroup organized by a few middle aged mommies and college students a few feet away).

"How old are you two?"

"Four and a half," they chimed in unison.  (I remember when I would always include the "half" when saying my age.  Sometimes "three quarters" too.  I should try it out now, and say "22 and a quarter" to the next person that asks, just to see how they react.)

"And how old do you think I am?"

"Fourteen!" they exclaimed.  Very confidently, I might add.  Great for my self esteem.

"Not quite.. a little bit older."  "Fifteen! Sixteen! Seventeen…" They had a while to go.  Finally.. "Twenty two!"

"Yeah! Do I look twenty two to you?" I said.  "Yes!!!" These were very agreeable four year olds.  

At that point, we all put our heads close to the phone speakers and sang along to “Honor to us All” and “Part of Your World”.  It was pretty freakin’ fun and I was having a great time, until one of the middle aged mommies came over and tried to convince them to join the rest of the group in what looked like a very boring game of the Human knot (I hate that game).  They flatly refused, saying they would rather stay with me.  I worked hard to keep the smug look off my face (Yeah, I’m more entertaining than an organized playgroup; Baby Sitters Club ain’t got nothing on this). 

"The girl doesn’t want to play with you," the lady said (yes I did).

"It looks like she is about to leave anyway," she tried again (no I wasn’t). 

She half-dragged the little girls away, the group started up a game of duck-duck goose, and all memory of me was quickly forgotten as duck-duck goose is the trump card for fun among preschoolers.

But my memory was untarnished, and I sat there on the grass for a while with a nice, warm feeling of happiness.  We waste so much time worrying about what other people think of us, when really it doesn’t have to be that way.  Little kids don’t care what anyone thinks of them.  It’s a long-forgotten freedom we once had that is exhilarating to experience now (like when we go to bars by ourselves!) 

So my conclusion?  I guess I just have to hang out with more four year olds.  Can I rent a child?  Is that a thing?