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On Office Spaces, Office Dreams
@echolikebells It is a DREAM compared to my last job, where I had only one cubicle wall and the rest was open, and the offices got all the windows- us cube drones couldn't see daylight at all. And the free coffee was crap and it was a university where the free coffee was only available when students were on campus. Which is not that often compared to the staff. Between windows, a Mac, and the Keurig I spent my first week or so here in a daze of happiness.
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On Office Spaces, Office Dreams
@echolikebells So seriously: my current place has okay lighting, windows that open (onto lovely 51st St in Midtown?) and shiny beautiful Macs everywhere. And apparently we will probably institute summer Fridays at some point later, which means everyone leaves early on Friday through the summer? And we have a Keurig and a big-ass fridge. No toaster oven. Microwave? But it is, all things considered, a pretty decent office space.
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On Open Thread
@OllyOlly YAY abortion funds! I make a monthly $18 donation to the New York Abortion Access Fund, plus one-off donations at events.
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On 2 Ways to Interpret: "Well, My Parents Pay My Phone Bill, So"
@Vicky Both! I got a cell phone when I was a freshman in high school because my parents were tired of me calling them from friends' phones and leaving messages to say where I was, and then my friends wouldn't answer when they called back. In college I didn't have any other phone and they wanted to be able to call me. Now it's just cheaper/easier and until I have a partner or someone to share a family plan with, it seems like such a rip-off to pay for an individual plan.
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On How Much is Your Phone Bill Each Month?
@polka dots vs stripes I am never leaving my parents' family plan. NEVER. It's too good of a deal. Luckily they understand that it's better to "encourage my independence" by ensuring that my phone bill doesn't consume all of my disposable income.
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On How Much is Your Phone Bill Each Month?
I have an iPhone 4S, and I'm still on my parents' Sprint family plan. Grandfathered in truly unlimited data (and we all have iPhones so it's a good thing to have), unlimited texting, and I don't even know how many minutes we have because I rarely use them. Between unlimited Sprint-to-Sprint calls, free nights starting at 7, and free weekends, I probably use less than 50 minutes a month that we actually pay for. I was unemployed for a while and my parents were covering my share, but hopefully I'll convince them to let me pay them soon. My share will be $20/month- $10/month for my line and $10/month iPhone surcharge. They would keep the same family plan without me on it because they use the data and Mom is self-employed and uses the minutes, so I only need to cover my line.
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On Monday Check-in
I didn't estimate on Friday, but I had a pretty low-key weekend. Friday, $25 of groceries and $13 on a nicer-than-usual bottle of wine as a treat, and I hung out at home because it was raining and gross. Saturday, nothing. I baked (raspberry scones, ingredients already on hand) and cooked (chicken with some of the ingredients from Friday and the wine), watched a bunch of episodes of West Wing and drank the rest of the wine. Sunday I grabbed sushi & iced tea at Whole Foods in Union Square ($13) because I had forgotten to eat lunch before running errands. New bras at Nordstrom rack, $40, and iced coffee supplies (a small pitcher, a squeeze bottle for my simple syrup, and a little funnel for the squeeze bottle) and a four-skirt hanger from the Container Store for $23. Grand total, $114.
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On Tuition is Crazy But Can We Also Talk About How Some Student Loans Paid for Cruises?
I thought for a while before commenting on this, but I think I want to defend the people who spend loan money on non-necessities. I'll admit: I wasn't one of them. I only needed to take out enough loans to cover a portion of my tuition, and used college fund money & parental contributions to cover cost of living stuff (dorm room/rent, meal plan/groceries, utilities) and my part-time jobs to cover fun stuff (drinking, movies, restaurants, trips). But I have a lot of friends who used loan money to study abroad, and to travel while they were abroad. Or who took out enough loans that they knew it would cover summer cost of living as well so that they could take unpaid internships. Or even who used loan money to cover low-key vacations- no spring break cruises, but stuff within driving distance or short cheaper flights. For my friends who needed to take out significant amounts of loans to pay for our school, they figured what's an extra two or three thousand more? They're all prepared to pay it back- they just see no reason to put that extra money towards their loans immediately instead of having the experience now, because they expect to have very little "fun" money for a long time while they pay off their loans anyway. When your loan payments are already going to eat up almost every spare penny you have for the first few years after school, it doesn't seem like too much of a big deal.
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On Why Won't Anyone Hire Me?
@CRINDY Not to be totally discouraging, but whoever told you that it isn't crazy difficult to break into repro health was LYING. In the major cities with lots of repro orgs and therefore more jobs in that field (NYC, DC, San Francisco, and maybe Chicago & Boston), the entry level positions are fiercely competitive because there's a hell of a lot of young people just like you who want those jobs. In flyover country and red states, it's a little less competitive because no one who wants to work in repro health seems to want to live somewhere where it isn't accessible, but those organizations have much less money and therefore hire fewer people. And when they hire, they can't often hire entry level, because when you have three staff for your organization in the entire state and that state is trying to complete limit access to reproductive healthcare, you can't really afford someone who doesn't already know how to succeed. I don't work in repro health, because even in NYC there are not that many jobs and the ones I applied for didn't take me. I'm at a progressive economic think tank, and I volunteer in repro health/abortion access and hope to one day move into getting paid for that work, but I highly recommend opening up your search right now. Whatever kind of work you wanted to do in repro health- communications? programs? advocacy? development? education? Apply for those jobs in other areas. The job hunt sucks, and takes forever, and if you're only applying for repro health jobs then there's no way you're sending out enough applications right now.
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On Renata Adler on Charitable Giving and Young Folk
@theotherginger I'd love to hit 5% for my charitable giving, but it feels like a kind of lofty goal right now. I'm managing 5% to my 403(b) and 5% to short-term savings, and those numbers are off my pre-tax salary. Maybe 5% of my take-home after taxes & savings & whatnot would feel more workable for me? It would be a difference of about $50 less in donations than off my pre-tax salary, and it sounds a lot less scary.