Candid advice.
Delivered with style, humor and heart.
Hot Listing: Hobart and William Smith
There is a place on the New York Thruway - vaguely east of Utica - where I always say to myself: “I should have just flown here.”
Hot Listings: Dalhousie + King’s
The University of Florida it is not.
My first impression of Nova Scotia’s Dalhousie University was shaped by caffeine - not advanced planning. On my first morning, I hoofed it from my hotel to their student union, desperately seeking a boost. Once sated with black coffee, I turned around and beheld the building’s vast center stairway - it was painted with the Progress Pride Flag. I had gone from liquid inspiration to actual inspiration in mere moments.
College in the Time of Crazy
It’s hard to break a habit.
Mine is reading the news. You can take the boy out of Newhouse - but you can’t take the Newhouse out of the boy.
For most of my life, I have started my day with a meticulous review of the headlines in the New York Times. But in the last few years, the shape of this habit has changed as the world, too, has changed.
Hot Listing: SMU
Plot twist: I’m currently in the back of a 7-Eleven in Dallas double fisting lime cucumber Gatorade.
Hot Listing: University of Pittsburgh
Much like wearing four-inch Christian Louboutins to the supermarket on a Tuesday morning, attending a “city” college can read as bold, glamorous, idiosyncratic. Similarly, it often comes with some stark - and potentially uncomfortable - trade-offs.
This December, Take a Pass on Recruit-to-Deny Admissions
A few years ago, still panting from her modern dance class, a student burst into my office on Cyber Monday to tell me about a “bizarre” email she had just received from a college.
No names. But it was an Ivy with a microscopic acceptance rate.
Hot Listing: Elon University
For most of my life, my preconceived notions about North Carolina were more or less limited to chewing tobacco and Jesse Helms.
And I’ve never had much use for either. I care deeply about dental hygiene and find homophobic bigots generally distasteful.
Warren Buffet Might Tell You to Go to Purdue
I have a crush on Warren Buffet.
Disclaimer: not romantically. No offense. But rather because he’s an extraordinary human being. And because he knows money.
Summer’s Last Stand
This summer, please leave the arboreal monkeys of Central America in peace.
They have other things to be doing, like grooming and foraging. And they are not going to help you get into college. So you don’t need to pay $11,000 to “study” them for four weeks.
Hot Listing: Clark University
I didn’t even go here, and yet, somehow: I always end up back here.
My introduction to Clark University started rather young. I was born up the street, and my father was once a mover and shaker in this burg. His professional life connected him to Clark and its leaders - and while he did this or that in nearby offices, I eagerly toddled around this green in my favorite patchwork OshKosh overalls and Miss Piggy t-shirt.
The Year of Living Gratefully
Despite the overt risk of sounding like a clearance bin self-help guide, I will admit that at certain points in my life, I’ve struggled to express enough gratitude. Perhaps this affliction is not uncommon amongst those who loosely match the public perception of my previous self: young, ambitious and outwardly fabulous.
But in middle age, gratitude is something that I find myself trying to summon more and more - and thankfully, it eludes me less and less. Part of this evolution is just the wise, natural march of age. But honestly, I owe a good chunk of this quiet victory to my profession.
The Likely Dance
At this time of year, my brain is a jukebox stuck on a single track: The Safety Dance.
For those who may not be aware, the song dates back to 1982 and is by a Canadian synth-pop band called Men Without Hats. It helped drive the musical revolution known as New Wave, and was a smash hit all over the world. I guarantee your mom danced to it in high school with her ridiculously teased hair and white Keds. The bizarre, ultra camp video made zero sense - but it still played on blast on MTV for the rest of the ‘80s, and it happily populates some of my first sensory memories.
How to (Politely) Get Your Aunt Susan to Shut Up About Your College Search
Like any bon vivant, I love the holidays.
But decades of professional treadwear have taught me that this time of year can be tricky. Right now, everyone seems to be incessantly and obsessively talking about the “c word” - college. And frankly, by this point in the process, most seniors just need a rest; and I can surely empathize. Even the most passionate and caring counselors need one, too. I once holed up in a Saks dressing room on a snowy December evening, swathed in a steeply discounted Paul Smith angora sweater, patiently waiting for a very familiar voice to recede into the din of the cosmetics section - I simply couldn’t talk about college for another minute that day.