7 Lies

This is an excellent article by Charles W. Keene who is an is an award-winning assistant teaching professor at the University of Missouri’s Trulaske College of Business. A version of this article first appeared on BrazenLife.
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American college students have been trained from an alarmingly young age to believe that as long as they show up, they should be rewarded—and that is lulling them into a false sense of security.

After all, simply being there isn’t the same as contributing, and participating isn’t the same as succeeding. No one will be rewarded for just showing up in the real world.

Success isn’t found inside a rubric. It certainly isn’t something achieved without a few experiments, mistakes, and failures along the way. Here are seven common lies that young people hear growing up—and the blunt, uncensored truths behind them:

1. You’re amazing at everything you do.

Any 5-year-old will tell you it’s not polite to hurt a person’s feelings. Instead, society sells us a lie, because apparently it’s better to tell someone she’s great than tell the truth when she isn’t. We think we’ll stunt growth if we tell the cold truth; in reality, we’re stunting growth by handing everyone a participation trophy instead of rewarding real talent and achievement.

Beyond that, it’s much more traumatic when, after 20-something years, someone finally tells you that you’re not as amazing as you thought. Here’s an example: I teach college, and after completing their first college-level course, many students tell me, “This is the first C I’ve ever gotten.” My response? “Welcome to college.” Why? An A isn’t something that you’re entitled to; it’s something you earn.

2. You have to be perfect.

Failure is a great teacher. You don’t learn anything if you go through life being told you’re perfect. Writer and director Kevin Smith put it best when he said, “The truth is…failure is success training.”

So you don’t have a 4.0? That’s OK. Don’t have a job lined up right after graduation? That’s OK, too. You don’t need a perfect track record, grade point average, or plan to make a good career and life for yourself. You just need the perseverance, bravery, and grit to forge a path for yourself.

3. You have to be married before you’re 30.

College isn’t for everyone. Neither is marriage. Need proof? Just look at the divorce rate. There’s a lot of societal pressure to find the perfect person to spend your life with by a certain age. It’s completely arbitrary—and for a lot of people, it’s completely wrong.

Don’t force it. Don’t stress. And don’t buy into the myth; not everyone is ready for marriage by age 30.

4. You’ll succeed only if you go to the right college.

Success comes from all walks of life. Today, there’s unbelievable pressure on students to get admitted to their first-choice college. Give yourself a little more credit. It might require some work, but you can succeed in all different kinds of environments.

5. You can get a great job by just having a degree.

Some of the most valuable lessons are learned outside the classroom. Before you graduate, get involved, intern, study abroad, and network. Employers are looking for students who did more than just sit through four years of classes.

6. Your first job defines your career.

College graduates often buy into the “perfect first job” myth. They think they need to be in the right place at the right time right after graduation. That isn’t true.

My first job was pushing carts at Walmart. Skills and lessons are transferable, especially the ones you learn during your first job out of college. Those lessons will get you all kinds of places—including your dream job.

7. You’ll be in a better financial place than your parents—immediately.

Many millennials are incredibly sheltered. Some don’t even know what their parents do; they think the money just shows up. When you begin your career, you’ll have to work hard. You’ll have to put in time and pay your dues.

Don’t expect to live the same lifestyle that took your parents 20 years to achieve. Make peace now with the fact that the Baby Boomers have gobbled everything up from the table and you are now on your own to thrive.

Find your own truth

Society, peer groups and the media may have good intentions, but they often reinforce these seven lies.

To find your own truth, challenge everything. Ask hard questions. Demand—and give—honest answers. And don’t be afraid to fail. The best life lessons are learned through mistakes and imperfections, getting you closer to success than any participation trophy ever will.

Charles W. Keene is an award-winning assistant teaching professor at the University of Missouri’s Trulaske College of Business. A version of this article first appeared on BrazenLife.
American college students have been trained from an alarmingly young age to believe that as long as they show up, they should be rewarded—and that is lulling them into a false sense of security.

After all, simply being there isn’t the same as contributing, and participating isn’t the same as succeeding. No one will be rewarded for just showing up in the real world.

Success isn’t found inside a rubric. It certainly isn’t something achieved without a few experiments, mistakes, and failures along the way. Here are seven common lies that young people hear growing up—and the blunt, uncensored truths behind them:

1. You’re amazing at everything you do.

Any 5-year-old will tell you it’s not polite to hurt a person’s feelings. Instead, society sells us a lie, because apparently it’s better to tell someone she’s great than tell the truth when she isn’t. We think we’ll stunt growth if we tell the cold truth; in reality, we’re stunting growth by handing everyone a participation trophy instead of rewarding real talent and achievement.

Beyond that, it’s much more traumatic when, after 20-something years, someone finally tells you that you’re not as amazing as you thought. Here’s an example: I teach college, and after completing their first college-level course, many students tell me, “This is the first C I’ve ever gotten.” My response? “Welcome to college.” Why? An A isn’t something that you’re entitled to; it’s something you earn.

2. You have to be perfect.

Failure is a great teacher. You don’t learn anything if you go through life being told you’re perfect. Writer and director Kevin Smith put it best when he said, “The truth is…failure is success training.”

So you don’t have a 4.0? That’s OK. Don’t have a job lined up right after graduation? That’s OK, too. You don’t need a perfect track record, grade point average, or plan to make a good career and life for yourself. You just need the perseverance, bravery, and grit to forge a path for yourself.

3. You have to be married before you’re 30.

College isn’t for everyone. Neither is marriage. Need proof? Just look at the divorce rate. There’s a lot of societal pressure to find the perfect person to spend your life with by a certain age. It’s completely arbitrary—and for a lot of people, it’s completely wrong.

Don’t force it. Don’t stress. And don’t buy into the myth; not everyone is ready for marriage by age 30.

4. You’ll succeed only if you go to the right college.

Success comes from all walks of life. Today, there’s unbelievable pressure on students to get admitted to their first-choice college. Give yourself a little more credit. It might require some work, but you can succeed in all different kinds of environments.

5. You can get a great job by just having a degree.

Some of the most valuable lessons are learned outside the classroom. Before you graduate, get involved, intern, study abroad, and network. Employers are looking for students who did more than just sit through four years of classes.

6. Your first job defines your career.

College graduates often buy into the “perfect first job” myth. They think they need to be in the right place at the right time right after graduation. That isn’t true.

My first job was pushing carts at Walmart. Skills and lessons are transferable, especially the ones you learn during your first job out of college. Those lessons will get you all kinds of places—including your dream job.

7. You’ll be in a better financial place than your parents—immediately.

Many millennials are incredibly sheltered. Some don’t even know what their parents do; they think the money just shows up. When you begin your career, you’ll have to work hard. You’ll have to put in time and pay your dues.

Don’t expect to live the same lifestyle that took your parents 20 years to achieve. Make peace now with the fact that the Baby Boomers have gobbled everything up from the table and you are now on your own to thrive.

Find your own truth

Society, peer groups and the media may have good intentions, but they often reinforce these seven lies.

To find your own truth, challenge everything. Ask hard questions. Demand—and give—honest answers. And don’t be afraid to fail. The best life lessons are learned through mistakes and imperfections, getting you closer to success than any participation trophy ever will.

Lady

This is a very special song for me, and definitely belongs in the soundtrack.

"Lady" was written by the talented Lionel Ritchie and performed by Mr. Kenny Rogers.

Purge

facebook is an interesting place...kinda like a school playground.

Personally, I only want to hang around the kids that are nice and like me. I don't much care for those kids that really don't like me, are mean to me or others on purpose, or are simply hanging around to gather information to gossip about me or my close friends. 

I had to do a purge. Unfortunately, many of those I unfriended consider themselves believers--a fact that saddens me greatly. Others I had to unfriend because of their close associations with people who, on a regular basis, gossip about me and continue to disparage my name and character (who also consider themselves to be believers). To them I am truly sorry...I wish you all the best.

Innocently, some of the people I unfriended just because we never interact, and it was time to clean the place up a bit. No ill-will was intended on my part for any of the unfriendings, truly.

I want my facebook experience to be a positive, informative and sometimes inspirational place. I'm sure they do, too. Parting ways is probably the easiest way to accomplish that for all involved.

(And now they will all just have to figure out how to lurk my blogs, eh? Ha!)

Get the Right Fit

I didn't write the following, but it is worth sharing and saving. Remember, 90% of women are wearing ill-fitting bras...yes, even you. Read on, girlfriends!

The guide is intended to get you really close to wearing the perfect size but there is no alternative to actually trying on bras and assessing the fit. Ideally, every woman would have access to a well stocked lingerie store that carried everything from 24A to 50K, but alas.

You'll need a tailor's/cloth tape, a scratch pad and pen, and (if at all possible) a friend/significant other to help. You don't need a friend, but it's really helpful to have one as they can make sure you've got the tape lined up neatly and do the measurement for you.

First, here's the "Don't do this!" part of the program.

Don't measure yourself wearing a bra, even a bra you think is a good fitting bra. You'll effectively be measuring the bra and not your breast tissue.

Don't wear anything. You're not trying to measure yourself to wear a bra over a t-shirt or a bra over another bra or anything. You want a skin-to-tape measurement.

Don't do any weird math, fancy over/under the boobs nonsense, or anything else you've ever heard about measuring for a bra.

Alright, you're naked and you've got your tape and pen/paper. Now, let's get measuring! =)

Lean forward so that your back is parallel with the floor. This is important. You want gravity the help pull all your breast tissue forward, even the breast tissue that your previously ill-fitting bra squished back under your arms (and even around onto your back). You may even want to take a moment to reach back and massage your sides, kind of pushing the breast tissue forward with a sweeping motion. Measure around your torso with the tape passing over the fullest part of your hanging breasts. Keep the tape as straight as possible (essentially perpendicular to the floor if you've done your best to make your body parallel to it.)

This measurement should be loose. Tighten the tape just tight enough that it doesn't easily slide off the skin if nudged, but not tight enough to begin to deform the breast tissue.

So! Upper body parallel, measure with a snug and straight tape, and write that number down. For the sake of this example, let's say 42 inches. Write it down.

Note: If you have pendulous breasts you may wish to take two measurements and average them. You can measure yourself once in the hanging position, then once in the standing position and average the two numbers.

I strongly suggest leaning towards the larger measurement. The vast majority of the “90% of women wear the wrong bra” crowd are wearing bras with radically undersized cups. Make sure there is room for your breasts and then work down to a snug cup fit!

Next we measure for the band. Wrap the tape around your torso, directly under the root of your breast. Wherever your breast tissue terminates into the torso, that's where the band should be sitting. Even if it seems high (because you're used to wearing poor fitting bras or you have breasts with a high root but signification slope) you want the band to sit at the root of the breast so that the breast tissue is laying nicely in the cups.

You want this measurement to be very snug. Pull the tape tight enough that it feels really snug but not so tight as to be a corset or a that it leaves a red mark in your skin. It's important you get a snug measurement; If you start with a band that is an inch or more too big it will not only fail to support you right from the start but it will rapidly get worse.

So! Measure tight but not so tight that you leave a red mark on the skin. Write this measurement down. For the sake of this example, let's say the measurement was 34 inches.

Armed with those numbers: 42 inches over the fullest point of the bust and 34 inches snug around the rib cage, it's time to do some very minor calculating. You can do it manually or you can use a bra fit calculator. The big caveat is that 99% of bra fit calculators are absolute garbage; they're so bad as to be completely useless.

That said, as of this writing (3/29/12) the bra fit calculator at Sophisticated Pair is excellent. Probably the best one online at the moment. If we plug in the numbers we got with our measuring, it suggests that our model would likely be comfortable wearing a US 34H or a UK 34FF.

If you'd like to calculate your bra size manually you need the band size and the difference between the bust size and the band size. In the case of our example the band size is 34 inches and the different is 8 inches. The cup size is determined by the difference (8 inches, in this case).

You may notice that US bra manufacturers do not have their shit together. That would be an accurate observation. UK companies are almost completely standardized with a little variation in cut/cup size between companies and within their various lines. US companies are all over the map; part of it is a stupid fixation with not making bras bigger than "D", so G cups are sometimes labeled as DDDD. So stupid. To further compound the confusion, some US companies have thrown in the towel on the US system and are now using the UK system (because it's clearly easier to understand). Manually calculating your bra size using the US system is a complete crap shoot once you get above around a DD cup; US brands are ridiculously inconsistent.

With that in mind, I'd strongly suggest you start with UK brands first, to avoid frustration. Brands like Panache, Freya, Fantasie, and Curvy Kate are all great brands to start with. You can find lots of UK brands for dirt cheap at BraStop.com--we're talking bras that cost $75-120 in the US for a mere $20-30 USD.

The real test is actually trying the bra on. I'd suggest ordering a few bras from a few companies, around the size you think you are. Once you get the bras, try them on (making sure to use your hand to gently scoop all your breast tissue from the sides and armpit area into the cup) and assess the fit.

You must get in the habit of doing the scoop-and-swoop move. It enhances your bust, it smooths out armpit and back bulges, and (for larger chested women especially) it helps the breast fat that crappy bras have savagely smashed into your armpits and around your torso, migrate back into place. For women with C cup breasts and larger, it's not uncommon to go up a cup size after a few months of wearing the right size bra because all the previously smashed-around-"chub" has settled back into it's proper place: in the breasts.
As far as the cups go... You want all the breast tissue in the cups. None bulging out in the arm pits, none being pushed back against your ribs, and none spilling out over the top of the cups (the dreaded quad-boob).

The band should be snug (you should be able to slide a finger or two under it comfortably, but no more), it should be parallel to the floor, it should touch your chest all the way around (if the band doesn't sit flush to your breast bone in the front, that means the cups are too small and your breasts are lifting the band/gore away from your torso).

Here's a quick trouble shooting list:

Breasts spill over cup either on the tops or out the sides (like into the armpit area)? The cup is too small, go up a cup size.

Bra cup is wrinkly? Either the cup is too big or the style of the cup isn't suited to your breast shape (i.e. the cup is shaped to compliment a woman with upper pole fullness and you're more of a lower pole kinda gal).

Underwires are digging into your sides/armpits or aren't flush against your ribs? Cup size too small, go up a cup.

Band too tight? Increase band size.

Band rides up in the back? (i.e. curves towards your neck, not parallel with the floor?) The band is too big, go down a band size.

Gore doesn't tack? (the center of the cups, where the underwires form a little bridge of sorts isn't touching your torso?) Cup size is too small, go up a size.

Straps painfully digging in? Loosen the straps to a two-finger tightness. Do your breasts sag? Then you were using the straps to over support them. You most likely need a tighter band.

Remember, the cup and band are not independent. If you make an adjustment to the cup or band size you need to make an adjustment to the other element. For example, if you're wearing a 34H and you feel the band doesn't fit well, your next stop should be a 32HH not a 32H (unless of course you're attempting to diagnose a poor band and cup fit at the same time).

Most of all, it should be comfortable and flattering. Even if it meets all the requirements: breasts in cups, band flush, should straps not digging it... if it makes your boobs pointier than you'd like, gives them a weird shape, or otherwise doesn't make you feel awesome... send it back. You've spent too much time wearing the wrong size bra to settle at this point in the project.

Week 83

A picture of the place you want to spend the most time.


I don't think I can find a photo, mine or otherwise, that would portray where I want to spend the majority of my time. Instead, I will attempt to paint you a picture...

With wide, sweeping strokes, the lightest of white, pearly and somewhat translucent, would be the light of life. 

I want to live in the light.

Sweet hues of light blue, lavender and pink represent freely given friendship and acceptance. 

I want to live with acceptance and true, unconditional love.

Splashes of bright colors - yellow, orange and green - punctuate the days with new experiences and things to learn. 

I want to live in a place where new ideas are embraced and fresh opportunities are welcomed.

Deep and comfortable darker hues find their way onto my canvas; soft brown and warm burgundy...deep turquoise and emerald green. All these speak of the abiding feeling of home and belonging. 

I want to live in a place where I belong.

Dark accents of black only add to the definition of the place I want to spend the majority of my time. Clearly defined boundaries of right and wrong give life purpose and meaning. 

I want to live in a place where righteousness, justice and love rule the day.

What a painting. Yeah, that's where I want to spend the majority of my time.
It could be just a dream, but hope springs eternal...at least it does for me.

Week 82

A picture of the place you spend the most time.


I definitely spend a lot of time in my study. I am blessed with such a peaceful place to be, truly.

I believe it is also the place the cats spend the bulk of their time, as well.

Circle-boy

Week 81

A picture of something you may need in the future.


Jag XJ

Need vs. want.

You decide.