Women: Change Motherhood, Not Just the Workplace

by Rebecca Thorman   53 comments

In her cover story in the Atlantic, “Why Women Still Can’t Have it All,” Anne-Marie Slaughter proposes workplace changes in an effort to balance the impossible juggle of career, life, and motherhood.

The problem is, there’s still a lot more up in the air.

Slaughter argues women can have it all – assuming that America’s economy, society, and men just get their heads on straight. She proposes we change the culture of face-time in business, integrate family values into the workplace, and regain work/life balance.

3 Unconventional Ways to Love Your Job

by Rebecca Thorman   10 comments

It’s hard out there for a career. If only you had more challenge, more money, more responsibility. While you can and should ask for all of these things (going direct seldom fails), it’s not always that easy.

Here are three ways to build your self-confidence on the road to being one of those annoyingly awesome people who light up when they talk about what they do.

1. Get a side job. If you’re not ready to quit your job that sucks, get a side job consulting or freelancing.

Stop Fussing About Student Loans, and Find Gen Y a Job

by Rebecca Thorman   27 comments

Student debt is being compared to the housing crisis. Catastrophe? Imminent. We’re thrusting our kids into vast amounts of financial turmoil, and for what? Disaster. And while that may be true (education does need a transformation), debt is not the main issue on a young person’s mind.

“You would think that student loans are young people’s only priority,” argues New York Times columnist Charles Blow. “They’re not. In fact, a cleverly designed survey released this week by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics asked respondents ages 18 to 29 to choose between pairings of issues to determine which ones they felt were more important.

Behind-the-Scenes of My New Redesign!

by Rebecca Thorman   21 comments
Kontrary by Rebecca Thorman

When I started writing on Kontrary, I wanted to update the site’s branding right away, but I decided to commit to writing first. If I could commit to a weekly schedule, a redesign would be my reward. And oh, how satisfying it has been.

The old design was reflective of my mood at the time – a bit serious, but also clean and modern. For the new site, I wanted to keep the clean and modern, but dial up the happy factor.

How to “Fake It Until You Make It”

by Rebecca Thorman   10 comments

Quick background: I spoke at the meetup DC Tech earlier this week, which is a monthly event that rivals the NY Tech scene with more than 1000 attendees. My brief talk was about how you can “fake it until you make it” when learning how to code. It was so well received, and so many people requested the presentation notes, I thought I would share a special screencast version of the presentation created just for this blog.

The Quickest Way to a Better Career

by Rebecca Thorman   17 comments

You have the option to listen to this post:

I hate meeting people. I would prefer to be holed up in my apartment, lovingly arranged to every last detail purely to make me comfortable, than to present myself to the world. It’s not that I actually dislike people, but the whole process. The getting ready, the logistics, scheduling a time, finding a place – nevermind if you can’t meet me in my preferred five block radius.

Why Instagram is Art

by Rebecca Thorman   28 comments

You have the option to listen to this post:

I love Instagram.

It gives me a great deal of pleasure.

I’m not kidding.

Ryan and I had a big argument about this. He said he felt like a lot of people were on Instagram – including himself – to satiate the human desire to fit in and not be left out. I said it’s because Instagram is art.

Creating is fundamentally part of the human experience.

The Grief of Growth

by Rebecca Thorman   8 comments

Liam (name changed) runs an online business where he sells digital goods on a subscription basis. After approaching nearly $1 million in revenue, he experienced a mindshift. The shift was subtle and unconscious; he didn’t realize the harm he caused until later.

On the side, I consult for Liam’s company. For weeks, I tried to convince Liam to test changes on the site that could potentially increase sales to no avail. I couldn’t understand, why didn’t he want to make more money?

Solving the Gen Y Woman’s Career Problem

by Rebecca Thorman   17 comments

You have the option to listen to this post:

Levo League launched last week by founders Caroline Ghosn and Amanda Pouchot. It’s a professional social network for Gen Y women, and is funded to the tune of $1.25 million by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Ning founder Gina Biancihini, and Gilt Groupe’s Susan Lyne among others.

Oh, and it sucks.

Big connections mean big expectations and I’d say with the exception of some fantastic and probably un-deserved PR (Can you say privilege?

A Brief Retrospective on Growing Up

by Rebecca Thorman   46 comments

You have the option to listen to this post:

My mother says I am in the real world now.

“Things aren’t just handed to you,” she says. “You have to work.”

She is referring to my history of being blessed, the days when jobs, men, friends, careers, and connections came to me. When I had a wide network, when I knew everyone in my city. The days before DC, maybe even farther back.

I moved to DC for an adventure, of course, but mostly – and more than I knew at the time – to support Ryan and his start-up.

The (Online) Self-Educated: Doing What Colleges Can’t

by Rebecca Thorman   14 comments

Education is stuck at all levels. Increasingly so the older a student gets. College students not only face back-breaking debt, but also come out of their four-to-six year sojourns with little to no increase in their abilities or knowledge.

In one recent study, a group of students were asked to take a standardized test covering skills students are expected to garner from an undergraduate education, and 45 percent of students “did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning” during the first two years of college, while 36 percent of students “did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning” at all over their four years of college.

Got a Right to Be Wrong

by Rebecca Thorman   13 comments

This is the first installment in a series of behind-the-scenes posts on Kontrary.

Ideas are common, so I’ll tell you now that how I came up with the idea for Kontrary isn’t interesting. What is interesting is how immediately I jumped into a case of “professor syndrome” where I believed that for Kontrary to work, I would have to be less personal and aspirational, and more editorial and analytical. I know better. I know better, but still, I held onto the notion.