June 2023

I’d like to say to myself that 2016 started off with a bang, but I can’t. My first day of the new year was spent crying, questioning the decisions that have led me to where I am today, and calling just about everyone in my phonebook for strength. Facebook time hop reminded me that two years ago today I was also crying, but for very different reasons. January 2, 2013 I was boarding a flight to London, something I spent months working for and even more months anticipating. The time I spent living in the United Kingdom sparked in me a love for traveling, which eventually led to me relocating to Washington DC after college graduation, falling in love and slowly realizing my dream wasn’t as perfect as I imagined. Last year on New Year’s day I spent my time wandering the streets of Northwest DC, taking photos on a disposable camera and still believing that if I worked hard enough everything would fall into place. New Year’s 2015 I had a boyfriend who loved me, roommates to talk to when I got home, and barely enough money to pay my monthly bills. A year later I find myself in a much better job, enjoying every moment of my graduate program, but completely alone. If I could go back and talk to myself at the start of last new year, I would warn that version of me that giving all your time to a group of people who have zero interest in getting to know you will only lead to one day feeling as if you are completely alone in a room full of people. Committing yourself a relationship where you are always the first to call, apologize and move forward will only lead to you waking up one day exhausted, unloved and unaware of where to go next. This new year I finally began to listen to what my friends back home had been saying for months, and I finally listened to my gut instinct and realized nothing was ever going to change as long as I was the only one willing to admit change needed to occur. Unfortunately I spent 2015 supporting a man who gradually lost all respect for me, making small talk with people who were openly rude to me, and laying in bed at night wondering why no matter how hard I tried to make the people around me like me, they never did. Washington DC has been my dream since my 8th grade visit, and like an idiot I believed that my dream was possible while also spending time with people whose idea of fun was my nightmare. I cant count the number of hours I have spent sitting in a bar, making smalltalk with small minded people, inhaling secondhand smoke, and just wishing that just one of them would give me an ounce of chance to show them I wasn’t all the bad things everyone assumed I was. If I could show this letter to me in 2015, I would write in all capitals that it’s better to spend my nights alone than to spend them crying on my bathroom floor while someone sat in the next room without a care. I cant say for sure if things will get any better in 2016, but I am in control of the people I allow to into my life. So for now I am alone in a city full of people, but at the very least I can come home and not worry about what argument I’m going to fall into, what someone is going to say about me as I step away to the restroom, or what innocent gesture will be considered rude. If I could talk to the version of me on January 1, 2015, I’d tell her that nothing is going to get better as long as I continue on the same path. So starting today I’ve removed myself from the people who openly dislike me, I’ve quit trying to convince a man that I am worth respecting and I will do everything in my power to take back the dream I had at 13 years old, the one where I’m a strong, independent woman, with her own apartment in the city, a cat to cuddle with at night, and friends to call on when she’s grown bored of sitting at home.

If you’ve ever experienced being alone in a city I’d love to hear how you got through it. And if you have any advice on how to make friends as an adult I could really any advice. 

First days of work are hard. Don’t believe me? You must not have read my last post on how I cried in my office, twice. You can read all about that embarrassing moment here. As someone who likes to prepare for every possible situation, first days of work are a mix of anxiety and excitement, with a whole lot of caffeine added throughout the day. If you’re starting a new job soon or just moving to a different department, it’s important your first impression be the best represenation of you. In my last poisiton it was my job to get new staff memmbers acquainted with the office, as well as answer any questions they had about everything from copy machines to lunch recommendations. I’ll admit that seasoned staff members have a lot to say about new people, and it’s not always kind. Make sure you put your best you forward by makng your first day in the office a productive one, here’s how.

Related Post: 8 Reasons Your Coworkers Don’t Like You

I know, I know, having to get to know a whole new office of people sucks, but it’s so important you get this out of the way on day one. The reason you want to do this on your firsty day is because people are most receptive to talking to and helping you when you’re new, so use your inexperience as an advantage. Plus, people are most likely talking about there being a new person anyways, so make sure you make yourself known with a good impression.

Before my first office job I had no idea that it’s typical for someone from the company to take you out to lunch on your first day. Besides making a friend in the office, going to lunch with a coworker is a great way to ask questions one on one with someone who isn’t your boss, and learn a little more about what’s both inside and outside the office.

Related Post: 20 Things Only People with an Office Job Will Understand

As someone who used to give office tours, I know firsthand how beneficial they are to those who accept them. Avoid the stress of not knowing which printer to select of where the supplies are kept two weeks into your new job. Plus, on most office tours you’re introduced to people who you might otherwise not meet, which is another great way to make sure you meet most everyone.
Figuring out what to wear can be hard, especially if you don’t have much experience dressing for a office environment. My best advice is to dress as professionally as you did when being interviewed. Once a week has passed, you can either replicate the style of your coworkers or ask any questions to any friends you’ve made in the office.

Related Post: What to Wear on Casual Friday with 7 Outfit Examples

Most likely your first day in the office will be full of orientations and training, which is why it’s important to arrive early rather than just on time. Leave some wiggle room in your commute for traffic or getting lost, especially in those first days where you’re doing more than just your normal work. If something does arrive that will make you late, don’t hesitate to call the office or send an email to notify your supervisor. Eventually your new coworkers will stop thinking of you as the new person, meaning they’ll expect you to know basic office tasks and practices. Taking notes not only prevents you from remembering vital information, it also shows everyone how prepared you are on day one. Don’t be shy about pausing to make a note, it will benefit you in the long run.

So tell me, what’s thing you always do on the first day of work? In my case, I always wear black, it’s a no fail wardrobe decision. 

Creating the perfect resume is freaking hard, especially when you are currently unemployed and willing to take the first job offer you get. With all the stress of knowing that there are dozens of people applying for the same job as you, sometimes small avoidable mistakes fall through the cracks.

Listen, I get it. I moved to Washington DC with just barely over a thousand dollars, no job offers and not even a single job application submitted. I had one month before school started to find myself a job and somehow I did, and I’m pretty sure it had everything to do with my resume. Yes, I was super involved in college but weren’t we all? You can try as hard as you want to stand out with your resume but at the end of the day it’s just a bland list of all the things you’ve done. Wait to wow them in your interview, for now, let’s focus on making the information easy to comprehend and follow. All while avoiding the six all too common mistakes.

Also, if you haven’t caught part one of this series, click here to read the first 6 popular resume mistakes people make.

While I definitely agree that less is more, some people at times get a bit carried away. Strive to have at least three bullet points describing your work experience, because chances are if you can describe it all in two, it’s not worth mentioning. It’s 2016 but for some wild reason people are still spelling things wrong! Employers understand when Word fails to tell you that you used the wrong version of a word, but if you are making multiple grammar and spelling mistakes, consider yourself denied. To avoid this read your resume aloud or better yet, have a friend look it over. This one used to frustrate me to no end at my old job. Listen up guys! If you aren’t going to check your email regularly, do not list it on your resume. Employers expect a quick response when offering you an interview, so only list contact information that you will have access to regularly. Then again, it’s 2016, so if you don’t like receiving emails you better get with the times.

Related Post: How to Make the Best Resume with 10 Easy Tips

Maybe I’m wrong, I don’t think I’m wrong, but putting an objective on your resume is as tacky as putting a photo. Just saying. Many of us are most likely applying to jobs that are stepping stones to our ultimate goal, meaning the objective would most likely be a total lie anyways. Every inch of your resume is valuable real estate, don’t waste a single line with something you could just state in a cover letter or interview. Just cut it out, literally. Unpopular opinion but nobody gives a shit about your GPA. There, I said it, nobody cares! And this is coming from someone who graduated with a pretty awesome GPA, so don’t think I’m just saying this cause I’m not proud of mine. Unless your application is for grad school, your GPA is irrelevant. Once you enter the workforce nobody will bother to ask what your grades averaged out to, and come to think of it, nobody has ever even asked for proof that I even graduated college. Honest moment, I am totally guilty of this one, or at least I was. When I was getting ready to graduate college I was completely panicking at the idea of having to go get my first job. So what did I do to cope? Shoved four years worth of volunteering, officer roles and internships onto two very jam packed pages. Don’t do this, instead tailor your resume to each job application. By doing this you can eliminate job experiences that aren’t applicable while staying within the one page limit.

What do you struggle with most when creating a resume? Have you been guilty of doing any of the stuff above?? If you’re looking for more advice, follow my board for career tips and advice for twenty somethings below!

Follow When Life Gives You Rubi’s board CAREER TIPS & ADVICE FOR 20 SOMETHINGS on Pinterest.

Creating the perfect resume is freaking hard, especially when you are currently unemployed and willing to take the first job offer you get. With all the stress of knowing that there are dozens of people applying for the same job as you, sometimes small avoidable mistakes fall through the cracks.

Listen, I get it. I moved to Washington DC with just barely over a thousand dollars, no job offers and not even a single job application submitted. I had one month before school started to find myself a job and somehow I did, and I’m pretty sure it had everything to do with my resume. Yes, I was super involved in college but weren’t we all? You can try as hard as you want to stand out with your resume but at the end of the day it’s just a bland list of all the things you’ve done. Wait to wow them in your interview, for now, let’s focus on making the information easy to comprehend and follow. All while avoiding the six all too common mistakes.

Also, if you haven’t caught part one of this series, click here to read the first 6 popular resume mistakes people make.

While I definitely agree that less is more, some people at times get a bit carried away. Strive to have at least three bullet points describing your work experience, because chances are if you can describe it all in two, it’s not worth mentioning. It’s 2016 but for some wild reason people are still spelling things wrong! Employers understand when Word fails to tell you that you used the wrong version of a word, but if you are making multiple grammar and spelling mistakes, consider yourself denied. To avoid this read your resume aloud or better yet, have a friend look it over. This one used to frustrate me to no end at my old job. Listen up guys! If you aren’t going to check your email regularly, do not list it on your resume. Employers expect a quick response when offering you an interview, so only list contact information that you will have access to regularly. Then again, it’s 2016, so if you don’t like receiving emails you better get with the times.

Related Post: How to Make the Best Resume with 10 Easy Tips

Maybe I’m wrong, I don’t think I’m wrong, but putting an objective on your resume is as tacky as putting a photo. Just saying. Many of us are most likely applying to jobs that are stepping stones to our ultimate goal, meaning the objective would most likely be a total lie anyways. Every inch of your resume is valuable real estate, don’t waste a single line with something you could just state in a cover letter or interview. Just cut it out, literally. Unpopular opinion but nobody gives a shit about your GPA. There, I said it, nobody cares! And this is coming from someone who graduated with a pretty awesome GPA, so don’t think I’m just saying this cause I’m not proud of mine. Unless your application is for grad school, your GPA is irrelevant. Once you enter the workforce nobody will bother to ask what your grades averaged out to, and come to think of it, nobody has ever even asked for proof that I even graduated college. Honest moment, I am totally guilty of this one, or at least I was. When I was getting ready to graduate college I was completely panicking at the idea of having to go get my first job. So what did I do to cope? Shoved four years worth of volunteering, officer roles and internships onto two very jam packed pages. Don’t do this, instead tailor your resume to each job application. By doing this you can eliminate job experiences that aren’t applicable while staying within the one page limit.

What do you struggle with most when creating a resume? Have you been guilty of doing any of the stuff above?? If you’re looking for more advice, follow my board for career tips and advice for twenty somethings below!

Follow When Life Gives You Rubi’s board CAREER TIPS & ADVICE FOR 20 SOMETHINGS on Pinterest.

I can still remember the day I cut my cable. I was sitting at the receptionist desk of my old job, having recently given my notice, staring at my bank account wondering why I was being charged twenty dollars extra each month. After a very annoying call with Comcast I realized they had increased my price, with absolutely no notice. My anger got the best of me which led to me not only cutting my cable but internet as well, and within a few minutes I had cut ties with the only provider that serviced my area. I bussed home convinced that I would figure out a way around my new circumstance, which is what led me to this post today.

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Cable is too fucking expensive. Yeah, I said it. Sure it’s nice to not have to download anything or really think about what you wanna watch, but I refuse to pay that much money for a service that I really only use like 10% of. Think about it, how many channels do you actually watch? Probably like 5-10, leaving you with possibly hundreds of useless ones you don’t even need! This reason, along with the increased price, led me to cut my cable overnight. As an avid tv watcher I had to figure out something fast, I mean, I am the type of girl who eat, sleeps, breathes television. Below are the things I turned to that have helped me say goodbye to cable permanently, all while keeping up with my tv shows and saving a ton of money along the way.
The obvious alternative, but if you still don’t have an account, what are you waiting for? Netflix is great for binge watching sessions and rewatching old favorites that you can quote for days. Thankfully Netflix is now consistently producing content of its own, which means you get so much more than just favorites to watch after the season ends. If you’re anything like me, you have trouble not being able to keep up with your shows as they air. The great thing about Hulu is that they feature old content and episodes the day after they air. The price of Hulu is comparable to that of Netflix, so I definitely recommend you try the free trials to both so you can compare the two platforms.

Stupid me dated my boyfriend for six months before realizing I could have been watching live tv on the go with his Xfinity account. If you have family or friends who have an Xfinity account, they have the ability to make you a login so that you can watch live tv both on your laptop and cellphone.

Related Post: 4 Reasons to Go See a Movie Alone

For the past six years I’ve been falling more in love with YouTube, mostly because I can quickly watch a video while getting ready or cooking dinner. Some YouTubers film episode long videos, it all depends on what type of content you enjoy. There are also channels dedicated to live streaming certain shows 24/7, all you have to do is search the name of your favorite show and ‘live’ to find the account. Best of all, YouTube is totally free, and there’s new content every single day.  If you’re an Amazon Prime customer, don’t forget that you have access to Amazon Video to watch films, tv episodes, and access music all as a prime member. I prefer Amazon for films, but my sister swears by this streaming service.

What are your favorite streaming platforms? Also, let me know what your fave new shows is, my watchlist is in major need of new shows!

If you are anything like me, senior year of college consisted of too many people asking you what your plans were after graduation. Now a full year later, I’ve successfully managed to move across the country and transition from a low paying job at a nonprofit organization to my current position at a global law firm. How did I do this? Magic!

Just kidding! I worked my ass off. Not just after graduation, but throughout college as well. With every news outlet reporting how hard it is to get a job in today’s economy, I wasted no time during my four years in college. The only problem I’ve had is figuring out how to put all these experiences on a piece of paper. With so many applicants hoping to hired for the same job, it’s difficult to stick out in a sea of high GPAs and low salary requirements. While I can’t magically give you work experience or an amazing recommendation letter, I can take my experience with working at an organization that focused on unemployment to warn you about the all too common resume mistakes people make that leave their resume in the ‘no’ pile. Let’s not waste a single moment more and get to talking about all the things you want to avoid doing before submitting your next job application… While it may be hard for us to understand, this is an HR manager’s pet peeve. Typing at the bottom of your resume, ‘references upon request,’ is not only unnecessary, but sometimes redundant. Many applications today have you include references as part of the application, making the line completely unnecessary. For those applications that don’t initially ask for references, the hiring manager already knows you will be willing to provide references. You want the job, don’t you? Again, this is a small thing that bothers anyone who spends their day looking at resumes all day. If you include the month in one date range, make sure you include the month in all date ranges. For example, if I write I worked at Google from Sep 2012-Aug 2015, but my college dates are 2010-2014, the formatting is not the same. Fix it! It’s so simple yet such an eye sore when done wrong.

Related Post: How to Make the Best Resume with 10 Easy Tips

This mistake would have to be in the top 5, with so many people not realizing what they’re doing wrong until someone points it out. When describing your work experience, all jobs and positions you once held should be referred to in the past tense. Talking about everything in the present tense not only sounds like you are currently very busy juggling a lot of tasks, employers will automatically know you aren’t and conclude you simply failed to revise your resume. For help with avoiding making this mistake, ask a friend to read over your resume. My general rule for what to include on my resume is that it needs to be no longer than 2 years ago, then again, I just graduated college and have never put in too many years at one job. While everyone will have a different span of time, make sure the experiences you are including on your resume aren’t from too long ago. Talking about a position you held 10 years ago isn’t very helpful if you haven’t done anything recently to expand on that experience. Just recently I was revising a resume for someone seeking positions in the field of security. In his aim to fill up the page and include as much as possible, he listed a job he held almost ten years ago in a surf shop. Again, he was looking for a professional job in the field of security! How he figured selling surfboards factored in his job search, I don’t know. As objectively as you can, look over the experiences you include and ask yourself if they are actually relevant to the job you’re applying to. If you cant apply any of your duties or skills to the new job, save the space and remove it from your resume. Your resume should be an equal balance of all your past experiences, meaning all past positions should have relatively the same amount of bullet points and space given on the overall resume. If you take up one third of the space on the page talking about one job then cram four more positions in the remaining space, that should be a signal that not all of the positions are relevant and necessary. Aim to have the same number of bullet points per position or decrease the number of listed experiences so you can expand on those you wish to.

Are any of these common mistakes on your resume? What’s your biggest struggle when trying to update your personal resume?? Let me know in the comments below!