Joo is a hospital chaplain in NYC.
Role Call is a Petal + Sass blog section featuring interviews with professional young women occupying diverse careers – and their advice to teens.
Name: Joo Young Hong
Age: 41
College & major: Barnard College, environmental science & anthropology
Graduate school & concentration: Union Theological Seminary, Master of Divinity, Psych and Religion
So much depends upon what comes out of your mouth. Whether you are sitting in a sticky leather upholstered chair on a hot day being grilled by a chipper college admission counselor, or trying to impress the mom of your significant other with your knowledge of Phil Collins tunes, the way you turn a phrase – in one sentence or less – can send out all the right (or wrong) signals about who you are as a person and what your intentions are.
Fortunately, language is something you can work on, and everyone can improve somehow, whether it’s through diction, word choice, tone, or perhaps even more importantly – the ability to know when to stop talking and just listen.
Adjusting speech patterns, elocution and diction doesn’t happen overnight – but the more aware you are, the more likely you are to develop your speaking skills. Here are a few places to start.
The Graduate is a new blog feature considering college majors, graduate school, and a look into career options beyond higher ed.
For the past decade, teens have consistently rated becoming a lawyer as one of their top career aspirations (following careers in medicine, education, and STEM fields). Careers in law are often depicted as sexy, whirlwind, detective style who-done-it professions- and probably just a bit over glamorized – in popular media today (except for you, Amal Clooney: swoon. Looking at you, SVU and Suits.) but what is a career in law really like, and what does it take to get there?
Should I go to law school? Is pre-law an undergrad requirement to get there? Is being a lawyer actually worth it? We reconnected with corporate lawyer and Role Call interviewee Erika Payne, JD, for some hard nosed advice about a highly sought after field. Here are her points to consider:
Does it seem like other people around you have a sharper memory? Chances are, you’re just forgetting how great your brain retention really is. Memory is critical to success – and it certainly might come in handy when you run into that girl from French class at a party or sit down for a US History exam. Photographic memory is a superpower – and since most of us are mere mortals, here are just a few tweaks you can make in your everyday life to strengthen your ability to retain information.
Dr. Katie Fuchs is an Orthopaedic Surgery Resident at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center
Role Call is a Petal + Sass blog section featuring interviews with professional young women occupying diverse careers – and their advice to teens.
Name: Katie Fuchs
Age: 31
College & major: Middlebury College, Neuroscience and Music
Ok, maybe don’t count this kind of sheep. He’s a little creepy.
Zzzzz… it’s not just the sound of your phone on vibrate.
This is considered a pretty boring topic, but could add years to your life (ok, maybe not years, but at least a few more months worth of Netflix). You probably aren’t getting enough sleep. Only 15% of teens actually clock in a decent 8.5 hours a night. From overbooked schedules to midterm anxiety, late night texts and social obligations, you’re probably only taking in an average of 6.5 hours a night, when in reality you need anywhere from 8 to 10 hours just to function without dribbling that third cup of coffee down your shirt.
‘Love Letters’ is a Petal + Sass blog feature that regularly asks a group of diverse women in their 20’s and 30’s about their experiences with health, sex, emotional wellness, body image, college, careers – and what they wish they had known themselves as teenagers. Visit the ‘Love Letters’ To My Former Self page to learn more about the contributors.
Question Posed: When you’re a teenager, you are often asked ‘Where do you see yourself in 10 years from now?’ What did you picture your life to be ’10 years from now’ when you were a teen, and did it go the way you planned? What do those ’10 years’ from teenhood to adulthood really consist of?
Erin Austin is the Seattle based lead singer for Ok Sweetheart
Role Call is a Petal + Sass blog section featuring interviews with professional young women occupying diverse careers – and their advice to teens.
Name: Erin Austin
Age: 32
College & major: Oral Roberts University, Music Performance
‘Love Letters’ is a Petal + Sass blog feature that regularly asks a group of diverse women in their 20’s and 30’s about their experiences with health, sex, emotional wellness, body image, college, careers – and what they wish they had known themselves as teenagers. Visit the ‘Love Letters’ To My Former Self page to learn more about the contributors.
Question posed: What “cliques” existed when you were in high school? Did you belong to one (whether you wanted to be in it or not?) What advice would you give to teens about “popularity” (or conversely, unpopularity) in high school?
‘Tis the season for organizing your underwear drawer.
Back to school means fresh fall jeans and a chance to start over in more ways than one. Slip these handy academic and organizational apps into your back pocket and put your best boot forward.
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