Your Own Two Feet (And How to Stand on Them): Surviving and Thriving After Graduation - Softcover

Meyer, Ingrid

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312241348 ISBN 13: 9780312241346

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin, 2000

Synopsis

Until now mom and dad paid, but suddenly you're on your own. Is a degree really enough to fall back on? Your Own Two Feet demystifies the process of getting a life together on the double-quick.

Learn how to:
* manage your "adult" finances - realistically
* get and set up an apartment
* seek a job that actually makes sense
* get connected to an unfamiliar community
* keep safe and healthy
* fill the friend void with people you really want to know
* and have a great time while living independently

Perfect for the new graduate about to be flung out into the cold, cruel world, Your Own Two Feet eases the process and serves as a sane but fun mini-reference for the first few years out of the nest.

About this title

About the Author

Ingrid Meyer stood on her own two feet after graduating from Carleton College in 1990. Currently, she is a senior editor at Bloomberg Magazine in New Jersey. This is her first book.

From Kirkus Reviews

A breezy, convivial guide to the basics of post-college life, this debut primer is especially suited to well-heeled readers whose financial resources lessen their immediate need for gainful employment.In eight chapters, reporter Meyer (Bloomberg News Service) details a path for a particular breed of collegian, one who is neither shouldering substantial debt nor particularly pressed to earn a living. For such grads, Meyer details strategies for finding a place to live (complete with on-the-cheap decorating tips), inventories of groceries to stock, and household items to obtain (55 separate domestic objects). That many if not most students live on their own during college, and have presumably changed light bulbs and prepared more than one meal, does not deter Meyer from doling out basic, near-gratuitous advice, offering recipes for the culinarily challenged as well as an incomplete (and partially inaccurate, in her discussion of herpes transmission) précis of STD risks for sexually active young adults. Meyer’s conversational, slangy tone couches questionable generalized advice on attending parties (accept all invitations, unless your escort appears “physically dangerous”) and on finding friends in a new city (“go where the young people hang out”). Most revealing of all, the author ignores the job seeker’s search until the last chapter of the book, following lengthy discussions of unpaid employment options such as internships and, at the most extreme, missionary work abroad. Despite the surprising omission of online resources, the chapter on finding work is the strongest of the lot and is regrettably buried at the back of the book.Privileged young adults who can afford to tend to quality-of-life issues before bread-and-butter concerns may gain insights in these pages, but readers facing their first real financial responsibilities will discover little practical merit in Meyer’s guidebook. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0312241348
• ISBN 13: 9780312241346
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224