This recruiting season, an NYU student wrote a “laughable” cover letter for J.P. Morgan. According to Yahoo! Finance:

Since Thursday, February 2, when a Bank of America Merrill Lynch director forwarded the cover letter out to his entire team, offering drinks “to the first analyst to concisely summarize everything that is wrong with” the note, it has passed through more than a dozen firms.

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If you grow up being told that you can achieve anything you set your mind to, and that girls can be President and go to the moon, it kind of leaves you a little paralyzed by all options, doesn’t it? Or even guilty that you’re not an astronaut. (Or better: PRESIDENT ASTRONAUT!) More »

Some things really are a zero-sum game. Your time is limited, both every day and in terms of the years you have on this earth. You only have the emotional bandwidth for a certain number of close connections. Every input port you waste means that there is some incredible other person you will not meet or get to know more deeply. I moved to New York knowing that the people I just casually ran into would be more like me: they got themselves here because where they were wasn’t good enough.

There are six billion people on earth. There’s nothing wrong with moving on to some new ones. More »

Last week’s column, Bullish: Fund Your Business Or Get Started Investing In Startups, Part I, covered angel investing, microinvesting, and the evergreen topic of what being a lady has to do with it.

This week, we’ll discuss more ways to fund your startup or small business, and more ways that you can invest without being a millionaire (or even a tens-of-thousands-aire). More »

From “broccoli” to “triskaidekaphobia,” come test out your spelling in a bar backroom filled with smart people and beer. Free, open to all (21+). Signup begins at 7pm — first 18 people get to play. Three-strikes-you’re-out policy means more participation for everyone. Hosted by founder bobbyblue and comedian Jen Dziura. Winners get nerdy prizes and qualify for the annual Finals.

Pete’s: 718-302-3770
www.williamsburgspellingbee.com
www.petescandystore.com

Spread the Word: We always need prize sponsors. Stand up for spelling! Thanks to Vine Wine for providing prizes this time around.

Sincerely,
Jen

My new motto: “Dine like a dilettante! Labor like a Calvinist!” More »

Today’s column is for two camps of ladies – those of you wondering how to fund a new business, and those of you whose careers are doing well enough that you’ve got some cash to invest, preferably in an exciting and satisfying way.

I’ve done a ton of research, so today’s part I will cover angel investing, microinvesting, and what it means to be a lady in investing, and next week’s will cover crowdfunding, peer-to-peer lending, microlending, and a few creative alternatives.
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Adele is certainly an exemplary singer. I own all of her albums. She is very talented. Granted.

I assume you’ve heard this song by now:

I know everyone loves “Someone Like You,” but every time she sings, “Old friend, why are you so shy?”, I’m thinking, “Bitch, if that were my husband and you ’showed up uninvited’ to ‘remind’ him, you’d best bet he’d be ’shy’ — or creeped out — and I would kick your psycho stalker ass.”

He’s not “hiding from the light,” he’s being monogamous, like he’s supposed to. You do not get to declare yourself “the light.” Bitch, back off my man!

It’s a very pretty song — if you kind of don’t think about the fact that no one needs ex-girlfriends showing up reminding their husband of what he once said to them. Not cool.

That’s not how the sisterhood is supposed to treat each other.

You know, I find that a lot of career writing is overly focused on “The 10 Stupidest Mistakes Other People Made” – like getting drunk before noon and using the company’s servers to email everyone a pornographic racist joke-virus that spreads potentially-lethal peanut dust – so that we can all feel superior that at least we’re not that dumb.

But what are competent, intelligent people actually supposed to do? You know, to do better than neutral? More »

Uploaded to the ooShirts design interface, it looked like this:

I ordered the green v-neck shown above and a heather blue t-shirt. I waited until after my latest hair appointment to take a photo:

This one fit pretty well. ooShirts doesn’t carry extra-smalls, so I now have a (huge) small green Bullish t-shirt to gift to someone with sizable breasts.

Here’s a kind of aggressive looking one, if it is indeed possible to look aggressive in a t-shirt:

If I had a magical horn, I would totally shoot beams of light out of it right now.

I know how she does it. More »

In last week’s Bullish: This Year’s Most Aggressive Lady-Advice (and Bullicorns!), I shared that my project for 2012 was to start many companies that work together, sharing resources. In Bullish: Screw New Year’s Resolutions – Try Designing Your Career, I talked about how this shit seriously does not happen on its own. More »

If you live like a gentlewoman like Angelina Jolie, haters gonna hate. More »

All The Posts from 2011

And, in case you missed it, a wrap-up of all my columns on TheGrindstone.