The Career Episode

So apparently the question, "What are you going to be when you grow up?" (a Spice Girl, duh...) is not just for second grade term papers.

It's for students. It's for young professionals. It's for old professionals. It's for parents, teachers, the unemployed and the disaffected. We're all asking ourselves and each other, "What are we going to do?"

This question is stressful for us at this juncture in our lives. We're in college, and we love it. We love the parties, we love the people, we love that we can wear nike shorts and an over sized t-shirt to class every day and nobody questions our innate fashion sense. Our classes are okay. Sometimes they're stressful, sometimes they're boring, but most of the time they aren't at the top of our list of priorities. We envision a vague future in which we will magically develop an aptitude for a vaguely defined skill-set and live happily ever after. We sense that we'll make lots of money, or that we'll marry well. We anticipate families, houses, cars, high-powered careers, luxe house-wife statuses and complete and utter satisfaction. It is this inherent belief in our pending happiness which enables us to attend French class every day or finish our O-chem homework.

But what if the fairy tale doesn't play out?

What if we graduate and join the 2 million college graduates in the US who are unemployed?

There goes the car, the career, the vaguely idyllic life we had planned for ourselves. The reality is, it could happen to anyone. And it does, judging by the Christian Louboutin-clad woman we saw working as a public defender at the Houston traffic court a few weeks ago. Now there's a girl with Cristal taste on a Keystone budget. (You go girl! Don't let the haters get you down!)

We're at that point where we have to start making actual decisions about where we're headed. We've taken classes, we've had internships, we've spent a few years "developing our minds" (a.k.a cramming for midterms so we can get a piece of a paper that attests to the fact that we are at least marginally competent.) SPOILER ALERT: This is supposed to be heading somewhere.

Who knew?

There are several things to consider. Yea, you've got a major, but if you're like Ashleigh, extensive knowledge of Platonic ideals and metaphysical theory isn't going to help you face your post-grad Neiman Marcus bill. What's a girl to do?

It's time to say the thing everyone is thinking, but nobody is supposed to say: we're in this for the cash.


Maybe it's horribly bourgeois of us to say so, but we're willing to take that risk. Yes, being blissfully happy philosophizing on Paris's left bank in a shabby vintage cashmere, living in a 6 story walk-up with 3 roommates, smoking thin cigarettes and eating one croissant per day sounds quaint...but couldn't I have done that without wasting 4 years of my life in an institution of higher learning?

This is where we must separate passion from ambition. You all know what we're talking about. Yea, that cute guy that plays guitar and wants to be a musician someday is precious, but we know you're going for the buttoned up Goldman Sachs intern who wants nothing less than to take the wealth management world by storm. If he plays guitar on the weekends, even better. Ambition is something that women find incredibly sexy in men. Well ladies, here's an insider tip: it works well for women, too.

We're grown up now. It's time to be honest with ourselves about our skills versus our hobbies. Yea, you may do makeup so well that you put Bobbi Brown to shame, but unless you want to work behind her counter at Saks for $12.50 an hour plus commission, you better figure out a way to translate your love of eyeshadow palettes into a marketable skill. Bobbi Brown didn't get where she is today because she's great with gel eyeliner.

We absolutely believe that any woman who really believes in what she is doing can make an acceptable living off of it. (With the possible exception of our token marshmallow friend. Honey, go get your highlights re-done, you just need to find yourself a husband.) It's just about being passionate about what you do, and being smart enough to convince someone to pay you for it. And if you're really into underwater basket weaving or opera singing...well, you may have to get what we like to call a "day job." If you have the drive and temerity to stick with what you love, good for you. We'll see you at the law firm by day, and we'll be there for your living room solo in that perfect soprano of yours by night.

So, our advice? Do what you love. If you want to write, write. If you want to cure people, go to med school. Don't worry that nobody will want to publish your book. Don't worry that Obama's health plan might make life hellacious for doctors everywhere. If you have to be a wall street sell-out and write your magnum opus at night, so be it. If you spend 15 years on med school because you can only go part time, so be it. Remember, your parents and advisers are not the ones who are going to be living your life. So take what they say with an open mind and then follow your instincts. A wise man (Ashleigh's dad) once said, "If you do a job you love, you will never work a day in your life."

Maybe we're just young and quixotic, but if you are reading this and are neither young nor quixotic, remember that you use to be at least one of these, and most likely both. And maybe you feel like you're living the grind every day because you became an engineer instead of a ballet dancer, or a lawyer instead of an artist. Or maybe you used to love your life as a pastry chef, but now you need something more (let's face it...we change our minds about what we're wearing out at least three times every thursday night; we're apt to change our minds at some point in the next 50 years).

We're saying its never too late to follow your dreams. We're saying that if you have the chance to take life by the longhorns right now, then do it. Anything can happen.

Just make sure you're not sacrificing the finer things in life if you don't have to. "Number of faux handbags owned" and "inner happiness" are inversely related.

The Finals Episode

Premise 1: Finals week causes shit to get weird.

Premise 2: It is currently finals week.

Conclusion: Shit is currently weird.



Please excuse us, we've been studying philosophy, phenomenology, neurobiology of disease, sociology and after this week, we're gonna be in serious need of some psychology. Err...psychologist? Whatever, if it can't be that woman our parents made us see when we were thirteen years old and "difficult", we'll at least vent steam by complaining as loudly as we can about the difficulty level of our finals week and checking in at every library on campus across every social networking platform that we've discovered. Four square? Yep. Facebook? Check. Twitter? Check check. And now that we've pushed our finals-whining threshold to the point where we might have lost a few followers, we're going to blog about it.

Now that all of that's out of the way... let's get real.

Our lives are not difficult.

The only reason our finals week seems daunting come the end of Thanksgiving break is because we realize that instead of going to class and keeping up with reading, we've been slacking. And not even the way we used to slack freshman year. Back then we weren't not trying hard, we were just trying harder to be seen at every party (R.I.P. SigEp Safari 2010...you will live in infamy). Nope, now we're old enough to know better. Instead of going out 5 nights a week, as an alternative to Kant and Molecular Biology, we have been getting our money's worth on Netflix instant, online shopping for clothes we won't wear (truth: the last time we wore real clothes during the day and actually left the house was some time in early 2009), and stalking the freshmen online to see what kind of shenanigans we're missing out on.

Clearly, when we say that we are totally swamped and our professors are sadists, what we really mean is that we're well rested, all caught up on Gossip Girl, Breaking Bad, all those bad Netflix movies that we've never heard of, and that we're really excited about leopard print and the pink/red combos we're seeing on our favorite go-to shopping websites. As you can see, we tend to over-exaggerate the situation where our scholastic responsibilities are concerned, and this is never more true than during finals week. Oh, you stayed up 72 hours? We'll be willing to bet that at least 24 of those hours were spent social net-working about how much real work you have to be doing and finally finding time to figure out a degree plan or maybe even sending emails to family members you haven't spoken to in a while. Oh, you haven't had time to eat anything since last wednesday? We're onto you. We know you haven't had time to eat anything but surreptitious french fries from the Jester Wendy's at 3am. It'll be our little secret. (Unsolicited advice: stay away from the scale during finals week. You just don't want to go down that road--trust us.)

We all know what's really going on here. We're pretending to be ridiculously busy so we can act like our life is hard and that we in some way deserve all of the awesomeness that comes along with being a college student. But we all know the real story. College is just a 4 year procrastination of graduation. We are currently blogging for the first time in probably over a year just to avoid the studying that we successfully avoided all semester. When does it end?

Our guess is not any time soon. If you don't agree that three all-nighters and a caffeine headache are preferable to a semester of actual diligence, then you should probably stop reading this blog. That being said, loyal readers, welcome back to Disregard Males, Acquire Currency, and we can only hope that in some way we aided your avoidance of responsibility.

See you kids downtown on Thursday. We think that's a wrap for now.

The Fitness Episode

Your heart is pounding in your ears. You feel like your whole body is on fire. Sweat is dripping out of every pore, and every nerve is tingling with pain and pleasure at the same time. You can feel your body moving, almost pulsing is if to some internal rythym. You groan and pant...all you can think about is how close you are to finishing.

Yep. You're out for a run.

Being fit is a tricky business. On the one hand, you want to look to awesome in that new Jcrew perfect fit tee that you just bought...you know, the one thats kinda sheer? On the other hand...as much as you wish you were Wendy-Workout, you are really just dying to lay on the couch watching reruns of Friends and stuffing your face with Cheezits and M&Ms. But the latter isn't going to get you back into those size 26 Sevens you wore in high school and its definitely not going to get your finger into that Harry Winston you've been eyeing (MRS degree? Yes please!).

Now that we think about it, it is a little presumptuous of us to even be writing the fitness episode. We certainly are not experts in the field. But we struggle with it a lot, and since this is about our life and not about what we know (in fact...more often than not, it's about what we don't know) we're going to go ahead and talk about it. So just...read on. Or don't. You won't really learn anything.

If you're like us, you wake up every morning and start thinking about what you have to do that day. Invariably you block off some time for a high intensity work out and then a shower. And invariably, by the time the hour of the workout rolls around, you've already come up with some clever but justifiable excuse for why you can't make it to the gym today. Sound familiar?

Our roommate, Tessa, has a different approach to fitness. When asked about how she stays fit and flirty, she says, "well I basically just sit around all day and don't work out but I eat healthy." Tessa is thin. We are considering her approach to staying in shape, but she says that she is built naturally thin...plus, we enjoy french fries every now and then.

Something else that totally falls under this topic is our warped idea of what body type is attractive in men now that we are frat stars. We used to be attracted to the rock hard abs and chiseled pecs and biceps of athletes and movie stars; however, in just one year we have drastically altered our perception of male foxyness. We have passed up washboards in favor of doughy mounds, and we have foregone chiseled in favor of brand-name frat gear (who doesn't like a guy in chinos and Vineyard Vines?). We see these guys as catches, when a year ago we wouldn't have even given them a second look. Our question: How did we not negotiate this deal for ourselves? Seriously? We want to have beer bellies and pale limbs and still be considered dreamy. This is not fair. We've been gypped.

Anyway...it's basically too late now. Our rant, for once, was pointless and we have no solution. Our only hope is that we can some how muster the energy and motivation to want fitness for ourselves, purely for the joy of living an active and healthy life style. Until then, you can probably find us in room 413 huddled around a TV with some type of processed food within reach.

We feel like we should really be ending this post on a more upbeat note in which we mention going outside and enjoying the day, or maybe some quirky/funny but effective fitness or health tip. But the reality is, we aren't going to follow our own advice so we aren't going to burden you with it either.

Sex burns calories. That is all.

The Summer Episode

You just got back from an awesome weekend at an awesome beach/lake/ranch house of a close or not-so close friend. You come home to the apartment you'll be living in for the next two months (until July 31st, at which point you'll have that awkward span of 7 to 15 days in which you have nowhere to live until your new lease starts. Hello U-haul, lets move home for a week.) Your roommates all just moved back, and all the little future frat stars are pouring into campus for orientation. That's right. It's summer in Austin.

We like to think of summer as a time to start over. Didn't like the grades you got spring semester? Make it up to yourself in summer school. Tired of your roommates? Yay, you get new ones! Burned out on school? You have two months to catch your breath. Need to lose that 10 lbs you gained in the past year? Well...good luck. Let us know how that goes. Make new friends, work on your tan, try new things. Summer is the time when you've got nothing to lose. We have found that having nothing to lose is often strangely liberating. Summer is almost like the time of year that doesn't count, isn't it? "Yea...I made out with that guy in [insert fraternity here]. But it was summer, doesn't count!"

When we hear summer, we think freedom. We think sun, coconut scented lotion, and remembering how hot the pavement actually gets. During the summer we let go, decompress, let our hair down and soak up life. Summers are for refreshing.

We have developed a solemn resolution to make this summer the best of our lives (for the record, so far so good :-)

So far, we haven't developed firm plans as to how we're going to accomplish that. We've watched a lot of Gray's Anatomy, eaten a lot of late-night honey butter chicken biscuits, and donned some serious summer frat gear (we love seersucker season!). The point is, that we're here in Austin, living the dream. The other day, an incoming freshman said to us, "It still hasn't hit me that I'm coming here, that this is my life." My first thought was, "Girl, it still hasn't hit me yet either." Sure, we've taken a year's worth of classes, been to formals, taken finals, consumed more KA punch than we care to admit, made friends and missed our families (but not enough to actually go home), and come to the close of our pledge year, but we still can't believe that we have it so good. We would ask you to pinch us, but we'll just go ahead and pinch each other in the name of expediency.

We think the theme of our summer should be simply this: to soak it up. With another year under our belt, we have decided that this is going to be the summer that counts. So here's to the impending margaritas, man-tank (otherwise known as manks) and Chaco's sunburns, and straight A's (thank you summer school classes for fitting so well into our partying schedule). We'll be carrying around Smirnoff ice in our innocent-looking Tory Burch summer satchels...you've been warned. ;)

Top Ten Tips for Having a Summer as Awesome as ours:

Step 1: Move to Austin. Duh.

Step 2: Ingest large gusts of air for lunch.

Step 3: Break out the LFO. New kids on the block had lots of hits, chinese food makes me sick. Yea, we're summer girls. (but there will be NO abercrombie and fitch. We'll forgive LFO...it was 1999)

Step 4: Frat hard, frat often.

Step 5: Rinse and repeat Step 4.

Step 6: When your liver can't handle any more fratting, warm up your blockbuster card with seasons of Entourage and Gray's. Duh.

"There's no half-singing in the shower. You're either a rock star or an opera diva."-Josh Groban. We think this pretty much sums up what we're trying to say. Thanks Josh.

The Men Episode

OKAY...it's been a while since we've posted. We are busy, independent women and, since we are being honest here, we sometimes spend weeks making up clever, deluded, self-righteous excuses for avoiding our responsibilities. We have been working out a lot, we have a lot of studying to do, we're really getting into volunteering lately, and its been really sunny so we've been working on our tans. Whatever. The point is, we're back with a vengeance (ideally).

This episode is something we've been planning, considering, and crying over basically since we started the blog. Every time one of us has a negative run-in with the opposite sex (which is often), we say to ourselves, "We really need to write The Men Episode". We have labeled this as a "big topic" for our blog, and have brainstormed a lot and done plenty of research for this episode...and yet, here we are writing it, and we are not quite sure what to say. Men are inexplicable. Go figure.

We thought maybe we would use this episode to offer our readers some advice on how to deal with our less-intelligent, hairier and deeper-voiced counterparts. However, we have reached the conclusion that we are really in no position to be giving advice about men. These are our strategies:

1. If a man doesn't text you back, wait a few hours, get drunk, and then text him again. Drunk texts don't count as stalking.

2. If a man treats you with any kind of deference, kindness or general interest, it is safe to assume he is in love with you.

3. If a man hasn't noticed you, he is clearly blind, deaf, or retarded. (Although we would never say this out loud, as it wouldn't be politically correct.)

As you can see, our ideology is fluid at best. All jokes aside, we have no idea what we're doing. We have spent many more hours than we would like to admit dissecting conversations, glances, and text messages. We have gone out of our way to attend parties looking like bombshells for the express purpose of letting him know what he's missing. We have listened to songs and applied them to our own love lives, and we have tried fooling them into thinking we are more interesting than strange. You wore that new Diane Von Furstenberg top in that color your guy loves? That's nothing. We've worn leotards. Get on our level.

All of this time spent on men, and we are no closer to the answer of how to get one. We have been forced and yet relieved to come to a conclusion: the answer, if it even exists, doesn't matter.

That's right. You read that correctly. It doesn't matter.

Why might this be? Because to continue to search for the answer is to continue to define our lives, behavior and fashion choices by men. Maybe we are only speaking for ourselves, but we do not want to be defined by most of the chauvinist male pigs we've met (and in some cases, chased after). With this in mind, we've come up with some tips, but not for how to deal with men--for how to deal with yourself.

1. If you like it, buy it. Don't ask yourself, "if I were a guy, would i think this looks cute?"

2. In dealing with the opposite sex, take things at face value. If a man says he wants to hang out, assume that he is telling the truth. If a man doesn't call you, assume he doesn't want to talk. This is way less stressful than trying to find all of that non-existent hidden meaning.

3. Stop trying to be funny, interesting, or pretty. You already are all of these things. You just have to find the person who can see each of them at the same time.

4. Patience is key.

5. Girlfriends are key.

6. Living your life is key. If you are ever unsure if you are doing this step correctly, ask yourself, "Am I doing this for me?"

Sometimes they can be sweet, sometimes they can be raging assholes. We're all human. The point is, a man ought never be allowed to define your life. Whether you're single, have a boyfriend or are happily married, the idea of a man is not to complete you, but to complement what is already exceptional. To stand by you as you conquer the world.

Keep this in mind next time you ask your homegirl, "Does, 'I'll see you later' mean he wants to hang out tonight?" or, "Should I casually drop by where he works and pretend to ignore him?"

Be yourself. Love your life. Eventually you will find a guy who likes quirky weird girls. Or nerdy silly girls. Or funny nervous girls. Or outspoken sweet girls. Or stylish self-conscious girls. Or...(insert your personality here).

Don't put yourself in a neat box for anyone. Being yourself is what's going to get you that iconic pale blue box in the end.

And remember, "Maybe some women aren't meant to be tamed. Maybe they just need to run free til they find someone just as wild to run with them."- Sex and the City

As it turns out, The Men Episode is actually about Women.

We think that says a lot.

The Procrastination Episode

Have you ever:

1. Started studying for an exam at midnight the night before?

2. Sat at a light until it turned yellow before you actually went?

3. Waited until you had one more clean pair of underwear before doing your laundry?

4. Didn't wash your hair until it was it was so greasy that not even your best Frederic Fekkai Dry shampoo could save it?

5. Waited until the day of a formal event to ask your date? (Countdown to formal: 35 days. Gentlemen, we are on the prowl.)

If any of these apply to you, welcome to the club. You are a chronic procrastinator. We are well acquainted with this particular life style. We always wait until the very last minute to complete assignments, turn in money or forms, or begin getting ready. So far, we have managed to escape any serious detrimental effects, long-term or otherwise. However, we started writing this post 30 minutes ago, and all we have is what you've had the misfortune to have read so far. But slow blogging is not the only adverse effect that can arise from procrastinating. For example, any freshmen reading who seem to have gained 15 pounds might have told themselves for the past 8 months that they would start their new diet and excercise regime next monday (damn those mexican lunch tuesdays...). Or how about those times when you don't go to the grocery store until you're eating 5 bags of 100-calorie packs of Kettle Corn for dinner?

Because we love you, we're going to help you out with this chronic problem. First: Invest in some decent sticky notes. When you know you need to do something, post sticky notes all over your room to the point where you are so annoyed at looking at multicolored pieces of paper that you just do whatever it was on time. Second: Purchase a planner, and try to use it. We understand that this is not exactly feasible for everyone (including us) but we've heard it's a good idea. Third: consider investing in a life coach. This is a pricer route, but desperate times call for desperate measures (Ava would like to note that she is taking clients...Ashleigh would like to warn you against accepting her services).

For some of you, procrastinating is a way of life that you will never change. You, like Mark Twain, believe that one should, "never put off until tomorrow what one could do the day after tomorrow." To you we raise our hand in salute (not in a "heil Hitler!" way), for you have truly exhibited dedication to a lifestyle that is not always easy to pull off, and not always rewarding in its practice. That's determination right there. Git er done (or don't, whatever. We're hungry. Bye.)

ps. Sorry this was so short, but we have a lot of not-studying to do.

The High Maintenance Episode

It's getting closer. It's orange like the color of Arizona Desert Sand. It feels leathery, and it's perfectly wrinkled. No, its not that gorgeous burnt orange Hermes Birkin bag. It's that girl walking out of Darque Tan for the 5th time this week. Her skin looks like it would crinkle at the touch.

But it is not just her arid alligator skin that makes you cringe, its her two inch tips. Despite what her best friend Sha-nay-nay might have told her, a silver sparkle palm tree on each one of her hot pink acrylics will not make all the boys come to the yard. What's even worse is when Malibu Barbie runs those 1987 glam nails through her stringy, bleach blond hair. Bitches must be loco if they actually believe Alejandro at the hair salon cares about the texture of their hair and not the fat tip that he'll be getting from Glam Barbie's faux Coach wallet. No matter what he says, a shade lighter from her already fluorescent hair color will not bring out her eyes. High Maintenance is most certainly the appropriate term to describe Glam Barbie's look. Casual is clearly not her forte.

Don't get us wrong, every Cosmo girl should take care of herself, but just because you take a few hours to get ready doesn't mean you are high maintenance. It has come to our attention that the term "high maintenance" has been nonchalantly thrown around lately. We wish that when Drake said, "Chillin' with no makeup on, that's when you the prettiest" he wasn't singing a bold-faced lie, but what can we do? The male population is severely mistaken in believing that 30 minutes is sufficient time to properly prepare ourselves for public appearances. You like it when we look good, and good things come to those who wait. Also, expecting a call back does not make us needy, and would it kill you to send us flowers once in a while without some smart-ass comment about how we're nickel-and-diming you? Last week, we literally had to ask two boys on the ebus to let us have their seats; they were about to make us teeter in our 5-inch heels for the whole ride home!

We're going to let you in on a little secret. That term high maintenance that you've heard whispers about? Well let us tell you how it came about. One day some men were sitting around, complaining as usual, and they thought to themselves...hey, maybe if we can find a way to make women feel guilty for making us treat them they way they deserve, we can totally shirk all of our responsibilities as males and gentlemen! That's right girls. The term "high maintenance?" It's not a legitimate complaint, it's a massive, society-wide guilt trip. It's men making us feel guilty for expecting them to do things like open the car door for us and pick up the tab. We know it sounds crazy, but think about it. It is all starting to make sense. Those sneaky bastards! We will admit that it has definitely been one of the Y-chromosome's better schemes, but they've now been exposed.

Of course, we have to give credit to those select few southern gentlemen out there who momma raised up right and who know how to treat a lady. Thanks boys. You all might make up only 3% of the population, but we will find you.

As for those women who find that they've been with a series of men that seem to come from that other 97%, heres how to spot these cheap/disrespectful guys:

1. He doesn't pay...for anything. Can girlfriend get an ice cream cone?!

2. He tells you you're crowding him when you communicate with him in a non-facebook/non-text message form.

3. He uses the phrase, "Chivalry is dead." If a man ever says this to you, run. No questions asked.

4. Comments on your physical appearance with anything other than a compliment.

So keep yourself looking fly, and don't be intimidated by male-invented terms like "high maintenance."

And remember, never settle. Drake was right about one thing, "You the f**cking best."