Why is LinkedIn so darn expensive?

Have you ever looked at LinkedIn's prices? For anything? It is absurd! Yes, the profile is free, but to post a job for 30 days costs... ready... $295. And to post jobs on a careers tab for a company page? Fagettaboutit! A silver package is $10,000 a year and a Gold package is $30,000 a year. Here's an example of a Accenture's career page with job postings. Now you know what a pretty penny they paid to have that there. Even just upgrading your LinkedIn profile to $25 a month only enables you to send 3 Inmails. That's right, THREE. Those better be some darn productive InMails.

I never realized how expensive LinkedIn was until today. I created one last summer and have steadily added "connections" but didn't use it too heavily in the job search process. I never looked into anything beyond the regular profile, not that I could have afforded it if I did! I guess I'm just shocked after using sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, where I am able to do pretty much everything that I want without having to "upgrade" or spend a penny.

Well, just wanted to share the fun fact I learned today. LinkedIn = $$$

Being a Night Owl is a Hard Habit To Break

Wow, I have been an official employee for five days now and really like it so far. However, I have not adjusted to this real life sleeping schedule.

All summer I have gone to sleep at ridiculous hours (2, 3?) and have rolled out of bed around 11. Then I would mosey downstairs, drink coffee, eat "breakfast" and either come back to my room and do stuff (apply to jobs, etc) or run errands. I would typcially work out late afternoon or before dinner, eat, then do some more "to-do list" things in my room, or potentially hang out with a friend. Once 8 o'clock hit, I would do God knows what, entertaining myself until the wee hours of the night.

Now my daily schedule looks like this: Wake up at 6:15. (ok, maybeee I snooze until 6:35), eat breakfast at 7, leave by 7:30. Arrive to work around 8:30-9, leave the office around 5-6, get home at 7, workout until 8, eat, shower, get in bed and relax a little, and go over more stuff for work.

The problem is, around 9 each night I get a second wind and want to stay up and watch Chelsea Lately (11 pm) and do other things (especially with my new computer, I want to play with it for hours!) Every morning I remind myself how painfully tired I am, but to no ado. I've always been a night owl, so staying up late, no matter how tired I am or how droopy my eyes are is a difficult habit to break! But that's when I was in college and could nap during the day, or better yet this summer when I could wake up so late. When I'm at work, it's embarrassing to be yawning all morning - post coffee.

I give myself a month to learn how to get my butt to bed before 10:30. Unfortunately, I am not one of those people who can run perfectly fine with 5 hours of sleep. If anything I'm on the opposite spectrum and need 8 so I need to figure this out.

Let me know if you have any tips to get to bed earlier!

Graduation Present has arrived: MacBook Pro!

My college graduation present has finally arrived.... a 15-inch MacBook Pro with retina display! To say I'm obsessed is an understatement. It's beautiful!

I've been using a Dell for all of college. It has crashed at least 4 times, not to mention the speakers stopped working after year one, the CD drive stopped working after year 2, the left click gets jammed any time you click, oh and it lasts approximately one minute if it's not plugged into its power source. I could have gotten a new laptop senior year as an early graduation present but I wanted to wait to make it more special. And I knew it had been a while (a couple of years) since Apple presented the newest MacBook Pro, so I had a feeling one would be coming out soon. I'm so happy I waited because now I have the latest and greatest one on the market! :)

I have a feeling a lot more blog posts will come since I want to type / play with this all day long!!

Had to pink-ify it 

Won't be getting off the couch for a while :)

Officially Employed!

I can finally say the words every post college grad hopes to say.... I am EMPLOYED! It is such a great feeling! I am the communications coordinator for a trade association near DC. It is definitely not the route I was expecting to take after college, but I truly think everything happens for a reason and it seems like a great fit!

Originally, it looked like I was going to work in the marketing department for Strayer University, where my dad currently works in Operations. They needed helping hands and my dad mentioned I recently graduated with a degree in that field. From there, I had a couple interviews that went great. Everything looked like it was going well, I was just waiting for HR and then *boom* I got an e-mail that Corporate was on a hiring freeze, thanks to the economy. And they wouldn't hire anyone for that position until the new year at the earliest. I was really disappointed at first, but now I realize it was all meant to be.

I went on a trip to visit friends in NY and came home and job hunted like never before. (I never want to write a cover letter again). I was getting super antsy being unemployed since the beginning of summer. I mean, you can only wake up at 11am (ok maybe noon) for so many days in a row before it gets old. ;)  So, I was really motivated. From the beginning of my (new round of) job searching to the day I was offered the position was about 2 and a half weeks. It happened so quickly, and I'm so excited!

The current girl in the position is moving to Florida with her fiancé, so that's why the job opened up. I'm shadowing her for a week and a half and then I'm on my own.

I'm officially a member of the real world!

Post Olympic Depression

Ahhhh, Post Grad depression has turned into Post-Olympic depression! I enjoyed the Olympics SO much this year! The fact that they won't be on for 4 years actual depresses me. I honestly barely remember watching previous Olympics. I caught things here and there (aka gymnastics) but was never as into it as I was this year. Obviously Post Grad Problems at their finest.

I watched the Olympics all day long during the 16 days they aired. I turned my TV on in my room and sat on my bed (with my new "husband pillow") and applied to jobs, wrote cover letters, worked on my portfolio, all while catching 234 rounds of beach volleyball. :) It was the perfect backdrop to spending the day doing boring application stuff because it wasn't too distracting yet was the perfect 5 (ok maybe 20) minute break after I completed another paragraph on yet another cover letter. And don't even get me started about PrimeTime Olympic coverage, aka Ryan Lochte (yum yum yum and YUM). Also when I was at the gym, track and field was airing for the ladies - talk about motivation to keep running. #6packs.

I spent my childhood doing gymnastics, so of course gymnastics is my favorite and I was obsessed with the Fab Five! They are trying to change their name to the "Fierce Five" because apparently Fab Five was taken by basketball players, but I like Fab Five better. I streamed the team competition live because I couldn't bare to have it ruined by someone mentioning the result during the day. (Hated the time lag!) I cried multiple times when they won. They were amazing, starting with vault and continuing through the whole competition. Take that poor-sport, rude, attitudinal Russians. There wasn't any big drama, but when you are total beast there doesn't have to be. :) It's nice for everyone to know the whole time you're going to take home the Gold! Don't even get my started on little Gabby! So precious and so proud of her for getting the Gold in All-Around. She has been doing gymnastics since she was 6 and moved to Iowa from the awesome city of Virginia Beach to make her dreams come true. She really is an inspiration and I love her cute smile!

I also loved / hated at the same time watching platform diving. That thing is 3 stories high! When the girls did handstands on it before pushing off and flipping my blood pressure legit shot up. I have a fear of falling from things whether it's into water or not. But overall, it was my second fav event. I loved track and field too. I think it's more fun than watching swimming because you can actually tell what's going on and who's winning. Not to mention the slow-mo's are hilarious. I wish I could run a 10k in 30 minutes... that is absolutely crazy!

I could go on and on about every sport I watched during the Olympics to really show the life that I don't have but I won't bore you with that. I just had to pay my respect to the amazing USA team this year. Most golds babbbbby! I love being the best country in the world ;) Now I'm going to brainstorm ways to make the Olympic team for Rio 2016. I wonder if they need team managers? I have nothing against getting athletes water (call me lochte).