Tuesday’s Workwear Report: Doneba Sheath Dress
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Our daily workwear reports suggest one piece of work-appropriate attire in a range of prices.
Boss knows how to do a sheath dress better than just about anyone else in the business. This emerald green, short-sleeved sheath is one of my favorites of the season. Wear it on its own or add a black or navy blazer for a more formal look.
The dress is on sale for $436 (marked down from $545) at Nordstrom and comes in sizes 0–16.
A couple of more affordable options are this dress from Maggy London for $118 at Macy's (also at Amazon) and this plus-size dress from CeCe for $89 at Nordstrom.
Sales of note for 1/16/25:
- M.M.LaFleur – Tag sale for a limited time — jardigans and dresses $200, pants $150, tops $95, T-shirts $50
- Nordstrom – Cashmere on sale; AllSaints, Free People, Nike, Tory Burch, and Vince up to 60%; beauty deals up to 25% off
- AllSaints – Clearance event, now up to 70% off (some of the best leather jackets!)
- Ann Taylor – Up to 40% off your full-price purchase; extra 50% off sale
- Banana Republic Factory – 50% off everything + extra 20% off
- Boden – 15% off new styles with code — readers love this blazer, these dresses, and their double-layer line of tees
- DeMellier – Final reductions now on, free shipping and returns — includes select options like Montreal, Vancouver, and Venice
- Eloquii – $29 and up select styles; extra 50% off all clearance, plus ELOQUII X kate spade new york collab just dropped
- Everlane – Sale of the year, up to 70% off; new markdowns just added
- J.Crew – Up to 40% off select styles; up to 50% off cashmere
- J.Crew Factory – 40-70% off everything
- L.K. Bennett – Archive sale, almost everything 70% off
- Rothy's – Final Few: Up to 40% off last-chance styles
- Sephora – 50% off top skincare through 1/17
- Spanx – Lots of workwear on sale, some up to 70% off
- Summersalt – BOGO sweaters, including this reader-favorite sweater blazer; 50% off winter sale; extra 15% off clearance
- Talbots – Semi-Annual Red Door Sale – 50% off + extra 20% off, sale on sale, plus free shipping on $150+
Is a vacation to NYC advisable in mid to late July? Especially with kids aged 9 & 11? I’ve been there before but only during temperate seasons.
We did a vacation at almost these exact ages when younger and I remember it being lots of fun. I also lived in the city for years and yes, it’s hot, but it’s far preferable to winter! Plan a mix of indoor (A/C) and outdoor activities and you’ll be fine. The Staten Island ferry is fun, and you’ll get a nice breeze
We took a 10-year-old in July and walked up to 11 miles per day. It was fine, but we are used to heat and humidity.
It will be hot, but I love NYC in the summer (as a resident). The city is much quieter as many people leave, less traffic, easier to get reservations, etc.
I’ve been in July a few times, it’s super hot but it’s doable. The last time I went, I did sightseeing in the morning and then went back to the hotel in the afternoon to rest/nap because I found the heat/humidity very tiring, before going back out in the early evening.
Question – do you enjoy the smell of hot garbage?
+1 I was going to say this! The city smells of hot garbage, which is why a lot of the locals leave. It isn’t like Paris in August or anything, though –everything will still be open for tourists.
Haha – many summers working in the financial district made this comment a scratch’n’sniff memory.
I mean, it’s full of garbage year-round. NYC is the only place where I have literally stepped on a banana peel on the street.
It’s hot and humid but it’s not like the surface of the sun – cooler than DC, for example, and cools off at night. It depends on where you are coming from. Going to the beach in NYC is also fun.
I don’t see why it would be an issue. I’ve lived there and it’s not like the weather ever stopped me from doing anything. It can be hot but it’ll probably just be in the 80’s.
It will be really hot, but if that’s the time you have, it’s fun!
My in-laws live in NYC and we visit frequently. July isn’t my favorite time, but it’s not unbearable heat and humidity compared to the south. There’s also lots of indoor stuff to do with kids that age.
If you don’t mind heat and humidity, go for it.
I’ve seen a few discussions recently about how Quince isn’t all that.
What about Italic? Are their products as nice as they look?
I hadn’t heard of Italic but it looks nice!
I’m interested to find out if anyone has tried it now also.
I ordered a few things from them and will not again. I ordered a few sweatshirts, which pilled quickly. I also ordered a pair of boots, which did not fit. I only tried them on at my house for about 5 minutes– I couldn’t zip them up so I took them off. When I returned them, I got a message that said that since I had “worn” the boot, I could only get store credit. It took emails with multiple people to finally get someone finally give me full refund instead of just store credit. I will not order from them again.
Thanks for the feedback on both quality and customer service! Don’t they understand that they’re competing with Zappos?
Well I wish their things were as nice as they looked, since they have a lot of lovely looking items, but maybe I’ll look for the same thing at Nordstrom’s instead.
Hi,
A few years ago, posters recommended the Old Navy Rockstar Jeggings. They fit my apple shape great. I no longer see them offered. I’m 5’1, so I prefer ankle length. Does anyone have any recommendations for jeans at Old Navy that work well with an apple shape?
Thanks!
I’m apple shaped and have moved on from my Old Navy jeggings. They do still sell the Rockstar skinny jeans I believe, which are similar, but my new favourite is the “wow” slim straight jeans. They’re a bit more current, high waisted, very comfy, come in different washes.
Thanks!
Reposting from yesterday because I’m really curious – and not at all suspect or conspiracy or something. Just interested in what is happening.
Question about the hearing today in Trump’s classified documents case. CNN is reporting that Trump and his lawyers will meet with the judge for several hours in a closed-door hearing without prosecutors. And then prosecutors will do the same without Trump and his lawyers. I understand why the proceedings are closed because they’re about classified documents, but I’ve never heard of legitimate ex parte hearings as CNN is describing. Do any lawyers know why things are happening this way?
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/12/politics/trump-smith-mar-a-lago-documents-case/index.html
Judge Cannon is trying very hard to ruin the case- there is no reason why trump and his lawyer should be meeting with the judge under cipa- the prosecution and the judge decide ex parte what material to substitute for summaries etc and what material can be read into the record.
+1. My understanding is that in the usual course of CIPA proceedings, the gov meets ex parte and in camera with the judge. Not the defendant.
I recommend the podcasts Jack as well as Lawfare – they both have episodes explaining CIPA procedures.
Excellent! Thank you! I’ll check out the podcast.
It looks like the 9/30/23 episode of Lawfare included discussion of CIPA. A recent episode of Jack also discussed CIPA and so did the 6/23/23 episode.
Those are two different podcasts by the way. Lawfare is the Brookings Institute. Jack is a podcast by the host of Mueller, She Wrote
Here’s a post on CIPA: https://www.justsecurity.org/87134/the-quick-guide-to-cipa-classified-information-procedures-act/
Do I listen to too many podcasts? Don’t answer that question. :)
You’re a full service online friend. Thanks so much for finding these for me.
Has anyone gotten a dog who loves human food to lose some weight? The problem is that he has soulful eyes and lives with 3 other people who succumb to his insistence that he is starving and won’t you please give him a piece of ham or your cheeseburger. He has lost a pound since summer but the vet says he needs to lose about 10 pounds (he is huge and fluffy so he doesn’t look fat).
Replace other human food treats with carrots. And, stronger willpower from the humans!
+1 my dog’s favorite treat is cut up baby carrots. She sits and catches them in her mouth!
This sounds like a human issue rather than a dog issue. The dog will keep asking as long as the humans are giving. Maybe the humans can feed the dog carrots instead of cheeseburger so everyone is happy?
OP here. I tried carrots. He was not impressed. I totally agree that the humans are the problem. I guess if you don’t have 4/4 humans on board, it might as well be 0/4 humans. I can’t walk him skinny to make up for that.
Try frozen carrots. My dog is only interested when they are frozen, but beware that you end up with carrot bits all over!
Feed the humans lentils until they shape up. No beef or pork in the house until you can be trusted not to put dogs health at risk.
I love this.
Harsh but true. People think it’s all cute and funny right up until irreversible damage is done.
100% – train the humans. You won’t train the dog not to beg if you keep giving him people food!
You all need to ignore the puppy dog eyes and stop giving him human food. Put him in another room while you cook and eat. I know plump dogs are cute but it’s not right to make an animal unhealthy.
Right!! This is not okay! If the humans aren’t toddlers, I’d have a serious talk with them because the dog is not starving, and this is bad for the dog! Then put the dog in another room while food is served to remove the temptation for everyone.
Yes, and agree that it is primarily a human issue. If you aren’t already doing it, I would start measuring the dog food as this is the easiest less puppy eyes way to do it. We also have strict rules that pets do not eat any people food until humans are done. This makes whatever people food they get purposeful and also limits the puppy eyes begging. Not saying you have to go as far as my grandma and make up the dog and cats “plate” at the end of the meal…
Yeah you get the humans to grow up and take better care of him.
I have this problem too. I had to have a serious talk with my husband, the man who “didn’t really like dogs, but we can get one if you want ” and now treats our dog like his long-lost son and is prone to giving into sad eyes. But I also have a toddler, and while we are working on not throwing food on the floor, I also accept that my dog will have some amount of the baby’s food and just reduce his dog food portion accordingly.
It’s always the ones who didn’t want a dog, isn’t it? Sounds like my dad, who takes his dog-grandpa role almost as seriously as his human-grandpa role.
Oh the high chair. My late, great dog figured out immediately that the best seat in the house was right under the chair. My toddler was in on it too.
Yes. You have to train the humans not to give in to the soulful eyes, lol.
Tell them plainly what kind of health problems the human food is causing and be firm about stopping it.
The other humans in your household need to get on board with a strict no people food rule. Many human foods are toxic or irritating to dogs, and it’s easier to set and enforce a blanket prohibition on human foods than to police the items and quantities that kids and suppose are giving the dog.
In our house limited amounts of certain human foods, mostly safe fruits and vegetables, are allowed on occasion, but all people foods must be approved by mom before they are fed to the dog. My kids are very solicitous of the dog’s health and safety so I can trust them to clear all human foods with me and don’t need a blanket prohibition. The dog is never fed anything during food prep or human mealtimes, only after human meals, to discourage begging. The dog is also required to sit before being given anything to eat, including her regular meals. This prevents the dog from jumping around, grabbing at food, etc., and results in a dog who begs by sitting and gazing longingly in the most adorable fashion.
The dog should be trained to stay out of the kitchen when food is being prepared and away from the table during meals, for reasons of both manners and sanitation. This can be accomplished by training him to go to his bed or spot on command. You can also choose to crate him during food prep and mealtimes.
I am beginning to think that a dog dreamed up the open concept design trend.
Hahahahahaha!
actually snorting with laughter at this!
During covid I did an online cooking class a team building exercise. Every single participant got to see my large dog sitting behind me on his dog bed patiently waiting for the dog safe food to be given to him. He’s aware begging means being locked out of the kitchen and learned real fast not to try it. We also have baby gates that became doggie gates so we can easily gate off upstairs (where the cat food is) and the kitchen if necessary.
I cannot tell you how many times I’ve yelled at my family (mostly my husband) not to feed the dog from the table. What do you think you’re teaching him? You’re teaching him to beg at the table.
We also have the sit before eating rule.
If someone wants to give the dog a scrap that badly, they have to get up and take the scrap into the kitchen where the dog eats, they have to make him sit, and then they can give it to him. That really cuts down on the human food he gets from my other family members – they don’t want to go to the effort.
Unless you have toddlers (in which case I’m sympathetic), the humans need to not feed the dog. And I say this as someone who does feed our dog a taste of what I’m eating. I wouldn’t do it if she were overweight.
Also, when I was training our dog, our trainer recommended decreasing her food intake to compensate for the treats she was getting as part of training – so we decreased her food intake from 3/4 cup to a 1/2 cup during that few month period when we were training her a lot.
If you really can’t get the humans to stop feeding the dog, then you should likely reduce the dogs intake of dog food to compensate.
Also, my dog loves watermelon which is also a low calorie human treat.
Unfortunately it is easier to train some dogs than some humans :) The issue with decreasing the amount of dog food to compensate is that if the 3/4 humans are feeding the dog enough to be 10 pounds overweight, you may have to decrease the dog food enough =to possibly create nutritional issues in your dog. The kibble isn’t just calories but is special nutrition that dogs need which is not met 1/1 by random human food.
Yep, this is 100% a human problem and needs to be solved by training the humans. I concur with the suggestion to feed the humans only unappetizing dog-safe foods until they change their ways.
Would the humans be amenable to substituting another treat for the dog? Maybe belly scratches or a backyard game of fetch? It might be easier to suggest this than to suggest cutting the dog off.
The humans need some education around this. Dogs do not know what is best for them. Do the humans in the house know what foods aren’t safe to give dogs? Even something as simple as garlic or onion can reduce their red blood cell counts, for example. I know I don’t make a lot of prepared food without garlic or onion!
They also need to know that humans are much, much more resilient to carrying weight than dogs are. They may be thinking that a dog being overweight is comparable to a human being overweight (not THAT big a deal). But the health ramifications for dogs are much worse than for humans.
I get that dogs love wet, smelly foods, and that kibble isn’t that. Maybe offering some wet canned dog food as a treat would help, or the vet may be able to recommend a human food treat that is okay (cooked chicken breast is a lot lower calorie than ham or cheeseburger!).
It’s definitely a human problem. DH and I broke our habit of giving our dogs human food when one of our dogs almost died of pancreatitis and it was a huge long haul to get the dog to a healthy gut again – the biggest rule was no human food.
I would find the most extensive scare-mongering list of human foods that are bad for dogs on the internet and what they can do to the dogs, and then I would sit down the whole household and share it seriously with them. I’d try and make it as overwhelming as possible, so that the most simple solution is to simply not feed the dog human food at all.
After a couple weeks, the dog will take healthy “treats” like ice cubes or carrots more happily. But they’re not going to be impressed with a carrot when an hour ago they got a piece of bacon from someone else.
caveat on my second paragraph – I’m happily childfree, and I have no idea if this is good parenting or not. lol
You don’t have a dog problem, you have a people problem
The most effective way to get my husband to buy into any safety precaution for our dog is to show him information on the potential vet bills. Here I’d look up pancreatitis as suggested by another poster.
Yesterday I noticed a patch of tiny, skin-colored bumps between my eyebrows. The rest of my skin is fine. I haven’t started using any new makeup or skincare products lately and I don’t wear an eye mask or anything like that. Any ideas what might be causing it?
Is it possible that it’s a patch of dry skin? You might be repeatedly missing that area when you moisturize.
They’re called milia. Google for more info.
I am trying to incorporate running into my life since I don’t have time for anything else for fitness. I have always walked and hiked a lot as an adult, previously with at least weekly tennis (still love, but takes several hours + another well-matched person). Am I right in feeling that running is just hard? Like it’s easy to do, but it takes a lot of muscle strength and cardio capacity to move an adult desk-worker body at a reasonable speed over any real amount of distance. I can hike and backpack for days but running more than a mile kicks my butt. I guess I was kidding myself that reading on the recumbent bike and just getting up off the couch was keeping me in a good fitness condition. I tell myself: anything is better than nothing.
Honest question, is walking so much less good for fitness than running? I regularly walk 4 miles but I have always been terrible at running (and in my mid 50s with foot issues, I’m not about to start).
Not the OP. You burn the same number of calories per mile walking very fast (15 min/mile) as running. However, even a relatively slow run is much faster than walking. In my lunch break, I can run 3-4 miles or walk 2 miles.
I think that’s a myth. I’ve always heard that running is a significantly higher caloric burn than any walking.
It’s heavily dependent on walking speed, and the issue is whether you calculate calories burned per mile or per hour.
But OP asked about fitness, not calorie burn.
Define “fitness.” Not being sarcastic.
I would say cardiovascular fitness – so how your body takes in oxygen and distributes it to your body while being active. Running also builds more muscle and is better for bone health than walking. They’re both good, of course.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/14/well/move/walking-running-health-benefits.html?unlocked_article_code=1.VE0.hMOA.0qnyqRaTOHrC&smid=url-share
My doctor recommended either running or stomping for bone strength. Apparently the pounding is better for bones that walking.
IIRC walking stairs, downwards, is also good for bone health.
I doubt it has the same cardiac benefits.
It’s hard initially. Expecting to take a couple of months to get easier. It’s a lot of fun once it does.
I don’t think this fun thing happens for everyone. I’ve been running 2-3 times a week for nearly 10 years. I feel great afterwards and it’s important to my overall well-being but during the actual running it’s usually not what I would call fun.
I’m not going to disagree, in that some people’s bodies just are ill suited to running.
That said, running 4-5 times a week is wildly different than 2-3 times a week, because your body builds up a lot more tolerance. Your stride becomes more efficient.
Agreed, I find running so boring. Its the same motion again and again and again for ages.
My problem with running is that it takes a couple weeks to get back into it, and then I cannot take off any days without losing stamina. It’s all or nothing for me and I don’t have the flexibility between work and kids and whatnot to make all work. I have good success with biking around my neighborhood when it’s warmer than this.
Running is a harder cardiovascular workout than a lot of things, but you will build up fitness to make it easier. I think a common problem is running WAY too fast at first. You may need to do jog/walk intervals. See if you can go slow enough that you can carry on a conversation while running. The idea is to keep your heart rate in a moderate zone and slowly build up fitness. Eventually you will be able to run farther. https://www.runtothefinish.com/how-to-start-running/
YES. Go slower than you think you need to. Your body will thank you for it.
Yup. As a former rower I got very used to doing workouts at heart rate. My HR gets very high when I run so I have to slow way, way down to keep it manageable. When I keep it in the 150s-160s I can run way longer than when my HR is in the 180s (which is where it naturally goes)
Hi former rower! From another former rower.
Agree with all this! You likely need to slow down. I love run-walk intervals and run half marathons doing 90′:30′ intervals.
This is the correct answer. Slow down! And run-walk intervals are awesome.
+1000000. Slow down!
And also make sure you have properly fitted shoes. If you are truly in pain or it feels wildly efficient AND it’s something you want to continue long-term, highly recommend a running coach gait analysis. It will help with little tweaks that can make running much more pleasant. I see some forms out there that make running much harder than it needs to be and wish I could help people, but of course I keep my mouth shut bc it’s none of my beeswax.
Can you give examples of what you see people doing wrong or that makes running harder for them?
Not the same poster, but my husband takes huge slow bounding strides instead of short quick steps, which causes more impact and likely contributes to his complaint that “running makes my back hurt.” It also wastes energy on vertical motion that could be better used for horizontal motion. Extraneous upper body movement is another common problem.
Not the above Anon. It is not just what someone is doing but why they do it.
A few things that will make running harder:
Weak core
Weak upper body (causes slumping)
Weak glutes (you don’t get enough power and tend to pull yourself with your quads, not push yourself with your glutes)
Tight hips
One of the biggest issues is leaning forward too much. Run with your body stacked and the hips in a more neutral position. People also stick their arms out like chicken wings, rather than having them tucked closer to the body.
The other big mistake people make is to do these little run/walk intervals that do not and biologically cannot build fitness. Sure, it’s good to start off at whatever interval you can handle; eventually, you need to graduate up to 10+ minutes of continuous running.
I really thought there was a lot of research on run/walk intervals producing great fitness outcomes, as well as disproportionate risks to continuous running? I guess I will have to learn more.
Besides the things you mentioned, I see a lot of people who are very visibly pigeon toed or splay foot when running, but I’ve never known if it actually matters as a kind of bad form, or if it’s fine.
Stride issues, like reaching way far out in front if their body to land a foot strike (body dependent as to where anyone should be striking on their foot – some people can heel strike with no issue, some are better off midfoot striking, but the striking should happen under your body, not out in front of it). Really clenching their hands or arms and being stiff with their upper bodies. The torso should have some rotation – it’s a bit like there is a rubber band X across your body with the middle of the X at your navel. So when you pull back your left shoulder it assists in pulling your right leg up in the striding sequence. A rigid torso will make lifting the legs more difficult bc you are working against the body’s natural movement. Foot shuffling vs using the legs as springs to help propel your body forward.
Do I run with perfect form every time (noting perfect form will be different from body to body but there are some foundational principles)? Absolutely not. But I can 100% tell it’s harder when I am not focused on my form.
https://www.alisonmariephd.com is a good source for running mechanics IMO
You can’t possibly build up to running 10 minutes straight without doing run/walk intervals unless you are one of those lucky people like my husband who are blessed with natural cardiovascular capacity and can just go out and run 3 miles whenever they want to with zero training.
It’s hard. As a kid, I was a truly gifted distance runner who never fully exploited her abilities. After not running for years, it is just hard. Start slow and alternate running and walking. Aim to improve the ratio of running to walking on a weekly basis. Also, if you can do some air squats daily/regularly, they will help you pick up your legs.
I always liked the idea of running for fitness and I certainly did feel fit when I could run a 5K, which I don’t think I could do now without injuring my bulging discs, but I found that mountain biking is much more fun and keeps me just as fit. It’s still some stress on the spine but typically less. For me the fun is crucial – and I don’t see much of that in your post. If you’re doing this as a last resort for fitness and finding it hard to start, I don’t think you’ll be as motivated to stick with it. What about OrangeTheory or something in a group?
My problem with mountain biking is that it is way too popular in my area. Trails are really crowded on weekends and that means you encounter both very aggressive weekend warrior types and also novices and kids who tend to wreck. It’s not enjoyable any more and I used to LOVE to do this. Now, if someone wrecks and you stop to try to help them, you are at risk of getting run over trying to help someone else up to brush off and patch up. Remind me what when the weather gets a bit nicer to take off a random Tuesday and hit the trails.
Yes, I’ve totally had this thought before! Running is hard, especially when you’re getting into it or back into it. I started doing run-walk intervals when I was recovering from an injury and it has made running so much more enjoyable! It’s still hard and a great workout but mentally easier knowing I’ll get a walk break in a few minutes. It’s made a big difference for me.
Yes, running is hard. What is your pace like? If you’re new to running and out there trying to pull down a 9 minute mile, you need to slow way down until your running fitness improves. It sounds like you’re actually reasonably fit, but running is a different kind of aerobic toll for some people. I can also recumbent bike or hike all day but running sends my heart rate sky high. Ideally you’d have a watch with heart rate monitor and you can use that to keep your pace to a place where your HR is below zone 4. Get to a point where you can run 2-3 miles (walk breaks allowed) at a slower pace with a lower HR and then start adding in some intervals of faster pace or even a tempo run now and then. This might take a long time (months, not weeks). And yes! Anything is better than nothing. It’s also ok if you decide running just isn’t for you and you’d prefer the biking, hiking, and tennis.
I posted above about the need to slow way down, and I want to add here – I’ve been running consistently for 6 years, currently training for my 4th half marathon, did a 13 mile training run on Saturday, and I have never in my life run a 9 minute mile. My easy pace is still over 12 min/mile, and there are many runners that are slower than me. Some of us are just slower. Going at my own pace makes running much more fun for me.
I am similar. I thought to run you had to be fast. It turns out you can just slow down. Who knew? Took me 40+ years to figure it out but now I am enjoying running so much more.
Oh I’m with you on the pace. 10 years ago (late 20s) I could do an 11 minute pace for 10 miles, now it’s more like 12-13 minutes/mile for maybe 2-3 miles. I’ve never been fast and never will be (to say nothing of currently being pretty out of shape for running). A lot of people have the impression that to be a “runner” you have to be running fast, but you and I both know that isn’t true!
Without discrediting your knowledge of your body, I will say that speed work and strides can really help you to hit faster paces. When you aren’t in a training cycle, hit the track and do a bunch of 200s (95% of the way to all out), jog or walk equal distance in between reps. Max once per week. Within about six to eight track sessions, you should be hitting paces you didn’t dream of before.
Thanks, I started incorporating some speed work last summer and it has been interesting. I can’t say I’ve gotten a lot faster but we’ll see how this next half goes. I’m also planning to do some 5Ks this summer, which will be a good opportunity to focus more on speed. I’m not light and approaching 50, so I’m fighting some natural forces that tend to slow people down.
You have to build up to running. It’s probably not going to be your favorite thing for 2-3 months. It takes longer to get acclimated to running than other types of exercise, IME. HOWEVER. When you turn that corner, it can be a great thing for your mental and physical fitness. Nothing else “works” for me quite like running. I am not fast, but who cares?
Getting back into running takes a bit of time (if you aren’t one of the . What are you defining as a “reasonable” speed? Chances are you need to REALLY slow down, and do walk/run intervals for a bit – e.g., 30 seconds running, 90 seconds walking, then decrease over time. If you have a heart rate watch, try for two runs or run/walks a week were you keep the pace so that your heart rate stays down in the yellow/orange zone – way below peak effort. Also, for me, the first mile is always the worst. I can be a happy camper chill at mile 10 but that first mile of my run you’d think I was dying. You just need to stick with it.
Running is SO hard. I’ve flunked out of couch-to-5k twice now.
Thank you for saying this.
Yes, it is hard! But it gets easier the more you do it. I am sooo not a runner, but it is the easiest exercise for me to fit in, and I can’t believe how much better I am now than when I started.
Hard initially but easy to gain speed and see results over time. Definitely use the run walk method…you’ll see your time slowly get faster over time. And don’t add more than 10 percent mileage per week…build slowly. I run 20 miles a week and do 3 sessions of weightlifting at gym per week…in my 50s.
Two things:
1. Build up to running. Start with walking for an hour and go fast. Do this every single day. You want to walk fast enough you get sweaty. After 6 months you can start running slowly for 45mins. Build up to running for an hour.
2. Listen to good music and it’s a lot easier. Spotify is needed.
Anyone who can walk, can run. It’s a matter of speed and grace. I’m so and not graceful!!!
I have wanted to love running virtually my entire post-puberty life and struggled mightily to do so. The only thing that really makes me feel some joy in it is taking my dog, but you need to be careful with their joints as well as yours!
Your problem is entirely contained in the phrase “at a reasonable speed.” Slow down. Slow way down. My easy runs are a good 3-4 minutes slower per mile than my mile-5k times. Slow. Down.
Thoughts on private versus public? We live in a good but not top public school district in a NYC suburb. Oldest is going into second grade. He is above grade level on all subjects (other than PE). We have the opportunity to send him (and potentially our younger child(ren)) to a prestigious private school 20 min drive from the house (we will have busing so transportation not an issue). The tuition is $50k/year, which we can afford but will mean we will delay upgrading to a bigger house, fewer fancy trips etc.
The pro for the private is the connections that we can potentially make. I am a biglaw lawyer and the head of our practice group as well as several of our clients’ senior execs send their kids there. But we will be on the lower end of the economic spectrum amongst the families.
The pro for the public is financial. Our neighborhood is blue collar, and we won’t have the pressure to keep up with the Joneses so to speak. The downside is the education quality and our child(ren) will not be challenged enough.
What do you all think? And yes, I know there is a third option, which is to delay the entrance until middle school. But we do have this amazing opportunity now so want to at least give it some thought.
Thank you!
You might ask on the moms page for additional perspectives. But I don’t see any mention of how the fancy school is a good fit for your child educationally, and what it provides for your child that’s worth $50K a year.
I definitely see that you think that sending your kid there would be good for your business, which is…. a choice.
Bear in mind that if you send one kid there, the pressure will be immense to send all your kids there. You don’t mention how many other children you have, but is it really worth a $100K/year outlay when the publics will meet their needs? Join a country club FFS.
This. Don’t use your children. And also you sound tacky and desperate.
using your children’s education to make connections and get to know senior execs? most big law boss-babe move of 2024
go head OP, do as much rich person stuff as you want.
+1 to joining a country club. If the biggest reason to send your kids to private school is for connections, you can get that at a country club. Although it might cost the same.
It’s not about my connections. It’s about the connections they will have growing up. I am a first gen college grad and law school grad. I have seen so many of my classmates getting amazing internship opportunities through knowing someone who knows someone at Blackstone or whatnot. Yes, I got there at the end but we are kidding ourselves if we say those connections don’t matter for our kids.
OMG! Your kid is in 2nd grade! What connections is he going to make that will get him a job in 20 years??
LOL seriously.
I’m so glad that I’m not relying on the impression I made upon other children while in middle school (or high school, or elementary school(???)) to boost my career opportunities now.
While I don’t doubt your experiences, I also wouldn’t assume that’s a sure thing for anyone. So much depends on what fields your kids go into, where they eventually want to live, etc. I think playing that kind of long game is almost a fool’s errand. Do what’s best for your kid and family now, not hypothetically in a best-case scenario.
OP, I think you are getting unfairly piled on. I knew before you wrote this that you were first-gen law school, if not first gen college. This is NOT a knock on you! You know enough to understand that connections matter and many wealthy, successful people help their kids with that. You’re just struggling to figure out the particulars and that’s fine.
IMHO, if your local public school is good, send the kids to private high school (which will do just fine for connections). Use the money you would save on grades 1-8 to pay for other opportunities for them: summer camp in Europe, music lessons, graduate school, help with a down payment in a condo, etc.
I think all of this is gross. What “amazing opportunity” do you have anyway?! If your local public school district isn’t good enough you’re obviously rich so I’d choose option D- move to a town with a school district that is good.
I assume the amazing opportunity just means that her child got accepted in an off year. Typical private school entry points are at K, middle school and high school.
FWIW, my kids go to private school in NYC, and we love the school and the community. It is an excellent fit for our kids. I will say that as a fellow big law lawyer, I have not made any professional connections or enhanced my career in any way by sending my kids to this school.
This is such a personal decision. And this is the wrong panel to crowdsource advice.
I’m coming from perspective and geography as you, so I get the quandary, but this is similar to asking for advice on which religion to choose.
I would probably go public because you said the school district is good. I would feel different if you were in my area )the Bay Area), where the public school districts are extremely mixed and some are downright horrific. However, I would more strongly consider the private if it offered something really special for your kid.
You will need to send them there, but as a working mom, the moms at carpool won’t be working. Ditto the bus pickup — the nannies will be there and they don’t mix with the moms. Other than the parent auction or committees (again, dominated by the non-working moms), IDK that you will always mix with whom you want to (at LAX games? but if it’s a sports-mandatory school, will this really be a good fit for your kid who seems to be more of an academic standout? I seriously mean this — there is a culture at some places that isn’t solely academic). I hate that it’s more straightforward for dads, but this is a culture where it is like stepping back to the 1950s and makes it worse IMO.
— BigLaw Equity Partner, mix of good and bad public and private NJ schools
What is the actual educational benefit of the private school? Are you prepared to send all your kids there? I personally think it’s kinda gross to pick your kid’s school based on business connections but I don’t live where you live.
Yeah … is this the 1700s? Are we using our children as political pawns, too?
Yes! I am going to marry my kid off in a year or two to cement an alliance.
Congratulations! I hope your lands increase and are productive, and you have many heirs.
I went to private school and the “connections” my parents could make was the last thing on their mind…they wanted me to have a good education at the school that was right for me. Keeping up with the Joneses seems like a terrible reason to put your kid in private school. Does your kid want to go there? Is it a good fit for him? Etc.
Yeah I was a scholarship kid at a private school and I had an amazing experience and got a top notch education. No one in my family benefitted from “connections”; my parents are blue collar and thus far my siblings and I haven’t been in a position to need or want connections from former classmates or parents of classmates.
There is never a one size fits all answer. I’m the product of private education in a family of many private school teachers and that’s generally my preference based on my personal experience. However, you should be making this decision based off o your children and their educational and social needs, not networking opportunities.
Do you have only one kid? Will you always? Also, is moving to a better school district an option? Some of the CT/NY suburbs of NYC have excellent public schools. $50-75k/year on private school for the next decade can buy you a lot of house in Westchester or Fairfield counties.
Isn’t there another private school that would be a better academic fit? Or a public magnet? The idea of sending your kid to private school solely for the business connections is icky, and it doesn’t sound like he will fit in socially.
Setting aside the question about whether it’s a good fit for your child, because that doesn’t seem to be a priority for you.
You need better intel about how networked/involved the parents are to understand whether this would actually benefit you and your business. At my kid’s private school the parents do not ever talk about work. I have an idea of what the parents do (many biglaw and private equity partners) but it’s almost aggressively ignored? Like school is the equalizer and people talk about their kids. The socioeconomic difference comes out because some families play expensive travel sports, or spend their weekends riding their horses, or spend breaks at their second homes or jetting around the world. But frankly it would be weird for me to try to network or leverage an elementary school connection for work purposes.
+1 to this. My daughter was involved in camps and activities with the kids of “elite” parents. There were multiple instances where I would be on friendly terms with a parent at an activity and have no clue who the parent was and what they did for work until I encountered them in a professional context. Then I always felt awkward seeing the parent in the kid context and knowing they were a judge or whatever.
You should take a step back from your milieu and consider that your kids are already ahead of many others in the world and doesn’t need this network to succeed. this isn’t really about the education. it’s about your kids surroundings. so how do you want them to grow up?
Amen.
If you view this as akin to a country club, would you pay dues of $50-$100-$150k for this club for the mere chance to network?
I went to the same private school for K-12. My working mom was friendly with the working parents of my close friends, and she volunteered for her one committee or event per year, but running the bake sale at the Spring Fling and chatting with other parents over brownies would have hardly been worth the $20k that tuition then cost.
Does Client CEO also have a second grader? Do you share interests with Client CEO? I just can’t imagine how you think this would work. If your kid is a theater kid (or a baseball kid or a whatever kid) and so is theirs, great, you’ll meet up in the audience/stands. But if not, aside from a bake sale or annual silent auction, how do you envision this working? Are these hypothetical networking opportunities worth the literal price of admission?
My thoughts – a twenty minute drive is pretty far, even with busing. Is there bussing home after after-school activities? How close is the public school? Having our school within walking distance is so convenient. And 50k-150k a year is a lot of vacations or house or college savings! And, it’s a lot of supplemental enrichment for kids who aren’t challenged in public school.
I completely understand the business connections aspect. It’s a thing at certain private schools where I live too. You say you are a biglaw lawyer – are you a partner? Are you going to stay at this firm forever? This is looking like the ultimate golden handcuffs situation. What if you want to leave – will you be limited both by salary and social pressure? What if you are laid off? And I don’t think being at the low end of the economic spectrum at a private school sounds all that fun for you or your kids.
I send my kids to public school in a large urban district. I was able to switch jobs from biglaw to government, which will be a long term benefit to my career (I plan to go back to private practice). Their teachers differentiate within the classroom, and I’m very happy with the quality of academic and social/emotional education they are receiving. It is certainly not a “customer” oriented experience like I hear private school is, but all in all I think it’s a better fit for our family.
Also, I think the gender aspects of this are crucial. If all those business connections are men and their wives are SAHMs, then you will probably not be able to network with them through school. The moms will be the ones doing the kid stuff and my guess is you will not be able to break in as a working mom. You need to join the country club where they golf, etc. But if it’s women business connections, I could see it potentially being useful.
Heck, even at my kids’ public schools, it’s been hard to break in as a working mom. I’ve sort of given up, honestly. (Kids are 9 and 14.) There are plenty of women who work, but lots seem to have very part-time jobs that allow them to be there at dropoff and pickup. The only parents I see are the ones who also have kids in the before and after-school clubs.
The public school is a 10 min drive but the bus takes 45 min because of the roundabout route. And no we cannot drop off – the line is insane and we have to go to work.
Have you considered how much actual non-school-day interaction you might have with the private school crowd that is twice as far from you and in a neighborhood you don’t live in? This sounds like a setup to make your family the outsiders not only in your own neighborhood but also with the private school crowd because you live so far away. This does not sound like a way to get your foot in the door.
YMMV, but in my experience people come from far and wide (45-60 min radius) for private schools. 20 minutes would be considered “close” for my kids’ school.
+1 to this. Much smaller scale but by chance we sent our kids to a different preschool than the one most of our neighbors sent their kids to. That choice made us feel a bit like outsiders at school since the rest of the class all lived a town over and all went to the same country club. It also made us feel a bit like outsiders with our neighbors since the preschool had a fair amount of social events for kids on weekends and parent fundraisers and such so our neighbors were often spending their free time at events together we weren’t invited to. If I could do it again I’d send our kids to the school the neighborhood kids went to even though we really did like our kids preschool. The social aspect was an unexpected challenge. Also as a 2 working parent household I can’t tell you how much easier my life is now that my kids are in the neighborhood public elementary school. I have a whole host of neighbors to carpool with, remind me of school and events, drop off forgotten items, have play dates they can walk to, etc.
People always talk about how hard it is to raise kids today given the lack of the proverbial village. Our experience with school taught me that the village was there the whole time, we had just chosen to live outside the village when our kids were in preschool.
I’m a big proponent of public schools, so that may sway my thinking. We also lived in Westchester (probably among the worst school districts, but we had a great experience) and now live in Fairfield County (and purposely chose a city, aka one of the “worse” school districts in this county).
We went out of our way to avoid pressure cooker schools; I have personally seen kids flame out in neighboring towns, and a lot of those schools have dealt with too many suicides. I want my kids in a more diverse environment – economically, racially – and I don’t want to feel like I have to keep up with the Joneses.
The NYC suburban area has a huge problem with pushing stress and achievement, and I am actively trying to temper that for my family. Unless you have a compelling reason why private would meet a unique educational need, I would absolutely give the public schools a try. You can always change your mind.
Decisions like these all come down to values, IMO. I also was super relieved when my son thankfully decided he wanted to attend the high school closest to our neighborhood. It’s a great school but is smaller and does not have the pressure-cooker reputation as the other one that he was interested in (same school district but located 20 minutes from our house). He already really struggles with comparing himself to others and not being the best at everything. I had very serious reservations about what the high-achievement school would do to him mentally and emotionally. Plus, I highly value our family being part of the local community, and it’s harder to do that when your kids aren’t attending the neighborhood feeder schools.
Have you worked through what it looks like to be on the lower end of the economic spectrum at the school? Are they going to feel ‘poor’ if you don’t have a ski condo or lake house?
Part of the reason my kids are in public is because I didn’t want them to think of picking whatever hobbies they want plus ski weekends in the winter, spring break week down south and international summer vacations as ‘ordinary/normal’. They live like this and some of their friends do but they also know that everyone doesn’t.
We supplement with science camps at local university in the summer, additional
language lessons on the weekends in the school year etc. You can always go private for high school.
I don’t know what’s right for your family, but I went to a not great, not terrible public school, with a lot of economic diversity, and I think I learned a lot of life resilience from it — but I was also remember being so bored, all the time. My parents could have managed private school (LCOL state, I’m sure nyc is a different ballgame) but it would have been difficult, and they’ve told me it’s something they wished they prioritized – I have more mixed feelings, I actually think there’s something to be said for learning how to be bored, and it did also make me very motivated to look for and get myself into more challenging situations. But still, even if you can supplement with cool camps and tutors and stuff, being bored at school all day is a lot of being bored.
I would make different decisions if they were bored but we have a bit of a unicorn school (for various zoning quirk reasons) with small class sizes which attracts great teachers so they are not bored but they are likely not as challenged as they might be in a great private school.
To clarify, the private school we are considering does seem to provide a much better quality of education. It is difficult to ascertain at the second grade level. Our kid spent a morning there and they seemed to enjoy but I do not know about your kids and I don’t think mine can tell me whether it’s better quality education. The test scores are much higher and the colleges they feed into are higher ranked (more ivies than our local public). They have more APs etc. I do think it’s more challenging but I don’t know how one can really figure out whether the education is better “fit” for a 6-year-old for the next 12 years.
And yes, I am an income partner.
If all of these wealthy people are sending their kids to this private school, then test scores and college admissions are likely more a reflection of the parents’ education and legacy admissions to colleges. You should definitely talk to parents about whether the academics are challenging and in what ways. I am pretty studies have shown that test scores are highly correlated with parent income, and also that kids of educated parents do as well in public as in private. Obviously each individual kid is different though and may thrive in certain educational settings and not others, while some will bloom where they are planted.
One thing that seems to be true in my area is that Ivy schools only have so many spots for each private hs. So if you didn’t go to Harvard, but you want your kid to go, and the private school class has 10 legacies – your kid might have a better shot from public.
Different take: since the kids are generally smart, studious, and have a lot of academic support at home, teachers can set the bar higher. That means what is “A” work at the public might be B+ work at the private school. The pace of classes is faster, the readings are more complex at an earlier age, students are expected to write longer papers, lab reports are produced to a higher quality.
I went to a very good, albeit not great, public high school. I want to send my kid to private school, mostly due to the inadvertently terrible recommendations of the local public school. “It’s a good school! My son goes there, is in the top 25% of his class, gets all As.” What that tells me is that you get a B for fogging a mirror and teachers don’t set the bar very high for As.
But on the flip side, you have an epidemic of parents screaming at teachers and escalating to the principal if their child gets a B, because it will hurt college chances. So parents should be really clear if they want their kids to get an honest education…or if they want a padded resume and won’t accept perceived failure
This
Sure, but there are also private schools where there is massive grade inflation and less rigor. I’ve definitely seen it in private schools here where the pedagogical approach is child-led, play based through 3rd grade, not too “pressure cooker” on purpose – and then by high school, everyone recognizes the need for a high GPA and what are the parents paying for except a good record for college apps? And then there are others where it is incredibly rigorous and kids really need to be committed and intelligent to even keep up. All I’m saying is that not all privates are incredibly rigorous.
I also don’t know that one anecdotal brag means that fogging a mirror gets a B at your local public. That student could be the only student to get straight As and they would still be in the top 25%! I think your response says a lot more about your assumptions than it does about that school’s actual ability to teach students.
Anon at 1:44 pm, I am aware that some private schools are not as good.
As for your last paragraph – HAHAHAHA. Let me guess, you are the quintessential “smart but not very smart,” and the exact type of person who benefits the most from 25% of the class getting As.
Honestly, and this frustrates me to no end, it likely won’t matter what you do. I hate that effort seems futile after being taught all my life that effort and opportunities matter, but it’s often the case that they don’t matter much past a certain point. Are Scarsdale schools good? Better than Yonkers? Better than private? IDK the answer but outcomes eventually are kid and motivation dependent. And based on parental budgets, so I damn well expect private schools to have better stats. But when I look to actual apples vs apples, I bet they look pretty similar.
I agree with this.
I also agree with this. I also think you (and honestly most parents on this site) should read Never Enough by Jennifer Brehney Wallace to help you with your choice.
As a product of private school, I was very well prepared for college. I went to a top college, everyone there was smart and well educated but I was definitely better prepared than most. Almost all of my college friends came from very good public schools, have well educated parents, scored over 1400 on their SATs, but weren’t as prepared for college.
Now that I’m in the workforce, I’m both shocked by the lack of general knowledge people have and by their lack of writing and analysts skills. I’ve become my department’s de facto editor because everyone raves about my writing. I think I’m a good but not amazing writer but it appears that I’m the best in the department.
So much obviously depends on which public school and which private school you’re considering. I see posts from parents here that mention that their kids barely write papers in high school whereas I was writing at least one short paper a week (3-5 pages or a DBQ), a medium length paper a month (5-10 pages) and a large research project with long paper each year (30 pages). With each paper we received written feedback and one on one conferencing with our teacher. Feedback covered grammar, organization, argument development, quality of analysis, and quality of / incorporation of outside sources. This level of feedback was possible because each teacher taught less than 50 kids (4 classes of 12-16 students). Tests were mostly blue book short answer and essay questions, with a few multiple choice. High school classes used both textbooks but also journal articles, so I was used to that type of reading and analysis by the time I got to college.
While I didn’t get any connections from my school, it did teach me how to exist in a higher class orbit than I grew up in. I work in government, so it’s not super useful for me but my brothers work is business and it’s been helpful for them to have exposure to a wide variety of lifestyles (though this goes both ways – upper class kids should be exposed to actual “normal” lives too).
That’s exactly the kind of education I got walking to the public high school down the street
I always remember that when I was grading undergraduate coursework in graduate school, an “A” was set to a good public school grad’s abilities. So the difference in ability between a good public school high school grad and a good private school high school grad wasn’t captured anywhere except maybe in recommendation letters (they both got As). The difference however was pretty stark; one of those As could reflect much, much better preparation than the other.
Anon at 11:53, I think that sadly, even good public districts are much less resourced than they were when we were growing up. Schools that once offered detailed feedback on papers, for example, now don’t even regularly assign papers because teachers have too many students to grade papers in a timely manner.
I got this education at my public school.
My husband did not get this education at his fancy and expensive private school.
My husband has tons of fancy connections from his fancy and expensive private school. But I’m not an equity partner in biglaw and now have fancier connections than he does from law school, biglaw, clients, colleagues, etc. I guess it would have been helpful to have more connections from my high school but I seem to be doing fine. And if we need a favor called in to get one of our kids a job in the future I’m putting the odds at 5 to 1 it comes from my network and not my husbands.
And I went to a ‘really good’ public school but never wrote a paper longer than 5 pages, even as an honors student.
I am going to disagree with many posters here because me (and later my younger sibling) attending the private school gave us a huge boost up in our education quality and connections. Went from low-income public school in second grade to private school through end of high school (though this was not in the US, UK, or Canada), and at the smaller private school with the much more rigorous education, we were educated as part of the country’s educational elite. Not all of the students were from wealthy parents (I would say most of us were middle class in our country), but a good chunk of them have parents as C-suite execs of companies you’ve definitely heard of or well known tenured professors at top universities in our country. Almost all of us went to top colleges and universities in the US, UK, or Canada, and between having the education and knowing the right people because we went to school with them, their kids, or their siblings, many of our alumni work at high profile companies.
I know it’s not for everyone, and the style of rigorous education means many of us are dealing with mental health issues as adults. I was lucky I tested into the private school as a second grader, because I don’t think I would have tested in as a middle schoolers, and definitely not for high school. But today as an adult I’m very grateful that I have that education and because it was a very small school, the connections are there if I choose to use them. (For example, I met one of my BFFs at the private school playground when we were in elementary school, and our families became close because of our friendship. A few years after friend and I graduated high school, friend’s father became a high ranking government official in our country. I haven’t leveraged that connection and unlikely to, but it sounds like the sort of connections OP would like for her kid to fall into.)
Thanks for this feedback. I think the way OP phrased things is bristling a lot of feathers. But I think it is hard to get past the reality that teenagers don’t always form ambitions towards futures that aren’t well represented around them. And sometimes they form aspirations towards futures that are represented around them that we think are not the best idea, and this is while they’re teenagers and don’t listen to us.
In USA, often the public school is excellent in the kind of zip code where parents can afford a private school anyway — but not always. In rural areas with struggling schools, the choice between local public school and some other alternative can be life changing.
I suggest applying for a middle school admissions. Pay for and schedule other enriching activities, and learn more about who your children are as they grow up a bit more. Public schools have a lot to offer, especially in these early years, with more diversity (generally) and community connections. Go for the private after that experience.
I wouldn’t think about private school until the kids are entering middle school. Maybe your son will be passionate about playing an instrument and there is a private school with an arts focus. Or maybe he will be a math nerd and want to go somewhere STEM- focused. At the elementary school level, I can’t imagine what $50k a year gets you.
+1
This is how I lean.
Keep your young child reading and avoid screens as long as possible, and enjoy your family time exposing them to lots of things to peak their curiosity.
*pique
obvi I went to public school :0
I would keep them in public school until they show signs of being under stimulated. And I say this as someone who enjoyed public elementary but was super bored in my pretty well ranked public middle school and am very grateful that my parents sent my to a more challenging private school.
And talk to them (I habitually hid how understimulated and under challenged I was because I was trying to fit in, but I did tell my parents when they asked! My life and mental health were so, so much better when I was actually academically challenged and not just spinning wheels in class all day).
Private fancy school all the way. I’m sending my kids to an upscale public school and really have no ego about keeping up with anyone. But there are awesome people and jerks in every school. Having good friends who are also wealthy and powerful will serve your kids better in life than having good middle class friends. People will be upset to hear that but it’s true.
The outcome is no different if they end up being friends with all the other middle class kids! Which happens a lot for obvious reasons.
Yikes on bikes!!
This is satire…right? I’d pick middle-class friends all day long
Same. I have rich friends. In terms of transactional value in my life they’ve provided almost none directly although they have gotten some of my middle class friends jobs
My middle class friends are the ones that do things like write me hand written congratulations cards for job promotions, bring over cheap wine and ice cream when I’ve had a bad week and came over to hold my baby so I could take a shower.
YMMV
I am of the mindset that the only reason people who can choose between public vs private opt got public schools is because they don’t really understand private schools. I went to private school K-12 and started my kids in public school but switched them to private and to me the difference is night and day. I’m thrilled we made the switch even if things are less convenient and money is tighter.
Also – there is a lot of scholarship money to be had at private schools. Even if others here don’t think they can afford it, I’d consider applying and seeing what is offered.
The other reason is because we practice what we preach. You can go on an on about equality and racial justice and opportunities for all kids but if you only want “the best” for your own family and to socialize with elites…the you can’t claim it’s the GOP ruining the country
It’s not perfect. It won’t be in the near future. But, I work in government human services and I donate money and I volunteer my time at a soup kitchen and applying for grants for community organizaitons. I wish all students had excellent opportunities. Public schools in my area are underfunded and are far more akin to babysitting center than they are to educational institutions. I do my best to offset this, but as one single person I can’t do that. I’m unwilling to sacrifice my kids’ educations in favor of “making a point”. As I said – I do my best with my career, volunteer, and charitable choices. But, I won’t limit my kids’ futures for this. Sorry.
If anything – the school is at least getting my school tax money as a “bonus”. I pay full school taxes in addition to my taxes, so for the school system its money in with two less students to spend that money on.
In NY state, school funding is based partly on enrollment numbers. So if your kid doesn’t go, the public school gets less money. I know not every state is like that, but the OP did say the NYC burbs.
And yes, I get that we make decisions for our families on a micro level. But it’s wrong to say the *only* reason people don’t choose private is because they’re uninformed. Some of us believe in participating in and supporting our public systems
Eh – I went to private K-12 and started my kids in a city public school. They switched to private for middle school, but most of our friends’ kids went on to the magnet city middle/high school. I honestly think that my older daughter might have done better sticking with the public system.
You need to sit down and consider what school setting is best for your child.
Public school works for some, it was a disaster for my elder two children. I found (stumbled) across a Catholic school with super small class sizes and this enables the teachers to get through everything faster. The students work on special projects or work on improving areas they are struggling with. Tuition is $9k a year per child and this enables a better mix of children in the class from different walks of life. $50k tuition doesn’t always equate to a better education.
Moving back to the NJ side of NYC my children will remain in private because the public schools in NJ are not able to meet their needs as 2e kids. I could hire a lawyer or pay the tuition. For my mental health, I pay tuition. I expect nothing business wise from other parents. It’s awkward. I say this as the mom who was navigating public and private school. The moms who keep it real are the moms I hang with. We are an eclectic mix but we all show up for the same reason and parent in a similar style despite the differences between households, some of whom lived in the projects, others in a brownstone.
Thanks for sharing this.
Your situation is very different from the OP, I think.
So I went to a fancy private school that had a lot of scholarships so the student body was pretty economically diverse (kids growing up below the poverty line, kids with blue collar parents who didn’t go to college, kids with average middle class families and then of course upper middle class and wealthy families). For example: my dad is a mechanic and my mom is a nurse, my best friend’s (single) mom is a secretary, and my other close friend’s dad is a top cardiologist.
One thing that stands out from my experience is that while not everyone I went to school with has a super impressive job (though plenty do), no one is really “floundering” for lack of a better term. I don’t know how to phrase this without sounding elitist, but of the kids I grew up with (neighborhood friends, not private school friends) about half are doing really well as adults (my closest two friends have PhDs, for example) and about half are kind of wasting their potential (went to college (and are in debt from college) but are working as school aides, lower level sales rep at a car dealership, or customer service reps). Like they’re doing totally fine, but these are bright kids who could have done “more” (and, at one point wanted to) but didn’t. Meanwhile, among my private school friends I’m almost the schlub of the group (and I work for the State Department).
I wonder how much of this is correlation versus causation. The kids that went to the private school on scholarships clearly had raw intelligence and parents who were involved enough in their education to get them to the private school. Was it that or the private school education that lead to the better outcome?
I think it’s not even the education but the “mindset”. It’s understanding what certain types of jobs look like, what applying to graduate school requires, how to get certain places. It’s the mindset of 4+ years of school not only telling you you can do whatever you want, but then backing that up with resources and information to do so. If you like school, want to do well, and have big dreams you’re not the anomaly, you’re the norm. You’re just exposed to different opportunities and ideas.
My experience as a scholarship kid at private school was that it wasn’t just the ceiling that was raised for us, but the floor was really what was raised. It was just the environment that made us all assume we’d be doing something “impressive”.
I’m the first person in my family to have a white collar job. My parents are awesome and cared a lot about education, for sure, but there was a lot of “intangibles” I wasn’t going to get from them. A lot of our teachers were teaching as a second career, so they had experience in a variety of industries (the physics teacher was a former engineer at NASA, for example) which was helpful.
And, I have friends who are lawyers, doctors, research scientists, finance folks, etc, but I also have quite a few friends / acquaintances who are teachers, engineers, nurses, and artists. So, it’s not just like “you can do anything so long as you go to Harvard law”; there was much more of a focus on doing something, whatever it is, well rather than financial success.
In talking with my neighborhood friends, a lot more of them “settled”, if that makes sense. The friend who is an aide wanted to be a teacher, but she graduated in December, started subbing but didn’t find a FT job in education but got an offer to be an aide so there she is 8 years later. I don’t truly know why she hasn’t pursued teaching again, but she hasn’t.
This makes sense to me (especially about the second career teachers and a greater understanding of what jobs even exist and how to prepare for them).
I have some people in my life who are pretty unhappy with their adult children’s choices, and I think a lot of it has to do with the schools they sent their kids to not being much like what school was like when they attended.
I think parents who are raising kids now are thinking a lot harder about this.
I get that but as the anomaly so to speak at my public school with parents who didn’t go to college I still managed to make it to a prestigious college and an elite law school and a top law firm. There was a point in my life where I used to wonder what my life would have looked like if I’d had the type of experience you describe. But honestly I’m not sure it would have made my life that different. But if I had gone to a fancy private high school I’m sure I’d say that it was key to my success. We’ll never know what happened on the road not traveled though.
My sense is that it’s always an advantage to be in classes with students who are there willingly and who want to learn and are cooperating and participating actively. And it’s a huge disadvantage to be in classes with students who are attending per force, who feel actively motivated to disrupt what’s going on, and who feel thwarted and oppressed the whole time they are there. So any kind of scholarship school, exam school, or admissions school has an advantage over a school that you go to because of where you live or because your parents paid the tuition, since in either case, some kids are experiencing school as a prison and that changes the whole dynamic.
Yes, when I was a student at private school it was cool to be smart and to like school and try hard. Even our class clowns and stoners and total jocks applied themselves
Yes same as my public school
Obviously this is school dependent, but my kids have enjoyed how many different activities they can join (at one time) at private school. Their private school doesn’t have gym class so everyone plays a sport (there are competitive varsity / JV teams, intramural teams, and an option that’s more like gym class). As a result, all other extra curricular activities are scheduled at lunch (only one lunch period), in a gap between school and sports, or after sports. My kids feel less boxed in as a result; you can be a jock and in the musical and write for the school paper all at once. This also lets them have different groups they hang out with (nice when there’s drama in one group, but even absent drama it’s just nice to meet different kids with different interests).
While there’s competition there aren’t “cuts”. So sure, you may never make varsity but there will always be a JV or third team for you. They don’t limit how many kids are in the chorus of a musical; obviously not everyone gets a speaking role but if you want to participate you can. There’s only 100 kids per grade at the school, so they can accommodate everyone. My kid is a senior and she and three friends tried out for the musical on a lark, simply because they thought it’d be a fun activity to do. They’re in the chorus and are having a blast.
This also seems to apply to academics too. While different levels of classes are offered (and you have to “apply” for honors / AP classes), there is no tracking. My senior does great with social sciences but struggles with math; she’s in the lowest math class offered but is in 4 AP history / English / language classes. My sophomore takes French and Spanish for “fun”. My senior has a friend who wants to take an AP not offered by the school, so she’d doing an independent study with a teacher to prepare for the test.
Wow. I am having a really tough time wrapping my head around this one. Everyone else is pitching in their .02, so here is mine:
1 – if you are trying to better your connections by sending your kid to this fancy-schmancy school, just how do you plan on doing that. As someone else mentioned, the moms here probably don’t work. They’re the ones running the show, the PTO, the spring carnival, the holiday pageant, whatever the activities are. You’re going to have to kiss a lot of ass before you you actually make any worthwhile contacts to better your career standings. Is that kind of hoop-jumping worth $50K a year, just so you can schmooze and rub shoulders with people that you could likely network with in a professional setting? (your local bar association or a professional women’s networking group for example.)
2. if you’re trying to better your kiddo’s connections, you do realize that kids may not stay friends with the kids they go to school with. Their best friend in second grade may not be their best friend in tenth grade. People move away, friendships change, etc. And maybe the plans you have for your kid aren’t the plans your kid has for him/herself. You’d be better off putting that $50k away and saving it for your kid’s college tuition where they are likely to make friends who are more apt to be of the lifelong type and make the kind of connections that actually matter where their career is concerned.
3. If you’re truly worried about the quality of your kid’s education (and I’m not feeling the vibe here, truthfully, but I’m offering up the advice anyhow) you can enroll your kid in enrichment-type classes for a FRACTION of that $50k. Sign them up for programs at your local museum or library or at after school programs that will help them to learn and grow and be challenged. There are options — your school may be able to help you seek them out.
And ask yourself, and think hard about it. Is this an amazing opportunity for YOU or for YOUR CHILD? Because the vibe I (and most other posters here) am feeling is that you’re looking at the opportunity for yourself and your kid is going along for the ride. That’s probably not the definition of an amazing opportunity.
+1
Your kid will grow up convinced that your family is poor. Not kidding. They will forever feel somewhat inferior and wonder why no private jet for me? Don’t just look at the plus side of academic opportunity (pressure), but also look at the downsides. Same for the public school. We can’t control how kids process reality; they get some weird ideas about themselves based on whom they are around.
I’ve definitely known people who felt like their family was “poor” in these situations. They are sort of embarrassed about it as adults (they were middle-class kids at prep school), but the orders of magnitude do distort a kid’s thinking about who is rich and who is not rich.
In my middle and high schools, the kids from the most well-off families owned local construction companies or another fairly small, lucrative business. Nobody had a famous parent or a private jet.
I went to what is now a 45k/year private school. I graduated 12 years ago, and the school was abut 35k a year then. I was on full scholarship – I grew up very middle class but I went to this school from K-12.
I’ll be honest, at times yes I felt “poor”. I had enough perspective from my non-school life to know that I wasn’t poor (we were rich for my town, but poor for my school). I knew my house was smaller than my friends’ and I didn’t have all of the same clothes, activities, and vacations as most of my classmates. Our school did have uniforms, for which I am grateful, because at least in-school we all looked the same and were wearing the same clothes. That being said, I found wealth inequality more visible in college. In grade school and high school there are certainly plenty of avenues to notice the wealth disparity, but in college it is a) every single day and b) the disparity feels even more extreme.
Most, but not all, of the families at my private school were old money. So, while they had more money than God they were not showy and a lot of them believed in making their kids “earn” it. Yes, there were kids who got brand new cars when they got their licenses, but way more kids were given a beater to share with a sibling or had to fund a car themselves. I feel like the kids had nice things when it was something for the parents too (house, vacations, hobbies like skiing – because the parents want these things) but when it was kids only, it was hand me downs or working for it yourself (a kid I grew up with lived in a literal mansion, his family is extremely wealthy, the family’s motto was Harvard or bust; however, when my friend wanted to do a CTY program (or something similar), his parents told him it cost as much as X months of the lawn service and if he wanted to go they’d cancel the lawn service for that time, he’d have to do all yard work, and then they’d use the money saved from the lawn service to pay for the program).
Also – families at 50k a year schools are not private jet families. Those kids are at even more elite schools (likely boarding).
I was a public school kid; husband was private K-12. His perspective of rich vs. poor is whack. We’re midwest, where median HHI is $80k. Our HHI last year was $400,000.
His family may have been “poor” by the standards of the educational environment he grew up in, but there is no universe where we are actually poor and it drives me bonkers whenever he says that we are, especially in front of the kids.
I attended a very prestigious, academically selective private high school from a blue collar neighborhood and I honestly think I ended up just about where I’d be if I had gone to the local good but not great public school. The benefits to prestigious elementary and high schools are for the kids who are geniuses who need college level courses at that age, which those schools can give them. Kids who are bright in an average way get the benefit of being around other bright kids without the less disruptive kids who are just at school to avoid truancy, but that can be accomplished through AP or Baccalaureate classes at a public school.
In terms of connections–if they happen at the HS level, I didn’t see it. Generally speaking, the super wealthy connected kids all clique up together, the less well off “scholarship” kids all clique up together, and the middle class kids all clique up together. There was a shocking amount of class segregation in my high school and I would think it’s similar in other institutions. For college, we definitely had more kids going to Ivies/Near-Ivies than the local public schools, but most people still went to our flagship state U, nearby flagship state Us, and SLACs.
Overall, not worth it, IMO.
If I was in your shoes, I would stay in public. You can pay for a lot of summer camp (sleepaway, fancy computer day camp), enrichment tutoring, and travel if you aren’t paying private school tuition. FWIW, my kids’ public elementary started out really slow and ramped up quite a bit in the older grades and into middle/high school. That isn’t every school, but instruction in public schools might surprise you.
I don’t know how connections work in your suburb, in LA people are pretty aggressive about being seen as “normal parents” even if they can offer Grandfather Oligarch’s backyard for the eighth grade party (and don’t take kindly to assertive networking in those spaces).
There’s a value in being a bigger fish in a smaller pond, and honestly, being used to peer interaction with people of different social classes has value.
As someone who attended a decidedly lower-middle-class public school K-12 then an elite college and sort-of-elite law school, I was initially more intimidated by the professors than the prep school kids, but I wound up doing as well (if not better) than many of the kids who had gone to better schools.
Chiming in on the connections for your kid angle…
My hometown public schools were very good, so private wasn’t really a thing (and the closest private school at the time was 45 minutes away).
All the influential/rich families sent their kids there. I was with some kids K-12.
I would not consider a single one a connection today. Just because your child goes to the same school as someone doesn’t mention a friendship or connection will be established. Because kids are kids and they are going to decide who they want to connect with. 20+ years later, those old school groups are still in place.
The real value of private school is college placement. The good private school college counselors have relationships with all the college admissions departments. They know that X school will take two of their students every year and Y school will take one, and they choose which students those will be and tell the colleges whom to admit. This is great if your kid wants to go to an elite college where public school valedictorians do not get in unless they play the bassoon and sail.
Coming from a private school, I think the community definitely helps with connections but not in the way you seem to be thinking. I have never once used a classmate, friend, or classmate’s parent as a “connection”. I’m in a kind of niche field so no one from high school would be helpful as a “connection” to me.
However, being the graduate of an older, very established private school with a close community means that people are very willing to connect with random fellow alumni. If I want to talk to someone, I can just reach out to my school’s alumni office with a request and they’ll connect me to someone relevant. This is the type of school where alumni are going back for homecoming every single year of their lives, so if I’m connected to someone via the alumni office they’re happy to talk to me – it’s just the culture of the school.
Likewise, students (so therefore later alumni) and teachers have close relationships. I had a former history teacher reach out to another alumni to connect us. The alum I spoke to was 20 years older and very senior / well known in our field and took two hours to chat with me because Mrs. A recommended me. He said he does this a lot because if Mrs. A recommends someone, he takes that recommendation as gold. We spent 20 minutes of our call bonding over shared traditions and a few mutual beloved teachers.
It’s very much an old boys’ (and now girls’) club in that if you mention you’re from the school people you’ve never met will bend over backwards to open doors for you. The bond from that kind of school is just really, really strong and we want to help people from that network succeed. We ALSO know the rigor of the education and that anyone from our school is going to be well educated, well spoken, and a hard worker so we’re happy to make the connection or recommendation.
Interesting. Do you find the alumni network to be broad or more local/regional in scope? There are some smaller cities (I grew up near one) where people are pretty fixated on where you went to high school. Like, they want to place where you are in the social hierarchy because you went to St. So-and-So or Country Day Whatever.
Admittedly, I’m in the same metro area where I grew up and went to school. However, I have friends from high school in a variety of cities who have tapped into the network, including cities across the country from where we grew up. It’s probably strongest in my home city and NYC, just by virtue of number of alumni in those cities.
That makes sense. My college is similar in terms of alumnae network, and my law school is mostly a regional alum network.
People are misunderstanding the concept of connections here. The connections for your kid are not his classmates or their parents. It’s the alumni network.
Exactly. With private school, you’re buying the smaller classes, the focused attention, and also, largely, the alumni network. I am always surprised that people say they wouldn’t send their kids to Harvard Westlake, National Cathedral, Sidwell, Philips Exeter, Ms. Porters, Hotchkiss, Collegiate School, Chapin, Brearly, Choate, Hockaday, St. Marks, or Horace Mann (or others in their respective cities, these are just a random list of ones I’m familiar with), if they had the opportunity.
This. 100%
OP is talking about using her fellow parents for business development.
It might not just be business connections directly, but being at the “right” kind of school that fits with what your boss and clients think you should have. Not saying this is a good thing, but just like how there are expectations about how a biglaw partner dresses, styles her hair, etc., there are also certain “playing the part” aspects of kids. One of those might be attending xyz school on your area. It shows you are in the know, that you are financially successful, that you are “one of them”. This is often more important to “new money”bosses/clients, imo, but I (as a public school kid in biglaw) certainly understood the undercurrents of what class expectations were now put on me.
If you turn down the seat now, will you really have the option to reapply for middle school or high school?
This is the battle of the realists v the idealists. I’m a realist, go private. And the connections will help both you and your kid.
And the connections are not “hello, we went to same school, please give me job/client.” It’s “listen, I’m doing this job in NYC this summer. Do you know of where I can stay?” And someone in the alumni network maybe has a spare room, or they know someone who does. It’s when you need to vet a doctor when you need a second opinion on a diagnosis, and someone in the alumni network works at a hospital that has a speciality in this. It’s you want to hear what the heck it means when you work in “private equity”, so someone agrees to have a 30 minute coffee with you. I genuinely feel bad if you don’t have the opportunity to use connections like these. And if you wouldn’t jump at the chance to go to a school (H-W) where freakin’ Charlie Munger was on the board of trustees for dozens of years if presented with the opportunity, then we just have fundamentally different worldviews.
What would you have done? I’m curious how others would have handled this situation. I was in a grocery store, grabbing some cans of soup. Two women were also looking at the soup section and one grabbed a box of tomato soup from the top shelf. She dropped it on the ground where it broke open and sprayed tomato soup on both legs of my light-colored jeans and on my light-colored leather shoes. It was clearly an accident and she apologized several times. Would you have offered money for dry cleaning if you had caused this accident?
No. My goodness get over it. It was an accident. If she had offered you should have declined.
Maybe, but I wouldn’t judge someone who didn’t, because a. she was probably pretty flustered by the incident and not necessarily thinking through all possible responses immediately and b. assuming it was a stranger, you have no idea about her financial situation. It would have been nice if she had, but I definitely would have declined her offer even if she had made it. Accidents happen, and I don’t really think that people go around owing each other for every little thing that happens. There’s a reason I pretty much never wear light colored pants or shoes!
+1.
no
No, accidents happen. And I probably would’ve been too mortified to think straight in the moment.
+1. Someone ruined a nice-for-me pair of suede shoes in a similar accident, but what can you do? Sh!t happens.
NO; and the thought would not have even crossed my mind. You can just wash your jeans and wipe your shoes off. JFC.
This.
No.
I might have offered, but also, unless I had $10 on me, what am I going to do, venmo you? I also would not have taken anyone up on this offer if they made it.
No. I would have apologized and then moved on. Accidents happen and it’s part of existing in the world that they sometimes happen to you.
No, definitely not. It’s an accident, it’s life.
Absolutely not.
I can see you’re in for a pile-on from a few “regulars.” Sorry, OP! It sucks to have shoes ruined in a place you weren’t expecting – it’s not like you took them on a muddy walk. I would pay for cleaning yourself and move on, though.
I think it’s telling she jumped right to dry cleaning. Almost all clothes can be washed in a regular home machine. Do people bring shoes to dry cleaners? It does stink to have your things get dirtied, but this was an accident. It’s a certain type of mindset to want everyone to “pay” for their mistakes
Exactly. It was jeans, not some fancy material that is dry clean only.
I’m sure she meant to clean leather shoes.
Don’t know about you and your laundry skills, but mine are just on the top side of average and the dry cleaners are much better at removing stains than I am. So I wouldn’t think it odd to take an oddly stained item to the cleaners.
Well, your tendency is not common.
Especially in the age of the internet.
Maybe I don’t want to spend my time and energy being a stain master. Maybe I just want to drop off the offending article of clothing and tell them it’s got tomato soup on it, or salad dressing, or whatever. And then I pick it up and it’s clean.
OP here and I was truly just curious from a manners perspective. Like, if I was the person who caused the situation, what would be a considerate way to handle it?
Trust me, I’m over it. I understand accidents happen, the woman was genuinely apologetic, and I graciously accepted her apologies. And I was able to remove the stains myself.
You’re clearly not over it if you’re writing about it on a blog the next day.
She did handle it in a considerate way. She apologized to you.
I don’t know why we are piling on OP. She asked a question of general interest. It’s not that deep. We don’t have to excoriate her.
So you wanted her to whip out her wallet right there in the aisle? Ask for your Venmo ID and give you some money? If you are really this worked up I suppose you could complain to the store but you’d probably get the side eye there too. Accidents happen. It’s life.
Just want to offer this perspective – I’m not high earning like most others on this board and there have been times at the grocery store where I am strapped to a low cash budget. As in, I can’t buy everything I want because I only have $50 in my account for groceries. Even if the thought of paying you did cross my mind, it wouldn’t have even been an option.
At this point in my life, I would let it go. Yes, I buy nice things and yes, I take exquisitely good care of the things I buy. However, I get paid real money and would rather spend $50 at the dry cleaner than to chase down a stranger for money.
There are times in my life when I would have bought those shoes second hand and not been able to afford the cleaning or the replacement, and I would have probably just used my words.
No, because you were wearing jeans and most people don’t dry clean jeans. At least that’s what the logical part of my brain would’ve thought in the moment.
But also, accidents happen and sometimes we are left handling the expenses.
I would have given her a $20 and apologized. I spilled (a little) wine on a woman’s sweater in a restaurant years ago, and that’s what I did. But I wouldn’t want to get into a back and forth about sending me the bill and all that because some people are unreasonable and would drag it on. (Not suggesting that’s you, OP) Anyway, sorry about your pants and shoes! Bummer
Dry cleaning? Jeans? No, that would not have entered my mind. I would have been mortified and apologized profusely but no to offering you some money for ???
+1
Nope, definitely not. Work on your reflexes!
She apologized several times which makes me assume she felt awful. Show some grace and wish her a better rest of the day.
No, and I would never expect anyone to offer me money either, especially with today’s grocery prices. I would assume the person doesn’t have dry cleaning money to give me and take care of it myself.
I would apologize profusely and disengage as quickly as possible. There are crazies out there. I would be concerned how the person might react once they had a chance to think about it. I’d also be concerned that they would take the offer of some money to be an opening to negotiate for more. “No $20 for dry cleaning isn’t enough you owe me new shoes and jeans! $500 minimum!” And if someone starts being crazy in public you can bet someone will whip out their phone and post – just some of it of course, which may or may not paint you in a good light – all over social media.
I would have offered money if I’d caused the accident, but I also wouldn’t expect money from the woman who caused the accident. For all I know, she’s using her last $20 to buy soup.
If you can’t afford to have those pants and shoes ruined, you can’t afford to wear light colored anything. Who would think of such a thing?
I’m going to my annual physical soon and am wondering if there are any specific tests or questions I should ask my doctor about. My doctor is okay, but she does the bare minimum at these appointments so I feel like it’s on me to be a little more proactive about asking for things. I’m late 30s and generally healthy but am feeling myself getting older so I’m trying to stay on top of my health. Any general advice? Thank you!
I would try to think about what you mean by “I am feeling myself getting older”. Do you mean psychologically? Or you are having more aches and pains? Or you are more tired? I ask because there are things that are more common with aging that often get diagnosed late in women who disregard their early symptoms (or more often, the doctors disregard them). So if you are sleeping less well, and/or feel more tired be sure to mention. Fatigue is a vague symptom, but you are getting to the age where thyroid issues are pretty common in women, and anemia always.
I think by your age, my doctor was checking my blood counts (cbc) to look at anemia, cholesterol, thyroid test (TSH), and a vitamin D if I haven’t had one (most of us are low, so I started vitamin D supplements around your age).
I would also think more carefully about what medical problems run in your family. For example, in my family, several members start having high cholesterol in their 30s / 40s, so I started checking that regularly. And we have a lot of cancer in my family, and now the women actually start getting mammograms and MRIs at age 35 (!). I was the first one to do genetic testing because of my family history, but it effects everyone.
All of this, but in general look up recommended screenings for 40 years olds. Many cancers hit earlier even for those without family history. If you are not white, that risk is higher. They should be checking you for diabetes, heart disease, etc at your age. You should also ask about updated vaccines: tetanus, hepatitis, mmr, many should be updated as an adult at least once. You can probably still get an HPV vaccine and reduce risk of cervical cancer. If you are sexually active, get screened for STIs. Don’t make it a moral judgement about the people who should get screened for their sexual health (not saying you would but many people do). It’s a routine fact of life that they can just test for in your blood sample anyway.
If you have any colon cancer in your family, request a colonoscopy.
Unfortunately most health insurance will not cover it unless you meet national guidelines for screening. Now the age is 45. If you have a family history, you can talk to your doctor about whether you should get cancer genetic testing. If you have a family history, your doctor may be able to argue with your insurance for you to get a colonoscopy at age 40, or 10 years younger than the age your family member was diagnosed with colon cancer.
Colon cancer is presenting much younger in our generation, and we don’t know why. So definitely pay attention if you notice changes in your bowels, anemia of unclear cause, black stools etc..
Even just a polyp in a close relative may be enough for coverage. My sister had a polyp in her 20s, and insurance covered my colonoscopy at age 33 (absent other compelling symptoms).
The guidance is actually a bit more nuanced. It’s 45 if you don’t have a family history. If you have a family history, screening should start at age 40 or 10 years before the age that an immediate family member was diagnosed. This is important because more people are falling in that second category. My colon cancer was diagnosed when I was 46. So those in my immediate family should be tested at 36. Definitely talk with your doctor. (And don’t just brush off anemia–I owe my life to my primary as that was my only symptom and I didn’t have any family history.) Other common symptoms can include blood in your stool, bloating, a change in bowel habits, or tiredness.
Fundamental to the job of a doctor is to consider what tests are appropriate for a patient and to order them. If you think she’s great, but wish she ordered more tests, you could say that you prefer more testing and ask if she has recommendations to step up your screenings. Definitely ask if you have a specific concern or symptoms or family history.
In general, I think it’s probably better to ask enough questions to get comfortable with her style or to find a doctor whose approach you trust more than people on the internet. You deserve to have a doctor you trust and the doctor deserves to have patients who trust her more than the internet (or maybe not, if she’s a bad doctor, but then at least you deserve to have a doctor you trust).
I’ve honestly never had a doctor so good that I couldn’t benefit from looking some things up; the appointments are so rushed that they don’t have time to cast a wide net. And I need to know what’s worth mentioning or asking about since it’s not going to be everything I could mention.
If your parents/aunts/uncles/grandparents have passed away, ask yourself whether any of them died of diseases with a genetic component. Breast or colon cancer? Ask for early screening.
Other than that, be sure she does a lipid panel if she does not do that automatically.
We live in the south and want to plan a trip for our two middle school kids to see snow. We don’t ski so I am not leaning towards the expensive ski towns in Colorado. The trip would be after Christmas this year (leaving Dec 27) or early March 2025. Any suggestions? If we go in March, does that limit our options because it won’t be snowing most places?
Quebec City
Charming but cold as absolutely efffff. We babymooned there for a cozy pre-Christmas extended weekend and it was delightful. But I’m from Boston and even for be it was out of this world frigid. Your southern blood genuinely may not want to even venture outside.
My advice is to leave some room in the budget for coat decisions. If you decide on Quebec City, or really anywhere during the winter, you might go during a week where it is properly cold. You will need to buy an actual parka for that, which you can easily pick up in the North. With that said, Quebec City is a great home base for a Northern vacation, and is also a city that handles snow and winter weather well.
IMO for places that get snow, they seem to have it in Feb but not at Xmas (unless it’s a place that always has snow). Presidents’ Day Weekend trip (maybe extended a bit) or MLK? I’ve had many a brown Xmas in the NEUS with my parents. Kids haven’t seen snow since before COVID.
Yeah my upper Midwest kid has never had a white Christmas I don’t think – and she’s 6.
I live in a snowy climate (Canada) and thanks to climate change we barely have snow after January anymore. Don’t go in March.
Where in Canada are you? Atlantic Canada has been getting walloped by snow. Looking at another 30-50cm tomorrow. Nova Scotia was basically shut down most of last week with snow.
Oh wow! I’m in Ontario and it’s not unusual for us to have a snowless Christmas the last few years.
Do early march, and go to VT or Canada. You have lots of options that include skiing and non skiing.
Like the poster above, I’m in Canada (Montreal) and the snow is melting in my back yard as we speak. We’ve also had quite a few « brown » Christmases in the past few years. Unless you’re in the mountains or pretty far North, snow is not a guarantee.
March is the worst time.
I’m in Southern Ontario and March is completely unpredictable. Snow is a possibility but can never be counted on. Sometimes it’s warmer in March than it is in April. If you want snow in March you have to go to the prairies or way up north.
I made the suggestion for VT and I ski early march in Stowe. It’s always been snowy (not actively snowing). Perhaps just getting to a higher elevation will help, vs moving North.
If you like the idea of Colorado, Leadville (old mining town with a TERRIFYING public sledding hill), Estes Park or Granby/Grand Lake (the entrance towns to Rocky Mountain national park) are fun in winter, still snowy in March, and not skiing oriented
+1 to Granby/Grand Lake. Reliable snow, non-downhill-ski activities available (tubing, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing), only about 2 hours from DEN, and it’s not as $$$ as the fancy ski towns.
I was coming here to suggest either YMCA Snow Mountain Ranch or YMCA Estes Park, both in CO.
What about Quebec? Winter carnival in Quebec City, or ski area at Mt Tremblant. Montebello is also nice.
Innsbruck in Austria also has a nice mix of ski and other winter activities like long sledding tracks. Fly into Munich or direct into Innsbruck via London.
Montebello is an absolute dream. It also has lots of family events around Christmas.
You don’t ski, but do you want to ski? Skiing is the most concentrated fun you can have on snow and there are ample resources for beginners/first-timers. There are a lot of options that aren’t as expensive (or crowded) as Colorado.
If you go in March, I’d go somewhere with mountains if you want reliable snow. Lots of other places might have snow then, but also might not. Ski towns are especially good because they make snow, plus they often have other activities like cross country skiing or snowshoeing if you’re not into downhill skiing. If you’re coming from the east coast, I’d probably go to Vermont, but no specific recs as it’s been a few decades since I lived in New England. Or you could try Utah or a cheaper town in CO.
Maybe try southern CO instead?
I don’t know how you plan a trip like this. A place where snow is guaranteed is also likely to have flights cancelled due to bad weather – i.e. you ideally want to go when the snow has stopped and it’s picturesquely sitting on the ground, not when it’s falling heavily and traffic is restricted or shut down. These things can’t be planned even a week or two in advance, much less a year in advance. I think a ski place (even if you don’t ski) is better because it’s built around winter travel, and also has manmade snow in case it’s an unusually warm winter.
you just book it knowing you might have to last-minute cancel if there’s a freak storm that means you can’t travel, or if it’s so warm there’s no snow. This is why airlines with reusable trip credit and lodging with flexible cancellation policies are great!
I would suggest the Canadian side of the Rocky Mountains if you want to see snow in March. Banff and surrounds are a good option and flying into Calgary + renting a car is the best way. The area is a tourist trap in a lot of ways, so the prices may be on par with Colorado. There’s a lot of options for accommodation in the area, and this area of the mountains generally sees snow until March. Calgary is also basically Denver, but March is unreliable in terms of snow in the City itself. In Banff, I’ve skiied until May, though the snow was really only on the mountains by that point.
Alternatively, I would suggest Buffalo or other northeastern spots. They get some of the most snow in North America so the odds might be good?
This is a great option! You can skate on Lake Louise I think?
A bit late on this, but I am traveling with an 11-yr-old to Quebec City this weekend. We’re going to try out snowshoeing in a nearby national park and there is also a big toboggan ride you can do in the city itself. Another big plus is that the company we’re using for the snowshoeing excursion will rent you a set of outdoor gear (snow pants, parka, boots, etc) – convenient if you don’t own winter gear or can’t figure out how to pack it. I have been to QC before, though not in winter, and found the food to be really good so I’m looking forward to that too. Good luck with your trip!
Travel and Leisure just did an article about ski vacations in West Virginia – sort of random and wouldn’t make sense for a serious skier but sounded like a fun and much cheaper option for someone who wants a snowy getaway
Snowshoe WV is still surprisingly expensive, and it’s not at a high enough elevation to guarantee snow or snowmaking weather.
Someone posted here recently about how to overcome a scarcity mindset and I wasn’t on time to contribute that day, but I have been thinking about this a lot lately and one thing that has made a huge difference to me is switching from “I don’t have time“ to “that’s not a priority right now.” We all have the same amount of time, 24 hours in the day, and there are a lot of people out there spending those hours a lot differently than I do and fitting in a lot more than I do. It helps me get out of the scarcity mindset to acknowledge that I do have choices about how I spend my time. It’s simply that I don’t always want the consequences of certain choices. Could I get in a longer workout if I got up at 4 AM? Absolutely! There is time for that. I just don’t want to sacrifice sleep so I need to fit it in somewhere else instead.
I love this. Thank you for sharing.
I have been trying to get my husband to think this way about money. He thinks we are poor because we cannot save over 50% of our income and pay for college and buy a boat and take fancy vacations all at the same time. (We don’t want a boat but some of the families in our very ordinary middle-class neighborhood have them and it makes him think that they have more money and we are somehow doing something wrong.) I keep explaining that the neighbors might have chosen to prioritize their careers more to earn more money or to make their kids take student loans or to save less for retirement or to finance things instead of paying cash.
Exactly! You see Bob and Jane down the street with a boat, Sue and Kevin who go to Europe every year, the couple next door who just sent their kids to Dartmouth, and the DINKs across the street who just bought a vacation house.
Okay, does that mean that you should be able to afford a boat, European vacations , full tuition at an expensive college, and a vacation house? Or are you doing the exact same thing all of your friends are, which is picking and choosing what you can afford?
(Not to start a Disney firestorm, but I get this a lot in my circle with Disney. “You aren’t taking your son!” “Why don’t you want to do the Disney races? You’re a runner and they are the best!” Because we take our son on different travel adventures, which mean more to us as a family than Disney, and I’m spending gobs of money trying to do all Abbott WMM races, which means a lot more to me than Disney. I can’t afford to do that AND Disney, and Disney isn’t a priority.)
God, if I had endless resources I absolutely would not spend it on Disney. I do not understand the Disney-obsessed.
me neither and i say this as someone currently planning a disney trip, but we plan on going once. i joined a facebook group to get some tips and omg people are insane. like their whole lives revolve around going to disney world and collecting different things and eating certain snacks, etc. i will admit it is quite entertaining
I don’t, either. It’s a one-and-done trip for us. Some of our friends are Disney adults, though. Comes in handy for getting tips for a once-in-a-lifetime trip, but that’s where I draw the line. To each his own!
We have a group of friends that like to do RunDisney. It is essentially, the elder millennial gen x version of my MIL’s group of cruise friends that go on one or two cruises a year. No different than the friend groups that have the annual trip to Vegas or NOLA. Do we completely drink the kool-aide? No. But, its an excuse for us to go on vacation once or twice a year together, plus it keeps our increasing older selves motivated to keep running.
If I had endless resources would do maybe ONE all-inclusive Disneyland trip with the fancy guides and the hotel and the character breakfasts, mostly because the base-model Disneyland visit is so unpleasant nowadays. The last time I took my kids, it was absolutely packed on a random weekday, all of the waits were hours long, and I swear the Haunted Mansion broke down like three separate times while we were on it. My kids and I agreed that the janky, rusty old boardwalk amusement park near the grandparents’ house was more fun.
I really like this! Thanks for sharing.
For me it’s not that simple, because both phrases can be true, and it’s often not the case that a person is choosing X over Y because Y is not a priority. It’s often that X has to be chosen for reasons even though they would love to do Y and consider it a priority. It just can’t be top priority at that moment.
We can’t all pick and choose how we spend our time, and sometimes we genuinely don’t have time for all of the things we would like to do.
That….is what “priority” means? You’re choosing X because it is the higher priority? Doesn’t mean other things aren’t important to you, just that they can’t be the priority in this life stage.
Right – and in some cases, the consequences of shifting something to be lower-priority are too severe for you. For example, when thinking about elder care, you may want to limit your involvement to no more than 10 hours per week, but you find that hiring a separate caregiver would cost more than you can comfortably spend. In that case, instead of saying “I have no time for anything else because of elder care,” you’d say “I could make the time by hiring a caregiver, but the cost of that feels too high right now and that is taking priority.” It’s all about feeling agency over choices, even hard ones.
That’s why ‘That’s not a priority right now’ is such a silly phrase. I might be choosing X because it has to be *the* priority, but Y is still *a* priority, it just has to come second for reasons at that moment.
‘I don’t have time right now’ to me is a much more realistic and honest phrase.
That’s fine, but this convo is about avoiding a scarcity mindset. Saying you don’t have enough time, money, or whatever it is is a scarcity-based way of thinking. Absolutely everyone on this planet has different priorities and things that must get done and we all have the same amount of time.
Tell me about your experience finishing or remodeling your basement. Especially looking for DC-area experiences. Costs? What would you do differently/wish you had known? Thanks!
What is your water table like? I have a sump pump and during a storm, the power went out overnight and the basement flooded. I put in a sump pump with a battery backup but I’m still wary of that happening again. I’m by Roslyn, so to me it was well-drained high ground but not high enough :(
Our neighbors recently dug down to get a ceiling height of 8′ (was just under 7′). It cost about $100K just for the excavation and the underpinning. Then they added two sump pumps and finished the space with nothing fancy, laminate floors and can lights. The total price was under $200K for everything.
(You know this already but do not skimp on the waterproofing!)
I’m the sump pump person above and this is a legit point. I am envious of a neighbor who had a deeper-dug-out basement (randomly — these were tract houses so IDK why one is different). Mine is not for the very tall. I decided it was Ikea-item worthy but nothing better than that. I had a swale dug in the yard so that it helped pull water from the house but even if a basement is dry, dampness can seep in through the cinder blocks. I’d ideally start fresh with a poured concrete foundation (then put tar over that). Water is the enemy of the homeowner. I felt much more secure spending $ on a paver patio and many heaters and a fire pit because it was harder to ruin.
I did this in the NYC burbs, so cost might be similar. Ours was a good size and concrete blank slate, so we didn’t have to do anything structural. We did already have a French drain and sump pump w/ backup — definitely do your waterproofing first! And have a plan for dehumidifying it in the summer.
Our space was about 400-500 sq ft, and we framed it into a big rec room and a smaller office. No bathroom/plumbing. Including permits and unforeseen issues, the total was about $58K and five months. We were quoted $42K and three months, so definitely build in time and money buffer. And that didn’t include heat/hvac, which we still have to add for another $2-3K.
We are very glad we did it. Only “regrets” are that we said yes to a lot of things and I wish we’d better tracked what the upcharges were going to be.
Has anyone had a physical reaction to the pneumonia vaccine? I got it on a whim yesterday afternoon for the first time at my annual bc I have a newborn and mild asthma.
Today, I’m achy in all joints, esp legs, mild chills. I react strongly to Covid vaccines and this is a mild version of that but very noticeable and enough to make me very nervous since we’re traveling by air to the memorial services for a dear family member this weekend. Internet sleuthing isn’t giving me a strong answer either way. SOS. Any anecdata? Loading up on fluids in the meantime.
Ask your doctor.
Omg, you’re fine. It’s 2024. Is it not common knowledge by now that human beings get mild flu-like symptoms after certain vaccinations? You are not contagious and, yes, you can fly.
Yikes.
My question is, is this one of those vaccinations?? It’s new to me. Flying isn’t my concern. It’s feeling like SH IT and this getting way worse while traveling with said newborn to a go-go-go weekend with lots of family, some very elderly, being away from home. Flight is tomorrow. I do have a call in to my doc but we have a lot of snow today and their office is closed. Who knows if I hear back.
But, you have a nice day.
This is a normal reaction to a vaccine.
I mean she’s being cautions about flying, which is a good thing.
OP, I haven’t gotten the pneumonia vaccine but the flu shot this year wiped me OUT. In your shoes I might take a covid test on Thursday before flying out, but otherwise just rest/fluids/NSAIDs.
??? You’re not sick or contagious. This is a normal reaction to a vaccine.
Yes, of course. It is a good sign that my immune system is reacting as intended to the vaccine. A vaccine is supposed to activate your immune system so it starts rapidly building cells in anticipation of a severe infection. Much of getting sick is not the effects of the virus per se, but your own body trying to fight it.
So just take some tylenol, take it easy, and thank goodness you are healthy that your immune system is working appropriately. Sure hydrate well, and rest up, if this is unpleasant for you.
I have a family member who is immunocompromised and they never feel any response to vaccines. And they get sick a lot. It is not “normal”/desired to have no response to a vaccine.
Thank you. I’ve honestly never ever reacted to any vaccines at all but two of the however many covid boosters I’ve had. I had no idea that it was common knowledge that all vaccines could cause this. Glad this is prob all it is and sorry(?) for apparently annoying some of you for asking. Fluids and Tylenol and praying the baby sleeps today so I can too.
Like others have said, this is a common reaction. My doc told me to schedule it on a Friday when I didn’t have anything big that weekend (or Thursday with WFH Friday). Unfortunate they didn’t give you the same warning.
It’s really too bad that doctors don’t explain that this is normal for pretty much any vaccine. It leads to the common misconception that “I can’t take the flu shot… it gives me the flu” type of misinformation.
They should have given you papers with the vaccine that talk about the side affects. Reading that may help?
I had reactions to Covid vaccines too. You could check with your doctor to see if they can do a tele/health visit. Or see if your insurance has an ‘ask a nurse’ line you could call and consult if you want more information specific to you not just general internet research. Hope you’re feeling better soon. Safe travels!
Is the pneumonia vaccine even a live vaccine? I didn’t think any vaccines were live any more. So you wouldn’t be “contagious.”
All the COVID shots knocked me on my ass, so I have sympathy. But you should be over it within 24 hours, or at the very least, can mitigate the symptoms with some Tylenol.
How did you get them to give you the pneumonia vaccine? I have asthma and my pulmonologist won’t recommend it because I am under 65.
She just offered! I’m 39. I barely have asthma. I get bronchitis quite a bit more than the average person so they flagged me as asthmatic last year (maybe for insurance reasons? Vaguely remember something to do with the inhalers they get me). Which is why I’m so annoyed I got it because I don’t really need it and now I’m feeling unwell. I really hope you can get it because you need it far, far more than I do.
I’m in my 30s. My primary recommended the pneumonia vaccine once I was recovered from a bad bout of pneumonia so I wouldn’t get it again (also have asthma). I was advised to get another dose at 65. I think it helped that she saw me in her office when I looked awful.
I also got mine early due to my very mild asthma so I would change doctors if I were you.
And OP – I too have not had serious reactions to any other vaccines, including COVID-19, but the pneumonia one was awful and left me with a sore arm and general achiness for about a week. Ibuprofen helps. I am sorry so many people got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning and are being so nasty about your question.
I also react strongly for 2 days to COVID shots (does NOT stop me from getting them timely). I had my pneumococcal pneumonia vaccine a couple months ago, and I felt as you describe for a day. Then I was fine. One person. Anecdata on the internet. Etc.
Coming back to add: vaccines do not make you contagious. This is a myth (IMO, a myth about on par with those crazy schools in Florida that told female teachers who got vaccinated for COVID that they could not work at the school because the vaccine they got would affect other women’s periods).
Some vaccines can make people contagious. Just because some don’t doesn’t mean none do!
OMG you are fine. Drama much?
Has anyone actually tried on this Boss dress? I found it to be too low-cut for an office setting.
I haven’t tried this one, but I have tried a bunch of them via Rent the Runway and I often find them too low-cut.
Anyone voting today in Santos’ seat? I listened to The Daily episode about the candidates and the race this morning and it sounds like it has been interesting.
This dress pick is beautiful! And the plus size version is…not. Looks like a child’s play dress.
Do you have a running inner monologue? I do, and apparently my husband doesn’t! It’s funny. I assumed everyone does because that’s my reality. I googled and saw estimates that 30-50% of people do. For me, that means I talk to myself, often in the second person (ex: “where did you leave your headphones? You last had them in the car…”)
I do. And, until right now, I assumed everyone does. Interesting.
Me too!
I don’t have a running inner monologue or think in words (which is awkward because I don’t form my thoughts into words before saying them unless I deliberately pause and think it all through as if I’m imagining myself talking, which people notice as a long pause and comment on!). I was equally surprised when I learned how different this is for other people.
This is weird because I only think in words. Sometimes I have to literally talk through something aloud to fully get it.
No, because my running time is one of the few times when the racing thoughts in my head stop and give me a break!
I think the OP meant “running” as in “continual,” not “running” as in “while going for a run.” :)
LOL, I totally misread that, based on the conversation above.
Yes, I meant continual!
Yes, unless I am listening to a podcast or some such.
I often speak it out loud to my 10mo baby, which I think is just a very mom thing to do.
And I also speak in first-person plural (“where did we leave our headphones? We had them in the car…” Perhaps I am Gollum).
+1. Sometimes putting on an audiobook is how I shut down the inner voice which helps me fall asleep.
Snort, I also do the first-person plural in inner monologue. Absolutely hate it when it’s used in speech or text as a substitute for second person plural or y’all, but will happily ask myself “now darling, where did we leave our headphones?”
All day long! Sometimes out loud, too.
I do. I also hear music and other people’s voices, see still and moving pictures, and have a map in my head.
My husband has none of these and says he thinks exclusively in feelings and impressions.
Yes, and when I’m alone my internal monologue is often an external monologue. It was a difficult transition going back to the office after lockdown; I got so used to talking to myself all day! DH has more or less gotten used to it but sometimes if I’m having a particularly animated conversation with myself he’ll poke his head around the corner and ask who I’m talking to. I often pace around while talking to myself or in deep thought because I have trouble sitting still all day. Apropos of nothing, some of my closest friends seem to think I’m neurodivergent? Idk why.
DH does not have an internal monologue. If I ask him what he’s thinking the answer is almost always a truthful “nothing”. It must be nice to be able to experience silence.
When I ran I always found that the PRIME TIME to have imaginary arguments with other people, sometimes in the past. Maybe that’s just me though…
Ooo yes. While running and at 3 am.
No and I am equally surprised that some people do!
+1
Yes. It’s my depression-and-anxiety-ologue. It never shuts up but appropriate medical treatment installed a very effective volume control.
Recently someone here said the linen dress they got from Talbots last summer was on major sale. I went to check it out, and found work/travel pants on sale, in both black and navy. The Montauk pants are a slim fit, and — miracle of miracles — look reasonably similar on non-model shaped me as on the model. The fabric is machine washable and feels/looks higher quality than more expensive pants I own. $30, and returnable.
Thanks for the heads up! I need work pants and Talbots pants have historically worked well for me.
I keep reading in the comments here that dresses are no longer a current look for work and that sheath dresses would come across as dated. But I keep seeing great sheath dresses suggested here like the one today. Personally, I love the green dress pictured today. I hate pants because they feel too constricting, plus I end up having to coordinate 3 pieces – pants, top, blazer or sweater. And with the newest pants cuts I am trying to figure out how to tailor for length, flats vs heels, etc. I really miss when I could just throw on a dress and call it a day. Are sheath dresses really dated now, or am I reading the comments too literally? My job involves a lot of client interfacing so I need to be very polished, but I’m struggling with the current work clothes. Can we please bring back dresses??
Sheath dresses are absolutely fine. It’s a classic style. If I saw a colleague wearing one, I’d be thinking, oh cute dress, nice color, not OMG SO DATED WHAT IS SHE THINKING.
Also, I am becoming very, very tired of the word dated, in case you can’t tell. We are lucky to live in a time when many styles are available. It’s FINE and good to choose what works best for your style, body type, and preferences.
This is true, but there are definitely visual elements that are trends for a year or two and then are seen less and aren’t available new anymore. Obviously they’re still wearable, but some people don’t want to keep wearing them. Call it dated or call it something else, it’s something lots of people are concerned with.
You are on a fashion blog. People discuss fashion here.
hehehe
Dresses are not dated and I think look better on most women when the goal is to look very polished.
I never wear pantsuits. It’s dress and jacket. Easier in every way including not having to worry about heel height.
Agree. And except for a few extreme style trends like nap dresses, visible zippers, or cold-shoulder details, I think that dresses don’t “date” as much as pants do. With pants you have lengths, widths, tapering, waist height, fabrications . . that’s all I have because I don’t wear them; that’s just what I read on here.
Not only more polished but more comfortable, easier to throw on and be “done”, and better to flow over a menopot, sigh. But to each her own!
+1 I think sheath dresses are a classic style. There are dated versions that feature things that were very in at some point but as a general matter I don’t think a sheath dress in and of itself is dated. A sheath dress with bell sleeves or a chunky exposed zipper would read dated. But a basic sheath dress with a blazer seems fine for most work places today as long as it’s a more formal environment. I do agree that a lot of places went more casual and if your work place has gone more power casual with nice looking sneakers and nicer jeans making regular appearances a sheath dress would look out of place/dated as it’d be too formal of a look.
Look it’s a know your workplace thing. Lots of workplaces have gone very casual and being this level of dressed up would be out of place.
I know I’m getting rid of the majority of my similar dresses because I have very few occasions to wear them for.
Well, if they’re dated, Calvin Klein needs to get his ish together because my local Macy’s had a ton of CK sheath dresses. Too bad I don’t work in an industry where I can wear dresses because they had some really pretty ones, too!
CK is not really a fashion line – I’m sure they make those dresses just for Macy’s because Macy’s knows they sell well. Skinny jeans are sold at Macy’s too. Doesn’t mean they’re current.
If you have to be very polished, go for the sheath dresses if you like them!! I think it’s just that a lot of offices aren’t that formal anymore.
A sheath and blazer with sheer hose is not dated. A black pencil skirt with black booties and black tights is kind of a pre-Covid look and one I’m not seeing around.
I am a lawyer and I wear dresses and see other women wearing them every day. Live in Florida.
Travel question: For a trip to Europe this summer, one option is to fly from our midwest city and transfer in Toronto to our destination in Europe. (There are no direct flights.) Will we need to go through immigration/customs at that airport, or will there be a way to avoid that since we are only connecting to another flight out of the country? From the airport website, it seems the latter, but I’d feel better hearing from people who have done this kind of connection. Asking because I want to feel comfortable with the connection time. Thanks!
Where are you flying from in the US and where in Europe are you going?
A lot of flights don’t show up when you search on Google. Now I’m in Texas I play travel Tetris with flights to Europe.
I haven’t transited Canada, but I’ve always gone through customs + security when transiting in Europe, even when I don’t leave the airport. I would leave extra time.
Not sure why my reply is in mod – I said I’ve had to go through customs and security when having a layover in Europe, so I assume Canada would be the same.
Usually it’s only if you’re leaving the airport or the controlled zone so you should be fine. Ymmv but my consultant dad (ie basically had all the flight timetables tattooed on his brain) recommends if you’re flying to Europe and have the option of connecting somewhere there vs in the US, take the one that connects in Europe because if there are delays, they prioritize getting the international flights out first and there will be more options to reschedule if you need to once you’re on the right continent if something goes wrong. I’m not actually sure how that would apply to canada but thought I would share as a rule of thumb because I have often been overwhelmed by flight choices:)
You’ll not have to go through immigration in Toronto on your way to the EU, as long as you don’t leave the airport. You will go through inbound immigration in Toronto, not in the US. I’ve found it to be far more efficient than coming into the US in either the NYC area or Boston.
You will need to go through customs in Canada.
You may also need to go through US Customs in Canada – in some international airports, you do it there vs doing it after arrival in the US. See https://www.torontopearson.com/en/departures/us-customs-pearson
Yes for on the way back – when I’ve done that it’s a special US/customs immigration booth handling just the one flight at a time right near the gates – you don’t need to worry that you’ll get caught in a massive line or anything
I’ve been caught in massive lines, but I don’t remember how Toronto’s was.
Pearson is a complete clusterf&ck these days.
I haven’t done this post pandemic so I’ll defer to your more recent experience!
I have transferred through Pearson without having to clear immigration/security – you just stay in the international terminal – although I imagine you can’t /guarantee/ you get the right gates for that
You’ll have to clear passport control/customs but it’s pretty quick. They’re not going to hold you up if you are just connecting USA to Europe.
You need to go through Canadian customs, but there is a special line/area for this purpose.
I’m the OP, and see a wide range of responses! I am only interested in the outbound trip, flying from a US city to Pearson, then from Pearson to Dublin (so EU), not leaving the airport. The connection is about 90 minutes. Does that sound OK? I can use points for that flight, but want to make sure it’s doable. On my return, based on my experience connecting from Europe in US cities like ORD and PHL, I’d leave a lot more time. Thanks.
If you’re flying out of Dublin back to the US, you’ll clear US customs at the Dublin airport. So, you can avoid getting stuck in customs while you try to make your connection on the way home.
+1, Dublin is one of a handful of cities where you pre-clear US customs while physically still in the departing airport. A few places in Canada do this, Aruba, Bermuda, and a few others. It means you have to get to the airport a little earlier there, but so nice at home!
Tips on travel rewards credit cards? Is it worth it to open one for the miles? I’m planning an international trip later this year, and we would either travel on Delta or United. I received several prequalified offers for these cards with bonus miles: “get X miles after spending $Y in Z number of months”.
Do I get the miles as soon as I spent $Y, or do I have to wait Z months?
I would spend to meet the minimum, immediately pay it off, and not use the card again except for booking the tickets. I already have the Capital One Venture, which doesn’t charge an international fee, so that’s not an important consideration.
I got the American Express Platinum card when they were offering a lot of points/miles last year, and I believe the points showed up within weeks of fulfilling the minimum spending requirements. (Possibly sooner.)
You get the miles as soon as you spend $Y. The Z is just the deadline for spending, not the waiting period.
I recently opened up an American Airlines credit card, as they offered a $200 credit to open it, free checked bag, no annual fee (1st year?) and 50,000 miles after spending $2500 in 3 months. So I got it. The miles appeared quickly – right after the 3 months. I am going to use the credit to buy another ticket today… month 4 after getting credit card, and I will cancel it before the year is out… using my miles and free checked bag until then for travel this year. I don’t travel a ton.
It’s a little annoying to “keep track” of things…. make sure you charge enough within the time period, and of course… the $200 credit mysteriously disappeared and I had to fight to get it back. So in general, I’m not sure it is worth the frustration.
If I was a frequent traveler, I would splurge on one of the pricier cards that folks on this site talk about with many more benefits.
Does anyone have a Christmas memory journal they like?
I do not but I found a nice album to put our previous cards since we personalize ours with photos. I don’t know if that’s weird or not, but it took me a while to find this one, so I’ll share:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003WSV9VQ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Just a shout into the void today–I am leaving my job in the fall to go back to school and I am absolutely counting the days. I cannot stand the project I’ve been on for the past year (and will not be rolling off until the end of spring), I cannot stand the people I work with, my boss is entirely MIA, I have no motivation to work and so much to work on–ahhhhhh!!!!!
Just have to make it another six months…..
What is the appropriate amount to give as a birthday gift to a paralegal? Very small firm- just myself, one associate, one part-time of counsel and two paralegals. The birthday person has worked for me for a little over 1.5 years. I was planning to give a gift card. (Apologies if this has been covered recently, I had a hard time finding it in the archives.)
It’s unusual to recognize an employee’s birthday with cash. Usually a card and maybe flowers or cake. If you give to other paralegals then I think you have to treat her equally though. As compared to an assistant, I guess it depends what the paralegal’s job is. Imho a paralegal is a professional position, they are not admin support, but different attorneys have different approaches.
Know your office. I’ve never worked anywhere where people gave birthday gifts, as opposed to maybe the office ordered a breakfast spread or a did a cake party each month for that month’s birthdays.
This. An office cake is plenty. PLEASE do not start a tradition of birthday presents if one doesn’t exist. You’re adding mental labor to others around you.
what is the best site these days to compare flights across different airlines?
I find Google Flights to be the most user-friendly
+1, though I think it doesn’t play 100% well with Southwest (like you have to click thru to see the price) if that’s an airline of interest.
As everyone else said, Google Flights to start but I usually follow up with a Momondo search. (But I book direct with the airline; Momondo tends to direct you to third party sellers.)
Google flights + the Southwest website for research, then booking directly with the airline.