Coffee Break: Margot Heels

This post may contain affiliate links and Corporette® may earn commissions for purchases made through links in this post. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

woman wears beige T-strap pumps with black cap toe and pointed heel

I've always liked a sleek T-strap heel, but it's been hard to find them in recent years. Imagine my surprise to se that Tuckenuck has them — and in nine colors!!

I especially like the fact that the stiletto kitten heel is only 2.75″ — a very walkable height.

According to the brand, the shoe is

[t]he rare kind of heel that'll take you from desk to dinner without a second thought. Vintage inspired with modern touches, the Margot Heels were created with style and comfort at the top of mind. … [The heels] can skew polished, sexy, or sweet, depending on how you style them.

I can definitely see that! The shoes are available in sizes 6-11, in 9 colors (some down to lucky sizes), for $245-$265.

As of 2025, these are some of our favorite T-strap pumps for workNordstrom also often has a bunch!

Sales of note for 2/14/25 (Happy Valentine's Day!):

  • Nordstrom – Winter Sale, up to 60% off! 7850 new markdowns for women
  • Ann Taylor – Up to 40% off your full-price purchase — and extra 60% off sale
  • Banana Republic Factory – 50% off everything + 15% off (readers love their suiting as well as their silky shirts like this one)
  • Boden – 15% off new season styles
  • Eloquii – 300+ styles $25 and up
  • J.Crew – 40% of your purchase – prices as marked
  • J.Crew Factory – 50% off entire site and storewide + extra 50% off clearance
  • Rothy's – Final Few: Up to 40% off last-chance styles
  • Spanx – Lots of workwear on sale, some up to 70% off
  • Talbots – Flash sale ending soon – markdowns starting from $15, extra 70% off all other markdowns (final sale)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

110 Comments

  1. I posted rather late in the morning thread about Canada. I am talking to my husband about vacationing in Canada this year in order to be supportive of our kind neighbors to the north.

    One Canadian poster responded “please come!” So I’m here to get some ideas. Places I’ve been and loved:

    Victoria BC
    Vancouver
    Banff/Lake Louise
    Montreal
    Toronto

    I know that leaves a lot in between! We are US west coasters so it’s a little easier to get to BC but I’m open to everything. Love both beautiful nature and lively cities, nice lodgings, and great food.

    Thanks for all suggestions!

      1. I would add Prince Edward Island to these, especially if you go to Nova Scotia. Beautiful nature and fantastic people in all three places.

    1. Nova Scotia and PEI pair well together (Halifax is the airport to fly into). Beaches in PEI are beautiful. Halifax is pretty lively for its size.

      Could also pair up Nova Scotia and Newfoundland or just do Newfoundland. Gros Morne is lovely for hiking and kayaking. I like the Neddie’s Harbour Inn but there are also AirBnBs with unbeatable views. Fogo Island Inn is fantastic if that’s in your budget (3 Michelin keys).

      Polar Bears in Manitoba are amazing experience but that’s a late October/early November trip.

      1. Can you share more details about the polar bears in Manitoba? I want to take my elementary school age daughter in the next few years (when I looked recently it seemed like a lot of tour operators had age minimums of 8 and I don’t think I’d take her before then anyway).

        1. We did ground level with Nanuk Operations but with a child I would probably do the buggy tours with Frontiers North. They have packages that include activities in Winnipeg and on the way to Churchill. You can fly direct into Winnipeg from LA/Phoenix and a few other spots but you’d have to go through Toronto or Montreal from the east coast.

    2. We did a coast-to-coast Canada trip in the fall of 2023 and honestly there wasn’t a place we didn’t love. I second the suggestion to try Nova Scotia/Newfoundland. It’s just beautiful and the people are lovely. Also we’re going to Calgary for a convention in June and looking forward to that.

    3. We’re also in the PNW and did an amazing roadtrip from Port Angeles to Victoria to Tofino to Vancouver last spring. It was lovely and I wish we lived closer to Tofino. We stayed at the Empress in Victoria, the Wick in Tofino and the Loden in Vancouver. Recommend the JW Marriott over the Loden, but the other hotels were wonderful.

    4. Notes for anybody planning a Newfoundland and Labrador trip in 2025:

      The Canada Games will be held here 08-25 August. Flights, ferries, hotels, and car rentals will be scarce.

      For any summertime visit, reserve your rental car early. If you are planning on taking the ferry from Nova Scotia, reserve your passage and cabin early.

      I wouldn’t say that a wintertime visit is the worst idea in the world. However, there are better destinations in Canada for skiing and other winter outdoor activities. Also, you have a higher risk of weather-related flight delays here than with other Canadian cities, because the airlines will tend to keep their aircraft off the island rather than have them stranded here while we wait out a storm and the clean-up.

  2. A commenter here once (within the last year maybe) said something along the lines of “male readers who only like Haruki Murakami make me roll my eyes.” Is there anything universally annoying about this writer? Google didn’t have anything. I’ve read a few things in the past few years and find his writing to be so captivating, but wondering if I’m missing something obvious. Still unpacking the new Neil Gaiman allegations and want to read w eyes wide open.

    1. I think it was probably just a comment about smarmy men who refuse to read books by women. I’m also a Murakami fan and haven’t heard anything negative about him personally. He doesn’t live a very public life, I believe. Gaiman has been widely know to be a creep for a long time, so I think comparing them is apples and oranges.

    2. You are giving a random snarky commenter on the internet too much mental space. If you like Murakami (me too!), that’s all that matters.

    3. I decided to DNF the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle early on because a female stranger calls the main character and starts saying explicit s*xual things. It may have been key to the plot but at the time it only seemed to want to titillate the reader. I decided the book wasn’t for me. I’ve heard his other works are similar in that he portrays women as s*x objects instead of characters. Curious if others here have noticed this?

    4. I think they were probably referring to the opinion some people have that his female characters are one dimensional or manic pixie dreamgirl types.

      1. This is also my understanding! I enjoy some Murakami books, btw.

        It’s more to do with the writing and nothing to do with allegations against him as a human.

    5. As an avid reader of Japanese fiction, I have read many Murakamis and did not come away with such an assessment.
      I would not give the opinion of a single person commenting on the internet a single thought – read for yourself and decide whether you like this author’s style and characters.

    6. Annoying in which way? Murakami makes very nice modern noir novels, Dashiel Hammet moods set in modern-ish Japan, with dream scapes and lonesome males struggling to connect. I like his novels a lot, and there are no particular dog whistles I’ve noticed. His females are meh, but they’re in the noir tradition. Maybe a little dismissive? I have zero views on his author persona. I have noticed no universally annoying traits, and most of the people I know who enjoys his works are women.

      English is a second language to me, though, and I can see how some men who have a non-English language author as their favorite could be universally annoying, in the same way as insisting that French cinema from a certain age is superior. In my mind these would be the same men who “read” Sartre at college and imagined Nietsche would be their thing (based on a Jim Morrison biography), in their teenage years.

      I’ve enjoyed several Gaiman works a lot, but his work is very different to Murakami since he (succesfully!) subverts common Western literature and history tropes. He will make you go ooh, that’s clever!, while Murakami to me is more about a mood. I enjoy both. IMO Gaiman doesn’t write misogynistic characters, but his public author persona comes across as very cringe and fedora-like to me. In my mind his teen fans would have loved to come to the Nietsche-Morrison evenings, but were not invited.

      I think that on the whole I’ve this far had more joy from the cleverness of Gaiman, but I’ve enjoyed the works of both. Whatever YOU think about the works are always more important, though. Published works belong to the world!

      /end random fandom musings.

      1. Ohhh, fedora-like is a descriptor I have long needed. Thank you! You’ve more or less encapsulated my thoughts on the writings of both authors. I appreciate that you took the time.

    7. The Wind Up Bird Chronicle is one of my all time favorite books. That being said, I went on a kick of reading several of his books in a row and realized how regularly he uses rape as a plot device, and that did make me feel a bit uncomfortable. Fwiw, my personal version of that quote (which made me chuckle) is men who are obsessed with Werner herzog as a filmmaker.

  3. 2.75″ seems more like a “real” heel than a kitten heel to me… also, I can’t imagine wearing these to work these days; they look very Before Times….also the back of the shoe leaves your foot so bare!

    1. Agree that these would no longer be appropriate in my office. You’d field a lot of questions about where you were going.

      1. Really? And what is the assumption about where you are going to? I wore flats today but like the look of heels even if my feet don’t.

    2. Yeah, I would have worn the heck out of these back in the day, but to me they don’t look current any more.

      1. I instinctively love these shoes, but feel like the current generation would wear them to work with crew socks, baggy cropped pants, and maybe a bathrobe-like garment on top.

    3. I’m glad to hear that it’s not just me. Anything outside of a flat, a loafer, or a tennis shoe gets the side eye around here. Kind of sad, but my feet are happy.

  4. i’m about to cry about the state of the US at the moment, you guys. hearing the department of education is next.

    hilary clinton just shared this gift article in the atlantic that sums up a lot of it.
    https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/02/elon-musk-bureaucratic-coup/681559/?gift=bQgJMMVzeo8RHHcE1_KM0WBeHzOXI-QvNDe77JFppiU&fbclid=IwY2xjawIPTG9leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHce4BD_EwfnUrpaN-lLa6IJSFyaHX8yzQ2DBQVLAnC0xhrY9u9Oj3QtY1Q_aem_ZwnzguTSE1VtoXa7uSZmWw

    Musk’s pinned tweet (as of the last hour) is in response to a chuck schumer speech and reads as thus:
    “He’s mad that @DOGE is dismantling the radical-left shadow government in full view of the public.
    This is our ONE CHANCE to return POWER to the PEOPLE from an unelected BUREAUcracy back to DEMOcracy!!

    Only with the support of YOU can this succeed. Thank you, unknown soldiers.”

    so f’ing terrified of what’s going to happen.

    btw — i hope no one is going to protests on 2/5, i think those are all fake. no one will say who’s behind them so the fear is it’ll be an excuse to use the insurrection act or just sow violence in general.

    1. The whole playbook is that they want you to panic, cry, overreact, overdramatize. It is clearly working on a lot of the commentariat here.

      Nobody has ever won a negotiation by conceding to the emotional manipulations of the other side. Keep calm. Level your head. And love your neighbors as well as you can.

        1. No, it’s the “come on adult, act like an adult” of political commentary.

          A calm and mature resistance is a strong resistance. Let’s get things done.

          1. Not yelling that the sky is falling like chicken little. We can all see what’s happening. The thing is to stop screaming and start thinking.

          2. …are you asking me to write a long post summarizing effective protest and resistance strategies for you because I dared to say that they don’t include posts that begin “i’m about to cry guys”? Because I’m not going to do that…precisely because it is not an effective or efficient protest strategy.

            Don’t whimper. Do become active in the way that your current power and privilege suggests you will be most effective. I am quite confident you can figure out what that looks like on your own.

        2. Ok, well the OP is nearly hysterical, so “be calm” seems like pretty good advice.

          I’m looking at it in a different light. What all needs to still be around in 2029 for it to feel like my America has survived – wounded, battered, and bruised – but survived? I need our economy (the value of a dollar, the stock market, manufacturers, service providers, businesses – the whole nine yards), our democratic institutions (House, Senate, court structure, etc), our Constitution and our rights, and the same level of domestic tranquility (no roving bands of a r m e d g a n g s, no mobilized military for domestic use). I do not believe it’s hyperbole to say that this is as momentous a time in our nation’s history as the Civil W a r was.

          I think the US as a nation can survive the loss of the Dept of Ed – I’m not commenting on whether it’s good or bad, just that the republic can live without it. Cabinet agencies aren’t what make America America. The executive branch bureaucracy is huge, historically speaking. And yes, Elon having access to the Treasury data is horrifying, but Bessent (who got Yellen’s full-throated endorsement just a couple weeks ago) says that access is read-only, so let’s see what the jerk does with the data before we lose our senses about Social Security payments. Is the loss of USAID heartbreaking? Absolutely. Does it allow bad actors to swoop in in our place? You betcha. Do the orange one and his acolytes care? No.

          So many things are going to change during these four years. Careening from crisis to crisis is a recipe for emotional burnout. Keep your eyes on the horizon – whatever the horizon looks like for you. Have you ever seen a WWII aviation movie, where the plane is getting buffeted by flak and the aircraft shakes, but it didn’t hit them so they just keep on flying, steely-eyed, toward their target? The crew CAN’T think about the flak and the other planes getting blown up and all that nonsense – they have to keep doing their jobs and keep their eyes ahead. And when they land after their flight, the aircraft is all s h o t up? That’s where I am – flying that aircraft til January 20, 2029.

          1. I’m the person who originally responded to OP, and wow, this is exactly the sort of comment that I meant (on the good side!). Pick your battles and fight them hard, and do not let fear overpower your soul. Well said.

          2. Absolutely agree with this. Plus, just as a matter of principle, I refuse to give Donald Trump the power to make me terrified or hysterical. I hate everything about the man, but it’s not worth it to give him control over my emotions. He’s not king, and a lot of what he’s trying to do is illegal and will ultimately not happen (though not as much as I’d like, I’m sure). I’ll focus on giving my money and time to efforts to actually try to make things better, not just doomscrolling and complaining about every new thing he says or does in an effort to provoke people like me. That’s letting him win.

          3. What you seem to be missing is that all of this is illegal. You want to get rid of the Dept. of Education? Okay, go through Congress, introduce a bill, get it passed and on the president’s desk for signature. Ditto for the USAID. What you can’t do is hire someone to just do it. Our system of checks and balances doesn’t work this way. The panic is not necessarily about the programs being dismantled although it is bad, bad, bad. It’s about a complete and utter disregard for our checks and balances, and a deliberate decision to transform our governmental system into a dictatorship. And yes, for that, we should be in full blown panic. Anyone who knows anything about Roman history knows how this will end. It’s tragic.

          4. So Anonymous panic, what is your suggestion then? Because rending our clothes and wringing our hands and crying is not going to do anything and will just leave us each feeling worse.

          5. I hear you on this, truly. And I agree, but….. I’m not sure that it accounts for the damage that he can do that isn’t so much shock and awe, capable of taking down the entire country standing alone, but which will still be very difficult to unwind.

            For example – the composition of the federal judiciary. Putting crazies like that clown in Texas (and the whole Fifth Circuit basically) who oversaw the mifepristone case. Activist courts looking for ways to undermine longstanding regulatory frameworks/the entire administrative state. What does that trickle down to? Harder time protecting workers, the environment, public health, etc. Are the impacts seen immediately? No, but that’s also part of the reason they’re harder to undo.

            There are lots of bad things that happen that don’t by themselves sink the ship. But enough holes, it’ll start taking on water, and eventually there will be a tipping point. Elon Musk buying twitter was funny/stupid/a bad deal back when it happened. Does that, alone, sink a country? No. But seeing how it’s been used, and will be used. It’s hard to imagine what can drown out the sound of misinformation. Especially when our population continues to be less and less capable of evaluating information. And what contributes to that? Lack of investment in education. It’s all connected. This is what keeps me up at night.

          6. The irony is that Democrats have been sidestepping Congress for years through executive agencies, imposing major policies without legislative approval. The CFPB was structured to bypass congressional funding, giving it unchecked regulatory power over financial markets. Obama’s Clean Power Plan used the EPA to impose sweeping carbon limits on power plants without a vote. Biden’s student loan forgiveness attempted to cancel billions in debt through executive action rather than legislation.

            It is just now politically convenient to cry foul.

    2. It’s awful.

      Please call your reps — but make sure you ALSO call your state reps. Education is being dismantled everywhere, and the states is a place that often gets overlooked but absolutely should not. Your state house rep and state house senator will likely be much more responsive to you and care about what you think; if you have one you like, you can ask what is effective resistance. (I did that today; I got some decent ideas, along with the predictable suggestion of funds.)

      For those of you looking for what to do, my suggestion is to look up what bills are being voted on/discussed in your state houses in the near future. Find those that are doing bad things and call your rep about those specifically. Do that repeatedly. Then call your federal senator and house rep; that feels like a frustrating void, but do it anyway. Then, if you can, write your local media (local newspaper, local news source, etc.) and tell them to cover the issue. Do that repeatedly, too.

      Dogged repetition, day by day. That’s resistance, and it very rarely gets things done in an exciting way. But it’s the work.

      1. Education is being destroyed by teachers’ unions that prioritize job security over student outcomes, standardized testing that forces teaching to the test instead of actual learning, and DEI policies that dumb down curricula in the name of equality rather than putting students on tracks that match their abilities. California is a perfect example—a deep blue state that’s been pushing this nonsense for years, yet it ranks 34th in education nationwide. If the Democratic way actually worked, California should be a shining example of success. Instead, it proves just how badly these policies fail in the real world.

        1. You’ve lumped a lot together here.

          Unions don’t prioritize job security over student outcomes — is the argument that firing at will supports outcomes? Not sure how you’ve made this claim, with what data, etc.

          Teaching to the test instead of actual learning *is* a real problem — but that is due to state and federal demands, not schools.

          And your DEI comment tells me that you’ve dug your heels in rather than actually give a shit about education anyway.

          Signed, an actual teacher

          1. “In July 2023, the California State Board of Education adopted the 2023 Mathematics Framework, which provides guidance for implementing the state’s math standards. The framework recommends that students take Algebra 1 in ninth grade to ensure equitable access and readiness…. This approach aims to address disparities in math achievement and ensure that all students have the necessary skills to succeed in algebra.“

            I’m not just making this up. I am informed.

            Signed,

            A parent

          2. We *are* talking about it.

            And I can concede this math curriculum point, since that’s not my state and I don’t know the longer history. But an anti-DEI assertion is a broad brush, and it’s typically used to attack literature, history, and social studies. The reason I brought up misinformation campaigns around climate change, etc. is that there is a conservative push not to teach about climate change in science classes; there’s a conservative push to ensure that American history is a narrative of benign white victors rather than a long, brutal history built on human trafficking and genocide (because those real histories “demonize” white children); and there’s a conservative push to make the very existence of and stories about queer kids disappear. Those are political manipulations of actual information and stories. DEI initiatives are imperfect. They are also often necessary.

            You want to argue that California’s high school math curriculum should have different pathways into it? Fine. But saying “DEI policies that dumb down curricula” makes a bigger, and indefensible, claim about the deleterious effects of that work. And the idea that unions can protect ineffective teachers is not totally incorrect. But they more importantly, more broadly, and more vitally help make sure that teachers get paid (which they don’t get enough) and that teachers’ employment isn’t subject to the whims of “informed” parents—or politicians who find a proxy puppet to enact widesweeping and damaging destruction of governmental institutions and protections without tending to process.

          3. ok but a math framework that was adopted in July 2023 has been taught possibly for one year, so maybe it’s not reasonable to blame it for the state’s overall ranking.

          4. I appreciate the concession on math. But my stance on DEI comes from real experience in deep-blue California, where I’ve seen kids in my own family struggle under these policies—not from partisan talking points. I say this as a multi-ethnic woman of color, predominantly Latino, who has seen firsthand how these so-called equity initiatives fail the very people they claim to help.

            Inequality exists, but instead of fixing early education, funding better teachers, or expanding tutoring, DEI policies lower standards for everyone in the name of equity. That’s the issue.

            Teachers deserve better pay and protection from politics, but that shouldn’t mean keeping bad teachers in classrooms at students’ expense—especially in underperforming schools where low-income kids suffer the most. Vergara v. California exposed this, yet instead of reforming tenure laws, unions doubled down, making it even harder to remove ineffective teachers.

            You put “informed” in quotes, but I am—through firsthand experience and research, not just opinion pieces. You can concede a math point, but when it challenges progressive policies, suddenly “DEI is imperfect, but necessary.” That’s the problem—ideology takes priority over results.

            On history—you’re conflating teaching facts with injecting ideology. I support teaching real history—including its ugly parts. But kids shouldn’t be made to internalize racial guilt or feel responsible for sins of the past. We can teach history honestly without turning it into a struggle sessioN.

            And when it comes to sex ed, I support treating all people with dignity and respect—but young children shouldn’t be exposed to age-inappropriate content, queer or heterosexual. Kindergarteners don’t need lessons on gender identity any more than they need discussions on sexual attraction. Let kids be kids.

            We likely agree on more than you think. But ignoring DEI’s failures to protect its intent doesn’t help the kids being failed by it.

          5. To the “informed parent”, I wonder if you had to pick CA public schools for your child, or public schools in Mississippi or Alabama, which one would you pick? HAHA, Red states ain’t perfect either, but let’s ignore that fact.

            Signed, my kids went to NY schools and are now college grads who did just fine despite, oh gosh, “tenure” and “DEI”

          6. You guys love to pick and choose. Should I write a thesis on how CA has failed in education despite its vast resources and progressive policies?

            The point is not CA vs a red state. It’s that it has the means to make the outcome it desires with its ideologies and yet it fails miserably.

            I’m also a product of CA schools from kinder to Cal. Obviously kids make it but that doesn’t make the education stellar overall. The school system has been struggling for at least the last 30 years.

          7. Slowing kids’ roll on math isn’t the worst idea in the world. I know in bougie schools, the trend is to get the STEM kids through calculus by the time they graduate high school. I get them in uni and see many if not most of them struggle with higher math because their fundamentals are weak, and they’re already through the calc sequence.
            A student going to college with good fundamentals ready for college algebra is better set up for success than one who got a 3 on their AP calc BC exam and doesn’t really know how they got there.

        2. What you’ve posted here does nothing to demonstrate that unions are a problem or that DEI “dumbs down curricula.” I’m wondering how you perceive the effects of politicizing misinformation (including climate change, sexual health, multiple histories of this country and elsewhere, etc.). Is that the fault of underpaid and pushed-around teachers, too?

          Spare me the “informed” parent.

          1. Delaying Algebra to 9th grade is DEI. The framework openly admits it’s about ‘equity’—not improving math education, but closing gaps by holding advanced students back instead of helping struggling ones catch up.

            Your response is response dismissing your point is deliberately avoiding the issue by conflating DEI with broader political topics (climate change, sexual health, etc.) rather than acknowledging a real life example.

          2. And I’ve seen this very issue discussed on this board before but when you name it DEI suddenly it’s not something that can be discussed.

        3. California also has really low per-pupil spending thanks to our landed gentry tax system (Prop 13) and has had really enormous population growth over the past few decades. There are definitely overreaches by super-lefty types but that’s not why we rank so low.

          1. The excuse that Prop 13 is responsible for California’s low per-pupil spending ignores how school funding actually works. Most education funding comes from state income and sales taxes, not just property taxes.

            Take Oakland Unified, which spends over $27,000 per student—far above the state average—yet still struggles financially. A 2019 Grand Jury report found the district wasted millions on administrative bloat and poor financial management. OUSD overspends by $500,000 every school day, proving that the issue isn’t revenue—it’s mismanagement.

            Blaming Prop 13 is a distraction from the real problem: California collects plenty of money but spends it inefficiently.

            Prop 13 sidebar: The usual scapegoat. But here’s the reality—Sacramento has endless revenue streams, and schools still fail. Prop 13 keeps people from being taxed out of homes they’ve lived in for decades. Grandma shouldn’t have to move just because Silicon Valley inflated property values and now you want her house.

          2. Also, Florida’s population has grown at a similar pace to California’s, yet it continues to rank among the top states in education performance.

            This continues to say to me that the bureaucracy, regulation, administrative bloat and top down directives don’t work.

            I support dismantling the Dept of Ed.

      2. The 2014 case Vergara v. California initially resulted in a trial court ruling in favor of the plaintiffs, finding that certain California teacher tenure, dismissal, and layoff statutes violated students’ constitutional right to equal education by keeping ineffective teachers in classrooms. The ruling stated that these laws disproportionately harmed low-income and minority students by making it nearly impossible to remove underperforming teachers.

        It was overturned on technicalities.

        The court did not dispute that ineffective teachers harm students—instead, it ruled that the plaintiffs failed to prove that the tenure and layoff laws were the direct cause of that harm.

    3. I’m the OP – I’ll admit I was emotional but curious re hysterical – did you read my post closely enough to see that I wasn’t the one shouting? That was a quote from Elon Musk. I kind of think he sounds hysterical and I still find that deeply troubling.

      And, the DoE *is* next.

      And, it’s cute if you think the US dollar and your relative comfort level can survive if only the rich get educated and there is no shared sense of national standards or history. And if the people who are supposed to protect us can only protect us if it doesn’t involve the president. And if all your financial data is in the hands of an 18-year old with the handle “BigBalls”.

      1. I was responding to your opening line and “so f’ing terrified of what’s going to happen”, neither of which are Elon Musk quotes.

    4. I think it’s totally fine to mourn the loss of normality, and the just suck it up posters should eff off. Grief has many stages.

      1. Nobody’s saying “suck it up”. They’re saying “don’t let yourself be played like a fiddle.”

        1. Yeah… apologies to Hillary, but is the Atlantic really publishing anything Bezos doesn’t want us to read?

  5. there was a convo last week about college consultants – how did you find one? i’m guessing they need to be local to be the most effective? i’m in ohio. kiddo has no idea what he wants to do.

    1. we found ours through a recommendation from a friend, but our consultant is in a different state, so I don’t think you necessarily need an in-state consultant unless your child would be better off meeting in person rather than zoom’ing with them. as for how to find one, i highly recommend that you ask some folks who have older children (kids who are now in college) and ask them if they used a consultant and if they were happy with their consultant. from talking to a lot of older parents, I have heard about more bad experiences (i.e., paid a lot of $$, the consultant did nothing for us) than good, so i think the industry is full of so-so people. also, the cost varies wildly and we found one that charges by the hour so it’s way more reasonable for us.

      1. it’s definitely a word of mouth business although if you google you will find. Most people i know met with their’s remote even if they were local and i think most people hiring private consultants are applying to national schools so i’m not sure why it should matter that they are near you unless you think your kid will do better in person and/or you think they have some real special insider information that is specific to your kids’ school (like i know someone who used someone whose own kids had gone to the school bc she figured all things being equal she had more information than someone else)

    2. I asked parents with older kids who had attended my kids’ high school. Because in-state UC admission is its own weird thing, it was important to me to find someone who had experience with kids applying to UCs and out-of-state schools. It’s a bunch of money, but my kid attends a public high school that doesn’t really have any individualized college counseling.

  6. Thank you all for the blazer styling ideas on the morning thread! Just what I needed to get out of the rut I was in.

  7. I don’t think we talked about Kanye and Bianca Censori on the red carpet at the Grammys. I am finding the whole thing very disturbing? Like it seems very much like he is in control and I am getting the sense that he is acting like her pimp and she does not have agency? Last time I brought her up on this forum, people totally said that she’s an adult and she can do whatever she wants to do, and yes, I agree with that also. So, do we think she wants to pose completely nude in front of cameras? If that’s the case, why does she only look and dress like that when she is with Kanye?

    1. I think he both attracts women who are a bit exhibitionist, but is also controlling.

      I think his wife’s sister said that she is completely in charge of her own decisions, so …

    2. Stephanie McNeal had a good take on this in Glamour (which aligns with a lot of what you’re saying)… will post in a follow up!

    3. I hear you. I’m in the “she has agency” camp but their behavior this past year has been so over the top, and I can’t really explain it.

      I have no problem w nudity and have been to my share of nude beaches, but there’s a time and a place for that, and our well known laws reflect that.

    4. I think at least one of them, if not both of them, is deeply mentally unwell (but not completely dissociated from reality), and while mentally unwell people absolutely have at least some agency over their actions, their actions will be the actions of a mentally unwell person. I don’t think it’s more complicated than that.

    5. I think she was initially independent but has gone so far off the deep end she can’t realistically go back to her day job so she’s basically stuck now because he’s the one with the money.

      1. But does he have money? I heard his fashion line bankrupted him and that’s why he had to sell his catalog of music to Jayz.

  8. And right on schedule Trump makes outlandish comments on Gaza to further distract from the Musk and DOGE access issue starting to get more attention.

    1. Disgusting. But I expected nothing less than for DJT to support ethnically cleansing the people inhabiting developable land and to want to ‘do a deal’ with Netanyahu. If he can ‘do a deal’ between Hamas and Israel and then ‘do a deal’ with Israel that undoes the first one, then he’s done two deals, which makes him a master dealmaker. He is a dolt. It’s sick but they are both sick people who act only on the basest, most primitive instincts – Trump greed and Netanyahu tribalism. May they both fail in all their endeavors, joint and separate.

      1. I hope the pro Palestine voters who just couldn’t support Kamala feel good about themselves now.

  9. My friends and neighbors are in the thick of college admissions now, all in a typical suburb where prestige matters a lot. I heard a TED talk recently that if you want to graduate in a hard science, regardless of school, you should enroll in a school where you are in the top quarter of admits (so not a reach school at all, more like a target-to-safety school). This makes sense to me — hard sciences are hard and you can’t just be smart and do well, especially for kids who maybe coasted in high school. But I would up majoring in classics (but with a bio minor) and now work in finance, so what do I really know? I’d be curious about what the college people here think since they can see behind the curtain a bit.

    1. The first courses in the hard sciences track tend to be weed-out classes, so it makes some sense to go to a target/safety school for the sole reason that you have other options if the hard science route doesn’t work out. I’m speaking from the standpoint of working at an R1 institution that is solid/good but wouldn’t be considered prestigious. Lots of kids figure out within the first semester or two that the hard sciences may not be for them!

      1. Why wouldn’t you have other options at a top school? If you go to Harvard and wash out of physics, you can still major in English there.

    2. Connections matter more than any of this. If you and your friends are in a wealthy suburb where “prestige matters a lot,” then there are already plenty of connections. Kids should maintain those connections via their parents throughout college, and approach the same group for internships.

      1. I get that for the sort of kids who go to law school or will go to work for banks. But if you are going to succeed in a hard science, you probably want a good study group for problem sets and to do well enough to advance in the major and either get a good job or go to a good grad school. And when classes are sequential, if you don’t start strong, it’s not likely that you’d even finish. My nephew was smart but he had to devote himself to it early his first semester in engineering the way his brother who was a history major didn’t.

        1. Connections matter at least as much for engineering! Especially with the tech downturn. Engineers still typically work for a business rather than a university.

    3. I’m a STEM prof and I think it depends what you’re trying to do. If you’re just trying to get a really high GPA to go into consulting or finance, there might be some truth to this (though for those fields you also want to go to a prestigious school). If you want to go to grad school in STEM, we’re looking for people who love science and show curiosity and creativity in the lab, not just grade grubbers, as they often really struggle in grad school. I don’t worry too much about grades, but I would always be more likely to accept the student who took the more challenging path over one who took an easier path, though that’s not always obvious just from their undergraduate institution. It’s also really important to get research experience, so picking a school where you have lots of opportunities to do that might be the most important thing.

      1. Yeah, I think if you’re interested in doing science the real deciding factor shouldn’t be “prestige” it should be research opportunities. That helps you build those industry connections and develop the necessary skills that aren’t taught in the classes.

    4. If your only goal is graduating with a major in a hard science, I guess that makes sense. But I think that major matters less for graduates of more-prestigious institutions. A lot of Ivies and similar don’t have undergraduate finance or business majors, yet surprise! the investment banks and consulting groups still hire bunches of those graduates.

      As someone who did rather well in some of the “weed-out” science classes, I decided not to continue because I thought the classes were boring and I hated lab work. My college had a lot of other options and I’m glad I could switch majors easily.

      1. I went to the tech equivalent of a SLAC and it was a fantastic school for me. But overall, I think more important than admission rate is — does the school have a good reputation for undergrad education? does the school /care/ about undergrad education? More prestigious schools can put so much emphasis on research that undergrads are really an afterthought; but it’s not a direct correlation – prestigious, well resourced schools sometimes have really good educational support teams that coach faculty through becoming good teachers, curriculum development, etc. It’s true that hard sciences are hard but they don’t need to be as hard as schools that brag about their weed out differential equations sufferfest pretend they need to be.

    5. It really depends on what you want to do after college. For law school or med school, it’s generally better to have a higher GPA at a lower ranked school (especially if you can back it up with high LSAT or MCAT scores). For grad school (PhD) it’s generally better to have a lower GPA from a more prestigious school.

    6. Absolutely agree (engineering here). Many of those classes weed out at least a third of their incoming classes. They grade on a brutal curve (or at least used to in the 90s and aughts). Whatever combination of smarts, work ethic, and study skills you need, make sure you’re well away from the bottom of the class. Even the middle of the class can get risky if you have any personal issues crop up (illness, parental death, etc.).