Welcome back.

The last post I wrote was over a year ago. Now that my job requires extensive writing every day, there’s less incentive to come home and write more. Plus, why write an entire post analyzing an article, when I can simply post it to Twitter with a hashtag, succinctly and wittily summarizing my feelings about whatever I’m sharing. You know, like: http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/8045747/ #lolz.

In the past year, nearly everything has changed for me: new job, new city, new cat. OK, maybe that last item is not on par with the other two -- but essentially my life has taken a 360, or 180, or some significant turn.

I work in PR now, which is either the exact opposite of working as a journalist or just a different slice of the same pie. I go back and forth in how I think about it. This move does really mean an official exodus from journalism for me. While on some level there’s relief about escaping a sinking ship, I still sometimes get the feeling I really still belong at sea. While journalism is still in an incredibly shabby state, things seem a bit less dour at this point compared with a year ago. For one thing, compared with 2009, when 596 magazines folded (including Gourmet and a number of other Conde Nast titles), 2010 actually saw more magazines launching than folding (193 to 176, respectively). I also woke up this morning to find a Groupon for a New York Times subscription in my inbox. $24 for eight weeks of the Sunday Times -- maybe that’s going to save the newspaper industry?

Quarterlife

The other day my good friend informed me she had found her dream job. Before I successfully got any details about said job, however, she modified her statement: this was a job that she would never, ever, actually have. Not because she wasn't qualified or couldn't get an interview - she simply couldn't afford to think twice about even applying for a job with such a low starting salary. Entering her third year of law school, she's looking at a graduation present of about $1000 a month in owed student loan payments. She explained that the mere fact that she'd attended law school was essentially locking her into the profession indefinitely. "Now I have to be a lawyer just to pay off the stupid loans," she said, matter-of-factly.

Three years ago, before I'd graduated and entered the "real world" of student loans and credit card debt and unpaid internships, I wrote an article about the problem of student loan debt for my journalism capstone. For the article, "The Real Cost of Education," I interviewed a handful of experts as well as actual students facing seemingly insurmountable debt. After talking to my friend last week, I went back and re-read the article. Sure enough, her sentiments were exactly the same as those I had typed into my paper a few years back. "Many students go to law school right after getting their undergraduate degree, with little or no experience to allude to the realities of being a lawyer," I wrote. "But bridled with $80,000 or more in loans, they have little choice but to practice law in order to repay their debt, even if this means sacrificing their happiness."

It was funny reading over the article. I had poured months of my life into researching, writing and editing the piece. And yet, because my own student loans seemed such a far-away reality (it would be nearly 4 months before I made my first payment), I didn't really conceive of the impact its subject matter would have on my own life or my friends lives. Sure, the numbers were shocking and the experts' arguments were compelling, but the article was about adults: people who had the letters MD typed neatly after their names, or had completed the bar exam - people who were making grownup decisions about buying houses and having kids.

But now I don't have to scramble to find people to attest to the impacts of student loans. These are my friends. I could rewrite the entire article quoting my friends from our gchat conversations or summarizing sentiments expressed over beers at happy hour. Even now, as I find myself grappling with the decision of whether or not to go back and get my masters in teaching, it's hard to absorb the realities of being saddled with significant loans. I know full well nearly half of all teachers leave the position within the first five years. And that the degree will land me with loan payments amounting to much more than the $100 a month I pay right now for my undergrad. But while there's the potential that going back to school will be a mistake, really no amount of research can answer that for me. Fifty percent of teachers quitting still leaves 50 percent who stick it out - some, I'm guessing, even like it. For most of these jobs there's no real trial run. You can volunteer in a classroom, but you won't know what it's like to deal with the administration or standardized tests. You don't get to try out being a doctor for a year before you commit to the four (plus!) years of medical school. And how are you supposed to know at 25 what you want to do with the rest of your life?

Healthcare

I came home the other day to an invoice from Qwest Diagnostics. The bill – for just shy of $200 – baffled me: I have insurance, surely this had to be some kind of mistake. As someone who’s constantly reminded that I really shouldn't qualify as a grown up, I pored over the document. Sure enough, the $185 was the remainder from the test that had not been covered by my health insurance plan. The test itself had consisted of a "medical professional" taking my blood and a phone call a week later from my doctor informing me that I was, indeed, healthy.
I had visited the doctor after my health insurance from my job finally kicked in, to deduce whether or not I was gluten intolerant. Both my younger sister and I have had chronic stomach aches for well over a decade. She found that by eliminating gluten (adios, delicious carbs!) her stomach issues had been greatly diminished. Having far less self control and patience than a 19-year-old, I opted to take the easy way out and ask my doctor if he could just tell me whether or not gluten could be blamed for my stomach. Which is how I landed with a $200 bill and the advice (once again) to “stress less,” as that was probably the cause of all my problems. I guess here’s where I throw in the obvious ‘how can I stress less with $200 doctors bills?’ but I digress.

Obviously this does not even rate when it comes to the problems associated with our healthcare system. It's incredible how many people I know who have disaster-only insurance, or none at all. None of them would get that bill because none of them go to the doctor.

Since starting my new job, my free time for reading has shrunk significantly. After numerous recommendations to read an article on the state of healthcare in The New Yorker, however, I sifted through my ever-growing stack of ‘to-read’ magazines and found the June 1 issue with The Cost Conundrum by Atul Gawande.

So now it’s my turn to make the recommendation: you should read this article.

I don’t pretend to know a lot about the many nuances of the healthcare system. Even when (especially when?) I covered the health beat for the Free Lance, I consistently found myself baffled by its many complexities. This particular article looks at a city in Texas with one of the most expensive health-care markets in the country. In looking at one of the most expensive cities, Gawande posits, maybe we'll figure out what makes our countries health care the most expensive in the world. The article really doesn't give any easy answers, although it's incredible thought provoking. I attempted to summarize parts of it initially and, in the end, decided that a summary is actually doing disservice to the article. So I'll just leave it at that. Read the article and please feel free to comment.

Apologies (Again)

I'm starting a new job, so I have been pushing 12 hours each day at work. The result has been me coming home to crash - not write - each day. Please enjoy these videos, until my return.

New York and DC

I spent last weekend in Washington D.C. with my parents - a trip comprised of patriotism and history - Americana-style, not nearly enough cherry blossoms to sate my yearly quota, and bookended by two long rides on the Chinatown bus.

While I appreciate a good monument as much as the next person, I have to say, the Newseum was really the highlight for me - albeit a bittersweet one (gosh, how many times have I paired some form of the word 'news' with 'bittersweet' on this blog). Having a museum for news in itself evokes images of an archaic field, but the museum did a nice job of acknowledging the history and importance of traditional newspaper forms and looking toward the future, whatever it might hold. So if anyone has plans to visit DC at any point, this is my plug for how you should spend a good half day.

Although I thoroughly enjoyed DC in all its historic glory, it really revealed how much of a New Yorker I have become. I felt strangely out of place in there: repeatedly commenting to my parents how clean everything was (and somehow this didn't seem like a good thing) and noticing how many people were wearing sweatshirts. Most of all though, I just felt like everything was moving eerily slow. Sometimes the pace of New York can be overwhelming, but it's something that I've come to thrive on. New York Magazine just published a piece talking with various famed New Yorkers about their first experience in the city. They also talked to new arrivals to the city. One person interviewed - Kit Schultz - a recent Ohio transplant, reminded me of my own move here just over a year ago:

In some ways, her story could have been told anytime in the last 50 years, and in other ways, it’s very typical of right now. She lost her job as a nanny late last year and found her prospects were dim. Before Christmas, she went out for drinks with some old college friends who are living in Brooklyn, and they invited her to come out and stay with them. So she packed a van, headed east, and arrived in New York on New Year’s Eve. A new year, a new life, she thought. Now she says, “I am having a great time here, but it’s also very hard. I’ve never been this poor in my life. I don’t exactly know what tomorrow’s stories will be or even how I will pay my cell-phone bill. But I am confident this city will continue to open up for me in ways that I cannot even imagine, and I look forward and forward.”

In January 2008, I was laid off from my job at the Free Lance and, serendipitously, Stephanie announced she needed a subleaser in her Bed-Stuy brownstone. I knew I needed a change from the small town in California where I had lived the past year. But I didn't know if I should do the impulsive thing - move to a giant metropolis with no job prospects, or the fiscally responsible thing - move home to my parents house and work at any number or jobs until I found a 'real' job prospect. That night, post-Chinese food, I opened my fortune cookie to find the message "Heads you do it, tails you go home."

Two weeks later I was on a plane with that fortune safely tucked in my wallet. Sometimes I'm not certain what exactly I'm doing here - but I'm glad the coin landed on heads.

Happy Thursday.

So I apologize for the brief blogging-hiatus. My parents are in town, so rather than write I have been traipsing about the beautiful and engaging city of New York serving as a mediocre tour guide (which basically consists of me trying to explain the difference between local and express trains and that no-I-don't-know-why-the-F-train-is-running-on-the-E-line-it's-just-Sunday-and-weird-stuff-happens-and-there's-no-rational-expression, and getting them repeatedly lost in Fort Greene, et cetera. Until my return, however, enjoy.

Money Trees

Around 2006, it seemed like every single magazine on the market was publishing ecology-centered issues. The Cosmo/Marie Claire/Allures of the magazine world featured articles on environmentally-friendly beauty products. Bride magazines talked about throwing a green bridal shower - I'm sure even Dog Fancy analyzed your puppy's carbon pawprint. Basically at that point if you wanted a new angle on an old piece, you just had to "green" it.

Well, that era has passed, it seems. And while I'm glad I won't have to see any more plays on "Green is the new [pink is the old] black", I'm not so happy the environment has been eked out of people's minds. Instead, a great multitude of articles now focus on saving money. Eco's been replaced by econ, and I guess saving green is the new black. These penny-pinching issues have become more and more frequent as the nation's economy has looked more and more bleak. Still, I was surprised to open my New Yorker Wednesday and find an article on the both the economy and the environment. The article, a short piece in The Talk of the Town, focused on the inverse relationship between economic prosperity and environmental responsibility. Author David Owen writes:

"The world's principal source of man-made greenhouse gases has always been prosperity. The recession makes that relationship easy to see: shuttered factories don't spew carbon dioxide; the unemployed drive fewer miles and turn down their furnaces, air-conditioners, and swimming-pool heaters; struggling corporations and families cut back on air travel; even affluent people buy less throwaway junk."

Even though the media and individuals aren't focusing on the environment, they're actually doing much more to prevent global warming than they were when it was the actual concern. I've definitely noticed this in my own life - specifically with my work. My company has prided itself on being green for quite a while now - but it's always been quite a battle for me, sometimes feeling like the sole eco-cheerleader (I know, Mom and Dad: you must be so proud/shocked). Getting people to reuse paper or make fewer copies is hard to rally support for, but when cuts are being made and you bring up the cost of all that paper, suddenly there are many more proponents.

While much of the article falls into the kind-of-intuitive-if-you-really-think-about-it category, it also does a nice job of taking things a step further. The article begs the question: if the environment and the economy do have an inverse relationship, how can we fix the economy without losing the footing we've made on the environment? For so long, the U.S. has been such a society of prosperity and excess. While many economists have suggested me may never go back to that level of superabundance (and I personally don't see that we need to go back), there is a happy medium in there. Is there enough money and jobs to be made out of green industries? It seems like now is the time to start looking for solutions that won't have us back to square one if the economy ever does go back to the "normal" of the past decade.