Locus of Control: How Gen Y’s Perceptions Impact Success, Happiness, and Anxiety

by Ellen Nordahl February 22, 2010

When asked about the majority of the successes in your life, which statement are you more likely to agree with?
-       I just got lucky – right place, right time.
-       My success is the result of my hard work and the decisions I’ve made.
When I took Management & Human Resources, one topic in the course that [...]

View Comments Click to continue →

A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

by Ellen Nordahl February 21, 2010

While in college, I interned in a pretty diverse array of work environments (corporate, recently-launched small business, and an internet startup).   While I loved the nature of my work at the startup, navigating the office culture proved to be quite the quagmire.  Come time for a meeting, and the team was cohesive, collected, and enthusiastic.  [...]

View Comments Click to continue →

Skin and Bones No More

by Ellen Nordahl February 20, 2010

This is the final post of a four part series on fashion marketing and ethics.  You can read my previous posts here, here, and here.
Our generation has been bombarded with an increasing number of advertisements featuring ever-diminishing women since the time we were in diapers.  While everything else was getting bigger and better (Hummers, [...]

View Comments Click to continue →

Things You Might Have Missed and a Casting Call

by Ellen Nordahl February 19, 2010

I finally had time today to catch up on my blog subscriptions, and rather than making this blog all-Ellen, all-the-time, I thought I’d share some of my favorite posts as of late:
Grace Boyle on Inspiration: When It Hits the Brain, It Feels So Good
Laura Kimball on Fear: Fear is a Four-Letter Word
Beth Oppenheim on making [...]

View Comments Click to continue →

Spoon-fed to be Dissatisfied

by Ellen Nordahl February 18, 2010

This is the third of a four part series on fashion marketing and ethics.  You can read my previous posts here and here.
I’d really like to know who decided to rebrand Extra Gum as a “snack substitute and weight-loss tool.”  Or who gave the green light to publish the book authored by Bethenny Frankel (of [...]

View Comments Click to continue →

Mastering the Art of the Gracious Complaint

by Ellen Nordahl February 17, 2010

My friend Kitty recently completed her first full month on her employer’s sales floor (training wheels off).  Kitty is a born saleswoman – she could sell an iMac to Bill Gates and get him to take home a few Shuffles for the kids.  It came as no surprise to me when she called me with [...]

View Comments Click to continue →

Read This: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

by Ellen Nordahl February 16, 2010

It’s a rare event when a single book can turn you on to an entire genre that had flown under your radar, especially when you spend as much time perusing Borders as I do.
Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is just such a book.  Before I’d even finished it, I downloaded its sequel, [...]

View Comments Click to continue →

Are we less interesting after college?

by Ellen Nordahl February 15, 2010

Last night, @CarleeMallard threw an interesting idea out into the Twitter-verse: “I think we were all more interesting people in college.  Why is that?”
I was taken aback at first – I cringe to think that freshman Ellen with a penchant for power hours was more interesting than the slightly more mature, slightly less naive Ellen [...]

View Comments Click to continue →

But I’m Not Supposed to be Here: Starting Over in the Same City

by Ellen Nordahl February 14, 2010

I’d never planned on staying in Madison after graduation.  After five years here, I was ready for a change; something more metropolitan, with better concerts, shopping and warmer weather.  With my closest friends in Kansas City and Des Moines, I didn’t have a lot holding me here.
While I struck out in my full-time job search, [...]

View Comments Click to continue →

Mediocrity Kills Slowly

by Ellen Nordahl February 13, 2010

One of the most loathsome phrases in the English language is “good enough.”  It makes my skin crawl (and gives me flashbacks of group projects) because “good enough” is an acknowledgment that things could be better BUT [the deadline is looming and I started too late/I'm tired of working on it/C's get degrees].
Now, before you [...]

View Comments Click to continue →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →