Be Yourselves, Girls, Order the Rib-Eye
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By ALLEN SALKIN
Published: August 9, 2007
MARTHA FLACH mentioned meat twice in her Match.com profile: “I love architecture, The New Yorker, dogs ... steak for two and the Sunday puzzle.”
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Christopher Smith for The New York Times
IT’S WHAT’S FOR DINNER Ashley Draughon and Fred Graham dine on red meat at Quality Meats.
She was seeking, she added, “a smart, funny, kind man who owns a suit (but isn’t one) ... and loves red wine and a big steak.”
The repetition worked. On her first date with Austin Wilkie, they ate steak frites. A year later, after burgers at the Corner Bistro in Greenwich Village, he proposed. This March, the rehearsal dinner was at Keens Steakhouse on West 36th Street, and the wedding menu included mini-cheeseburgers and more steak.
Ms. Wilkie was a vegetarian in her teens, and even wore a “Meat Is Murder” T-shirt. But by her 30s, she had started eating cow. By the time she placed the personal ad, she had come to realize that ordering steak on a first date had the potential to sate appetites not only of the stomach but of the heart.
Red meat sent a message that she was “unpretentious and down to earth and unneurotic,” she said, “that I’m not obsessed with my weight even though I’m thin, and I don’t have any food issues.” She added, “In terms of the burgers, it said I’m a cheap date, low maintenance.”
Salad, it seems, is out. Gusto, medium rare, is in.
Restaurateurs and veterans of the dating scene say that for many women, meat is no longer murder. Instead, meat is strategy. “I’ve been shocked at the number of women actually ordering steak,” said Michael Stillman, vice president of concept development for the Smith & Wollensky Restaurant Group, which opened the restaurant Quality Meats in April 2006 on West 58th Street. He said Quality Meats’ contemporary design and menu, including extensive seafood offerings, were designed to attract more women than a traditional steakhouse. “But the meat is appealing to them, much more than what I saw two or three years ago at our other restaurants,” Mr. Stillman said. “They are going for our bone-in sirloin and our cowboy-cut rib steak.”
In an earlier era, conventional dating wisdom for women was to eat something at home alone before a date, and then in company order a light dinner to portray oneself as dainty and ladylike. For some women, that is still the practice. “It’s better not to have a jalapeño fajita plate, especially on the first date,” said Andrea Bey, 28, who sells video surveillance equipment in Irving, Tex., and describes herself as “curvy.” “You don’t want to be labeled as ‘princess gassy’ on the first date.”
But others, especially those who are thin, say ordering a salad displays an unappealing mousiness.
“It seems wimpy, insipid, childish,” said Michelle Heller, 34, a copy editor at TV Guide. “I don’t want to be considered vapid and uninteresting.”
Ordering meat, on the other hand, is a declarative statement, something along the lines of “I am woman, hear me chew.”
In fact, red meat on a date has become such an effective statement of self-acceptance that even a vegetarian like Sloane Crosley, a publicist at Random House, sometimes longs to order a burger.
“Being a vegetarian puts you at a disadvantage,” Ms. Crosley said. “You’re in the most basic category of finicky. Even women who order chicken, it isn’t enough.” She said she has thought of ordering shots of Jägermeister, famous for its frat boy associations, to prove that she is “a guy’s girl.”
“Everyone wants to be the girl who drinks the beer and eats the steak and looks like Kate Hudson,” Ms. Crosley, 28, said.
Not all red meat, apparently, is equal in the dating world. The mediums of steak and hamburger each send a different message. Dropping into conversation the fact that steaks of Kobe beef come from Wagyu cattle, but that not all steaks sold as Wagyu are Kobe beef, demonstrates one’s worldliness, said Gabriella Gershenson, a dining editor at Time Out New York. It holds the same currency today that being able to name Hemingway’s four wives held in an earlier era.
Hamburgers, she added, say you are down-to-earth, which is why women rarely order those deluxe hamburgers priced as high as a porterhouse.
“They’re created for men who want to impress women, so they order the $60 burger, then they let the woman taste it,” Ms. Gershenson said. “The man gets to show off his expertise and show that he can afford it.”
When Paris Hilton was arrested for driving under the influence, she announced that she had been on her way to In-N-Out Burger, the Southern California chain revered for its gut-busting Double-Double, as if trying to satisfy a craving for two slabs of meat and cheese was an excuse for drunken driving that anyone could understand. And twice last year, Nicole Richie, persistently facing rumors that she suffered from an eating disorder, was photographed biting into burgers in Los Angeles, an effort that seemed designed to demonstrate her casualness toward calories.
Of course, there are always those rare women who order what they want and to heck with what a man might think.
Saehee Hwang, 30, a production director at Artnet.com, found herself out with friends at DuMont restaurant in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, when she started feeling attracted to a new guy in the group. She said she had wanted to order a burger, but started having second thoughts. “I didn’t want to appear too much of a carnivore,” she said. “It might be off-putting.”
But then she decided she should not change her order to fit a preconceived idea of what a man might want. She ordered the house specialty, a half-pound of beef on a toasted brioche bun with Gruyère cheese. “We started dating afterward,” Ms. Hwang said. “And he told me he liked the fact that I ordered the burger.”
What about when the tables, so to speak, are reversed? Can a man order a juicy New York strip on the first date and make a good impression? Gentlemen, be careful. Real men, it seems, must eat kale.
“When a guy sits down and eats something fatty and big, you wonder if they eat like that all the time,” said Brice Gaillard, a freelance design writer. “It crosses my mind they’ll probably die early.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/09/fashion/09STEAK.html?em&ex=1186891200&en=0f071a218bdbe24c&ei=5087%0A
Showing posts with label psychology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label psychology. Show all posts
Friday, August 10, 2007
Thursday, April 5, 2007
Living for College
Commentary: Live for Yourself, Not for an Application
Here are some of my reactions to the New York Times article, "For Girls, It's be Yourself, and Be Perfect Too." (See below)
It is very true. Girls--of course boys also--today are pressured to achieve on multiple dimensions and then told to still celebrate their youth.
But I do think it is possible to achieve and still be genuine. Students just have to love what they do. I did all my extracurriculars--theater, ultimate frisbee, chinese harp, newspaper, speech team, Broadway Club, Arista, history club, tutoring, etc.--with smiles on my face because I truly enjoyed everything.
Of course the truth is not everyone enjoy everything and they are being pressured to take up everything for the sake of "being well rounded." I think that everyone will feel a lot better when they take a step back and stop worrying about what they think others want them to do and start focusing on just their own passions. Of course, then they'll think about the admissions officers and will start worrying again!
The biggest problem with this is that people start to lose themselves. They live for others and forget who they are. It's sad when freshmen in high school already start looking around for resume-padders. They should be looking to get involved; but too many do it for the wrong reason. It's great that kids can win national spelling bees knowing the word "ursprache," but did all the participants of The Bee memorize dictionaries because they were interested or because their parents told them that they should be interested? One of the scariest things I can imagine would be for people to wake up one day and realize that they have been living for someone else, that no part of their being really belonged to themselves. But it seems that this very thing happens all the time now.
Of course this is still only dwelling on message #1. Message # 2--Be yourself. Have fun. Don't work too hard--adds even more trouble.
Kaavya Viswanathan's scandal-marred "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life" seemed to have been exploring this exact tension. Of course I never got to read the whole book since Little, Brown and Company pulled it from the shelves. But from what I managed to read--the free first chapter--high-achieving Opal got rejected by Harvard for not enjoying her youth and relaxing. (I think her real problem was that she wasn't doing everything she was doing for the sake of doing them, but rather for the sake of getting into Harvard.)
I think this kind of rejection does happen, sometimes unfairly, sometimes not enough (I'm probably going to get jumped for this ::laugh::). It definitely doesn't add to a campus community to have prototype nerds stay up in their dorms or the library all day. A lively college needs students who can do more than do well in classes. Life at college is shaped by those students who are willing to have lives outside of classrooms, libraries and labs.
But then some outstanding friends of mine were probably rejected because they were wrongly classified as uninteresting nerds. That coupled with the acceptance of classmates who did whatever possible to secure the top grades, who club-hopped to pad their resumes, and whose achievements also included underage drinking and drug dealing, really demonstrated to me the unfairness of the whole thing.
In the end, life is imperfect and some injustices simply can't be rectified. What we still have is a world full of enough wonderful things to occupy our time and our mind. When we are happy and in tune with the songs of the universe, we will be able to change the world for the better, a little bit at a time.
When Perfection is Not Enough
For Girls, It’s Be Yourself, and Be Perfect, Too
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
In an honors philosophy/literature class, Esther Mobley, center, participates in a discussion of “Man’s Search for Meaning.”
By SARA RIMER
Published: April 1, 2007
NEWTON, Mass., March 31 — To anyone who knows 17-year-old Esther Mobley, one of the best students at one of the best public high schools in the country, it is absurd to think she doesn’t measure up. But Esther herself is quick to set the record straight.
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'Amazing Girls'
Related
Excerpts: How Applying to College is Like 'The Aeneid,' and Other E-mails (April 1, 2007)
Text: Esther Mobley's College Essay (March 30, 2007)
Text: Colby Kennedy's College Essay (March 30, 2007)
Transcripts: 'The Appearance of Effortlessness' (April 1, 2007)
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Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
At Newton North High School in Newton, Mass., a Wonder Woman mural offers a role model to some girls. Newton North, one of the best public high schools in the country, gears its teaching toward gears its teaching toward a wide range of students.
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Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
‘It’s, like, a really big deal to go into a lucrative profession so that you can provide for your kids, and they can grow up in a place like the place where you grew up.’
Kat Jiang
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Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
‘I run, I do, but not very quickly, and always exhaustedly. This is one of the things I’m most insecure about. You meet someone, especially on a college tour, adults ask you what you do. They say, ‘What sports do you play?’ I don’t play any sports. It’s awkward.’
Esther Mobley
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‘I’m living up to my own expectations. It’s what I want to do. I want to do well for myself.’
Colby Kennedy
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Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
‘You’re supposed to have all these extracurriculars, to play sports and do theater. You’re supposed to do well in your classes and still have time to go out.’
Julie Mhlaba
“First of all, I’m a terrible athlete,” she said over lunch one day.
“I run, I do, but not very quickly, and always exhaustedly,” she continued. “This is one of the things I’m most insecure about. You meet someone, especially on a college tour, adults ask you what you do. They say, ‘What sports do you play?’ I don’t play any sports. It’s awkward.”
Esther, a willowy, effervescent senior, turned to her friend Colby Kennedy. Colby, 17, is also a great student, a classical pianist, fluent in Spanish, and a three-season varsity runner and track captain. Did Colby worry, Esther asked, that she fell short in some way?
“Or,” said Esther, and now her tone was a touch sarcastic, “do you just have it all already?”
They both burst out laughing.
Esther and Colby are two of the amazing girls at Newton North High School here in this affluent suburb just outside Boston. “Amazing girls” translation: Girls by the dozen who are high achieving, ambitious and confident (if not immune to the usual adolescent insecurities and meltdowns.) Girls who do everything: Varsity sports. Student government. Theater. Community service. Girls who have grown up learning they can do anything a boy can do, which is anything they want to do.
But being an amazing girl often doesn’t feel like enough these days when you’re competing with all the other amazing girls around the country who are applying to the same elite colleges that you have been encouraged to aspire to practically all your life.
An athlete, after all, is one of the few things Esther isn’t. A few of the things she is: a standout in Advanced Placement Latin and honors philosophy/literature who can expound on the beauty of the subjunctive tense in Catullus and on Kierkegaard’s existential choices. A writer whose junior thesis for Advanced Placement history won Newton North’s top prize. An actress. President of her church youth group.
To spend several months in a pressure cooker like Newton North is to see what a girl can be — what any young person can be — when encouraged by committed teachers and by engaged parents who can give them wide-ranging opportunities.
It is also to see these girls struggle to navigate the conflicting messages they have been absorbing, if not from their parents then from the culture, since elementary school. The first message: Bring home A’s. Do everything. Get into a top college — which doesn’t have to be in the Ivy League, or one of the other elites like Williams, Tufts or Bowdoin, but should be a “name” school.
The second message: Be yourself. Have fun. Don’t work too hard.
And, for all their accomplishments and ambitions, the amazing girls, as their teachers and classmates call them, are not immune to the third message: While it is now cool to be smart, it is not enough to be smart.
You still have to be pretty, thin and, as one of Esther’s classmates, Kat Jiang, a go-to stage manager for student theater who has a perfect 2400 score on her SATs, wrote in an e-mail message, “It’s out of style to admit it, but it is more important to be hot than smart.”
“Effortlessly hot,” Kat added.
If you are free to be everything, you are also expected to be everything. What it comes down to, in this place and time, is that the eternal adolescent search for self is going on at the same time as the quest for the perfect résumé. For Esther, as for high school seniors everywhere, this is a big weekend for finding out how your résumé measured up: The college acceptances, and rejections, are rolling in.
“You want to achieve,” Esther said. “But how do you achieve and still be genuine?”
If it all seems overwhelming at times, then the multitasking adults in Newton have the answer: Balance. Strive for balance.
But balance is out the window when you’re a high-achieving senior in the home stretch of the race for which all the years of achieving and the disciplined focusing on the future have been preparing you. These students are aware that because more girls apply to college than boys, amid concerns about gender balance, boys may have an edge at some small selective colleges.
“You’re supposed to have all these extracurriculars, to play sports and do theater,” said another of Esther’s 17-year-old classmates, Julie Mhlaba, who aspires to medical school and juggles three Advanced Placement classes, gospel choir and a part-time job as a waitress. “You’re supposed to do well in your classes and still have time to go out.”
“You’re supposed to do all these things,” Julie said, “and not go insane.”
Stress Trumps Relaxation
Newton, which has a population of almost 84,000, is known for a liberal sensibility and a high concentration of professionals like doctors, lawyers and academics. Six miles west of Boston, with its heavily settled neighborhoods, bustling downtowns and high numbers of immigrants, Newton is a suburb with an urban feel.
The main shopping area, in Newton Centre, is a concrete manifestation of the conflicting messages Esther and the other girls are constantly struggling to decode. In one five-block stretch are two Starbucks and one Peets Coffee & Tea, several psychotherapists’ offices, three SAT test-prep services, two after-school math programs, and three yoga studios promising relaxation and inner peace.
Smack in the middle of all of this is Esther’s church, the 227-year-old First Baptist, which welcomes everyone regardless of race, sexual orientation or denomination, and where Esther puts in a lot of time.
The test-prep business is booming. Kaplan (“Be the ideal college applicant!”) is practically around the corner from Chyten (“Our average SAT II score across all subjects is 720!”), which is three blocks from Princeton Review (“We’re all about scoring more!”). My First Yoga (for children 3 and up), with its founder playing up her Harvard degree, is conveniently located above Chyten, which includes the SAT Cafe.
High-priced SAT prep has become almost routine at schools like Newton North. Not to hire the extra help is practically an act of rebellion.
“I think it’s unfair,” Esther said, explaining why she decided against an SAT tutor, though she worried about her score (ultimately getting, as she put it, “above 2000”). “Why do I deserve this leg up?”
Parents view Newton’s expensive real estate — the median house price in 2006 was $730,000 — and high taxes as the price of admission to the prized public schools. There are less affluent parents, small-business owners, carpenters, plumbers, social workers and high school guidance counselors, but many of these families arrived decades ago when it was possible to buy a nice two-story Colonial for $150,000 or less.
Newton North, one of two outstanding public high schools here, is known for its academic rigor, but also its vocational education, reflecting the wide range of its 1,967 students. Nearly 73 percent of them are white, 7.3 percent black, nearly 12 percent Asian and 7.5 percent Hispanic. Many of the black and Hispanic students live in the Roxbury and Dorchester neighborhoods of Boston, and are bused in under a 35-year-old voluntary integration program.
Newton North has a student theater, winning athletic teams and dozens of after-school clubs (ultimate Frisbee, mock trial, black leadership, Hispanic culture, Israeli dance). There is an emphasis on nonconformity — even if it is often conformity dressed up as nonconformity — and an absence of such high school conventions as, say, homecoming queens, valedictorians and class rankings.
‘Superhuman’ Resistance
Jennifer Price, the Newton North principal, said she and her faculty emphasized to students that they could win admission to many excellent colleges without organizing their entire lives around résumé building. By age 14, Ms. Price said, the school’s highest fliers are already worrying about marketing themselves to colleges: “You almost have to be superhuman to resist the pressure.”
If more students aren’t listening to the message that they can relax a bit, one reason may be that a lot of the people delivering the message went to the elite colleges. Ms. Price has an undergraduate degree from Princeton — she makes a point of saying that she got in because she was recruited to play varsity field hockey — and is a doctoral candidate at Harvard. Many of the teachers have degrees from the Ivy League and other elite schools.
But the message also tends to get drowned out when parents bump into each other at Whole Foods and share news about whose son or daughter just got accepted (or not) at Harvard, Yale, Brown, Penn or Stanford.
Or when the final edition of the award-winning student newspaper, the Newtonite, comes out every June, with its two-page spread listing all the seniors, and their colleges. For that entire week, Esther says, everyone pores over the names, obsessing about who is going where.
“In a lot of ways, it’s all about that one week,” she said.
There is something about the lives these girls lead — their jam-packed schedules, the amped-up multitasking, the focus on a narrow group of the nation’s most selective colleges — that speaks of a profound anxiety in the young people, but perhaps even more so in their parents, about the ability of the next generation to afford to raise their families in a place like Newton.
Admission to a brand-name college is viewed by many parents, and their children, as holding the best promise of professional success and economic well-being in an increasingly competitive world.
“It’s, like, a really big deal to go into a lucrative profession so that you can provide for your kids, and they can grow up in a place like the place where you grew up,” Kat said.
Esther, however, is aiming for a decidedly nonlucrative profession. Inspired by her father, Greg Mobley, who is a Biblical scholar, she wants to be a theologian.
She says she is interested in “Scripture, the Bible, the development of organized religion, thinking about all this, writing about all this, teaching about all this.” More than anything else, she wrote in an e-mail message, she wants to be a writer, “and religion is what I most like to write about.”
“I have such a strong sense of being supported by my faith,” she continued. “It gives me priorities. That’s why I’m not concerned about making money, because I know that there is so much more to living a rich life than having money.”
First Baptist Church counts on Esther. She organizes pancake suppers, tutors a young congregant and helps lead the youth group’s outreach to the poor.
On a springlike Sunday afternoon toward the end of winter, Esther could be found with her father, her two brothers and members of her youth group handing out food to homeless people on Boston Common. She had spent the morning in church.
About 2 p.m., a text message flashed across her cellphone from Gabe Gladstone, a co-captain of mock trial: “Where are you?” Esther, a key member of the group, was needed at a meeting.
Esther messaged back: “I’m feeding the homeless, I’ll come when God’s work is done.”
Fending Off ‘Anorexia of the Soul’
On a Saturday afternoon in late November, Esther and her mother, Page Kelley, sat at the dining room table talking about the contradictions and complexities of life in Newton. Esther’s father was with his sons, Gregory, 15, who plays varsity basketball for Newton North, and Tommy, 10, coaching Tommy’s basketball team.
Ms. Kelley, 47, an assistant federal public defender, and Mr. Mobley, 49, a professor at Andover Newton Theological School in Newton, grew up in Kentucky and came north for college. Ms. Kelley is a graduate of Smith College and Harvard Law School. Mr. Mobley has two graduate degrees from Harvard.
Amid all the competitiveness and consumerism, and the obsession with achievement in Newton, Ms. Kelley said, “You just hope your child doesn’t have anorexia of the soul.”
“It’s the idea that you end up with this strange drive,” she continued. “One of the great things about Esther is that she does have some kind of spiritual life. You just hope your kid has good priorities. We keep saying to her: ‘The name of the college you go to doesn’t matter. There are a lot of good colleges out there.’ ”
Esther said her mother is her role model. “I think the work she does is very noble,” she said.
“She has these impressive degrees,” Esther said, “and she chooses to do something where she’s not making as much money as she could.”
As close as mother and daughter are, there is one important generational divide. “My mother applied to one college,” Esther said. “She got in, she went.”
Back from basketball practice with his sons, Mr. Mobley joined the conversation. To Mr. Mobley, a formalized, competitive culture pervades everything from youth sports to getting into college. He pointed out to his wife that the lives of their three children were far more directed “than any of the aimless hours I spent in my youth daydreaming and meandering.”
Ms. Kelley asked, “Is that because of us?”
“Yes — and no,” he said. “It’s because of 2006 in America, and the Northeast.”
The bar for achievement keeps being raised for each generation, he said: “Our children start where we finished.”
As the afternoon turned into early evening, Esther went out to meet her best friend, Aliza Edelstein. The family dog, a Jack Russell terrier named Bandit, was underfoot, trolling for affection.
“I’m not worried about Esther because I know her,” Mr. Mobley said. “Esther’s character is sealed in some fundamental way.”
Ms. Kelley, however, wondered aloud: “Don’t you worry that she never rebelled? When I was growing up, you were supposed to rebel.”
But she acknowledged that she had sent her own mixed signals. “As I’m sitting here saying I don’t care what kind of grades she gets, I’m thinking, she comes home with a B, and I say: ‘What’d you get a B for? Who gave you a B? I’m going to talk to them.’
“You do want your child to do well.”
Mr. Mobley nodded. “We’re not above it,” he said. “It’s complicated.”
On a Fierce Mission to Shine
To sit in on classes with Esther in her vibrant high school where, between classes, the central corridor, called Main Street, is a bustling social hub, is to see why these students are genuinely excited about school.
Their teachers are pushing them to wrestle with big questions: What is truth? What does Virgil’s “Aeneid” tell us about destiny and individual happiness? How does DNA work? How is the global economy reshaping the world (subtext: you have to be fluid and highly educated to survive in the new economy)?
Esther’s ethics teacher, Joel Greifinger, spent considerable time this winter on moral theories. An examination of John Rawls’s theory of justice led to extensive discussions about American society and class inequality. Among the reading material Mr. Greifinger presented was research showing the correlation between income and SAT scores.
The class strengthened Esther’s earlier decision not to take private SAT prep.
In her honors philosophy/literature class, Esther has been reading Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, “Sophie’s Choice” and Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning.” Amid a discussion of the strangely unsettling emptiness Frankl encountered upon his release from a Nazi concentration camp, Esther quoted Sartre: “You are condemned to freedom.”
Her honors teacher, Mike Fieleke, nodded. “That’s the existential idea. If we don’t awaken to that freedom, then we are slaves to our fate.”
A few weeks earlier, Esther, taking stock of her own life, wrote in an e-mail message: “I feel like I’m on the verge. I feel like I’m just about to get out of high school, to enter into adulthood, to reach some kind of state of independence and peacefulness and enlightenment.”
More immediately, she wrote, Mr. Fieleke had told her “he thought, from reading my papers and hearing me speak in class, that I was just on the verge of some really great idea.”
“I asked him if he thought that idea would come by next Wednesday, when our big Hamlet paper was due. He said I might feel this way all year long.”
The most intensely pressurized academic force field at school is the one surrounding the students on the Advanced Placement and honors track. About 145 of the 500 seniors are taking a combined total of three, four and five Advanced Placement and honors classes, with a few students even juggling six and seven.
Esther’s friend Colby takes four Advanced Placement and one honors class. “I’m living up to my own expectations,” Colby said. “It’s what I want to do. I want to do well for myself.”
Another of Esther’s friends, from student theater, Lee Gerstenhaber, 17, was juggling four Advanced Placement classes with intense late-night rehearsals for her starring role as Maggie, the seductive Southern belle in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” It was too much. About 4 a.m one day last fall, she was still fighting her way through Advanced Placement physics homework. She dissolved in tears.
“I had always been able to do it before,” Lee recalled later. “But I finally said to myself, ‘O.K., I’m not Superwoman.’ ”
She dropped physics — and was incandescent as Maggie.
Esther’s schedule includes two Advanced Placement and one honors class. Among certain of her classmates who are mindful that many elite colleges advise prospective applicants to pursue the most rigorous possible course of study, taking two Advanced Placement classes is viewed as “only two A.P.’s.” But Esther says she is simply taking the subjects she is most interested in.
She also shrugged off advice that it would look better on her résumé to take another science class instead of her passion, A.P. Latin. Like so many of her classmates, Esther started taking Latin in the seventh grade, when everyone was saying Latin would help them with the SAT. But now, except for Esther and a handful of other diehards who are devoted to Latin — and to their teacher, Robert Mitchell — everyone else has moved on.
“I like languages,” said Esther, who also takes Advanced Placement Spanish. “And I really like Latin.”
Who Needs a Boyfriend?
This year Esther has been trying life without a boyfriend. It was her mother’s idea. “She’d say, ‘I think it’s time for you to take a break and discover who you are,’ ” Esther said over lunch with Colby. “She was right. I feel better.”
Esther turned to Colby: she seems to pretty much always have a boyfriend.
“I never felt like having a boyfriend was a burden,” Colby said. “I enjoy just being comfortable with someone, being able to spend time together. I don’t think that means I wouldn’t feel comfortable or confident without one.”
Esther said: “I’m not trying to say that’s a bad thing. I’m like you. I never thought, ‘If I don’t have a boyfriend I’ll feel totally forlorn and lost.’ ”
But who needs a boyfriend? “My girlfriends have consistently been more important than my boyfriends,” Esther wrote in an e-mail message. “I mean, girlfriends last longer.”
Boyfriends or not, a deeper question for Esther and Colby is how they negotiate their identities as young women. They have grown up watching their mothers, and their friends’ mothers, juggle family and career. They take it for granted that they will be able to carve out similar paths, even if it doesn’t look easy from their vantage point.
They say they want to be both feminine and assertive, like their mothers. But Colby made the point at lunch that she would rather be considered too assertive and less conventionally feminine than “be totally passive and a bystander in my life.”
Esther agreed. She said she admired Cristina, the spunky resident on “Grey’s Anatomy,” one of her favorite TV shows.
“She really stands up for herself and knows who she is, which I aspire to,” Esther said.
Cristina is also “gorgeous,” Esther laughed. “And when she’s taking off her scrubs, she’s always wearing cute lingerie.”
Speaking of lingerie, part of being feminine is feeling good about how you look. Esther is not trying to be one of Newton North’s trendsetters, the girls who show up every day in Ugg boots, designer jeans — or equally cool jeans from the vintage store — and tight-fitting tank tops under the latest North Face jacket.
She never looks “scrubby,” to use the slang for being a slob, but sometimes comes to school in sweats and moccasins.
“I think sometimes I might be trying a little too hard not to conform,” Esther says.
She says she is one of the few girls in her circle who doesn’t have a credit card. But she is hardly immune to the pressure to be a good consumer.
During the discussion around the dining room table, Esther’s mother expressed her astonishment over her daughter’s expertise in designer jeans. They had been people-watching at the mall. Esther, as it turned out, knew the brand of every pair of jeans that went by.
So what were the coolest jeans at Newton North?
“The coolest jeans are True Religions,” Esther said.
“They look,” she said, and here she smiled sheepishly as she stood up to reveal her denim-clad legs, “like these.”
Aliza and several of Esther’s other friends chipped in to buy them for her 17th birthday, in November.
Encouraged to Ease Up a Little
The amazing boys say they admire girls like Esther and Colby.
“I hate it when girls dumb themselves down,” Gabe Gladstone, the co-captain of mock trial, was saying one morning to the other captain, Cameron Ferrey.
Cameron said he felt the same way.
One of Esther’s close friends is Dan Catomeris, a school theater star. “One of the most attractive things about Esther is how smart she is,” said Dan, whose mother is a professor at Harvard Business School. “There’s always been this intellectual tension between us. I see why she likes Kierkegaard — he’s existential, but still Christian. She really likes Descartes. I was not so into Descartes. I really like Hume, Nietzsche, the existentialist authors. The musician we’re most collectively into is Bob Dylan.”
Sometimes, though, everybody wants some of these hard-charging girls to chill out. Tom DePeter, an Advanced Placement English teacher, wants his students to loosen up so they can write original sentences. The theater director, Adam Brown, wants the girls to “let go” in auditions.
Peter Martin, the girls’ cross-country coach, says girls try so hard to please everyone — coaches, teachers, parents — that he bends over backward not to criticize them. “I tell them, ‘Just go out and run.’ ” His team wins consistently.
But how do you chill out and still get into a highly selective college?
One of Esther’s favorite rituals is to hang out at her house with Aliza, eating Ben and Jerry’s and watching a DVD of a favorite program like “The Office.” Their friendship helped Esther and Aliza keep going last fall, when there was hardly time to hang out. Esther recalled in an e-mail message how one night she had telephoned Aliza, who is also a top student, and a cross-country team captain, to say she was feeling overwhelmed.
“I said, ‘Aliza, this is crazy, I have so much homework to do, and I won’t be able to relax until I do it all. I haven’t gone out in weeks!’ And Aliza (who had also been staying in on Fridays and Saturdays to do homework) pointed out: ‘I’d rather get into college.’ ”
By Dec. 15, Newton North was in a frenzy over early admissions answers. Esther’s friend Phoebe Gardener had been accepted to Dartmouth. Her friend Dan Lurie was in at Brown. Harvard wanted Dan Catomeris.
Esther was in calculus class, the last period of the day when her cellphone rang. It was her father. The letter from Williams College — her ideal of the small, liberal arts school — had arrived.
Her father would be at her brother’s basketball game when she got home. Her mother would still be at the office. Esther did not want to be alone when she opened the letter.
“Dad, can you bring it to school?” she asked.
Ten minutes later, when her father arrived, Esther realized that he had somehow not registered the devastating thinness of the envelope. The admissions office was sorry. Williams had had a record number of highly qualified applicants for early admission this year. Esther had been rejected. Not deferred. Rejected.
Her father hugged her as she cried outside her classroom, and then he drove her home.
Esther said several days later: “Maybe it hurt me that I wasn’t an athlete.”
But she was already moving on. “I chose Williams,” she said, with a shrug. “They didn’t choose me back.”
About that thin envelope: Mr. Mobley, unschooled in such intricacies, said he hadn’t paid much attention to it. He had wanted so much for his daughter to get into Williams, he said, and believed so strongly in her, that it was as if he had wished the letter into being an acceptance.
“It was a setback,” Mr. Mobley said weeks later. “But it’s not a failure.”
And Then One Day, a Letter Arrives
Has this all been a temporary insanity?
Esther’s friend Colby learned in February that she had been accepted at the University of Southern California. Soon, more letters of acceptance rolled in: from the University of Miami, the University of Texas at Austin, Tulane. With the college-application pressure behind her, she can go back to being the pragmatic romantic who opened her journal last August and wrote her “life list,” with 35 goals and dreams, in pink ink.
She wants: To write a novel. Own a (red) Jeep Wrangler. Get into college. Name her firstborn daughter Carmen. Go to carnival in Rio de Janeiro. Learn to surf. Live in a Spanish-speaking country. Learn to play the doppio movimiento of Chopin’s Sonata in B Flat. Own a dog. Be a bridesmaid. Vote for president. Write a really good poem. Never get divorced.
In mid-January Esther was thrilled to receive an acceptance letter from Centre College, one of her fallback schools, in Kentucky. But she was still dreaming about her remaining top choices: Amherst, Middlebury, Davidson and Smith, her mother’s alma mater.
Esther’s application to Smith included a letter from her father. He wrote about how, when Esther was a baby, they had gone to his wife’s 10th college reunion. He described the alumni parade as an “angelic procession of women in white, decade by decade, at every stage in the course of human life.”
He wrote about seeing the young women, the middle-aged graduates and, finally, “the elderly women, some with the assistance of canes and wheelchairs, but with no diminution of the confidence that a great education brings.”
“I still remember holding Esther as we watched those saints go marching into the central campus for the commencement ceremony,” he wrote.
“Lord,” he concluded, and he could have been talking about any of the schools his daughter still has her heart set on, “I want Esther to be in that number.”
Epilogue: Esther learned last week that she had gotten into Smith. She learned on Saturday that she had been rejected by Amherst and Middlebury. She is still hoping for Davidson.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/us/01girls.html?ei=5070&en=8542ef1a2b8dc3e1&ex=1176436800&emc=eta1&pagewanted=all
Here are some of my reactions to the New York Times article, "For Girls, It's be Yourself, and Be Perfect Too." (See below)
It is very true. Girls--of course boys also--today are pressured to achieve on multiple dimensions and then told to still celebrate their youth.
But I do think it is possible to achieve and still be genuine. Students just have to love what they do. I did all my extracurriculars--theater, ultimate frisbee, chinese harp, newspaper, speech team, Broadway Club, Arista, history club, tutoring, etc.--with smiles on my face because I truly enjoyed everything.
Of course the truth is not everyone enjoy everything and they are being pressured to take up everything for the sake of "being well rounded." I think that everyone will feel a lot better when they take a step back and stop worrying about what they think others want them to do and start focusing on just their own passions. Of course, then they'll think about the admissions officers and will start worrying again!
The biggest problem with this is that people start to lose themselves. They live for others and forget who they are. It's sad when freshmen in high school already start looking around for resume-padders. They should be looking to get involved; but too many do it for the wrong reason. It's great that kids can win national spelling bees knowing the word "ursprache," but did all the participants of The Bee memorize dictionaries because they were interested or because their parents told them that they should be interested? One of the scariest things I can imagine would be for people to wake up one day and realize that they have been living for someone else, that no part of their being really belonged to themselves. But it seems that this very thing happens all the time now.
Of course this is still only dwelling on message #1. Message # 2--Be yourself. Have fun. Don't work too hard--adds even more trouble.
Kaavya Viswanathan's scandal-marred "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life" seemed to have been exploring this exact tension. Of course I never got to read the whole book since Little, Brown and Company pulled it from the shelves. But from what I managed to read--the free first chapter--high-achieving Opal got rejected by Harvard for not enjoying her youth and relaxing. (I think her real problem was that she wasn't doing everything she was doing for the sake of doing them, but rather for the sake of getting into Harvard.)
I think this kind of rejection does happen, sometimes unfairly, sometimes not enough (I'm probably going to get jumped for this ::laugh::). It definitely doesn't add to a campus community to have prototype nerds stay up in their dorms or the library all day. A lively college needs students who can do more than do well in classes. Life at college is shaped by those students who are willing to have lives outside of classrooms, libraries and labs.
But then some outstanding friends of mine were probably rejected because they were wrongly classified as uninteresting nerds. That coupled with the acceptance of classmates who did whatever possible to secure the top grades, who club-hopped to pad their resumes, and whose achievements also included underage drinking and drug dealing, really demonstrated to me the unfairness of the whole thing.
In the end, life is imperfect and some injustices simply can't be rectified. What we still have is a world full of enough wonderful things to occupy our time and our mind. When we are happy and in tune with the songs of the universe, we will be able to change the world for the better, a little bit at a time.
When Perfection is Not Enough
For Girls, It’s Be Yourself, and Be Perfect, Too
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
In an honors philosophy/literature class, Esther Mobley, center, participates in a discussion of “Man’s Search for Meaning.”
By SARA RIMER
Published: April 1, 2007
NEWTON, Mass., March 31 — To anyone who knows 17-year-old Esther Mobley, one of the best students at one of the best public high schools in the country, it is absurd to think she doesn’t measure up. But Esther herself is quick to set the record straight.
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Excerpts: How Applying to College is Like 'The Aeneid,' and Other E-mails (April 1, 2007)
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Text: Colby Kennedy's College Essay (March 30, 2007)
Transcripts: 'The Appearance of Effortlessness' (April 1, 2007)
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Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
At Newton North High School in Newton, Mass., a Wonder Woman mural offers a role model to some girls. Newton North, one of the best public high schools in the country, gears its teaching toward gears its teaching toward a wide range of students.
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Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
‘It’s, like, a really big deal to go into a lucrative profession so that you can provide for your kids, and they can grow up in a place like the place where you grew up.’
Kat Jiang
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Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
‘I run, I do, but not very quickly, and always exhaustedly. This is one of the things I’m most insecure about. You meet someone, especially on a college tour, adults ask you what you do. They say, ‘What sports do you play?’ I don’t play any sports. It’s awkward.’
Esther Mobley
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‘I’m living up to my own expectations. It’s what I want to do. I want to do well for myself.’
Colby Kennedy
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Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
‘You’re supposed to have all these extracurriculars, to play sports and do theater. You’re supposed to do well in your classes and still have time to go out.’
Julie Mhlaba
“First of all, I’m a terrible athlete,” she said over lunch one day.
“I run, I do, but not very quickly, and always exhaustedly,” she continued. “This is one of the things I’m most insecure about. You meet someone, especially on a college tour, adults ask you what you do. They say, ‘What sports do you play?’ I don’t play any sports. It’s awkward.”
Esther, a willowy, effervescent senior, turned to her friend Colby Kennedy. Colby, 17, is also a great student, a classical pianist, fluent in Spanish, and a three-season varsity runner and track captain. Did Colby worry, Esther asked, that she fell short in some way?
“Or,” said Esther, and now her tone was a touch sarcastic, “do you just have it all already?”
They both burst out laughing.
Esther and Colby are two of the amazing girls at Newton North High School here in this affluent suburb just outside Boston. “Amazing girls” translation: Girls by the dozen who are high achieving, ambitious and confident (if not immune to the usual adolescent insecurities and meltdowns.) Girls who do everything: Varsity sports. Student government. Theater. Community service. Girls who have grown up learning they can do anything a boy can do, which is anything they want to do.
But being an amazing girl often doesn’t feel like enough these days when you’re competing with all the other amazing girls around the country who are applying to the same elite colleges that you have been encouraged to aspire to practically all your life.
An athlete, after all, is one of the few things Esther isn’t. A few of the things she is: a standout in Advanced Placement Latin and honors philosophy/literature who can expound on the beauty of the subjunctive tense in Catullus and on Kierkegaard’s existential choices. A writer whose junior thesis for Advanced Placement history won Newton North’s top prize. An actress. President of her church youth group.
To spend several months in a pressure cooker like Newton North is to see what a girl can be — what any young person can be — when encouraged by committed teachers and by engaged parents who can give them wide-ranging opportunities.
It is also to see these girls struggle to navigate the conflicting messages they have been absorbing, if not from their parents then from the culture, since elementary school. The first message: Bring home A’s. Do everything. Get into a top college — which doesn’t have to be in the Ivy League, or one of the other elites like Williams, Tufts or Bowdoin, but should be a “name” school.
The second message: Be yourself. Have fun. Don’t work too hard.
And, for all their accomplishments and ambitions, the amazing girls, as their teachers and classmates call them, are not immune to the third message: While it is now cool to be smart, it is not enough to be smart.
You still have to be pretty, thin and, as one of Esther’s classmates, Kat Jiang, a go-to stage manager for student theater who has a perfect 2400 score on her SATs, wrote in an e-mail message, “It’s out of style to admit it, but it is more important to be hot than smart.”
“Effortlessly hot,” Kat added.
If you are free to be everything, you are also expected to be everything. What it comes down to, in this place and time, is that the eternal adolescent search for self is going on at the same time as the quest for the perfect résumé. For Esther, as for high school seniors everywhere, this is a big weekend for finding out how your résumé measured up: The college acceptances, and rejections, are rolling in.
“You want to achieve,” Esther said. “But how do you achieve and still be genuine?”
If it all seems overwhelming at times, then the multitasking adults in Newton have the answer: Balance. Strive for balance.
But balance is out the window when you’re a high-achieving senior in the home stretch of the race for which all the years of achieving and the disciplined focusing on the future have been preparing you. These students are aware that because more girls apply to college than boys, amid concerns about gender balance, boys may have an edge at some small selective colleges.
“You’re supposed to have all these extracurriculars, to play sports and do theater,” said another of Esther’s 17-year-old classmates, Julie Mhlaba, who aspires to medical school and juggles three Advanced Placement classes, gospel choir and a part-time job as a waitress. “You’re supposed to do well in your classes and still have time to go out.”
“You’re supposed to do all these things,” Julie said, “and not go insane.”
Stress Trumps Relaxation
Newton, which has a population of almost 84,000, is known for a liberal sensibility and a high concentration of professionals like doctors, lawyers and academics. Six miles west of Boston, with its heavily settled neighborhoods, bustling downtowns and high numbers of immigrants, Newton is a suburb with an urban feel.
The main shopping area, in Newton Centre, is a concrete manifestation of the conflicting messages Esther and the other girls are constantly struggling to decode. In one five-block stretch are two Starbucks and one Peets Coffee & Tea, several psychotherapists’ offices, three SAT test-prep services, two after-school math programs, and three yoga studios promising relaxation and inner peace.
Smack in the middle of all of this is Esther’s church, the 227-year-old First Baptist, which welcomes everyone regardless of race, sexual orientation or denomination, and where Esther puts in a lot of time.
The test-prep business is booming. Kaplan (“Be the ideal college applicant!”) is practically around the corner from Chyten (“Our average SAT II score across all subjects is 720!”), which is three blocks from Princeton Review (“We’re all about scoring more!”). My First Yoga (for children 3 and up), with its founder playing up her Harvard degree, is conveniently located above Chyten, which includes the SAT Cafe.
High-priced SAT prep has become almost routine at schools like Newton North. Not to hire the extra help is practically an act of rebellion.
“I think it’s unfair,” Esther said, explaining why she decided against an SAT tutor, though she worried about her score (ultimately getting, as she put it, “above 2000”). “Why do I deserve this leg up?”
Parents view Newton’s expensive real estate — the median house price in 2006 was $730,000 — and high taxes as the price of admission to the prized public schools. There are less affluent parents, small-business owners, carpenters, plumbers, social workers and high school guidance counselors, but many of these families arrived decades ago when it was possible to buy a nice two-story Colonial for $150,000 or less.
Newton North, one of two outstanding public high schools here, is known for its academic rigor, but also its vocational education, reflecting the wide range of its 1,967 students. Nearly 73 percent of them are white, 7.3 percent black, nearly 12 percent Asian and 7.5 percent Hispanic. Many of the black and Hispanic students live in the Roxbury and Dorchester neighborhoods of Boston, and are bused in under a 35-year-old voluntary integration program.
Newton North has a student theater, winning athletic teams and dozens of after-school clubs (ultimate Frisbee, mock trial, black leadership, Hispanic culture, Israeli dance). There is an emphasis on nonconformity — even if it is often conformity dressed up as nonconformity — and an absence of such high school conventions as, say, homecoming queens, valedictorians and class rankings.
‘Superhuman’ Resistance
Jennifer Price, the Newton North principal, said she and her faculty emphasized to students that they could win admission to many excellent colleges without organizing their entire lives around résumé building. By age 14, Ms. Price said, the school’s highest fliers are already worrying about marketing themselves to colleges: “You almost have to be superhuman to resist the pressure.”
If more students aren’t listening to the message that they can relax a bit, one reason may be that a lot of the people delivering the message went to the elite colleges. Ms. Price has an undergraduate degree from Princeton — she makes a point of saying that she got in because she was recruited to play varsity field hockey — and is a doctoral candidate at Harvard. Many of the teachers have degrees from the Ivy League and other elite schools.
But the message also tends to get drowned out when parents bump into each other at Whole Foods and share news about whose son or daughter just got accepted (or not) at Harvard, Yale, Brown, Penn or Stanford.
Or when the final edition of the award-winning student newspaper, the Newtonite, comes out every June, with its two-page spread listing all the seniors, and their colleges. For that entire week, Esther says, everyone pores over the names, obsessing about who is going where.
“In a lot of ways, it’s all about that one week,” she said.
There is something about the lives these girls lead — their jam-packed schedules, the amped-up multitasking, the focus on a narrow group of the nation’s most selective colleges — that speaks of a profound anxiety in the young people, but perhaps even more so in their parents, about the ability of the next generation to afford to raise their families in a place like Newton.
Admission to a brand-name college is viewed by many parents, and their children, as holding the best promise of professional success and economic well-being in an increasingly competitive world.
“It’s, like, a really big deal to go into a lucrative profession so that you can provide for your kids, and they can grow up in a place like the place where you grew up,” Kat said.
Esther, however, is aiming for a decidedly nonlucrative profession. Inspired by her father, Greg Mobley, who is a Biblical scholar, she wants to be a theologian.
She says she is interested in “Scripture, the Bible, the development of organized religion, thinking about all this, writing about all this, teaching about all this.” More than anything else, she wrote in an e-mail message, she wants to be a writer, “and religion is what I most like to write about.”
“I have such a strong sense of being supported by my faith,” she continued. “It gives me priorities. That’s why I’m not concerned about making money, because I know that there is so much more to living a rich life than having money.”
First Baptist Church counts on Esther. She organizes pancake suppers, tutors a young congregant and helps lead the youth group’s outreach to the poor.
On a springlike Sunday afternoon toward the end of winter, Esther could be found with her father, her two brothers and members of her youth group handing out food to homeless people on Boston Common. She had spent the morning in church.
About 2 p.m., a text message flashed across her cellphone from Gabe Gladstone, a co-captain of mock trial: “Where are you?” Esther, a key member of the group, was needed at a meeting.
Esther messaged back: “I’m feeding the homeless, I’ll come when God’s work is done.”
Fending Off ‘Anorexia of the Soul’
On a Saturday afternoon in late November, Esther and her mother, Page Kelley, sat at the dining room table talking about the contradictions and complexities of life in Newton. Esther’s father was with his sons, Gregory, 15, who plays varsity basketball for Newton North, and Tommy, 10, coaching Tommy’s basketball team.
Ms. Kelley, 47, an assistant federal public defender, and Mr. Mobley, 49, a professor at Andover Newton Theological School in Newton, grew up in Kentucky and came north for college. Ms. Kelley is a graduate of Smith College and Harvard Law School. Mr. Mobley has two graduate degrees from Harvard.
Amid all the competitiveness and consumerism, and the obsession with achievement in Newton, Ms. Kelley said, “You just hope your child doesn’t have anorexia of the soul.”
“It’s the idea that you end up with this strange drive,” she continued. “One of the great things about Esther is that she does have some kind of spiritual life. You just hope your kid has good priorities. We keep saying to her: ‘The name of the college you go to doesn’t matter. There are a lot of good colleges out there.’ ”
Esther said her mother is her role model. “I think the work she does is very noble,” she said.
“She has these impressive degrees,” Esther said, “and she chooses to do something where she’s not making as much money as she could.”
As close as mother and daughter are, there is one important generational divide. “My mother applied to one college,” Esther said. “She got in, she went.”
Back from basketball practice with his sons, Mr. Mobley joined the conversation. To Mr. Mobley, a formalized, competitive culture pervades everything from youth sports to getting into college. He pointed out to his wife that the lives of their three children were far more directed “than any of the aimless hours I spent in my youth daydreaming and meandering.”
Ms. Kelley asked, “Is that because of us?”
“Yes — and no,” he said. “It’s because of 2006 in America, and the Northeast.”
The bar for achievement keeps being raised for each generation, he said: “Our children start where we finished.”
As the afternoon turned into early evening, Esther went out to meet her best friend, Aliza Edelstein. The family dog, a Jack Russell terrier named Bandit, was underfoot, trolling for affection.
“I’m not worried about Esther because I know her,” Mr. Mobley said. “Esther’s character is sealed in some fundamental way.”
Ms. Kelley, however, wondered aloud: “Don’t you worry that she never rebelled? When I was growing up, you were supposed to rebel.”
But she acknowledged that she had sent her own mixed signals. “As I’m sitting here saying I don’t care what kind of grades she gets, I’m thinking, she comes home with a B, and I say: ‘What’d you get a B for? Who gave you a B? I’m going to talk to them.’
“You do want your child to do well.”
Mr. Mobley nodded. “We’re not above it,” he said. “It’s complicated.”
On a Fierce Mission to Shine
To sit in on classes with Esther in her vibrant high school where, between classes, the central corridor, called Main Street, is a bustling social hub, is to see why these students are genuinely excited about school.
Their teachers are pushing them to wrestle with big questions: What is truth? What does Virgil’s “Aeneid” tell us about destiny and individual happiness? How does DNA work? How is the global economy reshaping the world (subtext: you have to be fluid and highly educated to survive in the new economy)?
Esther’s ethics teacher, Joel Greifinger, spent considerable time this winter on moral theories. An examination of John Rawls’s theory of justice led to extensive discussions about American society and class inequality. Among the reading material Mr. Greifinger presented was research showing the correlation between income and SAT scores.
The class strengthened Esther’s earlier decision not to take private SAT prep.
In her honors philosophy/literature class, Esther has been reading Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, “Sophie’s Choice” and Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning.” Amid a discussion of the strangely unsettling emptiness Frankl encountered upon his release from a Nazi concentration camp, Esther quoted Sartre: “You are condemned to freedom.”
Her honors teacher, Mike Fieleke, nodded. “That’s the existential idea. If we don’t awaken to that freedom, then we are slaves to our fate.”
A few weeks earlier, Esther, taking stock of her own life, wrote in an e-mail message: “I feel like I’m on the verge. I feel like I’m just about to get out of high school, to enter into adulthood, to reach some kind of state of independence and peacefulness and enlightenment.”
More immediately, she wrote, Mr. Fieleke had told her “he thought, from reading my papers and hearing me speak in class, that I was just on the verge of some really great idea.”
“I asked him if he thought that idea would come by next Wednesday, when our big Hamlet paper was due. He said I might feel this way all year long.”
The most intensely pressurized academic force field at school is the one surrounding the students on the Advanced Placement and honors track. About 145 of the 500 seniors are taking a combined total of three, four and five Advanced Placement and honors classes, with a few students even juggling six and seven.
Esther’s friend Colby takes four Advanced Placement and one honors class. “I’m living up to my own expectations,” Colby said. “It’s what I want to do. I want to do well for myself.”
Another of Esther’s friends, from student theater, Lee Gerstenhaber, 17, was juggling four Advanced Placement classes with intense late-night rehearsals for her starring role as Maggie, the seductive Southern belle in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” It was too much. About 4 a.m one day last fall, she was still fighting her way through Advanced Placement physics homework. She dissolved in tears.
“I had always been able to do it before,” Lee recalled later. “But I finally said to myself, ‘O.K., I’m not Superwoman.’ ”
She dropped physics — and was incandescent as Maggie.
Esther’s schedule includes two Advanced Placement and one honors class. Among certain of her classmates who are mindful that many elite colleges advise prospective applicants to pursue the most rigorous possible course of study, taking two Advanced Placement classes is viewed as “only two A.P.’s.” But Esther says she is simply taking the subjects she is most interested in.
She also shrugged off advice that it would look better on her résumé to take another science class instead of her passion, A.P. Latin. Like so many of her classmates, Esther started taking Latin in the seventh grade, when everyone was saying Latin would help them with the SAT. But now, except for Esther and a handful of other diehards who are devoted to Latin — and to their teacher, Robert Mitchell — everyone else has moved on.
“I like languages,” said Esther, who also takes Advanced Placement Spanish. “And I really like Latin.”
Who Needs a Boyfriend?
This year Esther has been trying life without a boyfriend. It was her mother’s idea. “She’d say, ‘I think it’s time for you to take a break and discover who you are,’ ” Esther said over lunch with Colby. “She was right. I feel better.”
Esther turned to Colby: she seems to pretty much always have a boyfriend.
“I never felt like having a boyfriend was a burden,” Colby said. “I enjoy just being comfortable with someone, being able to spend time together. I don’t think that means I wouldn’t feel comfortable or confident without one.”
Esther said: “I’m not trying to say that’s a bad thing. I’m like you. I never thought, ‘If I don’t have a boyfriend I’ll feel totally forlorn and lost.’ ”
But who needs a boyfriend? “My girlfriends have consistently been more important than my boyfriends,” Esther wrote in an e-mail message. “I mean, girlfriends last longer.”
Boyfriends or not, a deeper question for Esther and Colby is how they negotiate their identities as young women. They have grown up watching their mothers, and their friends’ mothers, juggle family and career. They take it for granted that they will be able to carve out similar paths, even if it doesn’t look easy from their vantage point.
They say they want to be both feminine and assertive, like their mothers. But Colby made the point at lunch that she would rather be considered too assertive and less conventionally feminine than “be totally passive and a bystander in my life.”
Esther agreed. She said she admired Cristina, the spunky resident on “Grey’s Anatomy,” one of her favorite TV shows.
“She really stands up for herself and knows who she is, which I aspire to,” Esther said.
Cristina is also “gorgeous,” Esther laughed. “And when she’s taking off her scrubs, she’s always wearing cute lingerie.”
Speaking of lingerie, part of being feminine is feeling good about how you look. Esther is not trying to be one of Newton North’s trendsetters, the girls who show up every day in Ugg boots, designer jeans — or equally cool jeans from the vintage store — and tight-fitting tank tops under the latest North Face jacket.
She never looks “scrubby,” to use the slang for being a slob, but sometimes comes to school in sweats and moccasins.
“I think sometimes I might be trying a little too hard not to conform,” Esther says.
She says she is one of the few girls in her circle who doesn’t have a credit card. But she is hardly immune to the pressure to be a good consumer.
During the discussion around the dining room table, Esther’s mother expressed her astonishment over her daughter’s expertise in designer jeans. They had been people-watching at the mall. Esther, as it turned out, knew the brand of every pair of jeans that went by.
So what were the coolest jeans at Newton North?
“The coolest jeans are True Religions,” Esther said.
“They look,” she said, and here she smiled sheepishly as she stood up to reveal her denim-clad legs, “like these.”
Aliza and several of Esther’s other friends chipped in to buy them for her 17th birthday, in November.
Encouraged to Ease Up a Little
The amazing boys say they admire girls like Esther and Colby.
“I hate it when girls dumb themselves down,” Gabe Gladstone, the co-captain of mock trial, was saying one morning to the other captain, Cameron Ferrey.
Cameron said he felt the same way.
One of Esther’s close friends is Dan Catomeris, a school theater star. “One of the most attractive things about Esther is how smart she is,” said Dan, whose mother is a professor at Harvard Business School. “There’s always been this intellectual tension between us. I see why she likes Kierkegaard — he’s existential, but still Christian. She really likes Descartes. I was not so into Descartes. I really like Hume, Nietzsche, the existentialist authors. The musician we’re most collectively into is Bob Dylan.”
Sometimes, though, everybody wants some of these hard-charging girls to chill out. Tom DePeter, an Advanced Placement English teacher, wants his students to loosen up so they can write original sentences. The theater director, Adam Brown, wants the girls to “let go” in auditions.
Peter Martin, the girls’ cross-country coach, says girls try so hard to please everyone — coaches, teachers, parents — that he bends over backward not to criticize them. “I tell them, ‘Just go out and run.’ ” His team wins consistently.
But how do you chill out and still get into a highly selective college?
One of Esther’s favorite rituals is to hang out at her house with Aliza, eating Ben and Jerry’s and watching a DVD of a favorite program like “The Office.” Their friendship helped Esther and Aliza keep going last fall, when there was hardly time to hang out. Esther recalled in an e-mail message how one night she had telephoned Aliza, who is also a top student, and a cross-country team captain, to say she was feeling overwhelmed.
“I said, ‘Aliza, this is crazy, I have so much homework to do, and I won’t be able to relax until I do it all. I haven’t gone out in weeks!’ And Aliza (who had also been staying in on Fridays and Saturdays to do homework) pointed out: ‘I’d rather get into college.’ ”
By Dec. 15, Newton North was in a frenzy over early admissions answers. Esther’s friend Phoebe Gardener had been accepted to Dartmouth. Her friend Dan Lurie was in at Brown. Harvard wanted Dan Catomeris.
Esther was in calculus class, the last period of the day when her cellphone rang. It was her father. The letter from Williams College — her ideal of the small, liberal arts school — had arrived.
Her father would be at her brother’s basketball game when she got home. Her mother would still be at the office. Esther did not want to be alone when she opened the letter.
“Dad, can you bring it to school?” she asked.
Ten minutes later, when her father arrived, Esther realized that he had somehow not registered the devastating thinness of the envelope. The admissions office was sorry. Williams had had a record number of highly qualified applicants for early admission this year. Esther had been rejected. Not deferred. Rejected.
Her father hugged her as she cried outside her classroom, and then he drove her home.
Esther said several days later: “Maybe it hurt me that I wasn’t an athlete.”
But she was already moving on. “I chose Williams,” she said, with a shrug. “They didn’t choose me back.”
About that thin envelope: Mr. Mobley, unschooled in such intricacies, said he hadn’t paid much attention to it. He had wanted so much for his daughter to get into Williams, he said, and believed so strongly in her, that it was as if he had wished the letter into being an acceptance.
“It was a setback,” Mr. Mobley said weeks later. “But it’s not a failure.”
And Then One Day, a Letter Arrives
Has this all been a temporary insanity?
Esther’s friend Colby learned in February that she had been accepted at the University of Southern California. Soon, more letters of acceptance rolled in: from the University of Miami, the University of Texas at Austin, Tulane. With the college-application pressure behind her, she can go back to being the pragmatic romantic who opened her journal last August and wrote her “life list,” with 35 goals and dreams, in pink ink.
She wants: To write a novel. Own a (red) Jeep Wrangler. Get into college. Name her firstborn daughter Carmen. Go to carnival in Rio de Janeiro. Learn to surf. Live in a Spanish-speaking country. Learn to play the doppio movimiento of Chopin’s Sonata in B Flat. Own a dog. Be a bridesmaid. Vote for president. Write a really good poem. Never get divorced.
In mid-January Esther was thrilled to receive an acceptance letter from Centre College, one of her fallback schools, in Kentucky. But she was still dreaming about her remaining top choices: Amherst, Middlebury, Davidson and Smith, her mother’s alma mater.
Esther’s application to Smith included a letter from her father. He wrote about how, when Esther was a baby, they had gone to his wife’s 10th college reunion. He described the alumni parade as an “angelic procession of women in white, decade by decade, at every stage in the course of human life.”
He wrote about seeing the young women, the middle-aged graduates and, finally, “the elderly women, some with the assistance of canes and wheelchairs, but with no diminution of the confidence that a great education brings.”
“I still remember holding Esther as we watched those saints go marching into the central campus for the commencement ceremony,” he wrote.
“Lord,” he concluded, and he could have been talking about any of the schools his daughter still has her heart set on, “I want Esther to be in that number.”
Epilogue: Esther learned last week that she had gotten into Smith. She learned on Saturday that she had been rejected by Amherst and Middlebury. She is still hoping for Davidson.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/us/01girls.html?ei=5070&en=8542ef1a2b8dc3e1&ex=1176436800&emc=eta1&pagewanted=all
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Four-Year-Old Dies of Medicine Overdose, Murder Suspected
Child's overdose death raises questions By DENISE LAVOIE, Associated Press Writer
Fri Mar 23, 2:58 PM ET
HULL, Mass. - In the final months of Rebecca Riley's life, a school nurse said the little girl was so weak she was like a "floppy doll."
ADVERTISEMENT
The preschool principal had to help Rebecca off the bus because the 4-year-old was shaking so badly.
And a pharmacist complained that Rebecca's mother kept coming up with excuses for why her daughter needed more and more medication.
None of their concerns was enough to save Rebecca.
Rebecca — who had been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity and bipolar disorder, or what used to be called manic depression — died Dec. 13 of an overdose of prescribed drugs, and her parents have been arrested on murder charges, accused of intentionally overmedicating their daughter to keep her quiet and out of their hair.
Interviews and a review of court documents by The Associated Press make it clear that many of those who were supposed to protect Rebecca — teachers, social workers, other professionals — suspected something was wrong, but never went quite far enough.
But the tragic case is more than a story about one child. It raises troubling, larger questions about the state of child psychiatry, namely: Can children as young as Rebecca be accurately diagnosed with mental illnesses? Are rambunctious youngsters being medicated for their parents' convenience? And should children so young be prescribed powerful psychotropic drugs meant for adults?
Dispensing drugs to children diagnosed with mood or behavior problems is "the easiest thing to do, but it's not always the best thing to do," said Dr. Jon McClellan, medical director of the Child Study and Treatment Center in Lakewood, Wash. "At some level, I would hope that you'd also be teaching kids ways to control their behavior."
According to the medical examiner, Rebecca died of a combination of Clonidine, a blood pressure medication Rebecca had been prescribed for ADHD; Depakote, an antiseizure and mood-stabilizing drug prescribed for the little girl's bipolar disorder; a cough suppressant; and an antihistamine. The amount of Clonidine alone in Rebecca's system was enough to be fatal, the medical examiner said.
The two brand-name prescription drugs are approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in adults only, though doctors can legally prescribe them to youngsters and do so frequently.
Rebecca's parents, Michael and Carolyn Riley, say they were only following doctor's orders. Rebecca, they told police, had been diagnosed when she was just 2 1/2, and Rebecca's psychiatrist prescribed the same potent drugs that had been prescribed for her older brother and sister when she diagnosed them with the same illnesses several years earlier.
But Rebecca's teachers, the school nurse and her therapist all told police they never saw behavior in Rebecca that fit her diagnoses, such as aggression, sharp mood swings or hyperactivity.
Prosecutors say the Rileys intentionally tried to quiet their daughter with high doses of Clonidine. Relatives told police the Rileys called Clonidine the "happy medicine" and the "sleep medicine."
Through their attorneys, Michael Riley, 34, and Carolyn Riley, 32, have accused Rebecca's psychiatrist, Dr. Kayoko Kifuji, of over-prescribing medication.
Kifuji did not return calls for comment and declined to be interviewed. But Kifuji has vehemently denied any role in Rebecca's death. She has agreed to a suspension of her license while the state's medical board investigates.
Kifuji told police Rebecca had been her patient since August 2004, when she was 2. She said she based her diagnoses of ADHD and bipolar disorder on the family's mental health history, as described by Carolyn Riley, and Rebecca's behavior, as described by Carolyn and briefly observed by her during office visits.
Kifuji told police she became alarmed in October 2005 when Carolyn Riley told her she had increased Rebecca's nighttime dose of Clonidine from 2 to 2 1/2 tablets, and warned Carolyn the increased dose could kill Rebecca.
But Carolyn told investigators Kifuji told her she could give Rebecca and her sister extra Clonidine at night to help them sleep.
Tufts-New England Medical Center, where Kifuji worked, issued a statement supporting Kifuji, saying her care of Rebecca "was appropriate and within responsible professional standards."
In the months leading up to Rebecca's death, others noticed there was something wrong.
Teachers and staff members at the Johnson Early Childhood Center in Weymouth, about 20 miles south of Boston, say they called Rebecca's mother repeatedly to tell her that Rebecca was "out of it," but her mother said the girl was tired because she wasn't sleeping well.
A neighbor who lived next door to the family in the last month of Rebecca's life said Rebecca and her siblings seemed listless.
"They looked like little robots. They looked very lethargic," Phyllis Lipton said. "I said, `Wow, they don't look right,' but who knew?"
Pharmacists at Walgreens in Weymouth called Kifuji twice to complain that Carolyn Riley was asking for more Clonidine, even though her prescription was not due to be refilled yet, according to state police.
Once, Riley said she had lost a bottle of pills, and another time, she said water had gotten into her prescription bottle and ruined the pills, according to police.
Kifuji authorized refills, but after the second incident, she began prescribing Clonidine in 10-day refills instead of 30-day supplies, investigators said.
On Aug. 16, a prescription for 35 Clonidine tablets — a 10-day supply — was filled at Walgreens, even though the Rileys had obtained a 10-day refill only the day before, investigators said.
Walgreens spokeswoman Tiffani Bruce said: "The scrip was filled as written, as it was prescribed by the doctor, and all the appropriate information on the medications was given to the family."
After Rebecca's death, police found only seven Clonidine tablets in the family's medicine tray; the pharmacist said there should have been 75. All together, prosecutors say, Carolyn Riley got 200 more pills in one year than she should have.
The Rileys' lawyers call them unsophisticated people who did not question their children's doctors.
Both were unemployed; they collected welfare and disabilty benefits and lived in subsidized housing. Michael Riley, who is also awaiting trial on charges of molesting a stepdaughter in 2005, claimed to suffer from bipolar disorder and a rage disorder; his wife told police she suffered from depression and anxiety.
"They are not the sort of people who go on the Internet and look on WebMD. These are the sort of people who, when they go to a doctor, the doctor is God and they do what the doctor says," said John Darrell, Michael's lawyer.
Carolyn's lawyer, Michael Bourbeau, said that because the Rileys' three children were all taking Clonidine, Rebecca's prescription may have come up short at times when her siblings were given some of her pills. And some of the pills may have been lost when they were split in half, he said.
In July, after a therapist filed a complaint with the state Department of Social Services, social workers met with the family's doctors and other medical professionals and were assured that the medications Rebecca was taking were within medical guidelines.
"There were lots of medical eyes on this case and none of them seemed to say there was an issue of over-medication in this case," said Social Services Commissioner Harry Spence, who has come under fire for the agency's handling of the case.
Still, there were lingering concerns. When social workers tried to make a home visit in November, Carolyn "resisted and evaded," Spence said. Weeks later, workers resolved to make a surprise check, but Rebecca died the very next day, before they could visit.
Rebecca was found dead on the floor of her parents' bedroom wearing only a pink pull-up diaper and gold-stud earrings, on top of a pile of clothes, magazines and a stuffed brown bear.
Rebecca's uncle, James McGonnell, and his girlfriend, Kelly Williams, who lived with the Rileys, told police that the Rileys would put their kids to bed as early as 5 p.m. Rebecca, they said, often slept through the day and got up only to eat.
When Michael Riley decided the kids were "acting up," he told Carolyn to give them pills, McGonnell and Williams told police.
According to McGonnell and Williams, Rebecca spent the last days of her life wandering around the house, sick and disoriented. But the Rileys told police they were not alarmed. "It was just a cold," Carolyn repeatedly said during police interviews.
The medical examiner said Rebecca died a slow and painful death. She said the overdose of Clonidine caused her organs to shut down, filling her lungs with fluid and causing congestive heart failure.
Williams told police that the night before she died, Rebecca was pale and seemed "out of it." At one point, the little girl knocked weakly on her parents' bedroom door and softly called for her mommy, but Michael Riley opened the door a crack and yelled at her to go back to her room, Williams said.
Later that night, McGonnell told police, he heard someone struggling to breathe and found Rebecca gurgling as if something was stuck in her throat. McGonnell told police he wiped vomit from his niece's face, then kicked in the door to her parents' room and yelled at the Rileys to take Rebecca to the emergency room.
Instead, Carolyn Riley said, she gave her daughter a half-tablet of Clonidine.
Carolyn's mother, Valerie Berio, said that when she visited the kids the night of Dec. 11, Rebecca seemed congested but not seriously ill. In a photograph Berio said she took that night, Rebecca is smiling slightly as her mother holds a new green velvet dress in front of her.
Berio said that shows that her daughter and son-in-law could not have known how sick Rebecca was.
Rebecca's death has inflamed a long-running debate in psychiatry. Some psychiatrists believe bipolar disorder, which was traditionally diagnosed in adolescence or early adulthood, has become a trendy diagnosis in young children.
"As a clinician, I can tell you it's just very difficult to say whether someone is just throwing tantrums or has bipolar disorder," said Dr. Oscar B. Bukstein, a child psychiatrist and associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh.
A study of mentally ill children discharged from community hospitals, published in January in the Archives of General Psychiatry, found the proportion of children diagnosed with bipolar disorders jumped from 2.9 percent in 1990 to 15.1 percent in 2000.
A report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2002 estimated that about 7 percent of elementary school-age children — or approximately 1.6 million youngsters ages 6 to 11 — have been diagnosed with ADHD.
The annual number of U.S. children prescribed anti-psychotic drugs jumped fivefold between 1995 and 2002, to an estimated 2.5 million, according to a study published last year by researchers at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital in Nashville, Tenn.
Some child psychiatrists say bipolar disorder may have been under-diagnosed in children for years, partly because several key symptoms are also symptoms of ADHD, including hyperactivity, distractibility and talkativeness.
Dr. Janet Wozniak, director of the Pediatric Bipolar Disorder Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, said early diagnosis and treatment are critical because the illness can cause social and academic problems, and lead to drug abuse, crime and suicide.
"What's commonly overlooked when considering diagnosing and treating children at such an early age is the risk of not treating and not intervening," Wozniak said.
(Corrects by deleting reference to photo being taken 18 hours earlier.)
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U.S. News
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070323/ap_on_re_us/drugged_to_death
Fri Mar 23, 2:58 PM ET
HULL, Mass. - In the final months of Rebecca Riley's life, a school nurse said the little girl was so weak she was like a "floppy doll."
ADVERTISEMENT
The preschool principal had to help Rebecca off the bus because the 4-year-old was shaking so badly.
And a pharmacist complained that Rebecca's mother kept coming up with excuses for why her daughter needed more and more medication.
None of their concerns was enough to save Rebecca.
Rebecca — who had been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity and bipolar disorder, or what used to be called manic depression — died Dec. 13 of an overdose of prescribed drugs, and her parents have been arrested on murder charges, accused of intentionally overmedicating their daughter to keep her quiet and out of their hair.
Interviews and a review of court documents by The Associated Press make it clear that many of those who were supposed to protect Rebecca — teachers, social workers, other professionals — suspected something was wrong, but never went quite far enough.
But the tragic case is more than a story about one child. It raises troubling, larger questions about the state of child psychiatry, namely: Can children as young as Rebecca be accurately diagnosed with mental illnesses? Are rambunctious youngsters being medicated for their parents' convenience? And should children so young be prescribed powerful psychotropic drugs meant for adults?
Dispensing drugs to children diagnosed with mood or behavior problems is "the easiest thing to do, but it's not always the best thing to do," said Dr. Jon McClellan, medical director of the Child Study and Treatment Center in Lakewood, Wash. "At some level, I would hope that you'd also be teaching kids ways to control their behavior."
According to the medical examiner, Rebecca died of a combination of Clonidine, a blood pressure medication Rebecca had been prescribed for ADHD; Depakote, an antiseizure and mood-stabilizing drug prescribed for the little girl's bipolar disorder; a cough suppressant; and an antihistamine. The amount of Clonidine alone in Rebecca's system was enough to be fatal, the medical examiner said.
The two brand-name prescription drugs are approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in adults only, though doctors can legally prescribe them to youngsters and do so frequently.
Rebecca's parents, Michael and Carolyn Riley, say they were only following doctor's orders. Rebecca, they told police, had been diagnosed when she was just 2 1/2, and Rebecca's psychiatrist prescribed the same potent drugs that had been prescribed for her older brother and sister when she diagnosed them with the same illnesses several years earlier.
But Rebecca's teachers, the school nurse and her therapist all told police they never saw behavior in Rebecca that fit her diagnoses, such as aggression, sharp mood swings or hyperactivity.
Prosecutors say the Rileys intentionally tried to quiet their daughter with high doses of Clonidine. Relatives told police the Rileys called Clonidine the "happy medicine" and the "sleep medicine."
Through their attorneys, Michael Riley, 34, and Carolyn Riley, 32, have accused Rebecca's psychiatrist, Dr. Kayoko Kifuji, of over-prescribing medication.
Kifuji did not return calls for comment and declined to be interviewed. But Kifuji has vehemently denied any role in Rebecca's death. She has agreed to a suspension of her license while the state's medical board investigates.
Kifuji told police Rebecca had been her patient since August 2004, when she was 2. She said she based her diagnoses of ADHD and bipolar disorder on the family's mental health history, as described by Carolyn Riley, and Rebecca's behavior, as described by Carolyn and briefly observed by her during office visits.
Kifuji told police she became alarmed in October 2005 when Carolyn Riley told her she had increased Rebecca's nighttime dose of Clonidine from 2 to 2 1/2 tablets, and warned Carolyn the increased dose could kill Rebecca.
But Carolyn told investigators Kifuji told her she could give Rebecca and her sister extra Clonidine at night to help them sleep.
Tufts-New England Medical Center, where Kifuji worked, issued a statement supporting Kifuji, saying her care of Rebecca "was appropriate and within responsible professional standards."
In the months leading up to Rebecca's death, others noticed there was something wrong.
Teachers and staff members at the Johnson Early Childhood Center in Weymouth, about 20 miles south of Boston, say they called Rebecca's mother repeatedly to tell her that Rebecca was "out of it," but her mother said the girl was tired because she wasn't sleeping well.
A neighbor who lived next door to the family in the last month of Rebecca's life said Rebecca and her siblings seemed listless.
"They looked like little robots. They looked very lethargic," Phyllis Lipton said. "I said, `Wow, they don't look right,' but who knew?"
Pharmacists at Walgreens in Weymouth called Kifuji twice to complain that Carolyn Riley was asking for more Clonidine, even though her prescription was not due to be refilled yet, according to state police.
Once, Riley said she had lost a bottle of pills, and another time, she said water had gotten into her prescription bottle and ruined the pills, according to police.
Kifuji authorized refills, but after the second incident, she began prescribing Clonidine in 10-day refills instead of 30-day supplies, investigators said.
On Aug. 16, a prescription for 35 Clonidine tablets — a 10-day supply — was filled at Walgreens, even though the Rileys had obtained a 10-day refill only the day before, investigators said.
Walgreens spokeswoman Tiffani Bruce said: "The scrip was filled as written, as it was prescribed by the doctor, and all the appropriate information on the medications was given to the family."
After Rebecca's death, police found only seven Clonidine tablets in the family's medicine tray; the pharmacist said there should have been 75. All together, prosecutors say, Carolyn Riley got 200 more pills in one year than she should have.
The Rileys' lawyers call them unsophisticated people who did not question their children's doctors.
Both were unemployed; they collected welfare and disabilty benefits and lived in subsidized housing. Michael Riley, who is also awaiting trial on charges of molesting a stepdaughter in 2005, claimed to suffer from bipolar disorder and a rage disorder; his wife told police she suffered from depression and anxiety.
"They are not the sort of people who go on the Internet and look on WebMD. These are the sort of people who, when they go to a doctor, the doctor is God and they do what the doctor says," said John Darrell, Michael's lawyer.
Carolyn's lawyer, Michael Bourbeau, said that because the Rileys' three children were all taking Clonidine, Rebecca's prescription may have come up short at times when her siblings were given some of her pills. And some of the pills may have been lost when they were split in half, he said.
In July, after a therapist filed a complaint with the state Department of Social Services, social workers met with the family's doctors and other medical professionals and were assured that the medications Rebecca was taking were within medical guidelines.
"There were lots of medical eyes on this case and none of them seemed to say there was an issue of over-medication in this case," said Social Services Commissioner Harry Spence, who has come under fire for the agency's handling of the case.
Still, there were lingering concerns. When social workers tried to make a home visit in November, Carolyn "resisted and evaded," Spence said. Weeks later, workers resolved to make a surprise check, but Rebecca died the very next day, before they could visit.
Rebecca was found dead on the floor of her parents' bedroom wearing only a pink pull-up diaper and gold-stud earrings, on top of a pile of clothes, magazines and a stuffed brown bear.
Rebecca's uncle, James McGonnell, and his girlfriend, Kelly Williams, who lived with the Rileys, told police that the Rileys would put their kids to bed as early as 5 p.m. Rebecca, they said, often slept through the day and got up only to eat.
When Michael Riley decided the kids were "acting up," he told Carolyn to give them pills, McGonnell and Williams told police.
According to McGonnell and Williams, Rebecca spent the last days of her life wandering around the house, sick and disoriented. But the Rileys told police they were not alarmed. "It was just a cold," Carolyn repeatedly said during police interviews.
The medical examiner said Rebecca died a slow and painful death. She said the overdose of Clonidine caused her organs to shut down, filling her lungs with fluid and causing congestive heart failure.
Williams told police that the night before she died, Rebecca was pale and seemed "out of it." At one point, the little girl knocked weakly on her parents' bedroom door and softly called for her mommy, but Michael Riley opened the door a crack and yelled at her to go back to her room, Williams said.
Later that night, McGonnell told police, he heard someone struggling to breathe and found Rebecca gurgling as if something was stuck in her throat. McGonnell told police he wiped vomit from his niece's face, then kicked in the door to her parents' room and yelled at the Rileys to take Rebecca to the emergency room.
Instead, Carolyn Riley said, she gave her daughter a half-tablet of Clonidine.
Carolyn's mother, Valerie Berio, said that when she visited the kids the night of Dec. 11, Rebecca seemed congested but not seriously ill. In a photograph Berio said she took that night, Rebecca is smiling slightly as her mother holds a new green velvet dress in front of her.
Berio said that shows that her daughter and son-in-law could not have known how sick Rebecca was.
Rebecca's death has inflamed a long-running debate in psychiatry. Some psychiatrists believe bipolar disorder, which was traditionally diagnosed in adolescence or early adulthood, has become a trendy diagnosis in young children.
"As a clinician, I can tell you it's just very difficult to say whether someone is just throwing tantrums or has bipolar disorder," said Dr. Oscar B. Bukstein, a child psychiatrist and associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh.
A study of mentally ill children discharged from community hospitals, published in January in the Archives of General Psychiatry, found the proportion of children diagnosed with bipolar disorders jumped from 2.9 percent in 1990 to 15.1 percent in 2000.
A report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2002 estimated that about 7 percent of elementary school-age children — or approximately 1.6 million youngsters ages 6 to 11 — have been diagnosed with ADHD.
The annual number of U.S. children prescribed anti-psychotic drugs jumped fivefold between 1995 and 2002, to an estimated 2.5 million, according to a study published last year by researchers at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital in Nashville, Tenn.
Some child psychiatrists say bipolar disorder may have been under-diagnosed in children for years, partly because several key symptoms are also symptoms of ADHD, including hyperactivity, distractibility and talkativeness.
Dr. Janet Wozniak, director of the Pediatric Bipolar Disorder Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, said early diagnosis and treatment are critical because the illness can cause social and academic problems, and lead to drug abuse, crime and suicide.
"What's commonly overlooked when considering diagnosing and treating children at such an early age is the risk of not treating and not intervening," Wozniak said.
(Corrects by deleting reference to photo being taken 18 hours earlier.)
Email Story IM Story Printable View (What happened to the "Discuss" option?) RECOMMEND THIS STORY
Recommend It:
Average (675 votes)
» Recommended Stories
Full Coverage: Mental Health
News Stories
Phone-Based Therapy Eases Long-Term Depression HealthDay via Yahoo! News, Mar 23 Internal Body Clock Linked to Mania in Mice LiveScience.com via Yahoo! News, Mar 19 Mental, Physical Torture Inflict Similar Pain HealthDay via Yahoo! News, Mar 17 Tragedy follows landmark court win at The Los Angeles Times (reg. req'd), Mar 16 Feature Articles
The ten top ways to beat stress at The Independent (UK), Feb 20 Not Just Any Old Butterflies at The Washington Post (reg. req'd), Jan 13 Opinion & Editorials
Fairness for Mental Health at The New York Times (reg. req'd), Mar 24 Mental Health Reform, Please at The Washington Post (reg. req'd), Oct 29
U.S. News
Officers blamed for Tillman case errors AP Ga. woman guilty of murdering boyfriend AP New heart stents pass key tests AP N.M. tornadoes destroy homes AP Skeletal remains of 8 people found Fla. AP Most Viewed - U.S.
Harvard club promotes abstinence AP Jeb Bush honored by U. of Florida alumni AP Pet owners double checking cabinets AP Skeletal remains of 8 people found Fla. AP Ga. woman guilty of murdering boyfriend AP
U.S. News Video
High water swamps Indiana county CNN - 1 hour, 21 minutes ago Miami officer in jail, accused of rape AP - 2 hours, 33 minutes ago Quick thinking teens avert bus disaster AP - 2 hours, 49 minutes ago Vet advice for pet owners CNN - Sat Mar 24, 2:36 PM ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070323/ap_on_re_us/drugged_to_death
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Job Winning Musts
Hidden Job Market Secrets
Debra Feldman, JobWhiz.com
Hot Careers for 2007
Thinking about finding a new job or a new career path? See who's hiring:
Registered nurses
Postsecondary teachers
General and operations managers
Elementary school teachers (non-special education)
Accountants and auditors
Business operation specialists
Computer software engineers, applications
Maintenance and repair workers, general
Carpenters
Computer systems analysts
Secondary school teachers
Computer software engineers, systems software
Physicians and surgeons
Network systems and data communications analysts
Automotive service technicians and mechanics
Fortunately, few executives acquire sufficient experience to call themselves job search experts. With luck, they move from one challenge to the next without having to master job hunting. In an ideal world, just about when an individual decides they want change, a new, appropriate opportunity miraculously presents itself complete with conveniently acceptable terms.
In reality, it's more likely that a proactive job search effort will be necessary. Worse, the results may not match their preferences very well and then owing to financial or family-related concerns, they end up taking a job which involves critical compromises.
What can you do to avoid the shock of suddenly being forced into the job market? Start job searching strategically before you need a new career opportunity. Planning ahead offers more control over the timing and specific details, as well as being able to prepare and develop the most effective approach for securing a good match.
Here's how to prepare in today's highly competitive and complex environment.
1. Identify yourself as the expert go-to resource. Don't leave it to a potential employer to figure out what your value is to them. You have one chance to present your qualifications. Hiring managers must conclude from your introduction that you are someone they need to know better. Keep your message simple; what's in it for them.
2. Target employers likely to appreciate your background. To stand out, choose a niche and present your credentials to a strategically chosen few who can appreciate your abilities. Focusing on the specific needs of a limited group of employers and commanding their attention produces better results than if you try to spread your search far and wide.
3. Define your goals. Focus your search. Name specific employers that have outstanding reputations or select prospects that intrigue you with their mission, products, services and partnerships. These employers and individuals comprise your project goals. You can expand your list to include companies chosen for characteristics like location, industry sector, size or ownership status. Limit your project scope to a manageable number of employers with whom you can "network purposefully" encouraging relationships and credibility. Expect that these connections will provide inside tips about career opportunities, cluing you into corporate changes that produce new positions and create vacancies.
4. Create your value proposition to attract interest. Don't try to adapt to suit every possible opening in order to get a job. You dilute your strengths and thereby lower your cachet as the expert with the best qualifications.
5. Customize your presentation for each opportunity. This is well worth the extra preparation because you will more clearly communicate your value proposition by addressing the specific needs of each prospect and communicating that you are the perfect solution for their needs. Remove any doubt that you will deliver 100 percent and demonstrate that you are low risk by promoting trust and increasing interest in you as the perfect candidate.
6. Dollarize your value. What is your specialty? What do you do better than others with similar credentials? What can employers expect from you to improve their bottom line, manage customer relationships better, increase sales volume, widen profit margins or reduce expenses while cutting costs?
7. Connect with the hiring authority. Stay on the decision maker's radar. Be remarkable and memorable. Even the most well crafted resume cannot be guaranteed to open doors and bypass corporate gatekeepers. Take advantage of personal referrals, friendly recommendations and confidential inside leads; these all depend on establishing and maintaining interpersonal relationships. Spend almost all of your job search time working contacts. If your network is not producing appropriate job leads, then expand beyond your existing contacts by designing a network purposefully for your campaign project and implementing this plan establishing new connections.
8. Personally meet hiring managers. Follow up relentlessly. Your goal is for the appropriate hiring manager at each of your target companies to know who you are and understand your potential value contribution. If there is not a current position available, stay in touch because organizations are constantly in flux with new staffing needs generated continuously. Keep networking! Ask for referrals to others that you don't already know both internally and elsewhere. Follow up on every lead on a regular basis and keep your network alive even after you start your new job so that you are in the loop for future positions and are considered a top candidate even when you are not actively seeking a new challenge.
9. Network purposefully. What's the best way to penetrate an organization? Connections. Find an associate or acquaintance you share with your target contact and have this person arrange an introduction. Make it easier for the connector by providing a crisp synopsis of your potential value and endorsing your credibility. Write out bullet points to help them present you, examples showing what you will do for their success and why you chose this organization.
Don't know anyone to set up an appointment for you? Make a cold call and enlist the help of their assistant or a junior associate. Don't say that you want to learn about upcoming job opportunities or ask about available jobs. Stress your interest in sharing ideas and be sure to convey that you have something to offer in return for their time and generosity.
Do you hesitate to make that call or ask for help getting introduced? Don't you enjoy helping others in different ways, whether it is making a donation, lending a hand or giving advice? The business world operates on the principle of reciprocity.
It is not just what you know, but who knows you. If you don't let people know what your job search goal is, you are leaving your future to fate. Network with a purpose to connect with individuals who can introduce you to those with access to new opportunities that match your specifications.
Debra Feldman is the JobWhiz. She designs and personally implements swift, strategic and customized senior level executive job search campaigns, banishing barriers that prevent immediate success. "Network Purposefully" with the JobWhiz and compress your job search into mere weeks, using groundbreaking techniques profiled in Forbes magazine. You can contact Debra at www.JobWhiz.com to expedite your executive ascent.
Copyright 2007 Debra Feldman.
Debra Feldman, JobWhiz.com
Hot Careers for 2007
Thinking about finding a new job or a new career path? See who's hiring:
Registered nurses
Postsecondary teachers
General and operations managers
Elementary school teachers (non-special education)
Accountants and auditors
Business operation specialists
Computer software engineers, applications
Maintenance and repair workers, general
Carpenters
Computer systems analysts
Secondary school teachers
Computer software engineers, systems software
Physicians and surgeons
Network systems and data communications analysts
Automotive service technicians and mechanics
Fortunately, few executives acquire sufficient experience to call themselves job search experts. With luck, they move from one challenge to the next without having to master job hunting. In an ideal world, just about when an individual decides they want change, a new, appropriate opportunity miraculously presents itself complete with conveniently acceptable terms.
In reality, it's more likely that a proactive job search effort will be necessary. Worse, the results may not match their preferences very well and then owing to financial or family-related concerns, they end up taking a job which involves critical compromises.
What can you do to avoid the shock of suddenly being forced into the job market? Start job searching strategically before you need a new career opportunity. Planning ahead offers more control over the timing and specific details, as well as being able to prepare and develop the most effective approach for securing a good match.
Here's how to prepare in today's highly competitive and complex environment.
1. Identify yourself as the expert go-to resource. Don't leave it to a potential employer to figure out what your value is to them. You have one chance to present your qualifications. Hiring managers must conclude from your introduction that you are someone they need to know better. Keep your message simple; what's in it for them.
2. Target employers likely to appreciate your background. To stand out, choose a niche and present your credentials to a strategically chosen few who can appreciate your abilities. Focusing on the specific needs of a limited group of employers and commanding their attention produces better results than if you try to spread your search far and wide.
3. Define your goals. Focus your search. Name specific employers that have outstanding reputations or select prospects that intrigue you with their mission, products, services and partnerships. These employers and individuals comprise your project goals. You can expand your list to include companies chosen for characteristics like location, industry sector, size or ownership status. Limit your project scope to a manageable number of employers with whom you can "network purposefully" encouraging relationships and credibility. Expect that these connections will provide inside tips about career opportunities, cluing you into corporate changes that produce new positions and create vacancies.
4. Create your value proposition to attract interest. Don't try to adapt to suit every possible opening in order to get a job. You dilute your strengths and thereby lower your cachet as the expert with the best qualifications.
5. Customize your presentation for each opportunity. This is well worth the extra preparation because you will more clearly communicate your value proposition by addressing the specific needs of each prospect and communicating that you are the perfect solution for their needs. Remove any doubt that you will deliver 100 percent and demonstrate that you are low risk by promoting trust and increasing interest in you as the perfect candidate.
6. Dollarize your value. What is your specialty? What do you do better than others with similar credentials? What can employers expect from you to improve their bottom line, manage customer relationships better, increase sales volume, widen profit margins or reduce expenses while cutting costs?
7. Connect with the hiring authority. Stay on the decision maker's radar. Be remarkable and memorable. Even the most well crafted resume cannot be guaranteed to open doors and bypass corporate gatekeepers. Take advantage of personal referrals, friendly recommendations and confidential inside leads; these all depend on establishing and maintaining interpersonal relationships. Spend almost all of your job search time working contacts. If your network is not producing appropriate job leads, then expand beyond your existing contacts by designing a network purposefully for your campaign project and implementing this plan establishing new connections.
8. Personally meet hiring managers. Follow up relentlessly. Your goal is for the appropriate hiring manager at each of your target companies to know who you are and understand your potential value contribution. If there is not a current position available, stay in touch because organizations are constantly in flux with new staffing needs generated continuously. Keep networking! Ask for referrals to others that you don't already know both internally and elsewhere. Follow up on every lead on a regular basis and keep your network alive even after you start your new job so that you are in the loop for future positions and are considered a top candidate even when you are not actively seeking a new challenge.
9. Network purposefully. What's the best way to penetrate an organization? Connections. Find an associate or acquaintance you share with your target contact and have this person arrange an introduction. Make it easier for the connector by providing a crisp synopsis of your potential value and endorsing your credibility. Write out bullet points to help them present you, examples showing what you will do for their success and why you chose this organization.
Don't know anyone to set up an appointment for you? Make a cold call and enlist the help of their assistant or a junior associate. Don't say that you want to learn about upcoming job opportunities or ask about available jobs. Stress your interest in sharing ideas and be sure to convey that you have something to offer in return for their time and generosity.
Do you hesitate to make that call or ask for help getting introduced? Don't you enjoy helping others in different ways, whether it is making a donation, lending a hand or giving advice? The business world operates on the principle of reciprocity.
It is not just what you know, but who knows you. If you don't let people know what your job search goal is, you are leaving your future to fate. Network with a purpose to connect with individuals who can introduce you to those with access to new opportunities that match your specifications.
Debra Feldman is the JobWhiz. She designs and personally implements swift, strategic and customized senior level executive job search campaigns, banishing barriers that prevent immediate success. "Network Purposefully" with the JobWhiz and compress your job search into mere weeks, using groundbreaking techniques profiled in Forbes magazine. You can contact Debra at www.JobWhiz.com to expedite your executive ascent.
Copyright 2007 Debra Feldman.
Saturday, March 10, 2007
How to Say No
The Basics
How to say NO! to anything -- or anyone
Pushy salesmen, relentless kids, mooching friends . . . it's time we learned how to say no. If you can't, you may find your money drained along with your time and emotional energy.
advertisement
Article Tools
E-mail to a friendTools IndexPrint-friendly versionSite MapDiscuss in a Message BoardArticle IndexBy Liz Pulliam Weston
Among the financial skills we should learn early in life -- but usually don't -- is the ability to say no.
Saying no is essential if we want to stick to a budget, make progress toward our financial goals and protect our credit. Yet we also want to preserve relationships with many of the people, including loved ones, who are trying to get us to say yes.
For help in navigating the minefield, I turned to several experts to create scripts for handling three common situations that call for saying no: When your kids throw a tantrum, when you're dealing for a car and when a friend asks you for money.
One of these experts, Joseph Grenny, provided a general framework for dealing with any situation where you must turn someone down. Grenny, a co-author of "Crucial Conversations: Tools for Resolving Broken Promises, Violated Expectations, and Bad Behavior," recommends the following steps:
Take a minute to think. The person who's making the request (or demand) probably spent a lot of time mulling over all the reasons why you should acquiesce. You, on the other hand, may have been hit out of the blue. You can put up your hand, say "I need a moment" or even walk into another room to collect your thoughts.
Don't make a sucker's choice. In our panic, we may think we have to choose between two bad alternatives: "I have to give her a loan, or she'll never speak to me again!" or "I have to buy this car with add-ons I don't want, or I'll lose a great deal!" (Professional salespeople and practiced mooches are, by the way, experts in backing people into this either/or mind-set.) The reality is that we usually have far more alternatives than we initially think. Taking a moment to consider those, and what we really want out of the situation, can keep us from grabbing a bad choice.
Go public. As soon as you can, tell the other person where you stand. This is also known as "articulating your boundaries," and tells the listener that "you're now driving the conversation," Grenny said. Instead of responding to their arguments, you're setting out what you will and won't do. Most petitioners "will see the answer coming" once you've gone public, and if you stick to your guns will shorten or end their attempts to persuade you. "Don't just say no," Grenny said. "Soften the blow by telling them why." Make it clear that your reasons aren't a personal reflection on the petitioner, but are instead solidly held beliefs.
More from MSN Money
Get a better deal -- with a threat
How to quit the gym (or anything)
Keep your old clunker or buy a new car?
New parents' top 10 money mistakes
Kids' parties at spare-no-expense prices
Turn the situation around. Here you're encouraging your petitioner to solve his or her own problem, while offering to help in any way that doesn't violate the bottom line you've set out.
Want to see how this works in practice? Here are some examples:
You're asked for a loan or to co-sign for one
You want to say no. You know that if the person were actually creditworthy, he or she would have no trouble getting loans from banks or other lenders.
But how do you refuse without imploding the relationship? By making it "not personal," Grenny said. After you've paused to gather your thoughts, and remembered that you have more options besides giving in or getting taken, you can use any or all of the following to communicate, "it's not you -- it's me":
"Co-signing a loan means putting my credit at risk, and I can't afford to do that."
"My spouse and I have agreed not to lend any more money to family and friends. We've had relationships go sour over money, and we wouldn't want that to happen with you."
"I've got clear financial and relationship boundaries I don't want to cross."
"I'm really not in a financial position to do that right now."
"I don't want to be put in the position of being a collection agent. I know that probably wouldn't happen with you, but I can't take the chance."
Any of these, if said in a calm, neutral voice, communicate that your decision has been made. Then, if appropriate, follow up quickly by asking the petitioner for help in solving his or her own problem. For example:
"How can I help you without putting money at risk I can't afford to lose or putting myself in the role of a collection agent?'
"Is there a way we can help you without lending money or endangering our credit?"
Someone with chronic spending or debt problems may need an appointment with a legitimate credit counselor, for example, and you could recommend an agency affiliated with the National Foundation for Credit Counseling. Someone who wants money for other goals -- a car or an education, perhaps -- could be referred to articles about achieving those goals on MSN Money.
An auto salesperson is pressuring you
Being able to say no -- and mean it -- isn't just helpful when negotiating a car purchase. It's essential, says Philip Reed, consumer advice editor for auto research site Edmunds.com.
"The most effective way of saying no is saying it with your feet" by leaving the dealership when you don't get what you want, said Reed, author of "Strategies for Smart Car Buyers." "Some people say you should leave at least twice" before agreeing to buy a car.
You don't necessarily have to resort to that level of gamesmanship, Reed said, but you should find a salesperson who can take no for an answer.
Video on MSN Money
Avoid the high pressure approach to car buying. Take your auto shopping on the Web. Click here to play the video.
"Car buying is a very expensive purchase with a lot of moving parts. . . . You need to be comfortable with your salesperson," Reed said. "You don't want someone who, when you say no, says, 'Well, why not?' or 'Didn't I tell you about this or that?' "
Using statements that can't really be argued, like "That's not my taste" or "I just don't want that," can help you fend off an aggressive salesperson, but a better solution is "if you're feeling uncomfortable, find someone else who understands no means no."
1 | 2 | next >
Extensively researching the car you want and arranging financing before you walk onto the lot can help you thwart attempts to sell you more car than you can afford. Being clear and consistent about what you're looking for will help, too, Grenny said, as can enlisting the salesperson to help you solve your problem rather than creating new ones.
"You can say something like, 'I want a year-old car with these features and I want to pay close to low Blue Book,' " Grenny said. " 'I'd also like you to make a reasonable profit. So how do we do that?' "
Negotiating the deal with the salesperson is usually only the first step. Many dealerships will also trot you to a "closer" as well as the "F&I" (financing and insurance) person. These folks may view your agreement with the salesperson as just the starting point for selling you more stuff you don't want.
Be upfront, Reed urged. "Tell them, 'I want to wrap this up as soon as possible. I don't want any after-sell,' " he said. That may short-circuit the sales pitch, or they may trot out a "deal" on the extended warranty or paint protection.
Repeating "I don't want to be rude, but I want to wrap this up," Reed said, should deflate any further attempts. If not -- once again -- say no with your feet. You can say something like, "Wow, this deal is going to be a lot more expensive than I thought. I guess we can't go through with it today." Chances are the pitches will stop.
Your kids are nagging you in a store to buy something
You're trying to get through your list and avoid public tantrums. Your kids spot something they want and start to whine, hoping you'll give in.
A firm no is the only answer, right? Maybe not.
More from MSN Money
Get a better deal – with a threat
How to quit the gym (or anything)
Keep your old clunker or buy a new car?
New parents' top 10 money mistakes
Kids' parties at spare-no-expense prices
Like Grenny, money expert Janet Bodnar believes that just saying no is often an ineffective tactic, especially with kids. Far better, she says, to either give them reasons why that can't be debated or to give them a choice to make on their own.
Ideally you'll have time to do little advance planning, said Bodnar, author of "Raising Money Smart Kids" and the more recent "Money Smart Women."
Before heading into a store, tell the kids upfront what kind of shopping trip you're taking. If you're buying a present for a friend's birthday party, for example, tell them that's the goal and that you're not buying for the family on this trip.
If the kids are older -- elementary school or above -- you can suggest that they bring their own money if they think they might want to buy something. (This assumes, of course, your kids have their own money, which most do through gifts and allowances. Bodnar believes in giving kids allowances by the time they're 6 or 7 so they get experience in handling their own money and making choices about it.)
If you're caught flat-footed -- you're in a store you hadn't planned on, or the petitions for stuff take you by surprise -- you can still revert to the family rules.
"You might say, 'We're not buying anything for ourselves today,' or 'If you want to buy that, we can come back later on another trip and you can bring your money,' " Bodnar said. "Don't say 'We'll see.' They'll think, 'If I beg long enough, she'll give in.' "
If the trip is to buy something for your kids, like shoes, set the boundaries upfront about what you'll buy and how much you'll pay. Bodnar's family had a "$50 sneaker rule" -- if the kids wanted sneakers that cost more than $50, they had to pay for the excess out of their own pocket.
If your kids are too young to have their own money, or you don't mind buying them something (just not everything!) during an outing, set the limit in advance.
With preschoolers, for example, Bodnar recommends telling them in advance that they can have one treat and then defining their choices. If you're in a grocery store and don't want them to have a candy bar, for instance, you might say that they can choose among cookies, a new cereal or a frozen treat.
Whatever the age of the child, stick to the rules you laid out in advance. If you give in and buy your kid two treats, or the $100 sneakers, you're sunk. If you hold firm, Bodnar promises, you'll head off a lot of whining down the road.
Get the latest from Liz Pulliam Weston. Sign up to receive her free weekly newsletter.
Preferred format:
HTMLPlain TextLearn more about newslettersLike any other skill, the ability to say no effectively takes practice. Thinking in advance about the situations you might face and rehearsing your possible responses can help you stick to your guns when the time comes.
"It's a little like martial arts," said Edmunds.com's Reed. "The reason you practice . . . is so that when you're under pressure, it's reflex."
Liz Pulliam Weston's column appears every Monday and Thursday, exclusively on MSN Money. She also answers reader questions in the Your Money message board.
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http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/ConsumerActionGuide/HowToSayNoToAnythingOrAnyone.aspx?page=2
How to say NO! to anything -- or anyone
Pushy salesmen, relentless kids, mooching friends . . . it's time we learned how to say no. If you can't, you may find your money drained along with your time and emotional energy.
advertisement
Article Tools
E-mail to a friendTools IndexPrint-friendly versionSite MapDiscuss in a Message BoardArticle IndexBy Liz Pulliam Weston
Among the financial skills we should learn early in life -- but usually don't -- is the ability to say no.
Saying no is essential if we want to stick to a budget, make progress toward our financial goals and protect our credit. Yet we also want to preserve relationships with many of the people, including loved ones, who are trying to get us to say yes.
For help in navigating the minefield, I turned to several experts to create scripts for handling three common situations that call for saying no: When your kids throw a tantrum, when you're dealing for a car and when a friend asks you for money.
One of these experts, Joseph Grenny, provided a general framework for dealing with any situation where you must turn someone down. Grenny, a co-author of "Crucial Conversations: Tools for Resolving Broken Promises, Violated Expectations, and Bad Behavior," recommends the following steps:
Take a minute to think. The person who's making the request (or demand) probably spent a lot of time mulling over all the reasons why you should acquiesce. You, on the other hand, may have been hit out of the blue. You can put up your hand, say "I need a moment" or even walk into another room to collect your thoughts.
Don't make a sucker's choice. In our panic, we may think we have to choose between two bad alternatives: "I have to give her a loan, or she'll never speak to me again!" or "I have to buy this car with add-ons I don't want, or I'll lose a great deal!" (Professional salespeople and practiced mooches are, by the way, experts in backing people into this either/or mind-set.) The reality is that we usually have far more alternatives than we initially think. Taking a moment to consider those, and what we really want out of the situation, can keep us from grabbing a bad choice.
Go public. As soon as you can, tell the other person where you stand. This is also known as "articulating your boundaries," and tells the listener that "you're now driving the conversation," Grenny said. Instead of responding to their arguments, you're setting out what you will and won't do. Most petitioners "will see the answer coming" once you've gone public, and if you stick to your guns will shorten or end their attempts to persuade you. "Don't just say no," Grenny said. "Soften the blow by telling them why." Make it clear that your reasons aren't a personal reflection on the petitioner, but are instead solidly held beliefs.
More from MSN Money
Get a better deal -- with a threat
How to quit the gym (or anything)
Keep your old clunker or buy a new car?
New parents' top 10 money mistakes
Kids' parties at spare-no-expense prices
Turn the situation around. Here you're encouraging your petitioner to solve his or her own problem, while offering to help in any way that doesn't violate the bottom line you've set out.
Want to see how this works in practice? Here are some examples:
You're asked for a loan or to co-sign for one
You want to say no. You know that if the person were actually creditworthy, he or she would have no trouble getting loans from banks or other lenders.
But how do you refuse without imploding the relationship? By making it "not personal," Grenny said. After you've paused to gather your thoughts, and remembered that you have more options besides giving in or getting taken, you can use any or all of the following to communicate, "it's not you -- it's me":
"Co-signing a loan means putting my credit at risk, and I can't afford to do that."
"My spouse and I have agreed not to lend any more money to family and friends. We've had relationships go sour over money, and we wouldn't want that to happen with you."
"I've got clear financial and relationship boundaries I don't want to cross."
"I'm really not in a financial position to do that right now."
"I don't want to be put in the position of being a collection agent. I know that probably wouldn't happen with you, but I can't take the chance."
Any of these, if said in a calm, neutral voice, communicate that your decision has been made. Then, if appropriate, follow up quickly by asking the petitioner for help in solving his or her own problem. For example:
"How can I help you without putting money at risk I can't afford to lose or putting myself in the role of a collection agent?'
"Is there a way we can help you without lending money or endangering our credit?"
Someone with chronic spending or debt problems may need an appointment with a legitimate credit counselor, for example, and you could recommend an agency affiliated with the National Foundation for Credit Counseling. Someone who wants money for other goals -- a car or an education, perhaps -- could be referred to articles about achieving those goals on MSN Money.
An auto salesperson is pressuring you
Being able to say no -- and mean it -- isn't just helpful when negotiating a car purchase. It's essential, says Philip Reed, consumer advice editor for auto research site Edmunds.com.
"The most effective way of saying no is saying it with your feet" by leaving the dealership when you don't get what you want, said Reed, author of "Strategies for Smart Car Buyers." "Some people say you should leave at least twice" before agreeing to buy a car.
You don't necessarily have to resort to that level of gamesmanship, Reed said, but you should find a salesperson who can take no for an answer.
Video on MSN Money
Avoid the high pressure approach to car buying. Take your auto shopping on the Web. Click here to play the video.
"Car buying is a very expensive purchase with a lot of moving parts. . . . You need to be comfortable with your salesperson," Reed said. "You don't want someone who, when you say no, says, 'Well, why not?' or 'Didn't I tell you about this or that?' "
Using statements that can't really be argued, like "That's not my taste" or "I just don't want that," can help you fend off an aggressive salesperson, but a better solution is "if you're feeling uncomfortable, find someone else who understands no means no."
1 | 2 | next >
Extensively researching the car you want and arranging financing before you walk onto the lot can help you thwart attempts to sell you more car than you can afford. Being clear and consistent about what you're looking for will help, too, Grenny said, as can enlisting the salesperson to help you solve your problem rather than creating new ones.
"You can say something like, 'I want a year-old car with these features and I want to pay close to low Blue Book,' " Grenny said. " 'I'd also like you to make a reasonable profit. So how do we do that?' "
Negotiating the deal with the salesperson is usually only the first step. Many dealerships will also trot you to a "closer" as well as the "F&I" (financing and insurance) person. These folks may view your agreement with the salesperson as just the starting point for selling you more stuff you don't want.
Be upfront, Reed urged. "Tell them, 'I want to wrap this up as soon as possible. I don't want any after-sell,' " he said. That may short-circuit the sales pitch, or they may trot out a "deal" on the extended warranty or paint protection.
Repeating "I don't want to be rude, but I want to wrap this up," Reed said, should deflate any further attempts. If not -- once again -- say no with your feet. You can say something like, "Wow, this deal is going to be a lot more expensive than I thought. I guess we can't go through with it today." Chances are the pitches will stop.
Your kids are nagging you in a store to buy something
You're trying to get through your list and avoid public tantrums. Your kids spot something they want and start to whine, hoping you'll give in.
A firm no is the only answer, right? Maybe not.
More from MSN Money
Get a better deal – with a threat
How to quit the gym (or anything)
Keep your old clunker or buy a new car?
New parents' top 10 money mistakes
Kids' parties at spare-no-expense prices
Like Grenny, money expert Janet Bodnar believes that just saying no is often an ineffective tactic, especially with kids. Far better, she says, to either give them reasons why that can't be debated or to give them a choice to make on their own.
Ideally you'll have time to do little advance planning, said Bodnar, author of "Raising Money Smart Kids" and the more recent "Money Smart Women."
Before heading into a store, tell the kids upfront what kind of shopping trip you're taking. If you're buying a present for a friend's birthday party, for example, tell them that's the goal and that you're not buying for the family on this trip.
If the kids are older -- elementary school or above -- you can suggest that they bring their own money if they think they might want to buy something. (This assumes, of course, your kids have their own money, which most do through gifts and allowances. Bodnar believes in giving kids allowances by the time they're 6 or 7 so they get experience in handling their own money and making choices about it.)
If you're caught flat-footed -- you're in a store you hadn't planned on, or the petitions for stuff take you by surprise -- you can still revert to the family rules.
"You might say, 'We're not buying anything for ourselves today,' or 'If you want to buy that, we can come back later on another trip and you can bring your money,' " Bodnar said. "Don't say 'We'll see.' They'll think, 'If I beg long enough, she'll give in.' "
If the trip is to buy something for your kids, like shoes, set the boundaries upfront about what you'll buy and how much you'll pay. Bodnar's family had a "$50 sneaker rule" -- if the kids wanted sneakers that cost more than $50, they had to pay for the excess out of their own pocket.
If your kids are too young to have their own money, or you don't mind buying them something (just not everything!) during an outing, set the limit in advance.
With preschoolers, for example, Bodnar recommends telling them in advance that they can have one treat and then defining their choices. If you're in a grocery store and don't want them to have a candy bar, for instance, you might say that they can choose among cookies, a new cereal or a frozen treat.
Whatever the age of the child, stick to the rules you laid out in advance. If you give in and buy your kid two treats, or the $100 sneakers, you're sunk. If you hold firm, Bodnar promises, you'll head off a lot of whining down the road.
Get the latest from Liz Pulliam Weston. Sign up to receive her free weekly newsletter.
Preferred format:
HTMLPlain TextLearn more about newslettersLike any other skill, the ability to say no effectively takes practice. Thinking in advance about the situations you might face and rehearsing your possible responses can help you stick to your guns when the time comes.
"It's a little like martial arts," said Edmunds.com's Reed. "The reason you practice . . . is so that when you're under pressure, it's reflex."
Liz Pulliam Weston's column appears every Monday and Thursday, exclusively on MSN Money. She also answers reader questions in the Your Money message board.
< previous | 1 | 2 |
Rate this Article
Click on the stars below to rate this article from 1 to 5
Low
Thank you for rating.
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Average rating: 3.3 from 7754 users
E-mail us your comments on this article
View all top-rated articles
Cool Tools
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Insurance rip-offs
Savvy Spending Quiz
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Shakuntala Devi--Another Human Calculator
Shakuntala Devi
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Shakuntala Devi is a calculating prodigy who was born on November 4, 1939 in Bangalore, India. Her father worked in a circus as a trapeze and tightrope performer, and later as a human cannonball. Her calculating gifts first demonstrated themselves while she was doing card tricks with her father when she was three. They report she "beat" them by memorization of cards rather than by sleight of hand. By age six she demonstrated her calculation and memorization abilities at the University of Mysore. At the age of eight she had success at Annamalai University by doing the same.
Unlike many other calculating prodigies, for example Truman Henry Safford, her abilities did not wane in adulthood. In 1977 she extracted the 23rd root of a 201-digit number mentally. On June 18, 1980 she demonstrated the multiplication of two 13-digit numbers 7,686,369,774,870 x 2,465,099,745,779 picked at random by the Computer Department of Imperial College, London. She answered the question in 28 seconds. Her correct answer was 18,947,668,177,995,426,462,773,730. This event is mentioned on page 26 of the 1995 Guinness Book of Records ISBN 0-553-56942-2.
Shakuntala Devi has written a number of books, many of them dealing with popular mathematics. She has also written a cookbook for men. She is a devout Hindu who feels a strong connection to Ganesha, whom she connects to her gifts. She is also interested in astrology and in recent years she has offered personal astrology consultations in India and the United States.
In 2006 she has released a new book called In the Wonderland of Numbers with Orient Paperbacks which talks about a girl Neha and her fascination for numbers. The book is in the form of story and will excite the readers about numbers and number theory.
[edit] Some of her books
Puzzles to Puzzle You
More Puzzles to Puzzle You
Fun with Numbers
[edit] External links
Hinduism today, 1988
Hinduism today, 2000
Sunday Times (South Africa), 2002
Times of India
A book by her
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakuntala_Devi"
Categories: 1939 births | Calculating prodigies | Indian astrologers | Astrologers | Hindu mathematicians | Living people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakuntala_Devi
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Shakuntala Devi is a calculating prodigy who was born on November 4, 1939 in Bangalore, India. Her father worked in a circus as a trapeze and tightrope performer, and later as a human cannonball. Her calculating gifts first demonstrated themselves while she was doing card tricks with her father when she was three. They report she "beat" them by memorization of cards rather than by sleight of hand. By age six she demonstrated her calculation and memorization abilities at the University of Mysore. At the age of eight she had success at Annamalai University by doing the same.
Unlike many other calculating prodigies, for example Truman Henry Safford, her abilities did not wane in adulthood. In 1977 she extracted the 23rd root of a 201-digit number mentally. On June 18, 1980 she demonstrated the multiplication of two 13-digit numbers 7,686,369,774,870 x 2,465,099,745,779 picked at random by the Computer Department of Imperial College, London. She answered the question in 28 seconds. Her correct answer was 18,947,668,177,995,426,462,773,730. This event is mentioned on page 26 of the 1995 Guinness Book of Records ISBN 0-553-56942-2.
Shakuntala Devi has written a number of books, many of them dealing with popular mathematics. She has also written a cookbook for men. She is a devout Hindu who feels a strong connection to Ganesha, whom she connects to her gifts. She is also interested in astrology and in recent years she has offered personal astrology consultations in India and the United States.
In 2006 she has released a new book called In the Wonderland of Numbers with Orient Paperbacks which talks about a girl Neha and her fascination for numbers. The book is in the form of story and will excite the readers about numbers and number theory.
[edit] Some of her books
Puzzles to Puzzle You
More Puzzles to Puzzle You
Fun with Numbers
[edit] External links
Hinduism today, 1988
Hinduism today, 2000
Sunday Times (South Africa), 2002
Times of India
A book by her
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakuntala_Devi"
Categories: 1939 births | Calculating prodigies | Indian astrologers | Astrologers | Hindu mathematicians | Living people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakuntala_Devi
Daniel Tammet, Human Calculator
Yahoo!My Yahoo!MailYahoo! SearchSearch:Sign In
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News Home > 60 Minutes > Health & Science > Brain Man
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Brain Man
Meet Daniel Tammet, a 27 year-old math and memory wizard. He can do things with numbers that will truly amaze you. He is a savant. . . with a difference. Unlike most savants, he shows no obvious mental disability, and most importantly, he can describe his own thought process. Join correspondent Morley Safer as he explores the extraordinary life and mind of Daniel Tammet.
60 Minutes Logo
Rate this segment:
Average (66 votes)
Web Exclusive
Human Calculator
Meet Daniel Tammet » Watch Clip
View Video
Memorizing Pi
Only 22,514 numbers to remember » Watch Clip
View Video
Numbers Magic
Morley puts Daniel to the test » Watch Clip
View Video
Learning Icelandic
He did it in a week! » Watch Clip
View Video
From The Archives
Real Life Rain Man
Meet George Finn >>Watch Clip
DID YOU KNOW?
Savants are usually mentally handicapped or autistic people whose brain somehow possesses an island of brilliance - or even genius.
It's estimated there are only 50 true savants living in the world today.
Daniel Tammet is unique among savants, because he is blessed with all of the spectacular ability of a savant, but with very little of the disability.
Great Gifts, Great Challenges "289 Is An Ugly Number" » Watch Clip View Video
Origin Of A Gift » Watch Clip View Video
Bullied » Watch Clip View Video
A Compulsion To Count » Watch Clip View Video
CommentsSound off on this segment. Here you'll see the comments in the order they were posted.
11 - 10 of 1145 First < Previous Next > Last
That guy's brain is absolutely incredible!!! 22,514 numbers and didn't miss a one!!! It really goes to show what the human brain is capable of . I found his discription of his thought process in "289 is an ugly number" incredibly fascinating. I wish him much success and somehow doubt he'll have any problem.
Posted by laneofpain on Wed, Feb 28, 2007 8:13 PM ET
2
I agree that Daniel is remarkable. This article does however wrongly define the word savant which has always been used to refer to any learned scholar or person of profound or extensive learning. Only 50 savants living in the world today? I hope not!
Posted by synaestheticmonkey on Wed, Feb 28, 2007 8:37 PM ET
3
Wow, laneofpain is right, it does show what our brain is capable of. One thing many people get wrong is that Daniel is not smart. Yes he has amazing memory and can do any math problem anyone can think about, but it is a natural ability just like us breathing or using a computer.
Posted by ericeng91 on Wed, Feb 28, 2007 8:58 PM ET
4
It is interesting that his gift is actually the result of a neurological malfunction. A friend of mine has senescence and can see people in colors. My color is orange. She said the majority of people are blue. I wonder if he has some form of this.
Posted by dustofangelsten on Wed, Feb 28, 2007 9:06 PM ET
5
The article does not wrongly define the word savant. Morely Safer simply did not use the full term he meant to, because it does not apply to Daniel. The term he is refering to is "idiot savant," a term which denotes a person with amazing skill in one focused area (math, music, etc) but suffers from some form of mental disability. Autisic individuals and those with Asperger's Syndrome (like Daniel) may have been termed idiot savants much more regularly in Morely Safer's youth, however, now it is not a politically correct term.
Posted by kodiak339 on Wed, Feb 28, 2007 9:09 PM ET
6
He is not the only one. Please take a look into Ms Shakuntala Devi and you will be amazed as well.
Posted by to_rahuls on Wed, Feb 28, 2007 9:11 PM ET
7
awesome...
Posted by nixjones on Wed, Feb 28, 2007 9:12 PM ET
8
It is hard to believe that we have existed as long as we have, yet have only evolved to know more about others and not ourself.
Posted by raclamp on Wed, Feb 28, 2007 9:14 PM ET
9
I watched a documentary on savants and this individual was featured in the documentary among many others. I have not really seen anything to date that empiracally substantiates the claims surrounding his abilities, along with the other savants. Fluent in a foreign language in a week? I doubt it.
Posted by piracyofficer on Wed, Feb 28, 2007 9:15 PM ET
10
I saw a show on Discovery Science channel about Mr. Tammet a month or two ago. He really is remarkable. And the fact that scientists can ask him questions and get insight into just how the brain of a savant works is a giant leap forward into understanding the human brain. I can't recall the title of the show, but if you get Discovery Science, I highly recommend it.
Posted by coolcelticmomma on Wed, Feb 28, 2007 9:23 PM ET
1 - 10 of 1145 First < Previous Next > Last
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Daniel Tammet's Official Website
Yahoo! Health: more about autism
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Senior Producer: Debbie De Luca Sheh
Producers: Deirdre Naphin, David Rubin
Associate Producers: Katy Textor, Rebecca Chertok
Graphic Designer: Robert Corujo
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http://60minutes.yahoo.com/segment/44/brain_man
New User? Sign UpNews Home -HelpNavigation:
News Home > 60 Minutes > Health & Science > Brain Man
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Brain Man
Meet Daniel Tammet, a 27 year-old math and memory wizard. He can do things with numbers that will truly amaze you. He is a savant. . . with a difference. Unlike most savants, he shows no obvious mental disability, and most importantly, he can describe his own thought process. Join correspondent Morley Safer as he explores the extraordinary life and mind of Daniel Tammet.
60 Minutes Logo
Rate this segment:
Average (66 votes)
Web Exclusive
Human Calculator
Meet Daniel Tammet » Watch Clip
View Video
Memorizing Pi
Only 22,514 numbers to remember » Watch Clip
View Video
Numbers Magic
Morley puts Daniel to the test » Watch Clip
View Video
Learning Icelandic
He did it in a week! » Watch Clip
View Video
From The Archives
Real Life Rain Man
Meet George Finn >>Watch Clip
DID YOU KNOW?
Savants are usually mentally handicapped or autistic people whose brain somehow possesses an island of brilliance - or even genius.
It's estimated there are only 50 true savants living in the world today.
Daniel Tammet is unique among savants, because he is blessed with all of the spectacular ability of a savant, but with very little of the disability.
Great Gifts, Great Challenges "289 Is An Ugly Number" » Watch Clip View Video
Origin Of A Gift » Watch Clip View Video
Bullied » Watch Clip View Video
A Compulsion To Count » Watch Clip View Video
CommentsSound off on this segment. Here you'll see the comments in the order they were posted.
11 - 10 of 1145 First < Previous Next > Last
That guy's brain is absolutely incredible!!! 22,514 numbers and didn't miss a one!!! It really goes to show what the human brain is capable of . I found his discription of his thought process in "289 is an ugly number" incredibly fascinating. I wish him much success and somehow doubt he'll have any problem.
Posted by laneofpain on Wed, Feb 28, 2007 8:13 PM ET
2
I agree that Daniel is remarkable. This article does however wrongly define the word savant which has always been used to refer to any learned scholar or person of profound or extensive learning. Only 50 savants living in the world today? I hope not!
Posted by synaestheticmonkey on Wed, Feb 28, 2007 8:37 PM ET
3
Wow, laneofpain is right, it does show what our brain is capable of. One thing many people get wrong is that Daniel is not smart. Yes he has amazing memory and can do any math problem anyone can think about, but it is a natural ability just like us breathing or using a computer.
Posted by ericeng91 on Wed, Feb 28, 2007 8:58 PM ET
4
It is interesting that his gift is actually the result of a neurological malfunction. A friend of mine has senescence and can see people in colors. My color is orange. She said the majority of people are blue. I wonder if he has some form of this.
Posted by dustofangelsten on Wed, Feb 28, 2007 9:06 PM ET
5
The article does not wrongly define the word savant. Morely Safer simply did not use the full term he meant to, because it does not apply to Daniel. The term he is refering to is "idiot savant," a term which denotes a person with amazing skill in one focused area (math, music, etc) but suffers from some form of mental disability. Autisic individuals and those with Asperger's Syndrome (like Daniel) may have been termed idiot savants much more regularly in Morely Safer's youth, however, now it is not a politically correct term.
Posted by kodiak339 on Wed, Feb 28, 2007 9:09 PM ET
6
He is not the only one. Please take a look into Ms Shakuntala Devi and you will be amazed as well.
Posted by to_rahuls on Wed, Feb 28, 2007 9:11 PM ET
7
awesome...
Posted by nixjones on Wed, Feb 28, 2007 9:12 PM ET
8
It is hard to believe that we have existed as long as we have, yet have only evolved to know more about others and not ourself.
Posted by raclamp on Wed, Feb 28, 2007 9:14 PM ET
9
I watched a documentary on savants and this individual was featured in the documentary among many others. I have not really seen anything to date that empiracally substantiates the claims surrounding his abilities, along with the other savants. Fluent in a foreign language in a week? I doubt it.
Posted by piracyofficer on Wed, Feb 28, 2007 9:15 PM ET
10
I saw a show on Discovery Science channel about Mr. Tammet a month or two ago. He really is remarkable. And the fact that scientists can ask him questions and get insight into just how the brain of a savant works is a giant leap forward into understanding the human brain. I can't recall the title of the show, but if you get Discovery Science, I highly recommend it.
Posted by coolcelticmomma on Wed, Feb 28, 2007 9:23 PM ET
1 - 10 of 1145 First < Previous Next > Last
Sign in to post a comment ADVERTISEMENT
Most Popular Segments
ViewedLove In The 21st Century
Barack Obama
Dixie Chicks
The Most Beautiful Woman
Howard Stern
Battling Depression
EmailedBrain Man
Dog Nut
Extraordinary Elephants
Dixie Chicks
The Most Beautiful Woman
Battling Depression
RecommendedGet Me The Geeks!
Helen Mirren
The Duke Case Part II
Working 24/7
Aishwarya Rai. . . The Most Beautiful Woman in the World
President Bush
Can't Wait?
Get an alert whenever a new segment is added to 60minutes.yahoo.com.
More From CBS News
News Stories
Bush Won't Say The C-Word: "Chavez"
U.S. And Iranian Envoys Talk In Iraq
Sick Infant Stolen From Texas Hospital
News Video
Captain America Killed Off
Talks Held On Iraq's Security
Debate Over Use Of Drugs
Featured
CBS Evening News with Katie Couric
Couric & Co. Blog
Podcast
CBS News 60 Minutes Podcast
More Episodes
Andy Rooney
Remembering Ed
Barack Obama
The Oscar Nominees
Kenny Chesney
Love in the 21st Century
More On The Web
Daniel Tammet's Official Website
Yahoo! Health: more about autism
Yahoo! Health: More about Asperger's Syndrome
Senior Producer: Debbie De Luca Sheh
Producers: Deirdre Naphin, David Rubin
Associate Producers: Katy Textor, Rebecca Chertok
Graphic Designer: Robert Corujo
Yahoo! News
U.S. Business World Entertainment Sports Tech Politics Science Health Travel Most Popular Kevin Sites Also On Yahoo!
360 Autos Finance Games Groups Health Hot Jobs Mail Maps Movies Music My Yahoo! News Shopping Sports Tech Travel TV » All Y! Services Things To Do
Buy Movie Tickets Set My TiVo Check Stock Quotes Check Sports Scores Lose Weight Listen to Music
Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright/IP Policy Terms of Service Help
NOTICE: We collect personal information on this site. To learn more about how we use your information, see our » Privacy Policy
http://60minutes.yahoo.com/segment/44/brain_man
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Good Looks Vital for Good Job?
Most Taiwanese Think Good Looks Is Vital For Getting A Good Job
Business
Previous news :: Next news
07:12 AM, February 23rd 2007
by Editorial Staff
Ninety-six per cent of Taiwanese think good looks are vital for getting and holding a good job, and 35 per cent would be willing to undergo plastic surgery to improve their looks, a survey showed Friday.
According to the survey of 1,802 career people conducted by the 1111 Job Bank, 96 per cent believed that good looks could help them get a good job, hold a good job, impress clients, attract the attention of bosses and get along well with colleagues, the Apple Daily said.
Thirty-five per cent said that they were willing to undergo plastic surgery to become better looking, the paper said.
Most of the men interviewed said they wanted to look like Japanese-Taiwanese film star Takeshi Kenashiro. Most of the women interviewed hoped to look like Taiwan's top model Lin Chih-ling.
When asked what kind of plastic surgery they wanted to have, respondents mentioned removing wrinkles, liposuction, orthodontic work to align teeth, eyelid surgery to make the eyes look larger, and height enhancement.
When asked how much they were willing to spend on plastic surgery, respondents said they were willing to spend an average of 89,000 Taiwan dollars (2,700 US dollars), the survey showed.
© 2007 DPA
http://www.playfuls.com/news_09_3654-Most-Taiwanese-Think-Good-Looks-Is-Vital-For-Getting-A-Good-Job.html
Business
Previous news :: Next news
07:12 AM, February 23rd 2007
by Editorial Staff
Ninety-six per cent of Taiwanese think good looks are vital for getting and holding a good job, and 35 per cent would be willing to undergo plastic surgery to improve their looks, a survey showed Friday.
According to the survey of 1,802 career people conducted by the 1111 Job Bank, 96 per cent believed that good looks could help them get a good job, hold a good job, impress clients, attract the attention of bosses and get along well with colleagues, the Apple Daily said.
Thirty-five per cent said that they were willing to undergo plastic surgery to become better looking, the paper said.
Most of the men interviewed said they wanted to look like Japanese-Taiwanese film star Takeshi Kenashiro. Most of the women interviewed hoped to look like Taiwan's top model Lin Chih-ling.
When asked what kind of plastic surgery they wanted to have, respondents mentioned removing wrinkles, liposuction, orthodontic work to align teeth, eyelid surgery to make the eyes look larger, and height enhancement.
When asked how much they were willing to spend on plastic surgery, respondents said they were willing to spend an average of 89,000 Taiwan dollars (2,700 US dollars), the survey showed.
© 2007 DPA
http://www.playfuls.com/news_09_3654-Most-Taiwanese-Think-Good-Looks-Is-Vital-For-Getting-A-Good-Job.html
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Handle College Without Depression
Student Resources
Help with the Demands of College Life
Get help for the top mental health issues facing university and college students:
1. Hope for the rising incidence of stress and depression
2. Tips for parents
3. Mental health problems increasing among college students
1. Hope for the rising incidence of stress and depression
Help for college students: Know the signs and how to get help for the top mental health issues facing university and college students
By Liza N. Eversole, MTN Wellness & Mental Health Consultant, August 15, 2006
According to a study three years ago by Kansas State University, the number of students seeing school counselors for depression doubled over a 13-year period and the number of students with suicidal thoughts tripled over that same span.
This is alarming, but there is hope. Help is here for the increasing numbers of students with anxiety, stress, depression, and suicidal thoughts. Campuses around the country are aware of the problem and many are creating ways to help manage these issues and even prevent students from developing mental health problems.
Read the following information to help manage these issues and learn how to get help when students can't manage the pressures of college life alone.
Some stress and anxiety is normal. Stress often increases as the number of responsibilities, choices, and decisions increase. Pressure to achieve good grades and fit into college life with ease contribute to the normal first year and back-to-school anxiety. Students who where successful in high school often find the competition too much. They are under even more pressure from high expectations to be the best and get higher paying jobs.
But, if stress continues to increase over time, the mental and physical results can be serious. Stress that persists day after day is a mental health problem. Experts agree that the physiological changes that result from stress contribute to nearly every major illness.
Be aware of the signs. The most commonly reported negative outcomes of stress include:
- Constant fatigue and/or insomnia: Are you just as tired when you wake up, as you were when you went to bed?
- Depression or anxiety: Are you feeling overwhelmed and anxious? Do you have angry outbursts?
- Physical Illness: Do you have a susceptibility to illness? Do you frequently have illnesses, high blood pressure, GI problems, headaches or back pain?
- Are you forgetful or disorganized?
- Are you noticing yourself using alcohol, drugs, or food more (or not eating)?
Please see your physician if you experience persistent physical symptoms!
The good news is that stress can be managed if students take the opportunity to assess the effects of stress on their overall wellbeing and to take the steps needed to improve their health and quality of life.
Keep yourself healthy: Take care of yourself physically and mentally. Your energy levels will be much higher if you are getting enough sleep, eating well, drinking enough water, and taking the time to do things you enjoy.
- Exercise regularly, but not excessively
- Get enough sleep (7-8 hours is average)
- Eat a balanced diet
- Slow down
- Stretch and breathe
- Learn relaxation techniques
- Remove yourself from stressors
- Get help from a counselor or therapist when the mental and emotional stress becomes too much to handle.
Signs and Symptoms of Depression
If you are experiencing any of the following, please seek help from an experienced counselor or therapist either at your Student Counseling Center, through your physician, or log onto MyTherapyNet.com.
Symptoms that Students and Parents Should Not Ignore:
- Abusing drugs, alcohol, prescription drugs or over-the-counter medications.
- Turning to food for comfort or not eating and/or excessively exercising (eating disorders)
- Problems with family or friends
- Feeling overwhelmed or anxious about school or personal issues
- Depression, which can have any of these symptoms/signs:
Feeling sad or empty, decreased energy, loss of interest in former activities, feelings of hopelessness or worthlessness, excessive crying, difficulty in concentrating or making decisions, weight gain or loss, over or under sleeping and thoughts of suicide.
According to The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) if five or more of these symptoms persist for more than two weeks, it is recommended that the person seek professional help. Go to the NIMH website for more information: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/
2. Tips for parents
Parents should know what is available on campuses to help their children. Many universities and colleges have counseling and intervention programs, some free and some covered by student health plans.
Symptoms that Students and Parents Should Not Ignore:
- Abusing drugs, alcohol, prescription drugs and over-the-counter medications
- Turning to food for comfort or not eating and/or excessively exercising (eating disorders)
- Unusual weight gain or loss
- Problems with family or friends
- Feeling overwhelmed or anxious about school or personal issues
- Difficulty in concentrating or making decisions
- Over or under sleeping
- Feeling sad or empty
- Excessive crying
- Decreased energy
- Loss of interest in former activities
- Feelings of hopelessness or worthlessness and thoughts of suicide.
According to a new study by the American Psychiatric Association, nearly one-third of adults who have a mental illness say they don't seek treatment because they fear what thers might think.
Students who are not comfortable talking find it easier to express themselves in writing. They often feel less inhibited and safer at the computer's keyboard, accept suggestions and move to solutions quicker than if they feel confronted by their therapist in person.
According to the article, Erasing stigma key to mental treatment, by former First Lady, Rosalyn Carter, "While mental illnesses can be as debilitating and life-threatening as many physical illnesses, research shows that fewer than half of the 54 million Americans who have a mental illness seek treatment. It is time to stop throwing up barriers to mental health care needed by so many Americans. No one suffering from a mental disorder should feel alone or ashamed."
By Liza N. Eversole, MTN Wellness & Mental Health Consultant, August 15, 2006
3. Mental health problems increasing among college students
Dr. Richard Kadison, chief of the mental health services at Harvard University Health Services believes colleges and universities should do anything they can to help the increasing numbers of students who arrive with pre-existing mental health problems or develop them while on campus.
ARTICLE SUMMARY: Mental Health Problems Increasing Among College Students
July 5, 2006, By KATHLEEN MEGAN, Courant Staff Writer
Every year at around this time, Dr. Kadisonef gets phone calls from concerned parents. Their children have been receiving treatment and medication for a mental disorder of some type, and they want to make sure that services are in place for their child in the fall at school.
"I am delighted to get the calls," said Kadison, author of "College of the Overwhelmed: The Campus Mental Health Crisis and What To Do About It." He believes colleges and universities should do anything they can to help the increasing numbers of students who arrive with pre-existing mental health problems or develop them while on campus.
Late adolescence and early adulthood have always been a time when mental illness is likely to flare up. "This is an age when there are developmental and hormonal changes going on with people," said Kadison. "It's a very common age of onset."
In the past, students with depression, severe anxiety or other mental illnesses often didn't make it to college or dropped out if those problems became too severe. Today, with better medications and treatment available, those students are staying on campus.
In a recent survey, about 90 percent of college counseling-center directors believe there has been an increase in the number of clients with severe psychological problems.
A study at Kansas State University looking at student mental health complaints on their campus from 1988 to 2001 found that the number of students who had serious depression had doubled, while the number contemplating suicide had tripled. Kadison said one in 10 students will seriously consider suicide, while 45 percent of students report having reached a point where they were so depressed they couldn't function.
FROM:http://www.courant.com/features/lifestyle/hcyoungadults.artjul05,0,587993.story?page=3&coll=hc-headlines-life
Students and parents can receive confidential help NOW! Experienced therapists at MyTherapyNet.com are available 24/7! Therapists are only a mouse click away.
Managing stress is the foundation for a wellness: A well-balanced and healthy life. So, in addition to receiving quality therapy at MyTherapyNet, please visit
www.MindBodySeries.com for information, tools and products to help you manage stress.
ATTENTION UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES: Don't let your students suffer in silence! Take care of your students and help them adjust to being away from home. E-mail leversole@mytherapynet.com to help your university or college set up an Online Therapy support program to ensure a healthy school environment.
http://www.mytherapynet.com/Public/ShowText.asp?EUID=&articleid=225&articletype=38
Help with the Demands of College Life
Get help for the top mental health issues facing university and college students:
1. Hope for the rising incidence of stress and depression
2. Tips for parents
3. Mental health problems increasing among college students
1. Hope for the rising incidence of stress and depression
Help for college students: Know the signs and how to get help for the top mental health issues facing university and college students
By Liza N. Eversole, MTN Wellness & Mental Health Consultant, August 15, 2006
According to a study three years ago by Kansas State University, the number of students seeing school counselors for depression doubled over a 13-year period and the number of students with suicidal thoughts tripled over that same span.
This is alarming, but there is hope. Help is here for the increasing numbers of students with anxiety, stress, depression, and suicidal thoughts. Campuses around the country are aware of the problem and many are creating ways to help manage these issues and even prevent students from developing mental health problems.
Read the following information to help manage these issues and learn how to get help when students can't manage the pressures of college life alone.
Some stress and anxiety is normal. Stress often increases as the number of responsibilities, choices, and decisions increase. Pressure to achieve good grades and fit into college life with ease contribute to the normal first year and back-to-school anxiety. Students who where successful in high school often find the competition too much. They are under even more pressure from high expectations to be the best and get higher paying jobs.
But, if stress continues to increase over time, the mental and physical results can be serious. Stress that persists day after day is a mental health problem. Experts agree that the physiological changes that result from stress contribute to nearly every major illness.
Be aware of the signs. The most commonly reported negative outcomes of stress include:
- Constant fatigue and/or insomnia: Are you just as tired when you wake up, as you were when you went to bed?
- Depression or anxiety: Are you feeling overwhelmed and anxious? Do you have angry outbursts?
- Physical Illness: Do you have a susceptibility to illness? Do you frequently have illnesses, high blood pressure, GI problems, headaches or back pain?
- Are you forgetful or disorganized?
- Are you noticing yourself using alcohol, drugs, or food more (or not eating)?
Please see your physician if you experience persistent physical symptoms!
The good news is that stress can be managed if students take the opportunity to assess the effects of stress on their overall wellbeing and to take the steps needed to improve their health and quality of life.
Keep yourself healthy: Take care of yourself physically and mentally. Your energy levels will be much higher if you are getting enough sleep, eating well, drinking enough water, and taking the time to do things you enjoy.
- Exercise regularly, but not excessively
- Get enough sleep (7-8 hours is average)
- Eat a balanced diet
- Slow down
- Stretch and breathe
- Learn relaxation techniques
- Remove yourself from stressors
- Get help from a counselor or therapist when the mental and emotional stress becomes too much to handle.
Signs and Symptoms of Depression
If you are experiencing any of the following, please seek help from an experienced counselor or therapist either at your Student Counseling Center, through your physician, or log onto MyTherapyNet.com.
Symptoms that Students and Parents Should Not Ignore:
- Abusing drugs, alcohol, prescription drugs or over-the-counter medications.
- Turning to food for comfort or not eating and/or excessively exercising (eating disorders)
- Problems with family or friends
- Feeling overwhelmed or anxious about school or personal issues
- Depression, which can have any of these symptoms/signs:
Feeling sad or empty, decreased energy, loss of interest in former activities, feelings of hopelessness or worthlessness, excessive crying, difficulty in concentrating or making decisions, weight gain or loss, over or under sleeping and thoughts of suicide.
According to The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) if five or more of these symptoms persist for more than two weeks, it is recommended that the person seek professional help. Go to the NIMH website for more information: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/
2. Tips for parents
Parents should know what is available on campuses to help their children. Many universities and colleges have counseling and intervention programs, some free and some covered by student health plans.
Symptoms that Students and Parents Should Not Ignore:
- Abusing drugs, alcohol, prescription drugs and over-the-counter medications
- Turning to food for comfort or not eating and/or excessively exercising (eating disorders)
- Unusual weight gain or loss
- Problems with family or friends
- Feeling overwhelmed or anxious about school or personal issues
- Difficulty in concentrating or making decisions
- Over or under sleeping
- Feeling sad or empty
- Excessive crying
- Decreased energy
- Loss of interest in former activities
- Feelings of hopelessness or worthlessness and thoughts of suicide.
According to a new study by the American Psychiatric Association, nearly one-third of adults who have a mental illness say they don't seek treatment because they fear what thers might think.
Students who are not comfortable talking find it easier to express themselves in writing. They often feel less inhibited and safer at the computer's keyboard, accept suggestions and move to solutions quicker than if they feel confronted by their therapist in person.
According to the article, Erasing stigma key to mental treatment, by former First Lady, Rosalyn Carter, "While mental illnesses can be as debilitating and life-threatening as many physical illnesses, research shows that fewer than half of the 54 million Americans who have a mental illness seek treatment. It is time to stop throwing up barriers to mental health care needed by so many Americans. No one suffering from a mental disorder should feel alone or ashamed."
By Liza N. Eversole, MTN Wellness & Mental Health Consultant, August 15, 2006
3. Mental health problems increasing among college students
Dr. Richard Kadison, chief of the mental health services at Harvard University Health Services believes colleges and universities should do anything they can to help the increasing numbers of students who arrive with pre-existing mental health problems or develop them while on campus.
ARTICLE SUMMARY: Mental Health Problems Increasing Among College Students
July 5, 2006, By KATHLEEN MEGAN, Courant Staff Writer
Every year at around this time, Dr. Kadisonef gets phone calls from concerned parents. Their children have been receiving treatment and medication for a mental disorder of some type, and they want to make sure that services are in place for their child in the fall at school.
"I am delighted to get the calls," said Kadison, author of "College of the Overwhelmed: The Campus Mental Health Crisis and What To Do About It." He believes colleges and universities should do anything they can to help the increasing numbers of students who arrive with pre-existing mental health problems or develop them while on campus.
Late adolescence and early adulthood have always been a time when mental illness is likely to flare up. "This is an age when there are developmental and hormonal changes going on with people," said Kadison. "It's a very common age of onset."
In the past, students with depression, severe anxiety or other mental illnesses often didn't make it to college or dropped out if those problems became too severe. Today, with better medications and treatment available, those students are staying on campus.
In a recent survey, about 90 percent of college counseling-center directors believe there has been an increase in the number of clients with severe psychological problems.
A study at Kansas State University looking at student mental health complaints on their campus from 1988 to 2001 found that the number of students who had serious depression had doubled, while the number contemplating suicide had tripled. Kadison said one in 10 students will seriously consider suicide, while 45 percent of students report having reached a point where they were so depressed they couldn't function.
FROM:http://www.courant.com/features/lifestyle/hcyoungadults.artjul05,0,587993.story?page=3&coll=hc-headlines-life
Students and parents can receive confidential help NOW! Experienced therapists at MyTherapyNet.com are available 24/7! Therapists are only a mouse click away.
Managing stress is the foundation for a wellness: A well-balanced and healthy life. So, in addition to receiving quality therapy at MyTherapyNet, please visit
www.MindBodySeries.com for information, tools and products to help you manage stress.
ATTENTION UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES: Don't let your students suffer in silence! Take care of your students and help them adjust to being away from home. E-mail leversole@mytherapynet.com to help your university or college set up an Online Therapy support program to ensure a healthy school environment.
http://www.mytherapynet.com/Public/ShowText.asp?EUID=&articleid=225&articletype=38
Depression in College
Depression and College Students
What do these students have in common?
When I took a part-time job and started
living off-campus, my course work fell
apart. I couldn't concentrate or sleep,
and I was always IRRITABLE and angry.
- Leah, sophomore year
After two years of straight A's, I
couldn't finish assignments anymore. I
felt exhausted but couldn't sleep, and
drank A LOT. I couldn't enjoy life like
my friends did anymore. - John, junior
year
I've always been anxious and never
had much confidence. College was
harder than I expected, and then
my parents divorced, which was
traumatic for me. After a while, all I
did was cry, sleep, and feel waves
of panic. - Marta, freshman year
They are college students who got depressed...got
treatment...and got better.
College offers new experiences and challenges. This can be exciting; it can also be stressful and make you, or someone
you know, feel sad. When "the blues" last for weeks, or interfere with academic or social functioning, it may be clinical
depression. Clinical depression is a common, frequently unrecognized illness that can be effectively treated.
What is Clinical Depression?
Clinical depression can affect your body, mood, thoughts, and behavior. It can change your eating habits, how you feel
and think, your ability to work and study, and how you interact with people. Clinical depression is not a passing mood,
a sign of personal weakness, or a condition that can be willed away. Clinically depressed people cannot "pull themselves
together" and get better. Depression can be successfully treated. With the right treatment, 80 percent of those who seek
help get better. And many people begin to feel better in just a few weeks.
Types of Depressive Illness
Depressive illnesses come in different forms. The following are descriptions of the three most prevalent, though for an
individual, the number, severity, and duration of symptoms will vary.
Major depression is manifested by a combination of symptoms that interfere with your ability to work, sleep, eat, and
enjoy once pleasurable activities. These episodes can occur once, twice, or several times in a lifetime. Symptoms include:
Sadness, anxiety, or "empty" feelings
Decreased energy, fatigue, being "slowed down"
Loss of interest or pleasure in usual activities
Appetite and weight changes (either loss or gain)
Sleep disturbances (insomnia, oversleeping, waking
much earlier than usual)
Feelings of hopelessness, guilt, and worthlessness
Thoughts of death or suicide, or suicide attempts
Difficulty concentrating, making decisions, remembering
Irritability or excessive crying
Chronic aches/pain not explained by other physical condition
A less intense type of depression, dysthymia, involves long-term, chronic symptoms that are less severe, but keep you
from functioning at your full ability and from feeling well. In bipolar illness (also known as manic-depressive illness),
cycles of depression alternate with cycles of elation and increased activity, known as mania.
How to Recognize Depression
The first step in defeating depression is recognizing it. It's normal to have some signs of depression some of the time. But
five or more symptoms for two weeks or longer, or noticeable changes in usual functioning, are all factors that should
be evaluated by a health or mental health professional. And remember, people who are depressed may not be thinking
clearly and may need help to get help.
I kept asking myself, "How could I be depressed? I'd had a normal family life, had been getting good grades, and
hadn't experienced any big trauma - where did my depression come from?" (John)
What Causes Depression?
The causes of depression are complex. Very often a combination of genetic, psychological and environmental factors is
involved in the onset of clinical depression. At times, however, depression occurs for no apparent reason. Regardless of
the cause, depression is almost always treatable.
Family History: Depression often runs in families, which usually means that some, but not all, family members have a
tendency to develop the illness. However, sometimes people who have no family history also develop depression.
Stress: Psychological and environmental stressors can contribute to a depressive episode, though individuals react
differently to life events and experiences. In coping with stress, some people find it helpful to write in a journal,
exercise, or talk with friends. In clinical depression you need some form of treatment to start feeling better soon.
Common stressors in college life include:
Greater academic demands
Being on your own in a new environment
Changes in family relations
Financial responsibilities
Changes in your social life
Exposure to new people, ideas, and temptations
Awareness of your sexual identity and orientation
Preparing for life after graduation
I had a period of nearly constant turmoil when I wanted to "come out" to my friends about being gay but didn't want
to be treated like an outsider. A good friend made jokes about homosexuals and I was afraid of what he'd say about
me. That stress played a big part in my becoming depressed. (Josh)
My family wanted me home every other weekend and I didn't fit in there anymore. I'd argue constantly with my
father, who still treated me like a child. My sister thought I was 'uppity.' Everyone was miserable; I felt guilty. (Kim)
Psychological make-up can play a role in vulnerability to depression. People with low self-esteem, who consistently
view themselves and the world with pessimism, or are readily overwhelmed by stress, may be especially prone to
depression. For Marta, her feelings of being "not good enough" were worsened by the academic stresses of college and
the emotional conflict caused by her parents' divorce, which combined to trigger her episode of major depression.
Bipolar Disorder (Manic Depression)
As mentioned earlier, bipolar disorder is a type of depressive illness that involves mood swings that go from periods of
depression to periods of being overly "up" and irritable. Sometimes the mood swings are dramatic or rapid, but most
often they occur gradually, over several weeks. The "up" or manic phase can include increased energy and activity,
insomnia, grandiose notions and impulsive or reckless behavior, including sexual promiscuity. Medication usually is
effective in controlling manic symptoms and preventing the recurrence of both manic and depressive episodes.
During a manic episode, I stayed awake for five days straight, but had a lot of energy. I spent my tuition on a major
shopping spree and long distance phone calls. I also had sex with several guys that I hardly knew. At the time, I felt so
great that I couldn't see that there were serious problems with what I was doing. (Teresa)
Suicide
Thoughts of death or suicide are usually signs of severe depression. "If you're feeling like you can't cope anymore, or
that life isn't worth living, get help," advised Darrel, a student who tried to kill himself during his freshman year.
"Talking to a professional can get you past those intense feelings and save your life."
Suicidal thoughts, impulses, or behaviors always should be taken seriously. If you are thinking about hurting or killing
yourself, SEEK HELP IMMEDIATELY. Contact someone you trust: a good friend, academic or resident advisor, or:
Staff at the University Health Services; a professor, coach, or advisor;
A local suicide or emergency hotline; in the Berkeley area: 510/849-2212; or call 911.
If someone you know has thoughts about suicide, the best thing to do is help the person get professional help. "I'm back
from the edge," Darrel says. "Now that I've gotten treatment, I know how to keep from being out there again."
Depression and Alcohol and Other Drugs
A lot of depressed people, especially teenagers, also have problems with alcohol or other drugs. Sometimes the
depression comes first and people try drugs as a way to escape it. Other times, the alcohol or other drug use comes first,
and depression is caused by the drug itself, or withdrawal from it, or the problems that substance use causes. And
sometimes you can't tell which came first... the important point is that when you have both of these problems, the
sooner you get treatment, the better.
Getting Help: Treatment Works
If you think you might be depressed, discuss this with a health care or mental health professional who can evaluate
your concerns. Bring an understanding friend for support if you are hesitant or anxious about the appointment.
Several effective treatments for depression are available and can provide relief from symptoms in just a few weeks. The
most common treatments are psychotherapy (“talk therapy”), antidepressant medication, or a combination of the two.
Which is the best treatment for an individual depends on the nature and severity of the depression. Sharing your
preferences and concerns with your treatment provider helps determine the course of treatment. Certain types of
psychotherapy can help resolve the psychological or interpersonal problems that contribute to, or result from, the
illness. Antidepressant medications relieve the physical and mood symptoms of depression and are not habit-forming.
In severe depression, medication is usually required.
Individuals respond differently to treatment. If you don't start feeling better after several weeks, talk to your provider
about trying other treatments or getting a second opinion.
Making a Decision and Taking the First Step
Don't let fear of what others might think stop you from doing what's best for you. Parents and friends may understand
more than you think they will, and they certainly want you to feel better though they may not completely understand.
I knew I was depressed but thought I could pull out of it by myself. Unfortunately, friends reinforced this attitude by
telling me to just toughen up. When that didn't work, I felt even worse because I had 'failed' again. When a friend
suggested I talk to his counselor, I resisted at first. In my mind, professional help was for weak, messed up people. But
then, I hit a bottom so low that I was willing to try anything. (John)
I decided to try treatment when my friends got fed up with me. They didn't want to talk about my problems any more,
but my problems were the major focus of my life. I needed someone who could help me understand what was
happening to me. I'd seen ads for the counseling center and decided to give it a try. (Kim)
When I began considering suicide, I knew I needed help. My resident advisor helped me call a hotline where I got
some referrals. It was just a phone call, but it was the starting point that got me the professional help I needed. (Leah)
Help Yourself: Be an Informed Consumer
Depression can make you feel exhausted, worthless, helpless and hopeless. Don't give in to negative thinking;
remember, these negative views are part of the depression, and will fade as treatment takes effect.
Take an active role in getting better. Make the most of the help available by being actively involved in your treatment
and by working with a qualified therapist or doctor. Once in treatment, don't hesitate to ask questions in order to
understand your illness and the way treatment works. And, if you don't start feeling better in a few weeks, speak with
the professional you are seeing about new approaches.
Be good to yourself while you're getting well. Along with professional help, there are some other simple things you can
do to help yourself get better, for example: participating in a support group, spending time with other people, or taking
part in activities, exercise, or hobbies. Just don't overdo it and don't set big goals for yourself. The health care
professional you are seeing may suggest useful books to read and other self-help strategies.
Helping a Depressed Friend
The best thing you can do for a depressed friend is to help him or her get treatment. This may involve encouraging the
person to seek professional help or to stay in treatment once it is begun. The next best thing is to offer emotional
support. This involves understanding, patience, affection, and encouragement. Engage the depressed person in
conversation or activities and be gently insistent if you meet with resistance. Remind that person that with time and
help, he or she will feel better.
Helpful and Affordable Resources
There are many people on and around campus that can offer help and support. In addition to the resources listed
below, staff in your living center, your family health care provider, and your clergy can be helpful resources for getting
help. If you are not eligible, or don’t know whether you are eligible, for the services listed below, contact the University
Health Services (UHS) anyway. We’re happy to discuss eligibility and referrals with you.
People are sometimes reluctant to seek help because they are concerned about the cost of treatment. If you are a Cal
student, contact the UHS to discuss the coverage provided by your student registration fees and your insurance plan.
Is It Worth It? … Yes!!
While the depression was painful, working to get better has taught me about who I am and how to stay healthy. (Marta)
Getting treatment definitely changed my life for the better and helped me avoid flunking a semester. (John)
Resources for Cal Students
University Health Services (UHS) Tang Center, 2222 Bancroft Way 510/ 642-2000 www.uhs.berkeley.edu
Emergency consultations
Counseling and Psych Services (M, T, W, F: 8-5; Th: 9-5): 642-9494.
After Hours Assistance: 510 /643-7197
24 hour crisis line: Alameda County Suicide Crisis Line: 510/849-2212
Appointments
Counseling and referral for anti-depressant medication evaluation, call CPS: 642-9494.
Medical appointments, including medication evaluations: 642-2000.
Health education appointments to discuss diet, exercise, and stress management: 642-2000.
Workshops
Counseling and Psychological Services (642-9494) has a variety of informational workshops and support
groups on depression, bipolar disorder, and understanding moods. Check the UHS website for updates and
schedules: www.uhs.berkeley.edu.
Self-Care Resource Center, Second Floor, Tang Center
A health information library with interactive computer programs, access to health websites, books, audio and
videotapes, pamphlets, magazines, journals and self-assessment tools. Books and handouts on depression and
other mental health issues. Hours during Fall and Spring Semesters are M – F, 11 am - 4 pm. 642-7202.
Adapted for UC Berkeley, University Health Services, from NIH Publication No. 97-4266; November 2003. s:uhs/healthed/depresscoll.doc
http://www.uhs.berkeley.edu/home/healthtopics/pdf/depresstudents.pdf
What do these students have in common?
When I took a part-time job and started
living off-campus, my course work fell
apart. I couldn't concentrate or sleep,
and I was always IRRITABLE and angry.
- Leah, sophomore year
After two years of straight A's, I
couldn't finish assignments anymore. I
felt exhausted but couldn't sleep, and
drank A LOT. I couldn't enjoy life like
my friends did anymore. - John, junior
year
I've always been anxious and never
had much confidence. College was
harder than I expected, and then
my parents divorced, which was
traumatic for me. After a while, all I
did was cry, sleep, and feel waves
of panic. - Marta, freshman year
They are college students who got depressed...got
treatment...and got better.
College offers new experiences and challenges. This can be exciting; it can also be stressful and make you, or someone
you know, feel sad. When "the blues" last for weeks, or interfere with academic or social functioning, it may be clinical
depression. Clinical depression is a common, frequently unrecognized illness that can be effectively treated.
What is Clinical Depression?
Clinical depression can affect your body, mood, thoughts, and behavior. It can change your eating habits, how you feel
and think, your ability to work and study, and how you interact with people. Clinical depression is not a passing mood,
a sign of personal weakness, or a condition that can be willed away. Clinically depressed people cannot "pull themselves
together" and get better. Depression can be successfully treated. With the right treatment, 80 percent of those who seek
help get better. And many people begin to feel better in just a few weeks.
Types of Depressive Illness
Depressive illnesses come in different forms. The following are descriptions of the three most prevalent, though for an
individual, the number, severity, and duration of symptoms will vary.
Major depression is manifested by a combination of symptoms that interfere with your ability to work, sleep, eat, and
enjoy once pleasurable activities. These episodes can occur once, twice, or several times in a lifetime. Symptoms include:
Sadness, anxiety, or "empty" feelings
Decreased energy, fatigue, being "slowed down"
Loss of interest or pleasure in usual activities
Appetite and weight changes (either loss or gain)
Sleep disturbances (insomnia, oversleeping, waking
much earlier than usual)
Feelings of hopelessness, guilt, and worthlessness
Thoughts of death or suicide, or suicide attempts
Difficulty concentrating, making decisions, remembering
Irritability or excessive crying
Chronic aches/pain not explained by other physical condition
A less intense type of depression, dysthymia, involves long-term, chronic symptoms that are less severe, but keep you
from functioning at your full ability and from feeling well. In bipolar illness (also known as manic-depressive illness),
cycles of depression alternate with cycles of elation and increased activity, known as mania.
How to Recognize Depression
The first step in defeating depression is recognizing it. It's normal to have some signs of depression some of the time. But
five or more symptoms for two weeks or longer, or noticeable changes in usual functioning, are all factors that should
be evaluated by a health or mental health professional. And remember, people who are depressed may not be thinking
clearly and may need help to get help.
I kept asking myself, "How could I be depressed? I'd had a normal family life, had been getting good grades, and
hadn't experienced any big trauma - where did my depression come from?" (John)
What Causes Depression?
The causes of depression are complex. Very often a combination of genetic, psychological and environmental factors is
involved in the onset of clinical depression. At times, however, depression occurs for no apparent reason. Regardless of
the cause, depression is almost always treatable.
Family History: Depression often runs in families, which usually means that some, but not all, family members have a
tendency to develop the illness. However, sometimes people who have no family history also develop depression.
Stress: Psychological and environmental stressors can contribute to a depressive episode, though individuals react
differently to life events and experiences. In coping with stress, some people find it helpful to write in a journal,
exercise, or talk with friends. In clinical depression you need some form of treatment to start feeling better soon.
Common stressors in college life include:
Greater academic demands
Being on your own in a new environment
Changes in family relations
Financial responsibilities
Changes in your social life
Exposure to new people, ideas, and temptations
Awareness of your sexual identity and orientation
Preparing for life after graduation
I had a period of nearly constant turmoil when I wanted to "come out" to my friends about being gay but didn't want
to be treated like an outsider. A good friend made jokes about homosexuals and I was afraid of what he'd say about
me. That stress played a big part in my becoming depressed. (Josh)
My family wanted me home every other weekend and I didn't fit in there anymore. I'd argue constantly with my
father, who still treated me like a child. My sister thought I was 'uppity.' Everyone was miserable; I felt guilty. (Kim)
Psychological make-up can play a role in vulnerability to depression. People with low self-esteem, who consistently
view themselves and the world with pessimism, or are readily overwhelmed by stress, may be especially prone to
depression. For Marta, her feelings of being "not good enough" were worsened by the academic stresses of college and
the emotional conflict caused by her parents' divorce, which combined to trigger her episode of major depression.
Bipolar Disorder (Manic Depression)
As mentioned earlier, bipolar disorder is a type of depressive illness that involves mood swings that go from periods of
depression to periods of being overly "up" and irritable. Sometimes the mood swings are dramatic or rapid, but most
often they occur gradually, over several weeks. The "up" or manic phase can include increased energy and activity,
insomnia, grandiose notions and impulsive or reckless behavior, including sexual promiscuity. Medication usually is
effective in controlling manic symptoms and preventing the recurrence of both manic and depressive episodes.
During a manic episode, I stayed awake for five days straight, but had a lot of energy. I spent my tuition on a major
shopping spree and long distance phone calls. I also had sex with several guys that I hardly knew. At the time, I felt so
great that I couldn't see that there were serious problems with what I was doing. (Teresa)
Suicide
Thoughts of death or suicide are usually signs of severe depression. "If you're feeling like you can't cope anymore, or
that life isn't worth living, get help," advised Darrel, a student who tried to kill himself during his freshman year.
"Talking to a professional can get you past those intense feelings and save your life."
Suicidal thoughts, impulses, or behaviors always should be taken seriously. If you are thinking about hurting or killing
yourself, SEEK HELP IMMEDIATELY. Contact someone you trust: a good friend, academic or resident advisor, or:
Staff at the University Health Services; a professor, coach, or advisor;
A local suicide or emergency hotline; in the Berkeley area: 510/849-2212; or call 911.
If someone you know has thoughts about suicide, the best thing to do is help the person get professional help. "I'm back
from the edge," Darrel says. "Now that I've gotten treatment, I know how to keep from being out there again."
Depression and Alcohol and Other Drugs
A lot of depressed people, especially teenagers, also have problems with alcohol or other drugs. Sometimes the
depression comes first and people try drugs as a way to escape it. Other times, the alcohol or other drug use comes first,
and depression is caused by the drug itself, or withdrawal from it, or the problems that substance use causes. And
sometimes you can't tell which came first... the important point is that when you have both of these problems, the
sooner you get treatment, the better.
Getting Help: Treatment Works
If you think you might be depressed, discuss this with a health care or mental health professional who can evaluate
your concerns. Bring an understanding friend for support if you are hesitant or anxious about the appointment.
Several effective treatments for depression are available and can provide relief from symptoms in just a few weeks. The
most common treatments are psychotherapy (“talk therapy”), antidepressant medication, or a combination of the two.
Which is the best treatment for an individual depends on the nature and severity of the depression. Sharing your
preferences and concerns with your treatment provider helps determine the course of treatment. Certain types of
psychotherapy can help resolve the psychological or interpersonal problems that contribute to, or result from, the
illness. Antidepressant medications relieve the physical and mood symptoms of depression and are not habit-forming.
In severe depression, medication is usually required.
Individuals respond differently to treatment. If you don't start feeling better after several weeks, talk to your provider
about trying other treatments or getting a second opinion.
Making a Decision and Taking the First Step
Don't let fear of what others might think stop you from doing what's best for you. Parents and friends may understand
more than you think they will, and they certainly want you to feel better though they may not completely understand.
I knew I was depressed but thought I could pull out of it by myself. Unfortunately, friends reinforced this attitude by
telling me to just toughen up. When that didn't work, I felt even worse because I had 'failed' again. When a friend
suggested I talk to his counselor, I resisted at first. In my mind, professional help was for weak, messed up people. But
then, I hit a bottom so low that I was willing to try anything. (John)
I decided to try treatment when my friends got fed up with me. They didn't want to talk about my problems any more,
but my problems were the major focus of my life. I needed someone who could help me understand what was
happening to me. I'd seen ads for the counseling center and decided to give it a try. (Kim)
When I began considering suicide, I knew I needed help. My resident advisor helped me call a hotline where I got
some referrals. It was just a phone call, but it was the starting point that got me the professional help I needed. (Leah)
Help Yourself: Be an Informed Consumer
Depression can make you feel exhausted, worthless, helpless and hopeless. Don't give in to negative thinking;
remember, these negative views are part of the depression, and will fade as treatment takes effect.
Take an active role in getting better. Make the most of the help available by being actively involved in your treatment
and by working with a qualified therapist or doctor. Once in treatment, don't hesitate to ask questions in order to
understand your illness and the way treatment works. And, if you don't start feeling better in a few weeks, speak with
the professional you are seeing about new approaches.
Be good to yourself while you're getting well. Along with professional help, there are some other simple things you can
do to help yourself get better, for example: participating in a support group, spending time with other people, or taking
part in activities, exercise, or hobbies. Just don't overdo it and don't set big goals for yourself. The health care
professional you are seeing may suggest useful books to read and other self-help strategies.
Helping a Depressed Friend
The best thing you can do for a depressed friend is to help him or her get treatment. This may involve encouraging the
person to seek professional help or to stay in treatment once it is begun. The next best thing is to offer emotional
support. This involves understanding, patience, affection, and encouragement. Engage the depressed person in
conversation or activities and be gently insistent if you meet with resistance. Remind that person that with time and
help, he or she will feel better.
Helpful and Affordable Resources
There are many people on and around campus that can offer help and support. In addition to the resources listed
below, staff in your living center, your family health care provider, and your clergy can be helpful resources for getting
help. If you are not eligible, or don’t know whether you are eligible, for the services listed below, contact the University
Health Services (UHS) anyway. We’re happy to discuss eligibility and referrals with you.
People are sometimes reluctant to seek help because they are concerned about the cost of treatment. If you are a Cal
student, contact the UHS to discuss the coverage provided by your student registration fees and your insurance plan.
Is It Worth It? … Yes!!
While the depression was painful, working to get better has taught me about who I am and how to stay healthy. (Marta)
Getting treatment definitely changed my life for the better and helped me avoid flunking a semester. (John)
Resources for Cal Students
University Health Services (UHS) Tang Center, 2222 Bancroft Way 510/ 642-2000 www.uhs.berkeley.edu
Emergency consultations
Counseling and Psych Services (M, T, W, F: 8-5; Th: 9-5): 642-9494.
After Hours Assistance: 510 /643-7197
24 hour crisis line: Alameda County Suicide Crisis Line: 510/849-2212
Appointments
Counseling and referral for anti-depressant medication evaluation, call CPS: 642-9494.
Medical appointments, including medication evaluations: 642-2000.
Health education appointments to discuss diet, exercise, and stress management: 642-2000.
Workshops
Counseling and Psychological Services (642-9494) has a variety of informational workshops and support
groups on depression, bipolar disorder, and understanding moods. Check the UHS website for updates and
schedules: www.uhs.berkeley.edu.
Self-Care Resource Center, Second Floor, Tang Center
A health information library with interactive computer programs, access to health websites, books, audio and
videotapes, pamphlets, magazines, journals and self-assessment tools. Books and handouts on depression and
other mental health issues. Hours during Fall and Spring Semesters are M – F, 11 am - 4 pm. 642-7202.
Adapted for UC Berkeley, University Health Services, from NIH Publication No. 97-4266; November 2003. s:uhs/healthed/depresscoll.doc
http://www.uhs.berkeley.edu/home/healthtopics/pdf/depresstudents.pdf
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