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SUIT UPDitch the
“poor collegestudent” look
SHE’S A NUTCASE
break up with her before she kills you
COLLEGE GRADUATES
WHY ITSUCKS TO BE YOUIt may surprise you...(it may not)
Ral
phLa
uren
.com
1-8
88-R
ALP
H
25 101 WAYS TO CHEAT DEATH How to ensure you live and breathe to fight another day T.E HOLT , M.D.
29 GAIN MUSCLE, LOSE POUNDS This food will help you do both KEVIN TURNER
34 IT’S NOT YOU, IT’S HER 5–somewhat easy ways to break up with lil’ Miss Lunatic RANDY JENSEN
37 HEALTHY MEALS ...That don’t involve tofu or artichoke (Promise) HANK RILEY
Photography by Richard Keele
40 THE SIMPLE LIFE The hardest thing in life may be ... to live simply WALTER SMITH
PURSUIT featuresApril 2012
8SUCKFESTSucks to be Us The reality that faces today’s college graduates: they’re screwed, coddled, self-absorbed, mocked and a surprisingly resilient generation. NOREEN MALONE
PURSUIT Magazine | 3
6 SPORT THE STYLISH SUIT 5 reasons why business casual is suitable for more than just business CHRISTINA PREETHA
14 COOL CASH FOR COLLEGE 9 Ways to loosen up that tight budget and pay for school J.D. ROTH
16 Q&A: THERE SHE IS, NOW WHAT? No more excuses! Talk to her with confidence DAVID DEANGELO
46 GET OUT AND CLIMB 10 great climbs that will kick your butt SAMUEL BIESINGER
50 DON’T LET YOUR NEW JOB KILL YOU Would it kill ya to put in an honest days work? –Maybe. RICK SWENSON
PURSUIT departments
On the CoverSucks to be US: The reality that faces today’s college graduates: they’re screwed, coddled, self-absorbed, mocked and a surprisingly resilient generation. Noreen Malone » p. 8
Suit Up - 5 Reasons why Men look good in Suits: Why business casual is suitable for more than just business Christina Preetha » p. 6
She’s a Nutcase: Break up with her before she kills you - 5–somewhat easy ways to break up with miss lunatic Randy Jensen » p. 34
Cover Photo: Richard Keele - Keele PhotographyModel: Jeff Hegerhorst
SUIT UPDitch the
“poor collegestudent” look
SHE’S A NUTCASE
break up with her before she kills you
COLLEGE GRADUATES
WHY ITSUCKS TO BE YOUIt may surprise you...(it may not)
4 | PURSUIT Magazine
1. ClassMen just look so classy in suits! You don’t have to be a
movie star to have that certain
indefinable something in your
air when you wear a suit.
Note: Please refer to my
previous statement about
looking like a used car sales-
man. That is not classy. Also,
if it is wacky or doesn’t fit
well or comes in the colors
of the rainbow, lay off or
risk looking like the Mask.
Women will be stealing covert
glances at you alright…and
laughing their heads off.
2. ConfidenceWomen aren’t just attracted to
your looks. You slouch when
you’re in casuals, but you know
that you need good posture to
carry off formals. This makes
you look more confident. Often,
exuding an air of confidence
makes up for other irregulari-
ties in your looks.
Note: It’s not just the suit,
you have to be comfortable
in it! If this is a problem,
practice wearing it in front of a
mirror. Choose suits which fit
you well and are comfortable
when you sit, walk or do other
everyday activities.
3. MaturityContrary to what you might
believe, wearing clothes a
teenager would wear does not
make you look any younger.
If you’re forty or fifty or even
older, be proud of it! Women
associate maturity with stabil-
ity and success. And they
also hope that you will behave
like a gentleman if you look
like one. Please do.
Repeat after me, looking mature is a good thing.
4. GroomingOne of my girlfriends once
told me that the first thing she
notices about a man is whether
he is well groomed. Men tend
to let themselves go a bit and
grooming takes a backseat in
daily casuals, but they’re much
more careful about it when
they’re wearing formals. And
all that extra effort shows!
Girls dig that, trust me.
5. It’s DifferentYou wear the same old jeans
and stuff everyday. And we
think you look good, honestly.
We like it when you’re just
chilling out and being yourself.
But looking at you in a suit
one fine day after weeks and
weeks of the same pair of jeans,
it’s like bam! You’re a different
guy. Women start to think that
there might be unplumbed
depths in you after all.
reasons women like men in suits
“Suits are full of joy‘They’re the sartorial equivalent of a
baby’s smile.”
» Barney Stinson: How I Met Your Mother
SUIT PURSUIT
I’ll let you in on a secret, guys: we think you look hot in formal wear. Do you want to be noticed by the woman you’ve been too scared to approach? Wear a suit. CHRisTiNa PReeTHa
5
6 | PURSUIT Magazine
WEAR ITWELL
Suit/TieMatching Tips
Even the nicest suit and most expensive designer tie can look cheap if matched incorrectly. Below are 3 tips that will make matching your suits and neck-ties a piece of cake:
1. ColorsThree simple things must be considered when it comes to color matching: The season of the year, do the colors on each clothing piece go together, and what colors look good on you.
2. PatternsIf you choose to wear a pat-terned suit and tie together make sure that the patterns are different in size and style. This is not only true for the suit and the tie but for all the clothing pieces on an outfit.
3. Fabric & Texture
Finally you should pay some attention to the fabric of the tie and the suit. Most neckties are made from silk but some (especially trendy skinny ties) are made from cotton or knitted wool. Make sure that the fabric of the tie matches the suit.
There you go ,with those simple tips you will be able to get the correct tie for any occa-sion and any suit you have.
Sinatra »
This guy knows what I’m talkin about »
SUCKSSUCKS to be US.
I know this might read as
very woe-is-us, but these are
the facts: Nearly 14 percent
of college graduates from the
classes of 2006 through 2010
can’t find full-time work, and
overall just 55.3 percent of
people ages 16 to 29 have jobs.
That’s the lowest percentage
since World War II, as you
might have heard an Occupy
Wall Street protester point out.
(Not coincidentally, one in five
young adults now lives below
the national poverty line.)
Almost a quarter more people
ages 25 to 34—in other words,
people who should be a few
years into their independent
lives—are living with their
parents than at the beginning
of the recession.
Every generation finds, eventually, a mode of
expression that suits it. Cavemen drew lines
on their cave walls. Sixties kids marched. My
generation, we Gchat, a million tiny windows
blinking orange with hopes and dreams and
YouTube links, with five-year plans and lunch
plans. So as I began to search for a single phrase that could,
preposterously, describe our entire cohort, post-crash, I did what
I always do in moments of crisis. I Gchatted my 24-year-old sister
Clare, who happens to be living back at home with our parents
while she looks for a job:
The reality that faces today’s college graduates: they’re screwed, coddled, self-absorbed, mocked and a surprisingly resilient generation. NoReeN MaLoNe
SUCKS to be US.
Being young is supposed to mean you have the luxury of time.
But in hard times, a few fallow years can become a lifetime drag on
what you earn, sort of the opposite of compound interest. Because
the average person grabs 70 percent of their total pay bumps dur-
ing their first ten years in the workforce, according to a paper from
the National Bureau of Economic Research, having stagnant
or nonexistent wages during that period
means you hit that springboard
at a crawl. Economist Lisa
Kahn explained to The Atlantic
in 2010 that those who graduate
into a recession are still earning an
average of 10 percent less nearly
two decades into their careers. In
hard, paycheck-shrinking numbers,
the salary lost over that stretch totals
around $100,000. That works out to $490
or so less a month, money that could go, say,
toward repaying student loans, which for the class
of 2009 average $24,000. Those student loans (the respon-
sible borrowing option!) have reportedly passed credit cards as the
nation’s largest source of debt. This is not just a rotten moment to
be young. It’s a putrid, stinking, several-months-old-stringy-goat-
meat moment to be young.
Earlier generations have weathered recessions, of course; this
stall we’re in has the look of something nastier. Social Security
and Medicare are going to be diminished, at best. Hours worked
are up even as hiring staggers along: Blood from a stone looks
to be the normal order of things “going forward,” to borrow the
business-speak. Economists are warning that even when the
economy recuperates, full employment will be lower and growth
will be slower—a sad little rhyme
that adds up to something decidedly
unpoetic. A ma- jority of Americans
say, for the first time ever, that this
generation will not be better
off than its parents.
And so we
find ourselves living among the scattered ashes and spilled
red wine and broken glass from a party we watched in our
pajamas, peering down the stairs at the grown-ups. This is not
a morning after we are prepared for, to judge by the composite
sketch sociologists have drawn of us. (Generation-naming is an
inexact science, but generally we’re talking here about the first
half of the Millennials, the terrible New Agey label we were
saddled with in the eighties.) Clare has us pegged pretty well:
We are self-centered and convinced of our specialness and
unaccustomed to being denied. “I am sad, jaded, disillusioned,
frustrated, and worried,” said one girl I talked to who feels
“stuck” in a finance job she took as a stepping-stone to more-
fulfilling work she now cannot find. Ours isn’t a generation that
will give you just one adjective to describe our hurt.
It might be hard, in fact,
to create a generation more
metaphysically ill-equipped to
adjust to this new tough-shit
world. Yet some of us, some-
how, are dealing pretty
well.
Our
generation
is the
product
of two
long- term so-
cial ex- periments
conducted by our parents.
The first sought to create little
hyperachievers encouraged
to explore our interests and
talents, so long as that could
be spun for maximum effect on
a college application. (I would
like to take this forum to at last
admit that my co-secretaryship
of the math club had nothing
to do with any passion for
numbers and much to do with
the extra-credit points.) In the
second experiment, which was
a reaction to their own distant
moms and dads, our parents
tried to see how much
self-confidence they
could pack into us,
like so many over-
stuffed microfiber
love seats, and
accordingly we were awarded
clip-art Certificates of Partici-
pation just for showing up.
The finite supply of actual
brass rings meant that the
first experiment would never
pan out, but the second was a
runaway success. Self-
esteem among young people in
America has been rising since
the seventies, but it’s now so
dramatically high that social
scientists
are considering whether
they need to find a different
measurement system—we’ve
broken the scale. Since we
are not in fact all perfect,
this means that the endless
praise we got growing up,
win or lose, must have really
sunk in. (Meanwhile, it’s this
characteristic that our parents’
generation—which instilled
it in us!—so delights in inter-
preting as “entitled.”)
I’ve got a working theory
about what’s happening as our
self-esteem surpluses collide
with a contracting world. A big
chunk of our generation, the
part David Brooks a decade
ago collectively labeled the
Organization Kid, more or
less happily embraced very
hard work within the system.
(Brooks was focused on
elite students, but I
think the term applies
equally well to your
typical first- and
second-honor-roll
strivers.) If
55.3%of people ages 16-29
have jobs. That’sthe lowest percentage
since World War II
Pho
togr
aphy
by
Ric
hard
Kee
le
10 | PURSUIT Magazine
you were an Organization Kid
and have prospered despite
the economy, landing one of
those jobs that come with an
embroidered gym bag, you’re
obviously fine. The big change
is that when you describe
yourself as lucky—a word that
comes up a lot with friends
I know like this—you may
actually mean it more than you
would have before. (Before, it
would have just been codespeak
for “privileged.”) If, though,
you set track records and made
summa cum laude—if you
earned praise not just for effort
but real achievements—only to
land back in the same bedroom
where you drilled for the SATs,
then you are unmoored. Your
less-decorated peers, feeling the
love regardless of results, came
to believe they’ll always be
appreciated. Whereas you have
had your worldview kicked in.
You become a little like my
friend Lael Goodman. “The
worst thing is that I’ve always
gotten self-worth from perfor-
mance, especially good
grades. But now that
I can’t get a job,
I feel worthless,”
she says.
Lael, who
is 27, was
the valedic-
torian of her
high school and
did very well in college too.
Unable to find a position that
paid a decent wage using
her English degree, she got
a master’s at the University
of Michigan in environmental
studies. She does technically
have a job, for now, filling
in for a woman on maternity
leave at a D.C. nonprofit, but
it’s not one that prevents all
her go-getting from seeming for
naught. Lael feels like she’s stranded on the wrong rung. “All the
articles in the newspaper say that investing in an IRA now means
I’ll have hundreds of thousands of extra dollars down the road, so
I should just scrimp and save,” she says. “But I can’t scrimp and
save because I’m doing that just to afford housing and groceries.
So I’m screwed now, unable to enjoy young adulthood in the way
that I feel I was promised, and screwed for the future.”
Then there is my friend Sam (not his real name,
because he felt that if I used his real name, he’d truly
be unemployable). In high school, Sam was the
sports captain who set all the curves in calculus.
I used to call him up the night before physics tests
to figure out what I should know. Sam went to the
best college he got into, for which he took out $50,000
in loans. He signed up for some abstract-math courses,
was cowed by classmates who worked theorems for kicks, and
majored in poetry writing rather than fall short in the subject
he’d built so much of his identity on. After graduating, he took
a job as a woodworker’s apprentice, not the expected outcome
for a grade-grubbing gunner, but also not all that unusual
back in the days before every decision about which major to
sign up for or job to take started to feel make-or-break. One
thing about being the boomers’ heirs growing up in boom times
was that it used to be okay to take a life-enriching sabbatical.
There was no reason to think you wouldn’t eventually be able
to get back on track.
Does your school suck?Percentage of recent graduates finding employment by school:
Sandiego State University
27%Columbia Illionis University
22%Saint Louis University
15%
Louisiana Tech University
30%University of Reno
20%Las Vegas University
23%
University of Detroit
29%Columbia Illionis University
19%Boise State University
14%
University of Connecticut
16%Ashen Community College
11%Richfield State University
35%PURSUIT Magazine | 11
“I have a lot of regret about
going tocollege,”
-Sam
Sam found out that woodworking turned out to be mostly
vacuuming up wood chips, and so after a few months, he moved
on to a series of other gigs, none of them exactly a career. When
he finally got sick of bouncing around in his broken-down $200
car and living with his parents—who kept pressuring him to
revisit his math-and-science aptitude—he got himself a $25,000
bank loan, which he used to cover expenses while enrolled in
continuing-ed classes in engineering at one of the U.C. schools.
He ran out of money pretty quickly. He then found a job work-
ing in urban education, but was laid off after a year and a half.
“That was the point in my life where I was like, I need to get a
career, I need to make that move,” he told me over the phone, in
the mellowed-out East Bay patois that had crept into his voice
since I last spoke with him. These days, he’s going to networking
events and desperately applying for jobs in the tech world, hope-
ful that landing something very entry-level will put him back on
a navigable route to success. He’s had creditors calling him at all
hours. He is rather earnestly worried that he might end up on the
street. His brothers are managing to stand on their own feet, and
he can’t bear to move back home.
“I have a lot of regret about going to college,” Sam, the person
in my high-school class who’d been most obsessed with getting
into a good college, now says. “If I could go back again, I think I’d
try … not going to college”—our generation’s ultimate blasphemy.
Sam blames himself for his predicament, not the economy,
mostly. But other people in similar straits are coming to see their
personal hardships as the product of broad inequalities. How
many young people will put themselves into that category is a big
test for Occupy Wall Street. One of its advocates created a Tumblr,
“We Are the 99 Percent,” to collect accounts of being screwed by
the recession. The posts from twentysomethings take stories that
sound something like Lael’s—“I worked hard (40 hours a week
during most of my education), for what? Tell me what I need to
do to get ahead, because I did
everything right!”—and make
them a call to arms.
The unions, we know, are
heeding that call, but a broader
youth movement has yet to
materialize.* The Obama 2008
campaign was the high-water
mark for twentysomething po-
litical involvement. The activ-
ism it entailed felt like work—
not a turnoff for us. Dialing
your way through spreadsheets
of get-out-the-vote phone num-
bers is something you can add
to a résumé; getting escorted
off the Brooklyn Bridge in
those plastic handcuffs is not.
But we’re done with that kind
of engagement, for now: While
this is by some measures the
most politically progressive
generation ever, young people
have never been more disil-
lusioned, as a group, about
their ability to bring about
meaningful change through the
electoral process.
Sam Graham-Felsen was
the Obama campaign’s chief
blogger last cycle and now
lectures about youth activism
all over the world. When we
Wow dude, you should be a doctor by now...
graduates based on age(National average)
19-24
10%24-26
15%27-29
35%30-33
25%34-36
17%37-39
7%
“If I could go back again, I think I’d try … not going to college”
Photography by Richard Keele
12 | PURSUIT Magazine
spoke during the early days
of the protests, he wasn’t
convinced Occupy Wall Street
could make activism cool for
kids again, a factor he views
as a key difference between
the U.S. and places like Egypt.
“Even just the physical style,
the types of chants, the stuff
that they’re eating, the gra-
nola—it’s just so derivative of
the sixties,” he said. “It’s like,
‘Guys, let’s do something that’s
more our generation.’ ”
What’s not clear is exactly
what that might look like. It’s
not that this is a generation
that doesn’t want to improve
the world—been to a college
activity fair lately?—but
ours is a fractured involve-
ment. The Cold War sort
of settled which was the
superior economic and politi-
cal system, leaving youthful
calls for revolution to be
shouted in the context of gay
rights and women’s rights and
pro-Palestinian-hummus-
in-the-campus-cafeteria
demonstrations, which are
really about improvements to
the status quo, not a wholesale
overthrow. In the sixties, that
generation’s protesters wanted
a blank slate, economic and
political chaos out of which
they could build something
new. We’ve got that chaos,
and all we want is a way to
get back to the structured
prosperity that preceded their
marching. It’s hard to build a
potent counterculture when
some of the people it’s meant
to appeal to are just hoping for
the chance to put on a tie and
report to their cubes.
“Maybe I don’t have to
make a splash. Maybe I’ll be
okay with just keeping afloat.”
If you look at the people
on the left who have painted
the darkest picture of what
the economic downturn means, they’re a generation ahead: Matt
Taibbi, for one, or Ken Layne, the publisher of Wonkette, whose
ironized blog prose mixes strangely with his incredibly
bleak reading of the economy and culture. (Layne
told me, in an e-mail of ambiguous
sincerity, that the main advice
he would give a recent graduate
was to own only what -
would fit in a
backpack and keep
a current passport always on hand.)
They are unabashedly, feverishly
upset. Their words
practically sweat clammily.
Our generation tends to prefer
our dystopian news delivered with the
impish smile of a Jon Stewart. (I turn the
channel when it’s time for scowling, ranting
Lewis Black.) Reared to
sponge up posi- tive reinforcement
that requires only a positive attitude
as a buy-in, we are just not that into anger.
I spent the summer listening to Helplessness
Blues, an album by Fleet Foxes. It is sweet and
comforting and hated by a certain kind of music snob,
and it was unexpectedly popular. The band, fronted by
a 25-year-old, owes much to the sounds of groups like
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, but if such a thing is possible,
Fleet Foxes makes those older acts sound hard-edged. The
folk music of the sixties was protest music, but there is
nothing remotely political about this. Instead, the preoc-
cupations are inward-turning, the title track serving as a
gentle generational anthem: “I was raised up believing / I
was somehow unique / Like a snowflake, distinct among
snowflakes / Unique in each way you can see,” it begins. “But,
now, after some thinking, I’d say I’d rather be / A functioning cog
in some great machinery / Serving something beyond me.” It’s
not just the bearded dudes in flannel; some of our angry-sound-
ing musicians, it turns out, are just seeking affirmation. On
the song “Radicals,” rapper Tyler, the Creator snarls, “I’m not
saying just to go out and do some stupid shit, commit crimes.
What I’m trying to tell you is, do what the f--- you want, stand
for what the f--- you believe in and don’t let nobody tell you you
can’t do what the f--- you want.” Then the kicker: “I’m a f---ing
unicorn, and f--- anybody who say I’m not.” Today’s f---ing
unicorn is yesterday’s “F--- tha Police.”
Desi and I tried to picture the country in 50 years, as a kind
of parlor game. One we loved playing on boring nights when the
news was particularly noteworthy. End of the world type stuff.
“Oh! Mushroom cloud! It’s going to be a disaster!” he said. “It’s so
overwhelming there’s nothing in particular to be worried about.”
We both laughed, because it’s true.
“I was raised up believing I was somehow unique...
like asnowflake...”
Photography by Richard Keele
PURSUIT Magazine | 13
“We Are the
99Percent,
to collect accounts of being
screwed by the recession”
1. Avoid Non-academic Debt
It might seem like a good idea
to put that Xbox on a credit
card, but it’s not. Focus on de-
veloping good money skills with
cash. Worry about credit later.
2. Save and then Splurge If you decide you must have
that Xbox, then save for it.
Wait until you can pay cash.
3. Track your Spending Habits Use a notebook, or use Quicken
if you have it. Good records
will prevent you from getting
overdrawn at the bank or
charging more than your credit
limit. This habit also allows you
to detect spending patterns.
4. Budget
Making a good budget is often
the simplest solution to some of
the most serious financial dif-
ficulties. It doesn’t have to be
fancy. At the start of the month,
estimate how much money
you’ll receive and decide
where needs to go. Remember:
you don’t need to spend it all.
As a student, you approve.
5. Save your Urgent Receipts It’s easy. Just bring them home.
Put them in a shoebox under
your bed if you must, but hold
onto them. You’ll need to be
able to compare them with
statements at the end of the
month. And some you’ll need
to keep for several years. You’ll
know when to toss them.
6. Live Without a Car (Gasp!)Yes. I said it. Cars are
expensive: gas, maintenance,
insurance, registration, parking.
Stick close to campus. Learn to
use mass transit. Find a friend
who has a car. Who knows,
you may even like the reduced
amount of stress due to driving
in today’s heavy traffic.
7. Spend Less than You Earn Don’t earn much? Then don’t
spend much. If your spending
and income are roughly even,
you have two choices: earn
more or spend less. When I
was in college, I worked as
many as four jobs at once. This
gave me a lot of spending cash.
(Unfortunately, I didn’t do a
good job with the spend less
part of the equation.)
8. Be a Great Employee
Good work habits can pay
enormous dividends, leading
to recommendations and
contacts that you can use after
you’re out of school. Several
of my classmates turned work-
study jobs into launching pads
for future careers.
9. Start your own business Are you a passable guitar
player? Charge cheap rates
and exceed expectations. Word
will spread. When you’ve built
up a customer base, you can
raise your rates a little. This
is an awesome way to make
money. Am I right?
CASH in HAND
School’s back in session, Personal finance can be easy, even if you’re just starting out. You just have to know how it works. All of the following are concepts I wish I had known before heading to college. J.D. RoTH
9money tips forcollege students
“When you’ve built up a customer base, you can raise your rates a little.
This is an awesome way to make money.”
14 | PURSUIT Magazine
Be good to me–I’ll be good to you.
PURSUIT Magazine | 15
LADY LUCK
This week’s Q&A focuses on how to
avoid being nervous with women, the importance of
being confident in the dating
game, and not getting caught
in the “let’s be friends” trap.
David DeAngelo, author of
Double Your Dating: What
Every Man Should Know
About How To Be Success-
ful With Women, has your
answers. Trust him.
What’s a good way for a
shy guy to overcome that
nervous feeling that holds
him back from approaching
women? The answer is to start
small. Don’t worry about what
anyone else is doing or what
anyone else thinks.
Just go out for a day and
go to a mall alone. Walk
into every store and start a
conversation with a woman
who works there. Don’t worry
about whether the woman
is good-looking, married or
whatever. Simply practice.
At first, let the women start
the conversations. When they
say, “Can I help you find some-
thing?” reply with “Yes, that
would be great. I’m looking for
joy, peace and a rich girlfriend.
Do you have any of those
here?” Say it with a straight
face, like a comedian would.
Women love this kinda thing.
After you’ve done this 20
times, reflect on what you’ve
learned. Think about what
worked and what didn’t. Think
about the conversations that
took place as a result.
Take a break, walk down to
a department store, and spray
some cologne on each wrist.
Then, walk into 20 more
stores. This time, try to make
direct eye contact with the
first woman you see that works
there, and hold it until she
either starts talking to you or
she looks away. Then walk over
to her and say, “Hi, I need a
female perspective on some-
thing. Which of these colognes
do you like better?”
Then, when she chooses
one, shake your head and look
at her with a disapproving look
and say, “You would.”
Yes, it’s that time once again: the day we feature your dating and relationship questions. Your e-mail may even be answered in the process. DaviD DeaNgeLo
breaking the ice, confident advice
What’s a good way for a shy guy toovercome that nervous feeling that holds
him back from approaching women?
Photography by David stoker
Q&A:
16 | PURSUIT Magazine