Jennifer Romolini > Quotes

“I want you to know that the thrill you feel being on the path to your dream is not mutually exclusive from the feeling of discomfort, and, on occasion, misery.”
― Jennifer Romolini, Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures

“You worked too hard to get here to let it go because some business-y bullshit bums you out. If you focus on becoming great at what you do (which we will talk about more specifically later in this book, and which I heartily encourage), if you keep your mind open to learning and seek out new challenges and opportunities and are kind to people in the process, no one and nothing can slow you down—especially not something as frivolous as the corporate-culture nonsense conducted under those fluorescent lights. And,”
― Jennifer Romolini, Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures

“Remember that you are not obliged to meet anyone where they are emotionally, especially if where they are is toxic or unhinged. The more visibly upset you get, the more you perpetuate the negativity; the more rattled and distracted you are, the more you give the bullies what they want. Unless”
― Jennifer Romolini, Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures

“Above all else, overwork was a distraction that blotted out the dull, but ambient emotional discomfort that was always there, a feeling of unworthiness that I’ve been running from my entire life. Work made me feel like I was somebody other than the unlovable monster I was quite sure I was inside. It allowed me to feel that if I cosplayed long enough as a cool and confident professional, I could obliterate that monster for good.”
― Jennifer Romolini, Ambition Monster: A Memoir

“I'm loath to bring up the E word here, and I'm even more embarrassed to talk about "millennials" in this way because it is a terrible cliché you've heard a hundred million times, and it is not a cliché I actually believe to be true. However, in writing a book for people in their twenties in 2017, I'd be remiss to not discuss this biggest criticism against them. If you are a twenty-something working in the world of Gen Xers and baby boomers, many older people think you are entitled. This is probably not news to you. Your bosses meet over glasses of wine and get parent drunk about how lazy you are and how you don't respect authority and don't take initiative and also what a pain in the ass and entitled they feel you are. Boo-hoo.
It doesn't matter that the assessment is a wild, sweeping stereotype, nor that it's not actually true or fair--after managing millennials successfully for years, I know it's not. There's not an entire generation of lazy jerks walking around, waiting to steal jobs and assignments they don't deserve. Also, people of all ages can and do act entitled, and this is just a tidy, cantankerous way to label a whole census block of folks and make them seem less threatening because some people (cough cough: olds) feel afraid that they might be aging out of their careers and not feel as relevant as before.”
― Jennifer Romolini, Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits – A Funny, Empathetic Memoir for Thriving at Work While Staying Authentic

“How much do we need to endure early in order to justify feeling messed up later?”
― Jennifer Romolini, Ambition Monster: A Memoir

“Destiny is not a GPS system that turns on the minute you start doing the right things and tells you exactly where to go. You have to accept uncertainty and the scariness of the unknown. You have to keep moving somewhere, one foot in front of the other, to give yourself hope that it will be better than it was before.”
― Jennifer Romolini, Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures

“You can’t just be weird, you also have to be good. And you have to be kind to people. But beyond that, you only need to be yourself. You have to let that freak flag blow around and around at full mast and let the world take you in. It is TOTALLY COOL to be who you are, because this is so much better than trying constantly to be a shiny perfect droid person. You—and everyone around you—will have so much more fun. You will enjoy the experience you worked so hard to live.”
― Jennifer Romolini, Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures

“Sometimes your career identity unfolds over years, the path twisting and turning as you learn more about both yourself and the working world. Sometimes, after decades doing something else, your brain cracks open, and you know you do not want to be a dental assistant anymore and instead need to become the world’s greatest cartoonist. And sometimes finding what you should do with your life starts simply with having the courage to try something else.”
― Jennifer Romolini, Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures

“The secret to becoming successful is little more than resilience, smarts, and the audacity to keep going when the world tells you to fuck off.”
― Jennifer Romolini, Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures

“But much as “meant to be” love stories about “the one” fill us with unrealistic expectations about what marriage and finding a partner are supposed to look like, finding your career path doesn’t always happen this way, and imagining that it will or should can leave you feeling anxious or paralyzed, wanting to crawl into a ball and hide under the bed. It can make you feel like you shouldn’t even try.”
― Jennifer Romolini, Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures

“Now listen with more intention, because probably what you’re actually hearing is: I wish that were me. And instead of wasting all this time being jealous, sad, or pissed, you should channel that energy into transforming your life.”
― Jennifer Romolini, Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures

“Mistakes and unfortunate events like these will happen to you and to almost every weirdo you know. You may even get “in trouble” for them. When you do, don’t blow them out of proportion; don’t obsess over them. Don’t let your weird brain take over and turn this all into the disaster that it is not. The events themselves don’t actually matter; how you recover from them does. If something is your fault, don’t deny it, don’t get defensive, just apologize. Quickly and succinctly. If you can, do it in person: “I am so sorry about today. It won’t happen again.” Then make sure it doesn’t, at least not for a long time.”
― Jennifer Romolini, Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures

“Professional identity, in the beginning, can feel like a too-big suit you’re trying on, an other self that you are trying to portray, like you’ve Being John Malkovich’d into a PROFESSIONAL PERSON when inside you feel like a vulnerable kid.”
― Jennifer Romolini, Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures

“(there are never enough years in a world that has both alcohol and kittens. I imagine you understand).”
― Jennifer Romolini, Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures

“Because behind your anger and jealousy is passion, and even further behind it is fear, and these very strong feelings are what you’re going to need to be persistent and unrelenting and succeed at and love what you do.”
― Jennifer Romolini, Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures

“Being a weirdo or an outlier or even a slacker and achieving real, high-level success are not mutually exclusive, even if all the CEOs you’ve seen look vanilla and the same. And even if all the business-success books are written by normals who you couldn’t imagine struggling with e-mail hoarding and having toothpaste in their hair. You are not shut out of the club just because you are awkward and not perfect or don’t look the part. Perfection is a fantasy anyway. If you are a card-carrying weirdo, your sensitivity and raw way of being in the world is not a detriment, it’s an asset. Your all-in, all-fucks-given intensity, your difference, is exactly what makes you special and a breath of fresh air in the business world. Your weirdness is an asset. Embracing it (in addition to working hard and becoming great at what you do) will help you succeed in almost any profession that you feel passionate about. If you want it, you can have a totally rewarding career that makes you real money and allows you to stay true to the misfit you really are.”
― Jennifer Romolini, Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures

“Unless someone tells you directly that they hate an idea, don’t want to collaborate with you, or don’t like your work, you are better off assuming a positive than a negative. Even when some of what you’re sensing is true, the truth doesn’t matter as much as your perception of it. Fixating on possible shade, inserting your own narcissism into someone else’s bad day, distorting conversations, and projecting negative feelings that don’t really exist or, if they do, are slight and insignificant—it’s all a slippery slope toward the crazy abyss.”
― Jennifer Romolini, Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures

“There are clues about your professional identity, what you’ll love and eventually be great at, hiding in even your most seemingly defeated and underachieving times.”
― Jennifer Romolini, Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures

“No matter how hard you try to bend and appease and please and hide yourself away to make those whom you “intimidate” happy, their feelings about you may never abate. The best you can do is recognize that “I feel intimidated” is really code for “You threaten me/I need attention and love.” Recognizing this doesn’t mean you have to transform into a lovable, validation-parroting Furby. If it feels right, you can choose to be more open and emotionally generous at work; if it doesn’t, you can simply say “fuck ’em,” keep your head down, and focus on your work.”
― Jennifer Romolini, Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures

“Your up-until-this-point failures and self-doubt mean nothing unless you let them stand in your way.”
― Jennifer Romolini, Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures

“If you focus on becoming great at what you do (which we will talk about more specifically later in this book, and which I heartily encourage), if you keep your mind open to learning and seek out new challenges and opportunities and are kind to people in the process, no one and nothing can slow you down—especially not something as frivolous as the corporate-culture nonsense conducted under those fluorescent lights. And,”
― Jennifer Romolini, Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures

“How I found the color of my particular parachute was by force, by taking a hard and honest look at my sadness and insecurity, what made me the most pissed off and envious, the things that I wanted to be so badly that I seethed.”
― Jennifer Romolini, Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures

“I didn’t really even understand where my body was in space. I was a sensitive, awkward overthinker with zero chill; I never met a chair I could not manage to fall out of, a sidewalk I could not trip upon, a person waving at someone else at whom I would not mistakenly wave back.”
― Jennifer Romolini, Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures

“Most of us are quick to judge “bad” parents and “bad” parenting. We feel we inherently know what is right and what is wrong when it comes to raising a child. The truth is, parenting is an emotional cataclysm in the best of circumstances. Add in a few extra extraordinarily common wrenches – generational trauma, socioeconomic hardship, neurodivergence – and there’s almost no way to not fuck up your kids.”
― Jennifer Romolini, Ambition Monster: A Memoir

“He woke every morning at 5:30 a.m., had one of those Very Productive People/Secrets of Success agendas from 5:30 to 6:30, when he ate a teaspoon of skim milk and two almonds and did 280 crunches and rubbed the New Yorker all over his body* before he lint-brushed his entire life.”
― Jennifer Romolini, Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures

“And it’s important to note here that every single thing you do, including whatever it is you’re doing right now (Are you lying on the floor watching Friends reruns? That counts.) will have meaning later on. You shouldn’t dismiss any of your experiences as insignificant, even if they are not conventional successes.”
― Jennifer Romolini, Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures

“Even when you think no one is watching, good people, kind people, smart people, the senior people you want to work with and for, recognize this kind of work. We see you. We praise your work and talk about how amazing you are in secret boss e-mails we send to each other: “If you ever have a position open, this is the person you should hire.” “Oh, I just heard you hired X, that was a VERY SMART move.” We go out of our way for you. We recommend you for jobs you don’t even know you want. Your goodness, coupled with hard work and skill, means something, even when you feel most despondent, even when you’re dealing with dark office bullshit. Even when you think it does not, your greatness counts.”
― Jennifer Romolini, Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures

“How do I walk the line between being ambitious, competitive, and powerful and being a 1980s-movie dragon career lady in shoulder-pads who everyone hates (and I hate too)? And, most important: How do I do all this and stay true to who I am?”
― Jennifer Romolini, Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures

“You will spend 90,000 hours of your life working. That’s more than you will spend doing anything else except sleeping. And you know you owe it to yourself to make those hours the most meaningful that they can possibly be. You know you can’t resign yourself to a listless job. You don’t want to spend your one life grinding out work you care little about, a sad office-humor cliché. You’re here because you want more out of your career, even as you’re facing a stupid-tight and ever-shifting job market, nagging self-doubt, the challenges of rampant sexism and racism in the workplace, a persistent wage gap (particularly for women of color), a lack of precedent for female leadership in most careers, a lack of mentors, and mansplaining men everywhere you look. You’re here because you’re tired of feeling quite so delicate, one professional rejection away from emotional cataclysm, a floor puddle of Chunky Monkey and Netflix. Because you want to get stronger and more sure-footed. Because you don’t want to be tripped up by small things like what to say in an e-mail, and big ones like how to ask for a raise. Because you don’t yet know when you need to stand up for yourself and when you definitely don’t need to stand up for yourself. You’re here because you haven’t realized yet that you’re not alone, that even your heroes think they are impostors, that we all think we don’t deserve to be here, we all believe, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that we are irrelevant, incompetent trash people, and soon THEY ARE ALL GOING TO KNOW. You are here because no matter how nasty the self-talk and shitty programming that’s intermittently popping off in your brain, the voices that tell you you’re lazy, untalented, the worst, you need to find empathy for yourself, you need someone to tell you how you are feeling is normal. That you belong. That you CAN do this. Because you can.”
― Jennifer Romolini, Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures