How to be a better listener: Lessons from the Interruption Queen
Penelope Trunk Blog
by Penelope
1d ago
My son met a Ukrainian girl over the summer, and after telling me it was a summer fling because she barely speaks English, he started learning Russian and seeing her all the time. The relationship became a race – could she learn English before he learned Russian. Her school is in an enclave of all Russian and Ukrainian kids who escaped the war, so she is not learning English as fast as you’d expect. Actively integrate various types of information. She told him he should be in high school instead of homeschooling. I didn’t say to her, “The only reason he learned Russian in six months is becaus ..read more
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The British royal family has ended
Penelope Trunk Blog
by Penelope
1w ago
William is done being heir to the throne. Not completely surprising since ruling the royal roost destroyed the lives of everyone before him. Maybe the throne would have been manageable for William if women he dated wanted to be royal. But only Kate would put up with it. Maybe the throne would have been manageable if Harry had played along. But that’s over. Now Charles has pancreatic cancer which means he’ll be dying imminently. And this is ruining all of William’s plans. William’s affair with Rose Hanbury was intricately planned 7 years ago: she married Lord Rocksavage who is gay but needed a ..read more
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Playbook for stage xx cancer
Penelope Trunk Blog
by Penelope
1M ago
It might be cancer. I have two more doctor appointments on Tuesday and maybe even more after that. My mom is coming to Boston to go with me so I am not going alone. My brother comes three days later. I’m so tired. I think back to how I used try to write blog posts while breastfeeding. I was so tired then, and I still wrote. I am telling myself to just write. Just keep writing. The hardest thing about cancer — before your life and every life close to you is twisted — is not knowing what to do with the time you might have left. Here are some things I do know: If it is cancer, it’s esophageal ca ..read more
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A blog is maybe more valuable than a credit score
Penelope Trunk Blog
by Penelope
2M ago
You know how if you have to be somewhere early in the morning and it’s super important then you can’t sleep the night before? That was me. I finally went to sleep at 3am and then I was an hour late for my 9am appointment. The courtroom was full and on one side were white people and one side were Black people, so I was like, okay, here’s where I belong. And then someone asked me if I was a lawyer, and I said no, and just as I was getting ready to go to the other side I heard someone calling my name. The landlord’s lawyer said, “Are you Ms. Greenheart?” I said yes and we went to a back roo ..read more
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How scientists measure if you have good friends
Penelope Trunk Blog
by Penelope
3M ago
I thought the good friend test was who do I tell that I got a job at Harvard. But I ended up telling everyone. Then I thought maybe the good friend test was who can I reach out to when I’m having a total breakdown? But again, the answer is everyone, because no one solo person can actually deal with me calling them, repeatedly, so I have to just tell you all, here on my blog. The research about friends talks about reciprocal friends. For example, does your best friend think you are their best friend? If the answer is no, then term for that person is not friend, it’s shitty friend. Because unev ..read more
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How to choose an apartment
Penelope Trunk Blog
by Penelope
3M ago
I don’t make Nino pay child support and I pay him back for almost all the money he spends when he’s with the kids. He just sent me an accounting for all the times I haven’t paid him back in 15 years. I owe him $8540. I told him he has to wait because I’m currently being evicted from an apartment I love, and if I kill myself over being evicted and people see I just paid Nino they might think I killed myself because of him. He laughed because he knows I know he wouldn’t care. Anyway, don’t worry about the eviction. I mean, worry a little, okay, because my rent is $5000/month. We can both worry ..read more
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Claudia Goldin won the Nobel Prize for the truth about women and work. Whooo hooo!
Penelope Trunk Blog
by Penelope
6M ago
After 20 years of blogging, learning to do academic research was a steep learning curve. People told me to ask for help from professors at Harvard because they’d feel obligated to help me because I’m at Harvard as well. In fact most did not even feel obligated to reply to my email. But Claudia replied. She told me what I was asking for was best accomplished with an econometrics grad student and gave me some ideas. So basically I asked a professor who was six months away from winning the Nobel Prize in economics if she wanted to be my grad student. But really, now we know how much Claudia Gold ..read more
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Lessons from the bottom rung of academia
Penelope Trunk Blog
by Penelope
6M ago
Golden Ladders by Yoko Ono I’m scared to talk about my job at Harvard because of imposter syndrome. But I know from experience that writing here and talking about myself incessantly is the way to beat it. If I post about things that make me nervous, then the people who are going to call me out will do it right in the comments sections. You know that adage keep your enemies close to you? It’s sort of like that. It’s also like when I got a job writing a weekly finance column — my brothers told me I shouldn’t even take the job, because people will find out that I cashed out my 401(k) to pa ..read more
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9/11: What’s still the same
Penelope Trunk Blog
by Penelope
7M ago
I still have not seen a video of the towers falling. But I started reading commentary about it this past year. I have never stopped thinking about the people jumping from the towers. Maybe because after the second plane hit, my brain couldn’t comprehend anything really, it was all abstract and unreal. But when my coworker told me “People are jumping from the building!” that’s when I understood it was real. And I followed her to go see. In the recovery group we could tell where each person was that day by whether we said jumping or falling. I read in some comments section that the people ..read more
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This guy said I charge too much for coaching, then he showed up to my door
Penelope Trunk Blog
by Penelope
7M ago
There are some people I’ve been coaching since they were in high school. Usually their parents pay for the first few sessions and then I get overinvested in the kid. So I have to stop and ask myself: “Does this family have $30,000 for me to coach the kid for a year?” Sometimes the answer is yes, and then my rent is on time for so many months in a row that the landlord stops by to see if I got married. Most parents don’t have that much money and I end up coaching the kid for free. I used to think I could get extra value by having the kid come live with us and then our lives would be so interes ..read more
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