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Life 101 Fox 61 News Laurie Perez reporting May 17, 2002 In the next few weeks thousands of Connecticut college seniors will walk across a stage, pick up a diploma and head off into the dreaded "real world.” After four years of intensive study, most will have some degree of expertise in some academic area, but when it comes to street smarts in every-day life, as Fox 61's Laurie Perez reports, a lot of college grads just don't have a clue. You've made it! You've got the parchment and maybe even a job and now it's time to boldly go beyond the dorm and into the business world, where you'll have to pay taxes, eat with manners, pick an HMO and allocate your 401k. Are you ready for that? Senior Pete Ruccius has a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Hartford, he's taken 5 math classes and 4 physics labs, but, frankly, he's worried about his life skills. "You hear things like 401k, you hear things like dinner etiquette, always put your napkin on your lap, but nobody really tells you exactly what they are or what they mean," said Ruccius. Pete's not alone, in a recent national survey, 73-percent of college students don't think they're ready for the real world. However there’s now there’s hope, from a trio of twenty-somethings selling the wisdom of their experience in seminars called "Cap and Compass". Jesse Vickey, along with his wife, Nicole, and their partner Andy Ferguson create witty seminars to teach serious life skills to college seniors from, the basement of his home. While everyone makes mistakes, Nicole explains how a simple little error in judgement may hurt you, "Everybody was coming back with these little embarrasing stories, but sometimes stories that could hurt them in their career," said Nicole Vickey. Even Jesse can recall one of his many mistakes he made as a fresh-faced Duke grad on Wall Street in 1996. “On my first work dinner I sat down with my boss, a client and a couple of other people and the waiter came to the table and asked what I wanted to drink. I innocently said, ‘oh, I’ll have a glass of wine,’ well everybody else at the table only ordered club soda and coke," explained Jesse. While his mistake wasn’t fatal, it certainly didn't help to be the only one boozing it up at the table. The top three must-know topics in this real life course are: how to find shelter, loving your money and how to avoid looking stupid at dinner. Getting Your Apartment Andy Ferguson spent half-a-year on-line and on-foot looking for a place to live, "I had helped my girlfriend move to Washington and it was like take a couple days, done. For me, it was place after place," said Ferguson. The lesson he learned is to be prepared with some serious money up front. You'll often need first and last month's rent, a security deposit, maybe a broker's fee and you'll need good credit, even before your first paycheck. Good credit is especially important, "It turned out my roommate had never used a credit card before and he thought that was a good thing, because he couldn't possibly have bad credit. Well, it turns out that was bad because he had no credit history at all and we didn't get the place," said Jesse. Loving Your Money Now that you've got your first job, our real life "professors" say it's is time to start thinking about retirement! They teach about 401ks, and IRA’s, stuff you never hear about in college classrooms, but crucial if you want to enjoy your golden years. Experts say it's not how much you contribute, it's when you start, "even if it's 50 dollars a month, even 20 dollars a month, it will add up," said Chuck Cumello of Fidelity Investments, "a 30-year-old person missing one 2000-dollar IRA contribution. That 2000-dollars compounded monthly at an average of 8-percent translates to 34-thousand dollars you miss out on." Avoid Looking Stupid At Dinner You won't have a paycheck to contribute or need an apartment to rent if you don't make it past the business interview lunch or dinner. "A lot of people have a general idea what stuff to use, but if you had to quiz them and say are you sure you use that fork for that they'd be like, no I think I use that fork," said Ferguson. Hot Tomatoes restaurant manager, James Cosgrove, has seen more than one crash and burn. "We see basically with a lot of the kids they're very stiff, very rigid, it's definitely a recommendation to try to get them to relax a little bit," said Cosgrove. These tips come from the real life 101 textbook: 1. Start with your napkin on your left knee. 2. Work from the outside in with utensils. 3. Eat slowly. For these U-Hart students, lessons from real life 101 are already being used. "Bread's always on the left side, drinks always on the right side, that's one of the things we all took away from it," said Ryan-Allen McKinney. .. |
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