The Amazing Adventures of Working Girl: Real Life Career Advice You Can Actually Use

This is one of, if not the best, career advice book I have ever read. It’s funny, interesting, and true to its title, it’s stuff you can actually use! Pretty much anything bad that can happen at work or any problem that could arise… It happened to this woman. So she definitely knows what shes talking about.

This woman, or “Working Girl” as she calls herself, has had quite the exciting life from what she tells in this book. The 59 short chapters in this book are all dedicated to one of her 59 jobs that she had during her lifetime. Being a seamstress, nanny, freelance writer, assistant manager, etc was all a part of her grand life. In each chapter there is a lesson to learn from the mistakes that WG made, and some pretty solid advice along with it.

Here’s a few of the very important things:
1) Your title is important. No matter what you are doing, whether its slinging poop off of the sidewalk in a resort, you had better have the title of “Best” or “Professional” poop slinger.
2) You can turn most anything in a job your way, if you show people that they need you. Tell your boss exactly why you think you’re perfect for the job. He might not have thought about it the way you are, and it could land you with the job plus major bonus points!
3) Anytime you quit, quit with grace.

Karen Burns (author) spent the majority of her life trying to figure out what to do with her life, and admits that she didn’t find a job she absolutely loved until #51. (That’s A LOT OF JOBS!!) I really enjoyed this book because being a college student means that I am still trying desperately to figure out what my future holds… and this book make me realize that it’s okay that I don’t have it all figured out.

This book is actually the book that inspired me to write this blog… Can you believe it? To me, this book said “How To Find What You’re Really Supposed to Do With Your Life.” Not that I'm meant to blog forever, but it showed me how to turn a passion into something productive. Whether its just for myself or to share with others, I really don't care... just that I'm doing it!

So what do I think the lesson with this book is? Well, for me, it was definitely that when reading about careers, even someone else’s career, you could learn a lot of things about what you definitely do and do not want to do with your life. Every book is an opportunity
to learn something, either directly or indirectly. I know this isn’t meant to be a how-to book, but that’s how it turned out for me! Who knows what you’ll learn?