Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction
Read Sample Chapters 
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Preface
“Each of us should make the most of our lives. We should give life our best. Let us use our lives more wisely to choose our dreams, find our true purpose, and be as happy and successful as possible.”
—Malcolm X
Embracing the Real World: The Black Woman’s Guide to Life After College was begun during a very challenging period in my life. I began writing the book while working as the managing editor of a black weekly newspaper in Houston. I was 21, fresh out of college, ambitious, hopeful, and thrilled at having a job many recent college graduates would forfeit their diploma for. Unfortunately, I was also very naïve.
After working in my first professional position I began to see that life in the real world was not what I had expected. What’s more, no one had truly prepared me for it. I felt like I was the butt of a joke on a Punked episode nearly every week. After struggling with conflicts with my co-workers and boss, the demands of my job, and the stress of living on my own, I began to feel disillusioned and slightly depressed. Later experiences of job loss and the frustrations of job searching only made matters worse. Like many recent college graduates my transition from college to the working world proved to be quite difficult. And I believe being an African-American woman made the transition even more complicated.
I wrote the majority of the chapters you’ll find in the book after I went through the issues they focus on, thus the book was written to help me make sense of my life as well as to help other black women make sense of theirs.
This book is filled with all the great advice that career-related books should have—based on my experiences, those of other college graduates, the insight of employers, and tons of research. You’ll get schooled on everything from applying and interviewing for jobs, choosing where to live, succeeding in a new position, handling conflicts with co-workers, managing your boss, networking effectively, budgeting, negotiating your salary, and coping with job loss.
But what sets this book apart from others on the market is that it’s specifically written for black women and covers topics that most career-related books ignore. Handling racial and sex discrimination in the workplace, working in corporate America, building and maintaining a positive image, and handling self-doubt and fear of failure are just a few of the chapters you’ll discover in Embracing the Real World. And then there are the personal stories from successful women who’ve already walked in your shoes. They share their trials and tribulations, as well as their accomplishments and what they’ve learned since being handed that sacred degree.
Like everything else in life, writing this book was a great balancing act. I wanted to paint the world that you’ve entered as welcoming, gratifying, and full of unending opportunities, yet I knew there was more to the real world than that. So I strived to be just as realistic as I was idealistic because the truth is that college graduates of all ethnicities face a world that can be frustratingly unfair, with more obstacles than we ever imagined.
I believe I’ve painted a picture of both worlds. I hope you appreciate the book more because of this. Perhaps you’ll even discover, as I have, that this realm called the real world is full of hard knocks but very happy endings.
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