There Is Life After College; Jeffrey J. Selingo (2016)

 I read this from the perspective of a parent whose children will need to navigate life after college, since things are very different now from when I graduated; for that matter, from when this book was published in 2016.  There are some good notes in here about the need to do internships, starting your job search relatively early in your senior year (in much the same way your college applications went out early in your HS senior year), and in your first decade out of college, move around from role to role, and company to company, in order to learn about how organizations work and what interests you most.  

There is some talk about the "7 competencies companies are looking for" that is both helpful and concerning.  For example, the author notes that students/future employees need to be able to "take tough feedback", but there is no discussion of how to recognize "tough but fair" from "harsh and abusive."  Similarly, in a discussion of one of the post-graduate "finishing schools", he quotes some of the participants talking about how they "often worked late into the night" on their projects, but there is no discussion of how to (or the need to) rest and recharge.  

There is an important question of how you do good work and have a satisfying career without being taken advantage of.  This was true in 2016, but in the light of the recent mass layoffs at Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, et al, it seems an especially important conversation to have.

Life with Fast Lane

Some time ago, they began to automate toll collection on toll roads.  VT had no toll roads (still has none), so we could sign up for another state's plan.  NY/NJ had EZ-Pass, but MA had its own system called Fast Lane, which was cheaper for us to sign up for, so we did it, and it has worked very well.

In 2011, we switched vehicles, and at that time, transponders weren't associated with a particular vehicle, so we just moved the transponder to the new car and there was nothing to update in the system.

In 2016, MA changed its system so that transponders had to be associated with a particular vehicle, and they associated it with our old vehicle without notifying us.  The transponder continued to work in NY/NJ for five years.

In 2021, we finally went on a toll road in MA for the first time since MA changed their system in 2016.  The cameras on the highway noted that the transponder was not in the vehicle on file, so they disabled the transponder and mailed us an invoice.

Unfortunately, this meant that the transponder no longer worked on the NY/NJ toll roads, but we didn't know this, and our first inkling was an invoice from NJ with $80 worth of "admin fees".  We got it all resolved (back in 2021), but it required a phone call, because there was nowhere in the online form to say you were a customer of Fast Lane... except that Fast Lane is now owned by EZ-Pass, so when I finally got a hold of a customer service rep, they were able to fix it.  (yay)

In 2022, our original near 20-year-old transponder died during another trip through NY/NJ.  With a few more mailed invoices and a few more calls, that's been settled and we now have a new EZ-Pass transponder, and a fond farewell to Fast Lane.