VERVE: Western North Carolina’s Smartest Magazine Women

February/March 2010 House a Mess? Send in the Declutterers.

by Robin Edgar 

Are you a hoarder, surrounded by stacks of to-be-read magazines, mail and bills on every surface? Perhaps you cling to any potentially useful item, from T-shirts you wore in the 1960s to old records too scratched up to play anymore. And you don’t even own a record player. (read more about Declutters)

Be sure to mind your body language
Gender and culture play a role in how people react to your movements
By Robin A. Edgar
Special to the Charlotte Observer
Monday, November 17, 2003
"I found myself leaning forward several times during the interview," said Cynthia McLaughlin, manager at W.R.Grace. The interview was for an executive position she really wanted, and she was disappointed that she did not get it. "I must have appeared too anxious," she said.

Although leaning forward can be an assertive posture, in McLaughlin's case, she may have invaded the interviewer's personal space. This nonverbal signal, when used by a woman, is often interpreted as being overly aggressive.
(read more about body language)

 
CREATIVE CROWD GIVES BUSINESSES A BOOST
FIRMS TRY WRITING, MUSIC, IMPROV TO HELP WITH TEAM BUILDING
Monday, May 16, 2005
Section: MONEYWISE
As an editor leading a tribe of neophyte writers, Robin Edgar encouraged her students this year to dig deep for those buried emotions and memories. Their collection of short stories would be bound in a book. She wanted the two dozen scribes to use their senses. Show, don't tell.

She wasn't teaching a college class but holding editorial court with a group of health-care workers at Carolinas Medical Center-University. About 1,000 copies of the self-published work, "Celebrating 20 Years and Growing," arrived from the printers last week and commemorates the hospital's 20th anniversary.
(read more about life writing)

You Are Moving Where?
By Robin Edgar

When my fiancé announced that he was interviewing for a job in a small town in the Midwest, I calmly dropped to my knees and begged, "Please don't send me back there!" (Picture the character in a grade B prison movie pleading with the warden not to be sent back to solitary confinement). You might see that as overreacting, but as far as I was concerned, I had already done my time in rural America.
(read more about moving)