What annoyed me about the book was that there was a defined endpoint to her being so busy, and at that endpoint she would get something really important to her, and her family/friends could not stop being such total buttheads about it.

IMHO, if there were a movie where they treated a first-year biglaw associate, medical resident or even somebody writing a dissertation on a deadline that way, the family and friends would be the bad guys (especially if the genders involved were reversed), but since she was a writer, she was supposed to sacrifice her opportunity so that she could attend their birthday parties and family dinners and be the shoulder to cry on when the best friend repeatedly screwed up her life.

CC

Well, that’s an interesting point.

I guess I never really bought that being someone’s second assistant would be the writerly path to fame and fortune (or publication), except (ahem), it worked for the author.

And the family and friends pretty much were buttheads for most of the movie.

I guess a lot of the “ethical choices” felt wrong to me in the movie, as if they were set up wrong in some fashion. I just think that screwing over the other assistant wasn’t really screwing her over…it was how that business worked. Hence, no real sin, no real redemption, so no real tipping point.

In the book, the assistant has always dreamed of writing for the New Yorker. Miranda offers the assistant a deal that if the assistant can stay on for one year, Miranda will use her connections to get the assistant a writing job at the New Yorker.

What bugged me about the movie is that it glamorizes the fashion industry (which is pretty glamorous from what I can tell) but then suggests that everyone involved in it (except this newcomer) is shallow and evil. It was just silly.

CC, I don’t think that came out in the movie. It was just sort of “I’ll make connections” if I stay for a year.

Hafidha, I think that’s a good point. I keep thinking that it’s really satire, so the moral code is exaggerated….but something wasn’t right.

A university business professor gave our class an analogy to explain an idea similar to the one you describe with the tipping point – that a person can change course 180 degrees without knowing it if the turns are micro enough.

That makes a lot of sense to me, Charlie.

The progress we make is a combination of little steps. After a while we reach a tipping point or a point of realization. We have a quantum leap of development. When we have that epiphany we often forget that the whole time we have been making slow, steady progress towards our goal.

Regarding tipping points with a negative connotation assigned to them, the same concept applies, except that the realization is inherently negative and invokes a great emotional response.