Firsts and Lasts
April 28, 2006 @ 03:49 PM
Last night was likely my last college class ever. Fittingly, I spent it in a bar. That's where the class was held, though… I wasn't skipping or anything. Ask Quinn or someone if you don't believe me. I'd say ask Amanda, but nobody really believes things she says anyway. :) I had a good time, and a few of us went out for (more) food and (more) drinks afterwards. It wasn't until I was getting ready for bed that evening that the realization hit me that I had probably just attended my last class of Ever.
I do have one assignment left to turn in next week, it seems. I have two options: either I can write a 1,500 word teaching philosophy (essentially why I teach the way I do), or I can write a 1,200 word essay explaining why I shouldn't have to write a teaching philosophy. And I'm planning on writing the latter. Not only does it sound like a more interesting challenge, it simply makes more sense. I'm probably not going to be teaching any time soon, nor have I taught in the last year. In fact, that's the basis of my argument right there. Only 1,182 words to go!
In about an hour, I get to head down to Ankeny and pick up my new car! :) Fate has been trying really hard to prevent this from happening, but I think I've outsmarted her for now. First, the glove box broke. As in, it won't open anymore, and it's full of my stuff. I'm guessing this will bring down my trade-in value a tad. At least it complements my broken driver's side door nicely. Next, someone in Illinois tried to buy my car, and I had to wait to see whether their financing would be approved before they could send the car my way (it wasn't, but I had to wait an extra day to see if they could secure outside financing (they didn't)). Then, this morning, my car's battery was completely dead. Turns out I forgot and left the dome light on when I was trying to pry open the glove box earlier in the week. Dana and I had to make a trip to Wal-Mart for a pair of jumper cables. I used to own a pair, but I must've loaned them out somewhere and never got them back.
Dana's birthday party is tonight, so I'm pretty excited about that. It should be a good time with a bunch of cool people, and that's really the best way to spend a Friday evening.
A week from today is my graduation, followed (around 10pm or so) by my graduation reception/party/thinger. If I haven't yet invited you personally, consider this an invitation. I've sent out a lot of paper invites, and I've invited some people via Facebook, and invited still others with a phone call or in person, but there's still a decent chance I'm missing important people. And if you read my website, you're probably pretty darn important, no?
Good Carma.
April 24, 2006 @ 03:05 PM
Veishea weekend was fun and pleasantly uneventful in comparison to the last Veishea I attended. I wasn't maced once this year! :) I spent Friday night in campustown attending the CD release party of Parallex, one of my favorite bands. I picked up their CD and a t-shirt. Afterwards, Dana, Kate, Lisa, Joe and I all headed to central campus to take part in the all-you-can-eat midnight pancake feast, but the line was several hundred people long and I decided cheap pancakes weren't worth an hour-plus wait.
Saturday, Dana and I headed down to Karl Chevrolet to test drive a car. Specifically, a 2006 Chevrolet Cobalt LT. I liked it, as I figured I would (I did about 10 hours of online research first). I went to the dealer with very detailed specs about what I wanted on the car. He didn't have one, and after a search, discovered there wasn't one like it within $250 miles. So I gave up on the pretty blue color I had picked out and went with the black instead, and there was one in Illinois he can have shipped our way. So, assuming a lack of financing snafus, I should have a new car by the end of the week! :) It'll be my first new-new car, so I'm pretty excited. The payments are going to be high compared to what I have now, but it'll be worth it if I don't have to dread driving to and from work every day. It's a 5-speed manual with lots of standard features (air, cruise, airbags, power windows/locks, etc) and a few fun extras like a spoiler, moonroof, and fantastic 7-speaker system from Pioneer (4 6x9"s, 2 tweeters in the front, and a 10" sub in the trunk). I decided not to get the leather, as I couldn't mentally justify the additional expense (plus black leather in a black car sounds painful in the summer), but I think it'll still be a pretty spiffy 'mobile.
I'm almost out of the woods as far as school goes. I'm starting to see the end. I've got a big project due yet this week which will make the next few days tough (especially now that I have a car to obsess over), but after that it's all moving and graduating and having fun for a few days until I start the new job, which is still sounding great. Thus, today is a good day.
Let that which does not matter truly slide.
April 18, 2006 @ 08:20 AM
It looks like I forgot to update regarding my creatively componenting endeavors. Of course, one family dinner, two text messages, three phone calls, and a dozen emails later, I doubt there are many left who haven't heard.
In the words of my major professor: "I'm sorry, but you passed. You have to go out into the real world now."
Which is still kinda a scary thought. Grad school is tough, sure, but it's a familiar sort of tough. I know the patterns, and I am more accustomed than I'd like to admit to the workload. I still have a lot of homework due before I graduate. In fact, I have a big draft due on Thursday and I honestly have no idea how it will get done. But you know what? It will get done. How do I know? Because it has to. That's the magic of grad school: things get done not because they're easy (or sometimes, even possible), but because they have to. I've always found an odd sort of comfort in that idea.
Of course, that also means there are a lot of things which are not truly necessary which end up falling by the wayside. Like exercise, for example. I'm pretty sure I've gained around 25 pounds in the last two years. I enjoy playing racquetball, and I enjoyed working out in the mornings. But when it came time to decide between having a good time on the racquetball court or finishing a paper worth a quarter of my grade, the paper invariably won. My racquetball time shrank as a result, and my stomach grew to fill that void.
Of course, I'm hoping I'll have a bit more free time this summer, and I'm planning on taking advantage. I've decided to buy a year pass to the Lied Rec on campus so I can continue playing racquetball and so forth with my friends. Hopefully I'll be smart enough to make it worth the money.
Do you have to be so defensive?
April 14, 2006 @ 09:57 AM
I'm off to defend my creative component before my committee. And by before my committee, I mean before my committee tears me a new one, places my ignorance on display, and gives me a week's worth of editing to complete over the weekend. :) Okay, I don't know for a fact it'll be that bad, but I think there's a saying somewhere that goes along the lines of "anticipate the worst and you'll never be disappointed" which I like because it's sorta got a double meaning going on there. I'm normally a glass-half-full type of guy*, so I read it to mean that if you expect the worst, it'll probably be better in reality, and nobody's disappointed by improvement.
Anyway, regardless of whether it goes well or poorly, I'll probably be out drinking (in celebration/mourning) this evening, so I don't know when or if I'll get a chance to report how it went. You just might have to wait in suspense until Saturday. Or call me, I guess. Assuming I remember to turn my phone back on. It'll be on silent for a good portion of the day, because after my defense I have an important meeting with my current boss to determine when I'm done.
Job Search Update #Lasteenth (I Hope)
April 12, 2006 @ 10:00 PM
So my second interview with YetUnnamed, Inc yesterday went really well, by my reckoning (and I reckon we'll use my reckoning). I met with my boss and the two other people I'd be working closely with (the other web production persons). They all asked me a lot of questions, and I took a really long time to eventually provide answers that were in some way peripherally related to the questions asked. About halfway through I realized that I'd somehow slipped into storytelling mode, which mean every answer had a narrative. For whatever reason, it was parable day in RobbyLand or something.
After the Q&A, my Future Potential Boss gave me the TOU&R of the premises. I got to see lots of offices, some featuring expensive computers and others expensive cameras and still others expensive power tools. Do you see the pattern? That's right… things requiring electricity. A blackout could bring productivity in this place to a grinding (or a cessation of grinding) halt.
During the tour I got to smell lots of fragrant aromas and see lots of pretty… visages? Whatever. It was a good tour. At the end of it, FPB guy pulled out all the stops and contrived to have the CEO's father stop in for a visit. And then he ~really~ went all out and had the President of the United States drive by as a gesture of goodwill (or is that a threatening gesture? I suppose it depends on one's country of origin). I snapped Photo Above as he sped by. Well, as his driver did, anyway. I'm pretty sure the Prez Proper was just sitting in the back, sipping on some Hennessey and tapping his boot heels to a mix tape heavy on the Beastie Boys. That's why being the President rocks.
Towards the end of the tour, FPB guy mentioned that they had had a bet going as to what I'd end up wearing to the interview, and that I lost out when I cut my hair short. Makes me wonder if the tie was a bit superfluous. ;)
---
And then, today, FPB guy called back to offer me the position! And I accepted! Exclamation! Which I guess means I can drop the whole mystery bit: starting on May Somethingth, I will be a Web Production professional for August Home Publishing. Which promotes FPB guy to FB guy (until I have permission to call FB by FN (First Name)). I'm very happy right now. :) Though I'm having a little trouble concentrating on that whole "prepare for the oral defense" thing, what with all the good news adrenaline I've got pumping right now.
And now that I know I'll have a job, I think one of my first orders of business will be to start looking for a new(er) car. I'm going to be driving around two hours every weekday: I'm going to want something luxurious. Something flashy. You know… something with cruise control and an air conditioner. I don't want to show up to work every day this summer stanky and sorefooted. As such, I've spent a bit of time online looking at local dealerships, and found one or two I'd like to test drive. Of course, by the time I actually have the time and finances to get a new car, they will have been sold. I don't know why I torture myself so.
JOB!
Job Search Pre-Update Update
April 11, 2006 @ 01:02 PM
Well, I'm off for my second interview with Company Which Shall Remain Nameless for a Bit Longer, Until I Know One Way or Another (or CWSRNBLUIKOWA, for short). For the record, I've caved in to the advice of others and am thus wearing a tie. I have to warn you-all though: if Potential Future Boss says anything even remotely like, "well, we were going to hire you, but then we saw that you came to the second interview in a tie and were like, 'whateva, this guy obviously doesn't know what he's doing'" then I'm going to be royally upset. I mean it, now.
Once this second interview is over, I need to switch back into Creative Component mode for the rest of the week, as I'll be defending on Friday morning. All in all, this is shaping up to be a very stressful, exciting, and important week.
Noam Chomsky is speaking on campus this evening, and I'm thinking about going. I can't decide if that would be a better or worse way to celebrate or mourn whatever happens today than, say, having a couple beers with a couple friends and watching a couple episodes of Grey's Anatomy. We might have to call it a draw.
Cool crap what happened on my b-day meme.
April 10, 2006 @ 10:24 AM
Okay, so I generally ignore each and every meme to spread its dirty tendrils through the webernets, but this one caught my fancy, so here I go.
The following stuff happened on August 6, my birthday.
3 Events
- The Holy Roman Empire comes to an end (1806).
- Tim Berners-Lee releases files describing a crazy little idea for something called the World Wide Web (1991).
- NASA announces that they've found a meteorite thought to contain evidence of primitive life forms (1996).
2 Births (not counting mine)
- Andy Warhol, American artist (1928, died 1987).
- M. Night Shyamalan, film director/writer/producer (1970).
1 (set of) Death(s)
- 80,000 people in Hiroshima, Japan after the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb (1945). 120,000 more eventually die to radiation poisoning.
And because that last one was a downer, here's some more cool stuff that has happened on August 6: Bolivia became independent (yay Debs), Jamaica became independent (ya mon), Prince released Purple Rain, and Microsoft bought $150 million worth of Apple stock. So cheer up.
Also, wish me luck at my interview tomorrow. :)
Job Search Update
April 05, 2006 @ 04:40 PM
Brethren and Sistren,
I just noticed that I never updated following my interview last week. Several of you were sufficiently interested and privileged (I use the term loosely) to ask in person, but for the rest, here goes:
Getting to the interview was somewhat stressful. I gave myself 50 minutes to drive from my apartment in Ames to their offices in Des Moines, which I figured would get me there plenty early. I ended up using 48 of those minutes. The first four miles of my journey took over 15 minutes, because the high winds and some deity wishing to agitate me with bad omens conspired to throw a semi across the Interstate just south of my on-ramp, causing me to sit at a complete stop for quite some time, wringing my hands nervously and singing along to Counting Crows at the top of my lungs. The two aren't really related aside from the chronology of the thing.
Once I got there, things got much better. I met the HR rep I'd been phoning with, and she was nice, as was the future-potential-boss guy. I sat talking with both of them in a little conference room for about an hour. I talked a lot, they talked a lot, we all laughed a little bit… things went well. So far as I can tell, anyway.
The best part(s) of the entire interview was that the f-p-b guy kept "warning" me about things he thought would bug me about the job. And the more he warned me about the job, the more perfectly suited for me it sounded. In the end, f-p-b guy's primary concern seemed to be that I would get bored, since I seem to be interested in a little bit of everything. I tried to allay his fears by telling him that I was planning on keeping freelance work in the picture to keep myself entertained, and that I might even try for a lecture spot here and there at the college. Quinn's suggested response was better, though: It's supposed to be boring - that's why they call it work. ;)
All in all, this company sounds like a nearly ideal environment for a person such as me. I mean, the CEO was described to me as a long-haired hippie who tends to wear t-shirts and moccasins to the office. Who knew: I didn't have to cut my hair off to get a job after all!
Also on the job front: I decided not to apply for my replacement position here at the Graduate College (my assistantship position is becoming a full-time position). I'd been weighing the pros and cons for weeks, and in the end I decided that I needed an opportunity to see how I fit in the nonacademic world. I've been working for ISU in various capacities for nearly seven years now. It's time I see how I fare in the world of business. I may come back to ISU to take a class here and there, or even to teach occasionally, but I don't want the university to define my existence for the next few years.
Well, as I was writing this update, above-not-mentioned company called to schedule a second interview! :) I'll be heading Moinesward next Tuesday afternoon. I'll probably dress a little more casual this go around, now that I've seen their attire in person. Last time, I dressed up a little intentionally, so that I would stand out. This time, I don't want to stand out-I hope to blend in, like I'd been there forever. :)