BrockLi Soup

I had an interview today for a real job, about a half hour south of RIT. I haven’t been talking much about my job search (nor do I intend to) for a variety of reasons, but I feel that this one bears mentioning because it’s historic: it’s my first real one.

I’ve done plenty of interviews before, but they’ve always been for part-time jobs or co-op. This time, I don’t have the luxury of resorting to McDonald’s (well…sorta) or putting that co-op off for another quarter. This time, it’s really sink or swim. It’s especially worrying because jobs are a little thin these days. I know several people who graduated in May and had a hell of a time finding a job; others are still looking. In my financial state (broke), there’s no way I can go for more than a couple weeks without a job.

I like to hope that this will prove to be the first of many. Surely, dozens of companies will be clamoring for my incredible skills and unparalleled charm! And, let’s be honest with ourselves - most IT departments could stand to have an extra good-lookin fella around, don’t you think?

This has been the most productive Saturday I’ve had all quarter. As mentioned, I do tech support all day every week. The students in this program are given a laptop, so I’m here to support them. This generally entails short bursts of overwhelming work followed by an hour or two of nothing - since they use the laptops in class, I don’t want to take them away to work on them, so I get as much done as I can during their breaks. When I first started, I figured it was perfect because I would be able to spend a decent part of the day working on homework.

I think we all know that things never work out like that. Over five weeks, I’ve spent a grand total of about three hours on actual homework, but a couple dozen on Internet reading and flash games.

Today, though, I’ve been all sorts of productive. I finished a lab report and study guide , and got started on a project for Tech Transfer. It doesn’t seem like a lot (and it really isn’t, now that I think about it), but I’m happy that I managed to avoid distraction for a little while. I really need to get cracking on my to-do list: on top of homework, I’ve got three web projects on the side and a serious job search underway. It’ll all work out; it always does.

I support two different classes during my Saturday job, but not at the same time. The classes meet every other week, so as far as I’m concerned, they just alternate.

The class that’s here this week has only 9 students, so I don’t have a lot to do. My plan was write that damn essay, but I forgot to grab the book I need to do it.

Also, I’ve been seeing a lot of fake comment spam lately. I don’t really know the motivation behind it, but they link to random blog posts and things like that (example). I’ve enable comment moderation, so comments won’t appear immediately. Apparently, MT 3.2 has pretty good built-in spam blocking, so I think I’m going to upgrade today.

Wednesday was my last day of co-op. I’m really glad I got the job and decided to stay for a second quarter, because I liked working with those guys and learned more than I could have expected. I got to do some projects I really loved, and one or two I hated - sometimes, that’s even better, because it’s good to know what you DON’T want to do before you take a job doing it. I’m still going to be working for the college, supporting the EMBA program on Saturdays.

It always takes a week or so to get used to working full time. This past six months was the longest period that I’ve worked for - I usually only work full time during the summer - so going back to a class schedule is going to be a weird transition. I’m looking forward to the variety of classes, though; it will be a nice three-month break between co-op and the real world.

Things have been going pretty well lately. Financially, I’m doing OK. I’m buying Becker’s Saturn next week, and I’ve got plenty of money set aside to buy, insure, and register it. The Apple loan is paid off, so I can put a decent chunk of my last couple paychecks to the credit card bill.

I’m working on a new project at work for the big plasma screen in the college lobby. One of the secretaries in the Dean’s office makes slides to show on it, but the system is pretty crappy, so we’re re-writing it to just show a web site we’re designing. I’ve been working on the client side, to make use of templates and styles that we’ll define so she can build slides. It’s been a lot of PHP and JavaScript, so I’m happy.

Classes are starting soon, which means people will be coming back from break in a week or two. I have never seen our parking lot so empty; apparently, most people go home for this break. It’s the calm before the storm; RJ showed up yesterday, and I hear the RA’s are starting to come back for their training. Another week or two and everyone will be back.

I’ve gotten over the whole graduation thing. Usually, I only get stressed about money, when I realize I’ve got $1.64 in the bank and a $50 bill due in four days. I freak out for about 10 minutes before I convince myself that everything has worked out in the past, so it’s sure to do so again. And it has - worrying about it has never fixed the problem, so I don’t bother. My anxiety about leaving for the real world was a little more profound than that, but I’m over it. Things are going too well to worry much about what will happen a few months down the road.

It’s been one of those days all week. We’re upgrading every faculty and staff machine in the building, one way or another. About 35 people are getting new machines, and another 50 machines will just be upgraded to Windows XP. We started this process first thing Monday morning, so work has been a non-stop barrage of upgrading, installing, and backing-up for the past few days.

Even so, I’d take this over classes any day. I spend more of my day at work than I do when I’m taking classes, and I’m beat every night when I get home, but the work is OK, the people are great, and I get a paycheck every two weeks that almost never fails to pay all the bills.

Life could be worse.

I had hoped that Po Bronson’s What Should I Do With My Life? would offer some insight or direction. I really enjoyed the book and it made me think about some things differently, but I still don’t know what the hell I’m doing with myself.

The thing I didn’t like about the book was the premise that you needed to find the perfect job to be happy. I hadn’t really thought of things in those terms before reading the book, but he made it sound like you would always be unsettled without the job that’s absolutely perfect for you. Not long after starting the book, though, I read an essay by Paul Graham that I thought expressed the way I’d always seen it (he’s talking about high school, but that’s not the point):

If I had to go through high school again, I’d treat it like a day job. I don’t mean that I’d slack in school. Working at something as a day job doesn’t mean doing it badly. It means not being defined by it. I mean I wouldn’t think of myself as a high school student, just as a musician with a day job as a waiter doesn’t think of himself as a waiter. And when I wasn’t working at my day job I’d start trying to do real work. [snip] Don’t just do what they tell you, and don’t just refuse to. Instead treat school as a day job. As day jobs go, it’s pretty sweet. You’re done at 3 o’clock, and you can even work on your own stuff while you’re there.

This is sort of how I feel about my career. I would love to find my perfect job and wake up every morning excited to go to work, but I know it’s unlikely to happen and wouldn’t last anyway (my urges are too fleeting for that). I need to find a job that I don’t mind so that I can spend the rest of my time doing what I want to do.

This has come up in conversation a few times lately, and it seems like a lot of people have a similar take on the situation. When BP, Fonny, and I sat out at the picnic table, drinking Yuengling and talking late into the night, we agreed that a mediocre day job would be great if it paid enough to let us spend our own time just hanging out with friends - college in the real world, basically. James and I were arguing about it last week, and he couldn’t understand why I only want to do web development - “Because it’s not my passion, but I like it better than everything else I can do.”

Bronson included a few stories about people that routinely made career-changing job moves every four or five years. As I read that section, I started thinking that maybe that’s where I belonged - nowhere in particular. There are a lot of things I want to try, and maybe that would work out for me. It’s unlikely that I’ll find my dream job that way, but I’m sure to learn a lot about myself along the way.

Some of the last stories in the book were about people that tried doing things they always thought they should, such as the guy that was bred to run his father’s company. They realized that it wasn’t what they wanted to be doing and went on to find something that they actually enjoyed (that guy became a trucker). I’ve always assumed I’d be a programmer someday without really thinking about what else I might do. I still expect to follow that path, but I’m starting to think about what I want to do with it. I’ve been considering the one-year MBA here at RIT, which became more and more enticing as I thought about it. I’m starting to think it would be a bad move, though. I don’t want to be a business man. I don’t want to take finance classes or anything like that. I just want a better paycheck once I finish the degree and get a job. That time could be better spent finding a job I like doing and a place I like living, than sitting through classes I don’t enjoy and dumping more money into college.

I would like to think that someday I’ll find something I’m passionate about, find a great job doing just that, and live happily ever after. Unfortunately, I expect to repeat the process every five years. When I came to college, I was totally psyched about programming. I wanted to sit in a cube in some tower in the city and code all day long, without pesky interruptions from co-workers. I’ve grown a lot in the past four years and changed my plans a dozen times since. I’m hoping I’ll sort of level off soon enough and find out what I really want to do when I grow up.

In the meantime, I’ll be happy to develop web sites, or work in a library, or do tech support for professors, or provide sound and lighting support, or run the tech side of a small art-promotion start up. None of these are what I want to do with my life, but I have the off hours for that.

This has been a hell of a weekend. Co-op has made this quarter one of the best yet. I had hoped that there would be more parties now that it’s spring, but it’s been a blast regardless. After work on Friday I made some mashed taters and corn muffins for Heewa’s swanky dinner party, which was a lot of fun. Some of us ended up at Sharon’s place for a little while afterwards. Yesterday, BP wanted to go to Canada for duty-free smokes and some Mighty Taco on the way back, so Bopp and Fonny joined us for a fun trip north. BP and I got a ginormous 3-liter bottle of Jack Daniel’s at Duty Free, so we came back to our place with some folks to watch Arrested Development and have some Jack & Cokes. ShaunJ called to tell me that a bunch of Tech Crew folks were partying at Jeff’s place, so we went over there for a little bit to hang out since I never get to see those guys any more.

I learned something last night, so I give you:

Things That Are Good But Not In This Order:

1. Eating an El Niño Burrito (courtesy of Mighty Taco)
2. Launching an attack on a ginormous bottle of whiskey with BP, leading to excess consumption of whiskey and, more importantly, Coke
3. Dancing at a party, thereby shaking the aforementioned into a fervor

Today was another lazy Sunday. We went and saw the RIT Players show Twelfth Night, which lived up to all the hype. This evening, I sat around watching TV and sorting through pictures.

It’s been great. I’ve just been hanging out and enjoying the company of friends, and while I’d like to get some personal projects done, the non-existence of school work has proved to be a great stress reliever. Real life is going to seem like vacation after college.

I’m actually looking forward to work tomorrow; The Boss had me add some stuff to our website the other day, and I was telling him just how craptacular the site was and asked if I could touch a few things up. He told me to have fun, so I spent half of Thursday eliminating table and font tags in favor of divs and CSS. On Friday, we decided to overhaul the site and make it look like the new intra-departmental page that the webmaster is working on, so I’ll spend most of this week (at least) playing with CSS, HTML, and ASP. Should be better than fighting with Microsoft Operations Manager, like I’d been doing for the past month.

This is turning out to be a great quarter.

It rained like hell this past weekend. Buffalo and everything south of it got slammed with snow. From what I’ve heard, we would have been buried in three feet of it if it had snowed here.

Today and yesterday were absolutely beautiful. It was sunny all day and topped out in the mid-50’s. You know it’s finally spring when the days feel more like cool summer days than warm winter days. Yesterday was windy, but it wasn’t the stinging, blistery wind of winter; it was a warm wind, a comforting wind that feels wonderful on a cool summer evening. I’m just hoping it holds out for the weekend. I’m planning to go home for a few days and want more than anything to spend most of it on a bike. I’ve seen so many guys out on their motorcycles this past week; unless you’ve ridden, you wouldn’t understand this kind of envy.

I’m still trying to decide what to do this summer. There’s no way I’ll know about any other co-ops by Friday, so it basically comes down to whether or not I want to keep working at the College of Business, or do something else. The more I think about it, the more I want to go home for three months. I’ve been feeling an unusual gravitation to home lately. I want to go back and reconnect with my family and the people I grew close to during high school. It’s weird to think that most of the people that I graduated with will be heading off into the real world in a month and a half now. I came into it expecting to spend five years at college, but I still feel like I’m ready to move on. Strangely, I sort of want to move on to where I came from. I couldn’t wait to get out of my home town, to meet new people and try new things. Now I want to go back and reminisce.

This decision is especially hard because I’ve only got a few quarters left at RIT. I had planned to co-op this summer and take classes during the fall and winter, leaving me with six months left in Rochester. Half of me wants to stay here and enjoy the company of my friends while I can, but the other half wants desperately to connect with the past I barely feel like I had.

I don’t know what I’d do this summer if I went home. I’ve only found a couple potential co-ops in the area, and none of them looked promising. My high school tech teacher (and de facto mentor) is asking around to see if he can find anyone looking for an intern, but it’s not looking good. I considered the option of taking some classes at the community college, but after looking at my class work sheet, a lab science and maybe a liberal art elective are about the only things I could do there. There’s an Apple store at the mall near my high school, which would be perfect, but I have no idea if they’re hiring (I’ll have to stop in this weekend). There’s a CompUSA about 20 minutes from home and things like Best Buy and Media Play. I don’t even really know where else I would go looking for a job. A lot of people I know find summer jobs, but I’ve been doing classes or co-op every quarter since the summer of 2002, when I worked full time for Tech Crew; it would feel strange taking a quarter off now, but it might be a welcome relief. A few months ago, I was in a funk for a while and wanted nothing more than to work with my hands for a while, to spend some time doing real, honest, blue-collar labor. Maybe spending another summer working in the MJ shop would help ground me (it was my first full time summer job, when I was 15).

Most decisions in my life are made on a whim, and it usually works out OK for me. This one has caused more stress and serious consideration than anything I’ve done in years, and it’s only for a three-month commitment. I’m going to call my parents tomorrow and talk it over with them. I’ve tried so hard to be independent of them since I was a kid, but I’ve learned time and again that they usually know what they’re talking about. It’s hard to admit that they were right and I was wrong, but it’s happened more times than I care to count.

I’ve been meaning to look for a summer co-op for weeks now. My boss at the College of Business offered me the same job for the summer, but I’d like to try to find a web dev gig in Buffalo. Living at home would save me some money and I could get some experience on a bike, and maybe even take the road test. I like the job I’m doing now, but I want to get into web programming after school so I’d rather find a job doing that if I can.

I talked to the boss today, and he wants to know what I’m doing for the summer by the end of this week. Unfortunately, I’m not going to know anything about any other co-ops by that time, so I need to figure out where I’m at. I’ve found a couple potential co-ops in Buffalo, but nothing really in web development. One is an online game programmer; the other is an IT intern and sounds like it would involve a lot of what I’m doing now. I know some people I can get in touch with and see if I can get any leads, but it’s unlikely that I’ll have any idea if I’ve got a chance by Friday.

So, I can keep my current job, or take a gamble and tell Boss thanks but no thanks. If I don’t find a co-op in Buffalo, I’ll take classes. I’m thinking of meeting with an advisor to see what I have left and find out if I could take any of them at ECC to save some money. In that case, I could still live at home, get time on the bike, and get some classes out of the way. If I stay at RIT and take classes, I need to figure out if I can take some business classes that would help out if I decide to do the Fast Track MBA next year (oh, by the way, I might go for an MBA).

If I had started looking for co-ops earlier like I said I was going to, I would probably be in better shape. My bad.

This co-op is shaping up to be a good one. Shortly after I got to work, Nick took us all out to China Gate for lunch. It was great to spend some time with the people I’ll be working will all quarter - they’re a good bunch.

Also, I’m confident it was the best Chinese I’ve ever had.

This evening, a professor stopped in and asked me to come to his class to take pictures of the students. Apparently, this is something they do in the College of Business, because Nim did the same thing yesterday. One girl was coming late, so he asked me to stick around for a bit so I could get her when she arrived. So I sat down and listened to the first 20 minutes of class. He asked everyone to introduce themselves, and one of the students was from Honduras. He introduced himself like I might - “I’m from Buffalo, New York.”

“I’m from Honduras, Central America.”

It just sounded odd, the way he worded it.

I’m trying to adjust to my newfound irresponsibility. I still have this constant nagging feeling that I should be working on some project or upcoming paper. Not that it changes my habits, of course - I never gave in to these feelings when they were founded, why should I now? It’s just a great relief to start stressing that I should be working on something, and realize that the only things I should be working on are self-imposed assignments, projects I want to do for shits and giggles. I started my Ta-da list clone today, and got as far as making a table in MySQL for the requisite data.

I call that an accomplishment.

I started at the College of Business today, and it went better than I thought it would. Everyone there is great - literally, everyone I met was friendly. My boss took me on a quick tour of the department, so I met a couple dozen people, and they were some of the nicest folks I’ve met at RIT.

That may all change when they’re coming to me with problems, but for now, it’s nice.

Unfortunately, I had a blinding headache by the end of the day. I noticed that my screen seemed kind of flickery early on, but I chalked it up to the KVM. Toward the end of the day, I figured I may as well check the monitor settings just in case, and sure enough, the refresh rate was set at 60 Hz. I’m hoping that it won’t cause me any more grief now that I’ve turned it up.

I have high hopes for this quarter. The co-op is looking promising. I can sleep in till 10:30 every day but Friday. I’ve already heard about a few good parties coming in the next couple weeks. I have time to read and a stack of books and magazines I haven’t gotten to. Today saw a high of 54F (well, and some rain). It’s going to be a good spring.

I just talked to Dave over at the College of Business, and I got the job! You’re looking (kinda) at the new Systems Administrator Assistant!

Man, saying that out loud makes me feel terribly under-qualified.

I’m so glad I can stop worrying about this. No more worries about loans, or what classes I’ll take (assuming they even let me register), and I can start paying back some debts. This is a huge weight off my shoulders.

Plus, I can finally get some shit done. I never have time for my own projects when I’ve got a ton of crap to do for classes. On co-op, the day ends at 5 (or in this case, 10, I think). I can come home and read, or watch movies, or finish countless projects that have been CSH Done for years. On top of that, I’m going to learn a lot on the job.

It’s going to be a good quarter.

These punks totally stole my idea. Some of you may remember the keyboard I painted blue my freshman year (the link on that page is dead). It looked really cool, but at the time, I didn’t consider the implications of a solid blue keyboard. It did keep me from sending drunk IMs most of the time, though.

At any rate, I heard back from DSS yesterday - no dice. I started panicking. What if I don’t get the CoB co-op? Will I be able to take classes? Will I have to take a leave of absence? WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN?!

Thankfully, apathy quickly set in and all was not lost. I made an appointment with a Financial Aid advisor this afternoon, and it turns out I won’t be totally SOL if I wind up taking classes. I’ll get around $3000 in scholarships and grants, but none of the federal loans I usually get. Since I’ll be paying those back later on anyway, it would cost me the same thing in the long run to take a loan out from the bank to cover the rest.

That’s my backup plan; I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that. When Fonny got home this evening, he found a message on his answering machin from Dave, asking me to give him a call. I don’t want to get my hopes up, but it seems like he would have just said it in the message or sent me an e-mail if they had hired someone else. Since I didn’t get the message till after 7, I’m going to call him in the morning, and we’ll see what happens.

In the meantime, I have more programming than I can shake a stick at, and I’m an accomplished stick-shaker.

In the past couple weeks, I’ve sent resumes to a number of on-campus departments for various co-ops. Without a car, my options are limited to campus and close to my parents’ house in Buffalo. I certainly don’t want to leave behind all my friends here for another 3 months, so I’m focusing my efforts on jobs here.

I only heard back on two of the resumes I sent in, and both interviews were on Tuesday. The first was for a Systems Administrator Assistant in the College of Business (the job Joanna currently holds, and Nik had before her). I checked my e-mail shortly before the interview to make sure I had the right room, and noticed a line I had missed before - “Please bring a list of references.”

I quickly whipped up a list and frantically tried to print it. I couldn’t get my printer to work, so I stopped into the lab in CoB, but only business students are allowed to print there. I pulled out my laptop (thanks again, Apple) and e-mailed it to the guy I was interviewing with, hoping that would be OK.

As it turns out, that was OK, but I was so flustered that I didn’t do very well in the interview. On top of that, I had been sick for a few days already and always feel out of it. I had to keep reminding myself to pay attention to what we were talking about and make sure my eyes were in focus. The interview only lasted 10 or 15 minutes, so I don’t think I really had time to convince them I’d be good at it. Both of the guys I met with were really friendly though, and I think they’d be cool to work with if I did get the job. I think they said they had interviews through part of next week, so it might be a while before I find out.

Half an hour later, I had the interview for the Evening Operations Assistant at DSS. I got there 5 or 10 minutes early and sat down to wait. Shortly after my 3:30 appointment time, the girl working there mentioned that the previous interview had started 10 minutes early and was running late - not a good sign for me. As it turns out, the guy before me was Vicki’s little brother Bill. I haven’t seen him since we spent the weekend in Corning two and a half years ago, and I wouldn’t have recognized him if he hadn’t added me on thefacebook a couple weeks ago.

Anyway, the interview lasted about 45 minutes, and was with two women that manage the labs and two guys who have done the job before. This one went better, because I had more time to get over the initial nervousness and be myself. I should have prepared better for the interview, though; I should have considered answers for standard questions like describing a conflict I’ve had with a customer before and how I dealt with it. I had thought of things to say when they asked me to tell them about myself, but I hadn’t really thought about customer service type questions. They had interviews scheduled until today or tomorrow, and the position starts right after finals, so I should know soon one way or the other.

The other problem I have in interviews is that I’m not sure how to act. My interview at Tech Crew three years ago was very laid back; it was four or five of the student supervisors and me, just kind of hanging out so they could get to know me and find out what I’m capable of. In an environment like CoB or DSS, it’s obviously more professional, so I act accordingly. At the same, I don’t want to seem too stuffy and boring if it turns out their office is as relaxed as Tech Crew or the library. I’m certainly not trying to act like someone else in the interview, but you need have an appropriate manner for the situation, and I’m never quite sure what that is.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do if I don’t get one of these two. I don’t have any financial aid left for the year, so I can’t take classes unless I take a huge student loan to cover them. I was considering that as Plan B. If I did, I would do a co-op sometime next year instead of classes and therefore need a smaller loan for the year, and it should all even out. However, since I’ll only be taking 2 quarters of classes in the 2005-06 school year, I’ll be pretty well off if my financial aid stays the same as it usually does.

But I suppose I’ll worry about that if I don’t get a co-op.