Saturday, March 30, 2013

Struttin'


In the fifth grade, Adam Zweiback was my math teacher.  He was a middle age man, tall (over six feet, definitely) and slender, with longish curly dark hair.  He went on sabbatical to Italy and upon his return told everyone to call him Adamo.  In the seventh grade he taught me social studies and in the eighth grade he taught me science and about time-space worms.  The class was asked to try to picture a line made on a map by our movements around the globe.  We were given some time to ponder what this would look like and what all of our time-space worms would look like all tangled together.  How many times had each of ours crossed?  How many unknown interactions had we had with the people in our lives and those that someday would be?  How far had our line extended?  How much of this earth had we traversed?

I was in the car, unknowingly on my way to a goat farm and Jerome, Arizona (population 446), on the Monday of Spring Break 2013 when I was told about an app called Strut.  Once downloaded to your phone and opened, Strut marks the tile (I’m not sure what unit of measurement this is, I’d guess a square quarter mile) where you are and unlocks more tiles as you move.  I started strutting as we left Jerome and watched, fascinated, as my time-space worm grew on the little screen of my phone.  It had been quite a while since I’d thought about Adamo’s kooky ponderings but here it was in real life.  While I still do not know all of the intricacies of my worm’s relations to those of other people’s, I have learned a couple cool things from Strut.  I have strutted 5,702 tiles so far, all in Arizona, and 4 of them have been over water (on bridges and such).  Of the 5,021 players registered, I am #162 worldwide.  I have the top score in Scottsdale, Show Low, Payson, Fort McDowell, and Heber.  Most importantly I’ve been able to see the size of the space in which I have not traveled relative to the space in which I have yet to venture.  I now have a fresh motivation, even if it’s absurdly driven by a lust for more tiles, to go explore new land and see more places.  And so a struttin’ I shall go…

  

Friday, March 29, 2013

The Internship.


For anybody unsure of the right internship this summer, these are some tips that can help you decide what it is you should do:

1. Although it is tempting to choose the internship with the best paycheck, that should not be your top priority. At this stage in life, learning and knowledge are more valuable than money. An unpaid internship that will teach you everything you need to know about your field is more valuable than $20/hour doing data entry or tedious administrative work. Choose an internship where you will have the maximum opportunities to learn.

2. You want to attack this internship with a completely open-mind. Observe the people around you. Listen and be aware of everything that is going on, inside and out. Take on responsibilities and look at them as opportunities to accumulate and learn new skills. Gain connections and dive right into whatever it is you're doing. If you're trying to learn and realize your potential, you really get what you put into the internship experience. If you're trying to coast and do the minimum to not get fired, you probably won't get very far in that field and should find something else.

3. Treat this job or internship like an adventure, understanding that your 20's are a time for exploring and experimenting. There is no rush to get a job just to get paid a high salary. You're figuring out what you want to do and who you want to be for the rest of your life. You need to experiment and try 4 or 5 different jobs until you find your calling. Your mindset shouldn't be getting as much money as possible. It should be on accumulating skills and experience, because nobody can take that from you and it will set you up for a lifetime of success.

4. The people that scoff at the idea of unpaid internships as free labor usually don't see the educational value an internship provides. Many people learn more during their internships and first jobs than all four years of school. And that internship won't put you $100,000 in debt like your university education did. 
Don't forget the value of an internship. It is an opportunity to give you an inside look of how a company works and will give you invaluable experience into whatever industry you're set on. 

Sometimes it is hard to know what you're getting yourself into. Will that internship really give you the networking, skills and experience you crave or will you find yourself going on coffee runs all day? Can you really trust what the company promises you? Unless you know somebody personally that has done an internship, you're pretty much in the dark on this stuff.

At howdyon.com, my team and I have talked to over over 75 different students that have done over 75 different internships, asking them all the important questions. We've spent at least an hour interviewing each student to get the most in-depth, comprehensive insight available. For the next 7 days, all of our internship guides will be free. Go to howdyon.com today to get yourself prepared for this summer!

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Musings of a Fevered Mind

As a lover of the English language and the ways languages play with words, I am always fascinated by things like expressions. The way words can be put together and played with to express an idea. I appreciate the ability of an expression because I admire the attempts made to perfectly sum up an idea or thought. This is the sort of thing I’ve always longed and searched for: the best and clearest way to make one’s meaning known.

That said expressions can be a real pain when they come back to bite you in the ass in such a smug way. In particular the expression that has been running through my head lately is “the best laid plans of mice and men”. Though a sentence fragment it hopes to express the frivolity of planning, and that no plan can ever truly be perfect as no person can account for any of the infinite number of variable presented in the universe. That said it seemed as if my plans for R&R on spring break were pretty fool proof. My plans were not so much plans as a looking forward to the absence of plans. The chance to do sweet, sweet nothing. Ultimately what I did not plan for is the irony of how getting sick really did reduce my Spring Break to “doing nothing”. It was all to be so easy, and yet by day 3 there I was in the courtship stages of the flu. It had made its overtures known to me with love letters of cough, congestion, and headaches.

I’m no stranger to my plans going awry, but usually the plans that go awry are those in which I am planning to actually do something. The irony that I did wind up doing nothing (but not in the way I’d hoped, in a sleep, sniffle and cough way) while envying the wild drunken adventures others were having in exotic places was not lost on me. I suppose next time, to use an expression, I’ll be careful what I wish for.

Friday, March 22, 2013

Soon I'll be Senile.

Today, I turn 20. All I can think to myself is that I'm getting horribly old and that I've had "Teen Idle" by Marina and the Diamonds playing on repeat for the past week and a half to try and comfort myself with the fact that I am no longer an adolescent. For most people it seems, birthdays are a wonderful occasion full of cake and ice cream and presents and well-wishing for the year ahead. However, I just become more and more morose and melancholy with each passing birthday. I do not want to get old; it's that simple.

I dread the fact that I'm now 20. What scares me even more is the fact that one day I'll be 30. I am horribly terrified of being 30. But for some strange reason, I am completely fine with being 40, 50, even 80 years old. Maybe I'm just afraid of wasting my youth doing things that older people are meant to be doing, like paying bills. Young people are supposed to be recklessly driving their motorcycles off into the sunset abroad while absorbing culture and eating strange foods while sipping LSD from their wineglasses through a straw. Or, at least that's what I've come to believe I'm supposed to be doing, instead of sitting here in my dorm watching The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and eating a whole bag of French Onion Sunchips by myself. I couldn't afford to buy myself a cake.

The problem with me, I think, is that I am terrified that I am never going to get to do what I really want to do. I wanted desperately, sickeningly so, to study abroad in London at the University of Westminster. But seeing as how I am a broke-ass college student barely capable of buying myself a Coca-Cola, I don't see how I would have been able to afford $11,000 worth of grandeur. It'd probably cost me that much to even go on my own time. There's a $2,000 flight, a $500 hotel, probably about $300 for food, $200 for travelling expenses like a taxi or the Underground or the bus (not to mention I'd want to take that underground train that goes to Paris and perhaps spend a weekend in Germany), and about $300 for odds and ends and emergencies. I am so worried that I am never ever going to be able to afford anything like this and it scares the living daylights out of me.

Or maybe I feel this way because nobody cares about being 20. Nothing grand happens when you turn 20, you just sit there and wonder if anybody notices that you're developing wrinkles. It is a strange in-between age, like being 19 was. You're past the excitement of turning 18 and finally being considered an adult. And then you turn 19, and nothing exciting happens. You wait all year and nothing. Then you turn 20. You wait all year, and nothing. And then you turn 21, you can legally get shitfaced and nobody will care, and because you can legally get shitface wastiepants, suddenly you're treated as more of an adult. You turn 22. Nothing special. You turn 23. Nothing special. 24, 25, 26, 27, 90. Nothing. And I think that's what I'm really afraid of. Turning 21 is my last chance of having a special birthday.

I really hate to be morbid on my birthday, of all days, but I've been thinking this way for a really long time. I just hope that someone somehow proves me wrong.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Running on Empty


There are only 24 hours in a day.  Time stops for nobody and for nothing.  1,440 minutes in one day.  Now doesn’t that make it seem even shorter?

I can only afford to spend 2 to 3 of those 24 hours sleeping.  That means the amount of sleep I get per night is as long as an ENGL 201 class.  I’m not going to bore you with explaining my schedule and why I have so little time, but I can assure you I waste no time.

My purpose is not to employ an “I’m so much busier than all of you” mentality, but to reflect upon the ratio of hours in a day to the amount of tasks that need to be completed.  It simply is unfair.  But not everyone is the same, and we all spend our time doing things that we value, like pursuing our education, earning money, or catching up on hobbies.  Catching up on a hobby however, is a foreign concept to me.

I love the job that I have, but it doesn’t pay enough, so I picked up another on top of it.  The fact of the matter is that I value money over sleep.  Free time is something I disregard because it doesn’t exist in my life.  For me, to live this way is worth having extra cash, but most would prefer to maintain sanity.

How does it feel to live on two to three hours of sleep per night?  Imagine your eyelids being magnetic and consistently resisting the pull of a magnet sitting within the bags under your eyes.  Imagine walking around campus having no idea what is going on around you.  It’s not easy, but I would rather maintain financial security than have to stress about it and having more time.  My body and mind are exhausted, I’m aware my lifestyle is unhealthy, and I know I’m crazy.  But at least I know I’m a hard worker, and I don’t regret that.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Coffee Rush

It's the perfect place to go on midnight whim. Coffee cravers, conversation lovers and intellectuals alike gather to sip coffee and hot tea.

Warm mocha in my hand, I find an empty table near a brick wall and a broken water fountain. By this, I mean there's a tiny broken hose that's spurting water into a shallow concrete basin of snapdragons. It looks like cupid is peeing on mother natures children.

This is the perfect place to people watch. Sitting at the table to my left, a man and a woman are smoking Menthols. The man is wearing a forest green plaid shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows revealing a snake tattoo running down his forearm. The woman sits with her knees pulled up to her chest, slowly exhaling the smoke of her cigarette and smiling with her ruby stained lips.

It is a dark and chilly night, illuminated by the glow of 1950s styled lampposts and trees wrapped in out-of-date Christmas lights.

As for me, I breathe in secondhand smoke and sip my mocha.


Someone has to say it: The smell of books is overrated


I like the way worn-out pages feel under my fingers. I like the musty smell of paper and binding. I like dog-eared corners in well-loved books.

And yet, every time anyone waxes poetic about the smell of old books during tirades against digital media, I get this urge to roll my eyes so far back that you can hear them getting stuck in the back of my head.

Friday, March 8, 2013

Follow the Money


The internet has grown at a rate far exceeding the development of programming education. As a result, wherever I look, it is clear that there is a low supply of software talent, relative to demand. Everybody needs a good programmer.
One of the main components of business is the concept of supply and demand. As supply exceeds demand, prices will drop. As demand exceeds supply, prices will rise.
Because everybody needs a programmer and they are so hard to find, freelance programmers are able to charge some of the highest per hour rates around. As I walked through the University of Arizona's Career Fair, I couldn't help but notice that every company needed a tech/computer science or MIS major.
Now to shift to a macro-perspective...
Unemployment is one of our country's biggest problems, but the reality is that there is a shortage of skilled labor. Ironically, there is far less competition for skilled positions than unskilled positions. Microsoft, having trouble finding "techies", has gone as far as to call the situation a crisis, lobbying the government to increase emphasis on science, technology, engineering and math teaching at schools.
As our technology continues to grow exponentially, our education system is quickly becoming archaic. We must do a better job of adapting to the new realities within our schools, before the U.S. loses it's competitive edge.

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Tell me the right way to take a testttt!!!!

Wow everyone,

   Sorry I haven't contributed to this , these stories are awesome. I have a little story about today that I would like to share because I'm pissed off at myself.

Today I had two midterms both of which I should have got an A on , but unfortunately I didn't and this blog is about test taking. A few pointers would be appreciated.

 I was the first person out of 150 students to finish my test and walk out of the class.
 This test was given on a scratcher scan-tron, if you haven't seen one of those this is how it works:

- You are given a penny to scratch off what you think the answer might be (A-E).
- If you get the answer right you'll see a star after it's scratched and you receive the full 3 points that the question is worth.
- If you answer the question wrong you get another chance to get it right, for 1 point.

This sounds good because you get another chance but it's kind of like a real gambling scratcher. I get super worked up to see that star as if it's worth some sort of cash prize and this deters me from concentrating on the actual test.

Also, I had 1 hour and 15 minutes to complete the exam and I did it in 25 minutes on a 41 question test. Why the hell did I spaz through that test?

Anyway, I got an 80% on it. Not cool. Oh one of the only cool things about the scratcher is that you get to know your score before you leave the class.

Someclassmates want to give me some test taking pointers?


Dirty Little Secrets



Occasionally when I get on facebook I’m not sure if I’m looking at my newsfeed or the U of A Confessions page.  If you have yet to visit this disgustingly fascinating chronicle of UA student blather, let me tell you, it is quite a treat!  It’s a personalized reality TV show that can be absorbed in blurbs averaging about 10 to 50 words apiece.  People anonymously submit their confessions to the page via SurveyMonkey and after about a day or so for the moderators to sort and post, voila, instant gossipy-goodness.  As well as entertainment value, there is the added benefit of a new sort of therapy for our generation. Due to the comment feature, an abundance of advice and ridicule is provided, free of charge.  The confessions are added to the page at times in a steady trickle and other times in rapid spurts.  Personally, upon noticing a varied bouquet of new posts, a solid 10-minute break from whatever I’m doing is required in which to stop and read until I’ve caught up.  They are about sex, drugs, and loneliness. Loved ones and hated ones.  Judgments about whole groups of people based on race, gender, Greek-life status, body types, and belief systems.  They are about really weird things you never wanted to know anyone has ever done.  They’re about Tucson lunacy and berating non-Wildcats.  Missed-connection dwellers and sappy do-gooders have a place to tell the world of their plights and awesomeness and high school clowns have an audience once more.  

Here are a few goodies:

Enjoy;)

sometimes the campus wide broadcast of "bear down, Arizona" makes me feel like im in a 1984ish police state.

"I can't stand people who think that being high automatically qualifies them to talk about theories of space, time, the universe etc. No, I will not listen to your theory that the whole universe is suspended on a giant taco, you uneducated fuck."

“If I live in the dorms is it safe to get a bottle of alcohol mailed to me in a package?”
(comments include: “Bar none the dumbest thing i have heard all day.”, “Can’t see any flaws here” and “Absolutely!”)

“If I get one more notification from DJ cypress posting about the aussie party I will fucking strangle someone!”

"My boyfriend won't stop playing online Yu-gi-oh.  Even for sex."

"I saw brother Jed at the grocery store and threw a cabbage at him. I'm not kidding."

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

For the Love of Cats


After being ridiculed for too long I have to come out now with a question I ponder for at least a short amount of time a day.

Why is it weirder to love cats than it is to love dogs?

Let me clear up that I am not a crazy cat lady.  I am a college student, living in an apartment, and do not have the finances or time to own a cat, or let alone 4, which is the number of cats I believe is required to be a cat lady.  I do however, love cats. 

I never had much of an affection for cats, I never imagined myself even owning a cat in my lifetime.  Until one day in seventh grade my sister’s friend brought a little mewing Albert Einstein furball with eyes into my house and I fell in love immediately.  I named him Gizmo and he is my pride and joy. 

Gizmo now weighs about 20 pounds.  He is a regal, black and grey striped long-haired beast with a white chest, white paws, and a white tip of the tail.  He is the king of the house and everybody knows it, especially himself.  His personality is unbeatable and the thought of him makes me smile. 

When I left for college I had to leave behind Gizmo and move onto a cat-less life.  I come across cats on a rare occasion, but when I do, it warms my heart and I get excited.  If I see a cat I will attempt to pet it, and Youtube videos of cats doing funny things makes my day significantly better. 

The reality is, plenty of people love dogs the same way I love cats.  People love their own dogs as much as I love my cat.  But I’m the weird cat lover.

My friends know me for a lot of things, but loving cats is one of them.  My friend loves puppies even more than I love cats, but she doesn’t get judged for it, even if she hyperventilates when a dog enters her line of sight.  Instead, I’m told I’ll be a cat lady for the rest of my life.  I reach out to pet a cat, and I get laughed at.  I reach out to pet a dog, and everyone else does too.  I don’t get it.

If cats are not your thing then that’s fine, but don’t judge people who love cats.  And if you still decide to, look at this face and tell me it’s unlovable:


Monday, March 4, 2013

Love Poem



Love Poem
Nicole Walker

"In Persian, there are 89 words for love. I would be happy just to remember one. Keeps me up at night, memorizing your name."



I stumbled across this while walking to class today. It was so lovely I had to take a picture and share it with all of you. 

My real post will come later!