Currently Listening At War with the Mystics By The Flaming Lips see related

Hire me please . . .

So I need a job.  Actually, I have two jobs secured for Austin, but they aren't exactly career starters.  Good news is that they have benefits and are in a business atmosphere, bad news is that it requires either placing orders all day on the phone or making copies all day when I'm not getting orders on the phone.  Not exactly career builders, but something to bring home the bacon (bits?).

Currently I'm trying to sift through the crap jobs to get to the ones that have some potential.  Places have a funny way of describing really crappy entry level, no possible way to move up, jobs as something a lot more exciting than what is actually there.

I think I'm aspiring to be a paralegal with a speciality in patents.  Aspiring to be something less than a lawyer . . . well that's unexpected.  The most popular peice of advice I heard in college about law school was that it's wrong to go if you aren't CERTAIN that you want to become a lawyer.  The best way to do that is to work at a firm and experience life from the inside.

I just put in an application for a pricing analyst at Dell.  I will have to learn a lot in excel before then and teach myself how to do more regression analysis.  I'm pretty sure they have computer programs for the fun regression analysis, so I should be all set.  I was never stellar in stats, but I was always really good at interpretting data.  For some reason I doubt Dell would sit us all in a room with a graphing calculator and the probability charts and tell us to have at it.

Waiting now to see what comes through.  So far we have bills, I just need a source of income.

WOO HOO TEJAS!

Summer School Woes.

I'm totally back in High School.  Spanish for Beginners at St. Louis Community College at Forrest Park.  First off, I forgot what it was like to take classes with boys.  We have some guys that come in for Smith classes, but they are always super out numbered and they are always mature and behave more like men.  But these are boys . . .

Boys snicker at things that are by a far stretch kinda gay.  Boys snicker and foreign words that by a far stretch kinda sexual.  Everyone talks in class, they are rude to the professor, they interrupt, etc etc.  I miss Smith.

The thing that angers me most, is that 2/3 of the class has prior exposure to Spanish.  This one kid has even taken 5 years.  And in a class where no one knows anyone else, the cool thing to do is apparently show off.  So the kids that have had a few years keep answering questions before the professor can end them and fun stuff like that.  I should take an introductory econ class, too, just so I can feel ahead of the game.  Yarg . . . I'm really not that stellar at languages, I just have a good memory and can study.

I would say that the class is like being back in High School, but it's more like being in Jr. High.  With all the AP classes in High School, it was only the rare exception of Sociology or Chemistry or (the worst) Health that I can remember being in a class where students act the way that they do in this class.  It's been a loooong time.

I had my first sad "you're a distance away from New England" experience.  All I wanted after the gym this morning was a BIG cup of iced coffee.  I remember coming to Massachusetts from Arkansas, always asking for iced tea, and always getting crappy iced tea.  I had one good glass of iced tea, and that was at Fitzwillies in Northampton.  They carmalized sugar and put it in the cold, fresh brewed tea, and it was just like home.

McDonalds recently started to sell Newman's Own coffee.  I guess they are still on a health/hippy kick with the apples and the fancy Asian salads.  Trying to steal some of Dunkin' Donuts' Market, they recently started to sell iced coffee.  It tastes identical to that of DD but you have less flavor coffee choices.  All in all, it's a good deal and I was excited that I could have iced coffee no matter where life took me, since McDonalds are everywhere.

So that was just a lie I told myself.  Apparently iced coffee is as geographically enclosed of a market as the Lobster Roll sandwich (also provided in the summers at McDonalds . . . at least the ones on the MassPike). 

The lady looked at me like I was stupid, and corrected me by saying "sorry miss, we don't have cappaccino here."  UGH...iced coffee is a distinctly different drink than an iced latte . . . AND I didn't ask for an iced cappaccino.  My whole summer routine of gym then class, in the hot summer sun, has been ruined by the absence of iced coffee.  Starbucks in the glass thingy won't satisfy me, and all of the starbucks coffee shops are out of the way.

This was a terribly boring posts, I'm just going a bit bonkers here without much social interaction.  I feel like a stranger in a strange land that was named after some Catholic dude.  I either want to be in Texas starting over or in Massachusetts tying up loose ends.  This St. Louis bit is getting old, and it's only been 6 days.  Booooo.

I do have baseball games and those are nice.  I still want to mother the babies of David Eckstein, I just have to figure out how to get him away from his wife.  I figure that being in St. Louis I have the best chances that I'll ever have of winning him over, but it's hard to get out to go stalk him outside of Busch Stadium.  I wish my parents weren't so dern strict.  I have a total crush on him.  Sigh . . .

Currently Reading Beginning Spanish for the Utterly Confused By Jean Yates see related

Home Sweet? Home

So this is my first entry in forever.  It's weird the people that I have on my xanga, most of y'all I haven't talked to since high school or I talk to every day.  There doesn't seem to be much of an in between other than Miss McNeir.

So I graduated!  WOOHOO.  It really wasn't a close call, so there shouldn't be a whole lot of super excitement.  I wasn't clutching on, needing exactly a 3.5 this semester to bring up a failing average or anything.  Graduation itself was anticlimatic, but really awesome.

I think they make you appreciate Smith most right before they boot you out of the Grecourt Gates.  We all wore white, played with the alums, listened to bagpipes and lots of inspirational speeches from people that are important (so they tell me).  It was fun to let the family, mostly Christopher and Patrick, see the campus and meet my friends.  The worst part about going to school so far away from home is that there's no connect between school and home, so it's always fun to mingle the both . . . your friends and family learn a lot about you that way.

So now there's life after graduation.  It's a scary thing, sorta, the first time that we aren't told exactly what to do or where to go.  Some people have given me shit about not chosing to go where they are, but whatever, I'm young . . . I'm hip . . . in the words of Jennifer Looopez (in that South Park episode) "I do what I want!"

For those of y'all that don't know, I'm moving to Austin, TX at the end of the summer.  I feel peculiarly homeless at this point in time, and I really want to start my own home.  Arkansas seems like a distant past, New England is expensive and snowy, St. Louis is nothing close to a home, even though it's where I go for school breaks.

My first year roommate quickly became one of my best friends ever.  Over the past four years we've become a dynamic duo.  We still have a theory that together we make super woman, and apart we make "almost super, but better than all the rest" women.  (We will be humbled in due time).  She got into a PhD program at UT (woohoo...go Nerdy Amanda) and so I followed her.  We made a pact last summer that I'd follow her to grad school or she'd follow me to my best job offer.  I haven't applied anywhere because she got into grad school, so Texas it is. 

I haven't been to Texas since I was 11, and I've never been to Austin.  Everyone I know tells me that it'll fit like a glove, especially after Northampton, MA.  Alls I know is that the rent is astronomically cheaper than Boston or NY and that we can get a new, big, fun place and that it won't snow into April . . . or snow at all!!  By god, they all have Central AC . . . what a concept.

I'll apply to some jobs when I get there, or right before I get there.  I'm spending the summer learning a bit of Spanish and trying to remain composed in my parents' house.  It's so damn hard to rewind all of the independence you've gained in the last four years.  I left to go to the gym in the morning before class, and my mom freaked out b/c I didn't leave a note.  I haven't left a note in a long long time . . .

I feel restricted and it's odd.  I have no one here to play with, so it's impossible to leave just for some privacy.  I can't just go into my room at night without someone knocking at the door to say something, blah blah.  At least at Smith I could pretend to be gone if I really needed the alone time.

I miss New England dearly . . . more on that to come in 2 seconds.