conquering the world one oxymoron at a time
Archive for September, 2006
September 15, 2006 at 11:46 am · Filed under grad life/MIT
Career fair is coming around next week, so everyone is in a frenzy about this new year of job-hunting season that is upon us. By chance, I met some international students from China last week, one of whom is here for a one-year Masters program. So essentially, less than a month after she’s been at MIT/Boston/the US, she needs to look for a job. That’s about as hard as it gets. American students have a hard enough time figuring out all of the resume/interview/networking/company presentation/online submissions/selling yourself/etc. etc. She’s supposed to do all of this after having been in the U.S. for less than a month.
At the same time, I stopped feeling THAT sorry for her after our TWO-hour marathon session yesterday in which I sat down with her to help her improve her resume (she asked me if I would do this with her last week). It was a frustrating experience for both of us, I think. I felt a lot of resistance on her end toward what I had to say; she was quite unwilling to let go of her pre-conceived notions of what a resume should look like or how to conduct a job search in America. Because of that, I think she thought I was a fraud.
I don’t claim to be the best resume writer in the world; I’m sure my own resume could use tons of help. At the same time, I did go through this whole process about two years ago; I had a decently successful resume/coverletter that got me the interviews, and ultimately the job offers, from top consulting firms and banks. I’m not just pulling this stuff out of my ass when I tell her to make bullet points and to include the title of the Intel exhibit she got ridiculous recognition for. Not to even MENTION that I really was doing her an enormous favor by sitting down with her for TWO HOURS; I don’t even sit down with good friends for 30 minutes these days for coffee because of how protective I have gotten of my time these past few weeks (and will continue to be for the next month or so).
I didn’t want to dangle that in her face that I was going extremely out of my way to help her; if anything, I initially played everything down, “oh, don’t worry; I’m happy to help you.” But even just out of common courtesy (two hours is a long time no matter how busy/unbusy people are), the least she could have done was to respect the suggestions I offered her and to listen to what I had to say.
Maybe my problem was that I was too ambitious in what I wanted to do with her resume. She told me that she wanted to interview for consulting jobs, so I went nuts in helping her to restructure her resume for consulting: highlight activities; highlight leadership; bullet-point and quantify your accomplishments, blah blah blah. Thinking back, I think that was just too much; I don’t think I left a very good impression because most of what I had to say was asking her to change her resume. Taking in so much critique, no matter how constructive I tried to make it, was probably hard. If I were to evaluate her original resume on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being phenomenal, 5 being about average, 1 being very very bad), I would say her resume started out at around a 2.5. I was trying to use that and take her to a 10, but maybe both of our times would have been better spent had I aimed for more around a 6.
I also feel badly because I don’t think she will get any interviews from consulting firms submitting the resume that she has. Since she is an international student in a one-year Masters program, I don’t know what she’s going to do when she doesn’t find a job.
September 14, 2006 at 1:20 pm · Filed under daily grind
Is September a popular month for parties? The current party count for this Saturday is at five. I don’t think I even have the time for one.
**EDIT** at 4pm: The count is now at 3; two got cancelled. Let’s have a couple more cancellations!
**Additional EDIT** at 9:20pm: Count for Saturday night is still 3, but now count for Friday night is also up to 3.
September 13, 2006 at 8:48 pm · Filed under daily grind
… in myself :O(
September 10, 2006 at 4:37 pm · Filed under dating/relationships
My friend, while talking about his girlfriend, who wouldn’t let him break up with her because “you can’t break up unless both people agree”:
him: the only other time i’ve ever heard of someone not allowing a break up was on seinfield
him: I feel immasculated, like i lost some manhood; i couldn’t even break up right
him: though i’ll be using condoms, just in case she’s gone crazy
me: was she on the pill?
him: yeah
him: it’s something 4 years ago that i would have never said
Where’s the logic? When did both people have to agree in order for a breakup to happen? Using condoms just in case the gf’s gone crazy? Where are we? In a soap opera or something full of back-stabbing, conniving, vixen girlfriends?
Absolutely hilarious.
September 8, 2006 at 5:35 pm · Filed under pictures
Grad orientation had a harbor cruise last Sunday night that some of us upper year posers went on as well. I actually uploaded some pictures from it. It was the usual crew, plus Cathal, who’s now back from Ireland!!
Following up on my last post about wearing glasses for the past week. It really is giving me a splitting headache when I wear them, so I try not to wear them unless necessary. So I guess I’ll be a bit blind until next Tuesday.
*EDIT* the headache wasn’t from the glasses. I was actually running a 101F fever yesterday. Regular readers should all know about my below-normal body temperature, which makes 101 seem even more grave :(
September 7, 2006 at 5:16 pm · Filed under daily grind
Procrastination is my specialty. For example, instead of reading papers right now and thinking about what I want to discuss with my advisor Sunday afternoon (yes, I am having a meeting with my advisor on Sunday), I am writing a blog entry. Why? Because it seemed much more appealing than reading papers.
Another example of my procrastination that is actually a really big pain right now (and which prompted me to write about): going to see the eye doctor.
About a year ago, I made an appointment with an eye doctor at MIT Medical for a routine yearly eye exam. However, somehow, not only did I not get a routine eye exam when I showed up for my appointment, I got talked into four follow-up sessions to get better-fitting contact lenses and was shoo-ed out of the office in under 30 minutes. When I left my original appointment, I asked the doc, “so, what about my eye exam?” His response was, “oh, don’t worry about that. We’ll get to it.”
Well, after two of the four follow-up sessions, I hated my eye doc so much that I vowed never to go back to see him again. So basically, in the ened, I used up the one yearly eye exam I am alotted by my insurance AND paid for four extra contact-lens fitting sessions (of which I only went to two), AND got nothing out of any of that, not even my originally scheduled annual eye exam where the doc flips through all those silly little discs of transparent plastic asking “Which one is clearer? Lens #458 or lens #459?”
Because of that, I never got a prescription written out for me for last year, which meant that I couldn’t buy new contacts unless I get another routine eye exam where the doctor actually does his job. Luckily for me though, my dad had bought me a whole bunch of boxes of contacts last summer. But what seemed like ample supply steadily diminished over the past year, and my last pair of contact lenses started deteriorating and irritating my eyes toward the end of last week, forcing me to throw them out.
I had, of course, realized that my contacts would run out at some point. On multiple occasions, I would think to myself “I should go and just pay out-of-pocket for another eye exam so I can get a prescription and make sure I can buy more contacts.”
This, however, I never did because I am an expert at procrastinating.
So as a result, I have had to wear my glasses for the past week or so, and I haven’t worn glasses since freshmen year of high school. The change in perspective from having corrective lenses right on my cornea to having corrective lenses AN INCH in front of my cornea is giving me a headache, literally. I feel like I am seeing cross-eyed all the time.
Not being able to procrastinate any longer, I made an appointment with an eye doc, a DIFFERENT one this time. Luckily, I don’t have to wait too long; the appointment is for next Tuesday morning. The first thing I’m going to do when I step out of that office with that piece of magical prescription paper is to buy me a box of contacts.
September 5, 2006 at 12:31 pm · Filed under daily grind
I volunteered to write an article for the the next issue of the Graduate Student New magazine a while ago, but that meant that I had to actually sit down and write something this past week. In typical fashion, serious writer’s block ensued, and whenever I struggle to write, I always think about George Gamow’s One, Two, Three … Infinity. It’s been a long while since I read the book, and I don’t remember much of it except this one thing that I always think of:
In one of the earlier chapters, Gamow mentions a machine that could theoretically output all sentences that have ever been written, as well as every sentence yet to be written. The machine resembles one of those combination locks that has a series of dials on them, except the dials on this machine have all 26 letters, 10 numbers, space, and a multitude of punctuation marks, and there are many many of these dials in a row. So in theory, the machine can just go through all the combinations of dial positions to make strings of characters. The vast majority of the strings would be gibberish (ie. “oajsmd928*9.asl\e”), but the sentences of the best written works would also be among the outputs. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
So theoretically as well, this machine could output sentences of the most ground-breaking scientific papers, or more importantly for my current state, it would be able to generate my entire thesis proposal for me, and/or have written that GSN article for me.
If only I had me such a machine.
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