I’m in Platt. It’s 3 AM. The whiteboards are covered in p-orbitals and I’ve got an empty bottle of diet Coke.
There are two guys sleeping in here. Strangely enough, not on the comfy leather couches everywhere–one’s on the floor, the other’s in an chair. One of them had an alarm clock that kept going off. He hit ‘snooze’ twice, then apparently slept through the third alarm…
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP
for like five minutes in a freaking study area. I had to walk over and turn the damn thing off. If you’re not going to pay attention to your alarm clock, at least have the courtesy to ignore it in your own room!
My Power Elite research paper still isn’t done, but it’s close. Just have to write the section on the Bakke case and the conclusion about Ivy League managerial hegemony (my, doesn’t that sound lovely and non-pretentious!), and it’ll be done. I had told my prof that I’d have it done by Wednesday. Being that it’s 3 AM, I don’t think it counts as Wednesday anymore. Thus, I think I may as well let my poor synapses take a break and finish the damn thing tomorrow.
I am so good at procrastinating. It’s really unfortunate. But at least sometimes it’s productive procrastination. That’s how most of my job/internship applications for the summer have gotten done. As of tonight, I have applied to 23 paid internships/gigs. Twenty-three. Of those, one was the APM internship that was shot down by sucky LA public transit. One was a web design gig that turned out to be for a stripper service. And one was a gig that in all likelihood was doing someone’s web design homework for him, for which the guy chose someone else. The other twenty never replied to me at all.
There were even more opportunities that I never applied for in the first place because they called for skills I didn’t have–Adobe Illustrator mostly, but frequently InDesign, Flash, and ColdFusion as well. MySQL, JavaScript, and Ajax on the coding side. I’ll be learning Flash next semester…but where will I learn everything else?
I applied to five gigs in the last two days, crossing my fingers that I hear back from some of them… Bleh.
I’m thinking about just taking a leap of faith and booking my ticket to DC, before prices rise. There’s way fewer web design opportunities in the Twin Cities than there are in DC (I’ve checked), so if I don’t get one there, odds are high I wouldn’t get anything at home either. If that’s what happens, either way I’d have to get some sort of retail/service job running registers or making sandwiches. Not especially career-invigorating, but fine. Anything’s better than scrubbing toilets in the middle of nowhere.
Arguably if I stay in DC with Nelson I’d make less money, since I’d be buying (some) groceries and paying for my own entertainment, but I figure those savings are mostly illusory: if I were at home, I’d still be eating and such–it’d just be my parents paying. Either way, there’s no free lunch, and given that paying for my education is a joint effort I don’t see much net advantage in staying home. Besides, no matter what I do I’ll be going into student loan debt; a few hundred bucks isn’t going to make a difference in that.
On the other hand, if I go to DC 1.) I get to be independent, 2.) I can use a functioning public transit system instead of paying $4 for gas for my theoretical commute, 3.) if any part-time web design gigs come up mid-summer, I’ll be there to take them, 4.) I’d get to spend time with Nelson before he disappears into the gaping abyss known as 1L, and 5.) I’ll learn how to get around Arlington/DC–which, given that there’s a pretty good chance I’ll be moving there after I graduate, is probably something I should do.
Besides, any less money I make this summer is going to be made up by income from student jobs next year. Besides Voice and the Student Store, now I’ve talked to Hillel and someone from CStu about doing possible web design work… We’ll see if anything happens with that. (Thank goodness I only signed up for three classes!)
Alright, going to bed. Good mornin’, y’all.
Yesterday, I moved most of my stuff out of my dorm room and into summer storage. I went in on storage with a group of Scrippsies, most of whom I’d never met. In past years, I’d gone in with three or four people. This year my share of the storage fee was almost halved–because there were seven other students sharing.
