|
|
 More photos |
According to recent surveys, Mac market share is up to 30% at Harvard and at Princeton. I wonder if Columbia puts out similar numbers. If only I knew someone that worked at QUIT. In any case, buy AAPL; it’s going to hit $200.
Part two doesn’t exist. In any case, I kicked a little bit of ass. For some reason, I started to hear myself a little bit better and figured out how to tune up my answers. Getting any of these positions would also mean I’m golden-state-bound. Change is a constancy.
I am in DC this weekend for a job fair. Here are some excerpts from my travel log:
4:20pm: I leave my apartment. The last song I hear is “Until the End of Time”. The song haunts me for the entirety of the trip. Damn you Timberlake.
5:05pm: I wait in line for the Chinatown bus. A transit employee approaches me, and hands me a flyer advertising his own private venture, “In N Out Enterprises”, which appears to be part metropolitan transport, part CD music production. I learn that during evenings he plays guitar; reggae is his genre. He queries for my ethnicity. I don’t mind because I return the favor. The bus begins to board and I say goodbye to my new Ghanian guitarist transit employee friend.
5:50pm : The bus is freezing and I am bored of my audiobook.
6:51 pm: My nap is interrupted by a young couple nearby. She is giggling like a metronome, a periodic eruption of young adult affection. I estimate their relationship phase at somewhere around the “Her needless titters meets His every sentence” stage. I doubt he is really that funny. I glare at them, but they are oblivious. Perhaps I should caution them against exhausting their relationship’s finite supply of mirth and cheer in a single night.
7:45 pm: Pit stop at the last rest area in New Jersey. The driver allots 15 minutes. I consider my dinner options with care. Soon, I am coolly leaning against the bus, eating supper, comprising of a vanilla frozen yogurt cone from TCBY. Life on the road is poignant in these little moments.
10:30pm: I am jostled awake and see a line of departing passengers in the aisle. The bus springs us loose in a back alley in Chinatown. I grab my bags and say a silent prayer to ward off bad luck and stray gunfire.
I need to re-focus the job hunt. My heart is just not in it. If the way I have been spending my time of late is any indication, I’m better off as a womanizing general manager of a National Hockey League team.
BusinessWeek: Profile of a premiere college admissions consultant. Reading these stories makes me so grateful I got into college when I did. Holla to SEAS’ 25% admissions rate. Favorite quote:
Her approach with these students depends on sussing out and then encouraging their own inclinations. If someone says she likes photography, Hernandez might suggest she take photos of the homeless, then mount an exhibit as a way to raise money. “A kid wouldn’t come up with that idea on their own,” she says. “They don’t know what colleges are looking for.” Hernandez advised a student working on a nanotechnology project to e-mail famous scientists and compile the exchanges into a book. “If you did that, I guarantee you’d get into any school,” she said to the girl. To another student who enjoys studying Latin, Hernandez suggested learning Greek over the summer, too: “It’s a great selling point.” When a ninth-grade boy said he might be interested in his school’s tech club, she told him: “You can take it over and take it in a new direction.”
Translation: college admissions consultant = domineering Asian parent.
Boy, after posting about Ahmadinejad and nips, the new incoming traffic and referral URLs are hilarious. Secret plan, successful.
Today, one of my more outlandish classmates accused me of having “soft nipples.” I scoffed and denied the charge, though I am unsure what exactly was being asked of me. Perhaps it was yet more legal jingo jango [that's the legal term for "jargon." -Ed]. I can’t imagine what a term such as “soft nipples” might mean. Was she commenting on my passive tendencies? My dim belly-fire? Perhaps it was a remark aimed at my generosity, my ample teat of charity, my ready wellspring of positivity?
I pressed the issue. She made an obscene gesture with her hands and her bust, and cackled fiendishly while walking away. Law school is a great place to meet new “people”.
Since I am not participating in a journal or a clinic, I need to fill the holes of my resume with an internship during the school year. Last week, I visited the offices of Callous & Stringent, a small IP boutique, for a second round interview with the named partners.
Jeremy Callous sat down with me first. He was an animated man, and began our interview by asking mildly inappropriate questions (possibly in violation of state and federal statute):
Impressive scholarship. I wonder, do you have any college debt?
…
I see you put ‘conversational [crab-ese]‘ on your resume. Are you [Crab-ese]?
…
What country are your parents from?
My answers were curt; I was a bit shell-shocked. In hindsight, maybe he was testing to see how I would play it off. If you know me, you know that I play things off by swinging a giant earnest, shocked hammer at it.
The interview nonetheless progressed. “Did you take any electric engineering courses?” he asked. I gave my sound-fundamentals-in-electronics answer. Of course, he got up and drew a circuit diagram on a whiteboard. “What’s this circuit do?” he asked. I answered, but who knew that not having taken electronics since high school means mixing up your resistors with your inductors? It was okay, because he interrupted our interview to take a phone call from a client, and never came back.
Michael Stringent wandered in about ten minutes later. He was grey and had puckered cheeks. He talked like sandpaper. Indifferent to my existence, he shot me the type of looks that seem to say “I have beaten hookers with better legal qualifications than you.” I asked my prepared questions and got the fuck out of there. I took the long way home.
This is what I skipped half a day’s worth of classes for?
NY Times profiles Columbia University as a travel destination. I guess the Ahmedinejad incident put us on the map. Don’t miss the Sundial shoutout near the end.
Also, from its recent ‘College Issue’ , some loving memories from Daniel Alarcon CC ‘99 in trying to create positions for ethnic studies, including hunger strikes and building storming.
With the whole hubbub of President Ahmadinejad’s visit now done, I only have two points of supplemental commentary that were absent from all coverage of the event.
First, the speaking invitation to Ahmadinejad was part of a week-long forum, held every year by Columbia University, in which Columbia invites many world leaders to speak. It is no accident that this forum coincides with the General Assembly of the United Nations, in which many leaders are in town anyway. When put into this context, Ahmadinejad’s visit appears less like an endorsement of his views, but rather more like a forum for which to hear a world leader’s point of view.
By no means does Columbia limit its invitations to saints and angels. In 2005, Columbia hosted President Musharraf of Pakistan; in 2003, Russian President Putin and Afghani head of state Hamid Karzai visited as well.
Even if you think his opinions are detached from reality or that he lacks any sort of real power in Iran, Ahmadinejad is still the democratically elected head of state of a nation that is key to the world’s stability. To me, that alone makes him worthy of giving a 45-minute speech at the University.