GRADUATING ON MAY 7TH.

It's going to feel weird, but next year I will not be coming back to Vermont Tech.

I have decided that I will graduate this year with an Associate's Degree and focus primarily on seeking employment.

I want to work. I feel like I am more than ready to work, and I really want to prove myself as being a valuable part of a great company. I will probably continue my education at Vermont Tech in the future, but I am not sure how long it will be from now before that happens. I have every intention of still getting my Bachelor's Degree in Computer Engineering, but for now I have decided to postpone my last two years at this college.

For the most part, I love this place. There ARE some things about this place that I absolutely will not miss, but overall I have been happy with my time here.

Things have changed, and things continue to change.

Not all of these changes I necessarily agree with.

I am currently on the hunt for job openings, but I am confident that I have already found the perfect match. I won't post publicly what the perfect match is, but I really really hope that I got the job. It will be a HUGE step forward for me, and it's the opportunity I have been looking for.

I left my interview with this company and I was feeling great about how everything went. Interviews are typically about presenting yourself to a company and impressing them, in a sense, with your qualifications. This interview was different in the sense that the company impressed me. I walked into the building to what seemed like nothing but happy people.

The best part? The fact that I am 100% sure that I impressed this company for simply being who I am. I am an incredibly honest person, and this wasn't going to be any different. I believe I impressed them solely off of my own personal achievements and character.

I cannot express how much I really hope I get this job, and I am already confident that I would love working at their company. I feel like my interview was a gateway to something great, and I hope that the company will let me in.

I have been told that I have amazing work ethics, and I myself believe I do too. I believe in pulling my own weight, and I also believe in getting things done the right way. Being an RA this year has taught me countless invaluable skills, and it has also taught me that not everyone who gets the job allows themselves to learn these skills. You have to actually do the RA job in order to gain the skills from it.

What have I learned and/or refined with being an RA?

LEADERSHIP.

CONFLICT RESOLUTION.

INCIDENT REPORTING.

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT.

MANAGEMENT.

TEAMWORK.

EVENT PLANNING.

INTEGRITY.

ADMINISTRATION.

It's been nothing but a HUGE learning experience that I feel has more than prepared me for the real world. I want to get out. I want to be successful now. I want to move onto a different part of my life.

I CANNOT express how excited I am for my future at this point!

I'm graduating in TWO weeks! My FIRST college degree! There will be more, but this is a great first step! I also only have 2 days left of classes this school year and barely anything to do for finals this semester... these 2 weeks are going to fly right by.

I'll miss seeing my amazing friends on a daily basis, I'll miss the college atmosphere, I'll miss my great professors, I'll miss my favorite Computer Engineering professor and his iconic sense of humor and his ability to teach everything, and I'll miss being the President of Vermont Tech's Music Club.

I'm onto new things!

WISH ME LUCK!!!

The above picture is of (most) of my college band in the Music Club during the "Morey Music Mania" event that I planned/organized for my dorm building.

YEAR #3: ALMOST OVER.

Only two weeks left of classes for this school year!!

I recently had a job interview for a job that looks like an absolute perfect match for me. After this semester, I will have my Associate's Degree in Computer Engineering Technology, so if I get this job then I am probably not going to be returning to Vermont Tech any time soon.

I plan on getting my Bachelor's Degree, but I am not sure when I am going to get it. I was originally going to jump into the Bachelor's program and finish up my last two years at Vermont Tech., but various things have come up that are making me reconsider.

I currently do not know for sure as to whether RAs next year are going to be given an option between a stipend OR a double-room-fee waiver, or if the waiver will be the only option. I can't afford to go to Vermont Tech anymore without having a job to pay for it. The loan payments increase every year, so my parents and I have to pay more money every month for every year of college. I can't live on campus as an RA if I am only getting an exemption from being charged for my room. I NEED income in order to make loan payments, and it's impossible to have a well-paying job to afford college while also being an RA. This is why my interests are being pushed away from the college. Why collect more debt when certain jobs are now available that could seriously push your career forward? That's what I am focusing on now.

I REALLY hope I get this job. I am confident that it will be a great experience, and it would be a huge step forward for me.

I'm also kinda getting sick of the college atmosphere. I have been here for 3 years now. Do I really want to be here for the next 2 years on top of that? I mean, I love being here, but 5 years is a long time. I feel like I have been here long enough, and amazing opportunities are now coming up for me that I would be foolish to NOT act on.

I am ready. I want to have a great job with great people, and I want to be doing things that I have always loved doing. I am confident that the interviews I had went incredibly well, and I should be hearing back from this company within the next week as to whether or not I got the job. I would likely be starting immediately after this school year ends... which would be great because I really want to work this summer.

The picture above is of a guitar tuner that I have been making with my Arduino board. The Arduino board is a programmable microcontroller that you can pretty much program to do whatever you want so long as all the other hardware is there. I programmed my board so that it has two buttons. One button goes to the next note in the standard scale, and the other button goes to the previous note. Each of these notes have a distinct frequency for their sound. To generate the frequency through the output pin, I have a formula within my program that calculates how long the signal must be HIGH and how long the signal must be LOW. It then takes this signal and outputs it through a transducer (which in this case is a speaker). It's a really cool project, and I have enjoyed making it!

I had to adjust my tuner (basically, I had to tune it with a professional tuner) because the commands within the software I wrote happen to produce extra delays on my Arduino board. These delays effect the output of my sound, so to fine-tune my guitar tuner I had to compensate for the difference. The notes, on average, ended up being roughly 8.67 Hz lower than they were supposed to be. I just added 8.67 to all of the programmed frequencies, and currently its most accurate not is an A5.

Well, I can't believe this year has gone by so quickly. I'm extremely excited, nervous, and hopeful, about getting a special phone call next week from a company that I would REALLY love to work for. It will be crazy not coming back to campus next year, but it is all for the best of reasons, and if I get this job then I am going to be incredibly excited for where things are headed. :D