The Real World

Well, BEFORE I even graduated I got a phone call from an international corporation letting me know that I got the job as their PC Technician!

Vermont Tech's job placement has been 98% within 4 months of graduation, but I never realized I would have a job this quickly!

Just to clear things up. Originally I was planning on going straight through Vermont Tech's Bachelor program for Computer Engineering Technology, but then I saw a job posting for a company that has a great reputation. I won't name the company on here because this is my personal blog, and my personal and work lives should stay separate from one another.

I was simply looking for a summer job, but instead I was offered a full-time position at a great company with great people, and great benefits as the tasty frosting on the cake. The told me that it would be in my "best interests" to not go back to college immediately after summer.

They offer full medical insurance, dental insurance, life insurance, 401k retirement plan, disability insurance, long-term disability insurance, up to 80% tuition reimbursement, mileage reimbursement (for business travel), and a few other perks. :D

Pretty awesome job! Within two months of graduating from college I have since moved into my own apartment, bought some of my own fancy furniture, live within 35 minutes of MOST of my family and friends, and only 15 minutes to work.

I am keeping an extremely detailed budget so that I can keep track of ever cent I get, and every cent I spend. My next goal is to get a new car, and that should be happening in a month or so. I just need to do a lot of research because dealers are conmen (haha), and I'll need to look into full coverage insurance. :D

Well, I REALLY should have been in bed about an hour ago, so I am going to pass out now. :)

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

Back From San Francisco!

Well, my trip to San Francisco was absolutely amazing!!

My first-and-second-ever flights took place on Wednesday morning through to Wednesday night. We left the airport in Burlington, landed a couple hours later in Chicago, and then several hours later in San Francisco. On my second flight I had to give into my hunger and I actually coughed up $9 for an (obviously overpriced) turkey sandwich. It tasted great, but it definitely wasn't worth $9. It's just the airline business taking advantage of people who have to pack light and can't make room for extra food.

My first plane trip was a REALLY cool experience. Lauri, the awesome career services counselor for Vermont Tech., kept checking in on my to make sure I wasn't too nervous about the flight, but I was having a pretty awesome time watching the land below us disappear as we approached the clouds. I knew that the plane had to go fast in order to take off, but it is one thing "knowing" something from common sense, and another when you actually experience it first-hand. Our first plane was a tiny plane that you could barely stand up in. It had two rows of seats on one side, and a single row of seats on the other. There were so few people on the plane that my friends and I were pretty much free to sit wherever we wanted to.

I got some awesome video footage of the first plane taking off, and some awesome footage of the plane landing in Chicago. The famous airport in Chicago was the coolest one I saw during the whole trip. It had a brontosaurus skeleton, fancy ceilings with flashing neon lights, and several other really cool things that cannot be described with just word.

When we landed in San Francisco and checked into our hotel, a lot of my friends were starving. We ended up walking around the streets of San Francisco to get a feel for the place and get comfortable, but then we were absolutely surprised by the crazy amounts of homeless people. We sat in Subway... probably a block a way from our hotel, and while we were eating our sandwiches some crazy/old homeless guy with a big white beard was outside of the shop and he was making these growling and grunting noises. We probably saw 13 homeless people on Wednesday night alone... maybe even more. It's because the city is relatively warm throughout the whole year, so people can actually survive living outside. It's not like Vermont where we have our crazy Nor-easter snowstorms that can even make living inside a house difficult.

Thursday we spent the day taking an amazing tour of Google's 500,000 sq. ft. campus in Palo Alto, California... otherwise known as the famous Silicon Valley. Google has everything... free massage parlors, dining areas/cafeterias, swimming pools, gym memberships, laundry rooms, outdoor sports, Google bikes, and even reserved parking for pregnant women. Their entrance lobby even had two gigantic Android phones that were fully-functional! My friends were playing some of the games that use the touch screen controls, and it seemed to work amazingly well.

After leaving Google, we then headed over to Apple. A somewhat recent Vermont Tech grad from the Computer Engineering Major (who was also a Morey RA at one point), is now the Project Manager for two security teams at Apple! On Mac OSX, when you are asked for your password, his team helps write all of the code that controls that functionality. It was cool meeting him because he is one of my professor's old roommates, and he was also in the same major that I am now, AND he was once a Morey Hall RA like I am now. It's just cool for me to see someone who is doing so well, and knowing that I am at least kind of on the same track as he once was.

Friday was the day that we went to the 2011 Game Developer's Conference! We got to see developer's and designers work on technologies for the newest games right on the show floor. We watched as someone from AMD (as in the former ATi) mold a human face using a modeling program. I also got to see Crysis 2 being played in 3D and it looked pretty damn good. I ended up walking around the whole show floor several times, but it was cool being there because you have to be either a college student, or in the game industry as a developer etc, or with the press in order to go to this event.

Overall this trip was an absolutely amazing experience. California is such an beautiful state (in the right neighborhoods). We went down to Fisherman's Wharf and Pier 39 where you get a great view of both the Golden Gate Bridge AND of Alcatraz. We topped our trip off by eating dinner and having some drinks at the Hard Rock Cafe right in San Francsico. I had a Long Island Iced Tea (one of my favorite drinks)... it was mixed to perfection, and I was even allowed to keep the fancy glass that the drink came in.

I will never forget this trip, and I can never thank Lauri or Vermont Tech enough for making it possible. I went to California with some amazing friends of mine! Google! Apple! GDC! Pier 39! What more could I ask for?!

I can tell you right now though... we got back to Vermont and we were experiencing a crazy blizzard. I could feel the cold air a lot more than I ever used to because I had gotten used to it being about 76 degrees in San Francisco. It's too bad it is sooo f#cking cold here! Haha

SAN FRANCISCO IN SIX DAYS!!!! :D

It is incredibly hard to believe, but six days from now I will be getting on plane (for the first time in my life), AND I will be heading out to San Francisco!! I am incredibly excited for this trip, and I know that it is going to be an amazing time. I never once thought that I would ever be able to go to GDC because it is restricted to college students, game developers, and the press. Most people do not know what the Game Developer's Conference is, so then I have to explain to them that it is one of the two largest gaming events that take place in the world on a yearly basis.

HUGE gaming corporations go to these conferences. ALL of the major businesses show up annually. Companies like Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, IBM, Google, Insomniac Games, Ubisoft, EA, and most of the gaming companies that you can probably think about... including a Minecraft booth this year!! :D (Minecraft is an incredibly addicting computer game... in case you don't already know... in which case you need to find out what I am talking about lol)

Well, I gotta turn in for the night! My RA duty for the night is now over since it is well past 12:00 am, so I should probably pass out soon. I have no problem with just letting these days go by because...


SAN FRANCISCO IN SIX DAYS!!!! SAN FRANCISCO!!!! OMFG!!! WOO HOOOOO!!!! GAME DEVELOPER'S CONFERENCE!!!!!!!! HELLLZZZZ YEAH!!!! :D

^ excited. :D

Better Thoughts & San Francisco in One Month!

The majority of my life I have been a calm, collected, and level-headed individual. I do a whole lot of thinking, I have a lot of consideration for various things, and a lot of respect for many people. I have been told in the past that I do a great job of seeing things for how they are, that I am great friend, and that 99% of the time I don't let anything cloud my judgment.

With that said, there still are times that this kinda falls apart for me, but I am still learning things in life. When I get extremely stressed out... I begin to lose my "cool." It's a natural thing for people, but this should hopefully provide a better understanding about my previous post.

I don't believe that I should delete my last post though because this is, in fact, my personal blog. While I don't post things that are too insanely personal on here, I still wrote it and it was important to me at the time.

I am glad to say though that I am back on track. I'm not letting the things that were bothering me before bother me anymore. I know what I care about, I know what I want in life, and I am not going to let anyone or any thing get in the way of that.

Know what else is great? Vermont Tech is taking me to San Francisco in less than a month for the Game Developer's Conference!!! It's going to be such an awesome time, and as of now I haven't been any further out of New England than New York City, so it is definitely a time that I will never forget!

I have a lot to look forward to. I really do. I just need to stop focusing on things that are out of my control, and accept the fact that not everyone is willing to put in the same amount of effort as I am when it comes to one doing their job. I guess I am okay with that now... it sucks when I have to clean up after others, but their bad work habits aren't exactly going to do anything to help them out in the future.

Looking forward to GDC 2011!!!

Also, another very important date: Next week will mark my girlfriend and I's second month together! We will be spending plenty of time together next weekend since after this week VTC has a week-long vacation. :D

This Semester is Going to Kick Ass! :D

First off, I have an amazing schedule this semester! I have Wednesdays and Fridays off completely (with the exception of RA duty on Wednesday night, but still... no classes), and on Mondays I only have a System Admin lab! :D

My schedule and two upcoming events are shown above. :D

This semester is also going to kick ass because I have nothing but awesome professors this time around. Such a huge turnaround from last semester when it seemed like nobody knew what they were doing. I even have one professor who people claim to be the best instructor they have ever had and this guy is teaching half of my course. :D

Well, this update is a short one, but that's really all I have for now. I am not sure when I will post again, but hopefully it won't be too-too long from now.

UPDATE:
I just updated my schedule on the blog's right-side pane and I noticed that for my previous schedule I forgot to change "Spring 2010" to "Fall 2010." Of course now it is the proper "Spring 2011."

22 Years Old, 1000+ Visits to My Blog :D

It's quite impressive, but two years ago I started this blog, and even though it hasn't been as actively updated as I originally intended it has managed to reach over 1000 views!

Last Saturday I had a birthday party at my house and about 40 friends came over. To make sure this was a good time I also set it up so that the VTC Music Club would be prepared to play 8 songs at the party. We ended up playing Basketcase, Say it Ain't So, Fade to Black, Creep, Closing Time, Lonely Day, Welcome Home, and Toxicity. The video above is a recording of the Vermont Tech Music Club playing "Closing Time" by Semisonic. It's too bad that you can't hear my solos too well, but the camera was being overloaded from all the sound. We kicked so much ass!! :D

Yesterday was officially my 22nd birthday. Out of all the birthdays I have had yesterday didn't truly feel like my birthday with the exception of having a couple hundred posts on my Facebook wall. There are a couple of great things that have been going on recently, but I won't post about those until things progress a bit further. I don't want to give out too many details, but I am sure that a certain thing is going to change soon, and I am greatly looking forward to it. :D

This week is stressful because it is final exams week AND I am an RA. All buildings and floors on campus are on 24-hour quiet hours right now meaning that residents must be quiet for every hour of every day this week. As an RA, I get to be one of the people to enforce that. It's tough because it seems unreasonable at 3:00 pm to bitch at people to quiet down, but at the same time... everyone has studying to do, and the less stressed out they can be going into an exam the better. I'll be honest. I let some of their noise slide. As important as it is for things to be quiet I also feel like it is important to take breaks and socialize too. I have definitely spoken up about people who were being too loud for this week though. Music is a big problem here because a lot of people in this building have impressive sound systems, and the bass loves to carry down the hallway.

Tomorrow I have my final exam for Object-Oriented Programming, and then on Friday I have my exam for Microcomputer Techniques. I already had my Physics II exam, and I did horribly on it. Oh well though. I know this is college and they expect you to do a lot of studying outside of the lectures and labs, but the fact of the matter is: If your professors suck, then you probably will too.

This semester has been such a nightmare for me. There have been a few things that have made me extremely happy, but overall... there have been a lot of crazy BS things this semester. The good things I LOVE, but the bad things are killing me.

I have ONE awesome professor this semester. I have Skoda for Networks, and though I have only actually met him twice I know that he is a really cool professor, and he even does a great job of teaching us the material even though it is an online course.

My other professors have made me unhappy too many times this year. My first and second year, I loved coming here. This year has been different though. Time management is a huge part of it, but my professors aren't doing anything to help. I am developing a certain level of disgust for this place, and that is probably what I hate most about this semester. I don't think that shitty professors should be allowed to encourage someone like me to start disliking Vermont Tech.

Don't get me wrong. I love it HERE, but I most certainly hate the courses I have this semester, and I think that it is total bullshit because the main challenge in every single one of my courses (except for Networks of course) is that the professors simply cannot teach the material.

I even had one professor say that he has been incredibly lazy this year, overloaded himself with teaching courses, and that the majority of the assignments we had he is just going to give everybody a 100 on because he is too lazy to grade everything. He came right out and told all of his students about this. Yeah, I understand that I am benefiting from this grade-wise, but what am I really getting out of it?

I am not going to lie. I have been doing horrible this semester. Yeah, I have a lot of stuff I am responsible for this semester, but that's not the problem. I think that I have made it very clear as to what the problem is, and I think that it is unfortunate that no matter how loud I make my voice nobody here seems to listen. I am just ONE person. I can bitch all I want, but no action will be taken to change anything unless there is a long period of time where the same shit keeps happening. You know what this means? nothing ever happens to fix what's broken at VTC. Not from what I can see anyway.

As far as I am concerned: Yes, I still love it here, but it's not because of the coursework, and I also don't think that this school deserves its #7 ranking on the top schools in the north east. Not if they let shit like this slide.

Well, I am done ranting about this topic. I think that I have talked about it way too much. This week has been going great, and tonight was a lot of fun. I am going to start focusing more on the fun things because it's almost Christmas break. Soon I will be home, and I can stay there for 3 weeks without all the craziness I have to put up with on campus.

I hope everyone reading this has a great Christmas break etc!!! :D

Second Semester - Week 11

Photo Taken from Facebook Fan Page

Last week was spring vacation week for my friends and I at Vermont Tech. I enjoyed the break from insane piles of homework, and was enjoying the fact that I could sleep in and dedicate plenty of time to my video games. I was actually focused on one particular assignment over break, and that would be my analytical report assignment for Technical Communications. The report is due this Friday, has to be roughly 8 pages, and mine is focused on the study of Quantum computing.

Quantum computing has been an extremely interesting topic to research because it is the next step for the computer industry. Quantum computing will mean that computers are exponentially faster, and have exponentially more storage space while using far less power consumption. These will likely be the kinds of computers that people will be using when I am 40 or 50 years old, and I am really looking forward to seeing how fast they will operate.

I have a pretty busy week set out for me this week. I started it off by having an interview for one of the Resident Assistant positions for next year. I got back from that interview not too long ago. There were 6 different people interviewing me at the same time, and I am pretty sure that my interview went well. I remember last summer when I was nervous about being interviewed by one person, and now future interviews are going to be much easier for me.

This Friday is when my analytical report is due, and when a huge assignment for my PERL Programming class is due. Lots of work to do... I better get back to doing it. :P

Halfway Through Second Semester!

Image Taken from Vermont Technical College Facebook Fan Page

Hard to believe, but half of this semester is already completed! I am 3/4 of the way to completing my second year of college at Vermont Tech., and things have been going quite well. I know that it has been 5 weeks since I last updated my blog, but I have been super busy they past 5 weeks with studying Calculus for Engineering and Electronics for Computer Engineers.

I wouldn't say that I am kicking ass in Calculus, but I am doing well enough to where I am probably averaging somewhere around a 75. This really isn't too bad for me because math has always been something that I have had minor problems with. The big thing with me is that I seem to master concepts AFTER I have been tested on them, so my grades don't actually reflect my true knowledge of the material. I will take a test on one subject, get somewhere around a 75 or 80 on it, and then a week later it will seem like I have mastery of it! It is kind of a pain in the ass, but I don't let it bother me because the fact that I am learning the material is truly the important factor.

In Calculus we have looked at the various ways to take the derivative of functions, applications using derivatives, solving for tangents and normals, and related rates. For the majority of the class up to this point I was learning the material simply because I knew that it would come in handy for later courses, BUT I wasn't sure exactly how I could use my newly discovered mathematical abilities. Earlier in the week we started looking at "related rates" which is, as it sounds, two or more rates that increase alongside one another. An example of this would be blowing up a balloon. As the balloon inflates the volume increases, the surface area increases, and so does the radius at the center of the balloon. It is pretty cool stuff, and this topic is the first mathematical topic that I have ever been introduced to that actually gave me a sense of newly found power... I think that it is because I had countless ideas popping into my head as to what these mathematical processes could allow me to solve. I was thinking primarily along the lines of circuits because that is the subject within my major where I will be using calculus the most.

Electronics for Computer Engineers has been going amazingly well. It is easily my favorite class because it is perfectly focused on what my major is about. We have been learning how to make circuits that amplify signals, circuits that can add two values and convert to binary output, and how to make switches that toggle on and off based on the conditions we have them wired to operate with.

I have been studying some pretty cool stuff this semester, but the cooler the topics the more advanced they are. I am learning some amazing things, but at the same time my work is getting significantly more challenging. This will continue until graduation, obviously, but I am more than looking forward to it. Bring it on, college! I am ready to kick your ass! :D

Year Two: Semester Two: Week Two! :D

Rocking Out

My first semester for sophomore year has been completed! My GPA is now just over a 3.0, and now I am in more advanced courses. I am taking Calculus for Engineers, Electronics for Computer Engineering Majors, PERL Programming, Technical Communications, and Work Energy and Conservation (Physics).

My courses definitely have been giving me more homework than I was given throughout my last three semesters, but we are learning some pretty cool stuff. It makes sense that as the courses get more challenging that they would also get more interesting.

In Electronics for CEM we are learning more about how the circuits work on an atomic level. My previous circuits courses looked at the basic forms of circuit analysis, but this course seems to pay more attention to the individual components. We learn about how they are constructed, and how their construction allows them to function in the way that they do. It is very interesting stuff because these are the same components that we rely on for every day things. My major will teach me all the ins and outs about all of these components, and by the time I graduate I should be able to have quite a thorough understanding of how they react to one another. :)

My Calculus for Engineering course is also more interesting then I thought it would be. I think that it is because we are exploring an area of math that I haven't explored before. I have been doing extremely well with all of the homework up to this point, but I know that I need to make sure that I stay on top of it because it is really easy to fall behind in that class. We are given a lot of work to do each night, and if we don't build a proper foundation with previous topics then present and future topics will be significantly harder to learn about. College courses are not about learning what you need to learn in order to pass the next exam... they are about developing a thorough understanding of the material being presented, and doing so even if you have to go "out of your way" to learn it.

We haven't done much in PERL Programming yet because that is simply writing programs using a scripting language. The language is great for regular expressions, file handling, and for writing programs in a timely manner.

Work Energy & Conservation is my physics course this semester, and it simply expands on the physics course that I had last semester. We are in the process of reviewing what we learned last semester, so I have yet to experience any of the new topics we are expected to cover.

Technical Communications is a pretty good class. My professor happens to be my all-time favorite English teacher/professor. Technical Communications is basically meant to teach students how to write technical documents. This includes resumes, cover letters, letters of resignation, proposals etc... Throughout this semester we will be writing an analytical report that is 8-10 pages, and covers a topic of our choice based on technology.

I am actually surprised that it took so long for me to update my blog. It has been quite a while since I last did so. I did quite well on all of my exams from last semester, and I ended up passing Technical Math with a B-. Statistically, a student has a single letter grade difference between Technical Math and Calculus for Engineering. This means that if you were to get a B in Technical Math then you should get a C in Calculus. As a final note I would like to present my goal for this semester: I want to beat the statistics. Instead of my grade dropping by a letter grade... I want it to go up by one, pass with an A, and in turn be exempt from the final exam. It is going to take a huge effort on my part... but I am doing quite well with keeping that going so far. ;)

Week 14 - Final Week of Classes

My Roommate

Week 14 is in full swing, and it is the last week of classes for this semester. This week is expected to be a busy week as loads of assignments are expected to be turned in, course material is expected to be wrapped up, and studying begins for next week's finals. I am confident that I will do well on my finals. I plan on focusing most of my attention on my Technical Math exam, and then focusing my attention primarily on Newton Mechanics (physics). I have the majority of my exams towards the end of the week, so that means that I won't have to be on campus for the whole week. I plan on staying at home during the days that I don't have exams, so that I can relax and do my studying there. I like being at Vermont Tech., but nothing beats the comforts of home.

Everyone has been quite busy, and it is expected to pick-up as the week progresses. It will be nice though once exams are finally out of the way. After exam week we are given three weeks off for Christmas vacation. Definitely looking forward to it. We will be back on campus on January 10th to start our second semester. I plan on posting my new schedule possibly over break, but if I can't manage to do so over break then I will be sure to have it up shortly after getting back.

Other than exam-prep and getting assignments out of the way, there really isn't too much else going on this week. I am not complaining though. :P

The picture above is of my roommate, and you can see that there are some clothes hanging from the pipes on the ceiling. Him and his girlfriend had just finished their laundry, and the clothes are hanging to dry. I thought that it would be funny to show in a picture... the reason why? I don't have damn clue. :D

Week 11 - Interop Conference Next Week!

Gloomy Photoshop Picture of Myself :P

I planned on making a post last week, but I found that I was quite busy with homework and studying for a math exam, so I didn't have enough time to post anything. I had another math exam last Friday. I am pretty sure this is #5 for that class, and I am also quite confident that I did an amazing job on it. Exam #4 I got an 86 on, but I am confident that I did even better on this one than I did the last one. I can't wait to get the exam back. Two out of three classes were cancelled today. Physics and Technical Math were cancelled, but I didn't go to C-Programming either because she posts all of her notes on blackboard, and I was feeling kind of sick anyway. The past couple of days I have had this random eye pain in my left eye socket. I think it is because there was a day when I got well over12 hours of sleep.... insane? nope. Not when you consider the fact that I am a college student. :D

Next week, Monday through Wednesday, Vermont Tech. is paying for my friends and I to attend a tech conference in New York City. The event is called Interop, and it focuses on the latest technologies being released in the Information Technology and Networking fields. I can't wait for the conference! Not only will it be cool to go to a professional tech conference, but being in New York City is going to be a lot of fun. I have been to Boston before with a friend of mine, but this will be my first time going to New York City. I know for sure it is going to be a lot of fun. Vermont Tech is paying for everything except for the costs of food. We get to stay in a hotel for free, get into the conference for free, and free transportation.

One of the coolest things about this trip, and the when it takes place, is the fact that the following week is Thanksgiving break. I have classes all of this week, but next week I will only have classes on Thursday and Friday, and then I have a whole week off! When I get back from Thanksgiving break I will have two weeks of classes, and then a week of final exams for the semester. I have said it countless times, but I really can't believe how quickly the semester is flying by. Hard to believe that shortly after having a week off I will have 3 weeks off for Christmas vacation. I am not complaining though. :D

Here is a link to more information about the Interop conference:

http://www.interop.com/newyork/conference/overview.php

Week 7 - Vacation Next Week!

I am relieved to know that all of next week I have vacation time. Wednesday is just about over, and tomorrow and Friday are going to be easy days. I had two exams earlier today. My first exam was for Newton Mechanics (Physics), and my second one was for C-Programming. I pretty much beat the crap out of both of my exams to the point that they were begging for mercy. I should be getting the results from my last math exam tomorrow. I am hoping that I didn't do too bad on it, but if I did then it simply means that I will have to up my game.

I meant to post something earlier in the week, but I have been extremely busy this week. I ended up moving out of Old Dorm 201, and now I am rooming with a friend of mine in the same building, but on the opposite end. In my old room I was lucky if I got even the tiniest bit of WiFi, but in this new room I get the best signal I can possibly get. It is a 1 gb/s wireless-n connection.

I just barely got out of History of Rock & Roll. I was actually bored out of my mind because we started to explore Doo-Wop music tonight. I am not really into that kind of music, so it made the class drag on more than usual.

All in all I am having a great week. It was stressful for a couple of days, but the rest of this week will be extremely easy, and then I have a well-needed whole week off to be lazy for a while. I am thinking that I might visit my high-school at some point and hang out with my old band teacher. I also think it is cool to talk to my old teachers and let them know what I am doing in college. A lot of people who are actually local to Vermont Tech end up passing it off because they assume that a school so close to home can't be worth going to, but in reality this school provides a very competitive education... trust me... they work the hell out of their students! It is totally worth it, so it is good to show my old teachers just how quickly I am learning the vast amounts of information that the college throws at me. :D

That is all I got for now. I may or may not be posting over vacation. It depends on how lazy I am feeling... :P