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.

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

"A NIGHTMARE IN MOREY"

Week 10 already?!? I find that to be extremely hard to believe, but when I look at my calendar and count up the weeks I know that it must be true. We are almost 2/3 of the way done with this semester, and I have to say that it has been a stressful one. The majority of the stress is due to how busy I have been with being an RA, being President of the Music Club, and of course with doing coursework. Now as far as getting perfect grades this semester, I have failed. This is perfectly fine by me though!

The class that I am doing horribly in is Microcomputer Techniques, but I am not alone! This class has a long history of being waaaay tougher than it needs to be. The main reason why this course is incredibly challenging is because the professor is clearly incapable of doing his job. We are expected to build circuits and then write software which we can then program to our boards, but the professor's very own code rarely works even when he says it will. He rarely helps any out in the labs or lectures, he loves to bring his kids into labs and lectures, and he always shows up at least 5-10 minutes late to each lecture. He makes me question what the hell my family and I are paying for because he is not providing a quality education... hell... he isn't providing any kind of education at all beyond the whole "Hey, I am professor [insert his name here] and I am an asshole."

Well, today I had a meeting with the Acting Dean of Academic Affairs regarding my issues with said professor (and also the issues of others in the class), so I am hoping that things can turn around. The problem is that things need to turn around quickly. Next Monday is the very last day to withdraw from any class and simply receive a 'W' for a grade. This means that it does not affect your GPA, but withdrawing after this date will take whatever grade you left off with and calculate it with your GPA. I know that it is most likely in my best interest to withdraw from the course. The problem is that a "Full Time" student is considered to be a student who is taking at least 12 credit hours for the semester, and dropping Microcomputer Techniques will put me down to 11.

Well, time for other news! I have come up with a great idea for a floor event for my 2nd floor residents! This floor event will be taking place on the night of Halloween. I went out and bought about $45 worth of candy and misc. drinks to increase the odds that my residents will have a great time. We will also be watching a movie, but I am not actually allowed to say what movie we will be watching. I took a picture of the stuff, and you can see it below:

I also had an Object-Oriented Programming mid-term the first week back from our last vacation, and I am pretty sure that I will be finding out the results today when I go to my lecture. This Thursday I have my 2nd hourly exam in Physics II. The Physics II exam will be covering topics related to Wave Motion and Sound.

As an "overview of what's new" I would say that me basically failing Microcomputer Techniques is kinda crappy, but at the same time it should give me plenty more time to get other things sorted out. If I withdraw from the class then I will feel kinda funny about being here, and that is too bad, but I won't have classes on Mondays or Fridays, and then I will only have my Networks lab on Wednesdays. Tuesdays and Thursdays would be the only days that remain as they are now.

Well, that is it for now! Maybe with my new free time I can actually manage to start updating this blog some more. It has been a while since my last post, but time is really flying right by with how busy I am! :P