I just spent the last 10 minutes staring at pictures of my favourite hockey players. Someone help me.
Once again it has been far too long since my last blog entry. I feel that with my short attention span and love of instant gratification I have been spending much more time on Tumblr. It probably doesn't help that I am pretty darn busy these days.
A standard day for me used to be this:
9:30am: wake up
10:00am: procrastinate online
11:00am: play Heart's "Alone" on piano + random movie soundtracks
12:00pm: eat lunch
12:30pm: go to school
5:00pm: arrive back at home + watch hockey
6:00pm: eat dinner
8:00pm: do homework
12:00am: sleep
But now my life has been flipped, turned upside down. I have 3 interviews for co-op coming up, one on the 19th, one on the 20th, and one on the 27th. Two of them are IT support type jobs for the federal government, and the last is actually for the Engineering faculty at school to work on their web courseware. I'm most keen on the school one (strangely enough -- I mean, how much more unglamourous can you get?), but the interview for that isn't until the 27th. I'm just freaking out over what these next few weeks will be like, what with interviews, school, work, driving lessons, applying to more jobs, and trying not to be totally anti-social.
Not going to lie, I felt like throwing up today when I found out that my interview on the 19th would force me to miss school and was less than 24 hours before my interview on the 20th. Good thing I hadn't eaten yet.
If I had one of these right now, it'd be a huge patch of unhappy.WARNING: long, somewhat personal, soul-baring diatribe ahead.
I went into this telling myself that whatever the first offer I got (should I get one at all), I would accept it. Really, that's how co-op works, anyway. Once you apply for a position, presumably you do want it and so it is expected that should you be offered a position, you would accept it. And really, I did want the jobs when I first applied for them. But having talked to my coordinator today, she asked how many IT support jobs I had applied for with implications abound that I should not have applied for them, that I could land an actual coding gig. She's always emphasized aiming and shooting high -- "I'd rather you say more about yourself and really sell yourself and have to hold you back than you saying too little" -- and I feel as though she's got her bar of expectations set this high while I am really only aiming for something below that. And honestly, my confidence and self-esteem is probably 6 feet below that.
I really had no (emotional) problems before talking to her about those IT jobs. Now I feel regret. Like I shouldn't have applied to them.
But on the other hand, I really don't have any job experience with computers, not in the IT field or the coding field. I mean, yes, ideally I would get a nice little web developer job and look at HTML and CSS all day, but "ideally" tends to pass right by me.
The bad thing about co-op in my faculty is that it's at my own pace and I'm very much at the mercy of the employers. If I get an offer from job A and just barely handed in my application for my dream job, job X, then I'm kind of stuck with job A. My mom just told me to look at it like this is just the beginning of my co-op career. Yeah, these positions are for 8 months, but that's only 2 work terms and I need a minimum of 4.
"Next time," she tells me. "Next time you can be a little pickier and go for the coding ones."
In terms of applying for things, I think that I've applied to around 11 jobs now. The deadlines for maybe half of them have passed, and of those 6 or so, I've gotten 3 interviews. That's not bad, really. I'm rather surprised. And if it weren't for the current remorse/regret/guilt trip that I'm currently on, I'd be really pleased with those results. There haven't been any really exotic positions that have come up (I think the closest was a general posting for IBM saying "go check their site", though their only positions in Europe are in Italy [WHY COULDN'T IT BE FRANCE? OF ALL THE ROMANCE LANGUAGES. HONESTLY. THEY WANT SOMEONE FLUENT IN ITALIAN. MIO DIO.] and Israel), though I'm working on applications for positions in Ontario and Quebec.
How cool would it be to work for RIM in Mississauga or EA in Montreal? My brother is already (and falsely) saying "When you're gone..." to me and lamenting how sad he'll be, which is really kind of adorable and endearing. He says that I have to Skype him every day, and of course he tries to cover up his sappiness by saying "Because you'll need to ask me for recipes and on how to cook because you can't do it by yourself". Haha, what a cute kid.
And really, that's better than my dad who says "If you're going, then we're moving there." Really, dad, really? You of all people?! I guess my mom was right when she told me that my dad and brother always whined about me not being home that often during the school year. And then he got all excited about how if I get a position in Montreal and we move there that we could go to Habs games and have lots of fun and yaddi yaddi yadda.
My family. Honestly. They need to get a grip. It's not even like I do anything at home. I just sit at my computer and argue with people.
So yeah. This is going to be a fun couple of weeks. I feel like rolling up into a ball and just dying. Or playing in traffic. On Knight Street. With all the cargo trucks. Fun fun fun.
