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プライド

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It’s been a pretty good past few days. Thursday I woke up at the crack of dawn (which is 7:30AM for me), to prepare for the IUSTV Advisory Board meeting. Got that all taken care of, and we have a bunch of Panera bagels for the meeting as well. Getting together all this stuff to present to the faculty and staff advisors, including an “annual summary” of goals and accomplishments, really made me realize how much has gotten done this year. Having all the current and incoming execs there, and a lot of the staff, it was good. I’m pretty proud. Also, Panera asiago cheese bagels taste like gourmet Cheez-Its.

Came back from the advisory board meeting with a bunch of leftover bagels, and took a nap for a while before my classes (yes, I am still actually taking classes). Did all that, and went to the office for a bit. Then it was the big night: the IUSTV Banquet. This year’s was a big change from last year’s; instead of a decent sized room at the Union, we went to the Mayfield’s Ballroom/MCL Cafeteria over on the west side of town. Until the day prior, when I went to go check the place out when Kaylyn and Jenny were setting things up, I had never stepped foot in the place. It was much much nicer than I would have imagined. When I heard “cafeteria,” I just thought of an old persons restaurant with some buffet lines and such, like an Old Country Buffet. Quite the contrary. The ballroom was really a nice ballroom, and it was many times nicer than the Union’s rooms. Also, you wouldn’t expect this, but pretty much every employee at the place was a hot chick. I would have expected old ladies. The actual banquet was really nice as well; the dinner was buffet style fried chicken, which was maybe a little messier than you would want for a somewhat formal event like this, but it was really good either way. Sean said there must have been a black woman cooking in the back, so I guess that means it’s not just me who thought it was good eatin. Also, I was luckily warned of the walnuts in the green beans, otherwise I would have probably taken a bite and had an allergy attack, which might have put a damper on the evening. Especially if I would have died, haha. But seriously, who puts walnuts in green beans??

People made some short speeches, and I did as well. I probably should have planned out a longer, more appropriate speech, but I don’t think anyone really would have wanted to listen to that. I did realize (and say) that if I wouldn’t have joined IUSTV, I wouldn’t have met most of the people who were at the banquet. Who knows what I would be up to if it weren’t for all of this. Brian also gave me a shout out, and I got some applause, so that was nice. This is kinda what it must feel like to retire, I guess. All in all, the banquet was awesome, and Kaylyn (my office assistant/exec director apprentice) did a good job of pulling something together that I never could have. Girls are better at party planning anyway I guess (not to be stereotypical).

Huge afterparty at Kyle’s house that night. It was probably one of the best parties all year, ranking right up there with the A-Team Halloween Reunion (a different kind of awesomeness though). Had so many IUSTV people at the party, it was great. To be honest, it might have been the last time I will see a lot of people, so that was another reason for everyone to party down. Wow I sound like an old man there. Anyway, although we didn’t make it to our goal of staying up until McDonald’s breakfast time, I was out there until around 3:30AM, when I came home and promptly fell asleep until the afternoon. The next day, I woke up and goofed around at home until a class discussion I went to. On my way back from campus, got a phone call from Rob at Aeon, and I called him back when I got home. I knew that I had the job, since I talked to him on Monday. I was just waiting on the placement information. And that’s what he was calling about.

So they found me a placement in Chiba prefecture. Ichihara City, which is not all that far away from Makuhari or Ichikawa, where I spent last summer and the fall before on my many adventures. Ichihara is a bit more suburban/industrial/smaller than what I was ideally looking for, but hey it sounds like a pretty darn good offer. It’s an Aeon school that has both adults and younger students. It’s about 40% business professionals, 30% college and high school students, 5% housewives, and 25% younger kids. The station nearest my Aeon branch school would be Goi station (五井) on the Uchibo line. Now, according to Ekitan, my handy-dandy guide to the mess that is the Japanese transit system, Goi station is about an hour train ride from Myoden (where I lived last year), and Tokyo Station itself. About 30 minutes to good old Kaihim-Makuhari. Ichihara/Goi is a little further south than the area I know and love, but I think this might be about as close as I can get with a somewhat random job placement that these companies all do. Also, Goi is about 5 stops away from Kisarazu city, the hometown of Kishidan!!!! That there might be enough reason to go. Here’s a map to help you (and me) understand where Goi station is.
Aeon offer map
There’s only 1 other foreign teacher at the branch, 2 full time Japanese, and 3 part time Japanese. Seems like a pretty small joint, but that might not be too bad. And since the school is at Goi station, I’m assuming I’d be living pretty close to there. If I lived a bit more in the Makuhari/Tokyo direction, that would be perfect. I have until about Wednesday to call them and give them my decision. Not a lot of time. But still, I think this sounds pretty good. The pay isn’t as much as the Sears job, but since pretty much everyone and their brother is telling me to avoid a cubicle job and get out and explore the world, I think Aeon sounds pretty good. I’m going up with Brian tomorrow to Chicago, since we’re interviewing with Nova on Monday morning. I’m pretty sure I’m just going to tell them straight, “if you guys can get me a placement in Tokyo and tell me by Wednesday, you can hire me. If not, I’m going with Aeon.” Sounds kind of asshole-ish, I know, but it’s the truth. I’m pretty much hoping that will give me some bargaining power. If not, then I wouldn’t be able to wait around for their answer anyway. Aeon demands my answer soon!

So what do you people think? I could either go with Aeon and go to Japan, with a pretty sweet placement, try to find a different job, go with Sears and work in a Chicago cubicle job, or I could just be homeless and jobless (that really isn’t an option). Right now I’m leaning towards doing Aeon. Hmmm… This is a pretty big decision.

If I end up going with Aeon, I wouldn’t have to depart until September 7, so I would also need to figure out what I’d be doing between graduation on May 6 and that. I have my apartment lease in Bloomington until the end of July, so I’d likely stay here and do something, maybe work in a restaurant again while helping out IUSTV. We’ll see. This post is already obscenely long, so I’m going to end it here. I have a few other minor weekend reports to write about, like the party I went to where I made smalltalk with a girl about the Crayola Crayons 128 pack with built-in sharpener, but I’ll have to save those for another day. I’m tired, and need to sleep so I can drive to Chicago in the morning/early afternoon.

AEON Interview

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Time to summarize the AEON interview experience. I actually wouldn’t be surprised if someone (aside from friends/people who usually read this) finds this sometime in the future via Google or some search engine, in hopes of preparing or learning more for their own upcoming AEON interview. I actually did this myself before my interview, stumbling upon this blog, which gave me some pretty good insight into what to expect at the interview. So here you go, future AEON interviewee: you also get a look at what to expect. Everyone else: this is a really long post, so don’t feel like you have to read it (of course, every other post, you are REQUIRED to read 4 times over in its entirety).

I actually applied online back in October or November for AEON, just knowing that it was one of the big English school in Japan. Within a week (it might have actually been even sooner than that), I got a call from their Chicago office asking if I’d like to come up for an interview. Knowing that I wouldn’t be graduating until May, I postponed it. They called me back again in January, and I finally scheduled an interview for March 16. I drove up to Chicago the night before, and checked into a hotel. I had most of my application materials they requested printed and ready to go, with the exception of my demo lesson plan: you’re supposed to have a 15 minute lesson plan written up, with the understanding that you’ll actually demonstrate 5 minutes of it. Now, until I actually did some research (by reading other peoples blogs), I had assumed this would have been something fairly basic. I read, however, that some people did things much more elaborate, and felt that I should do the same. I mean, if more people were doing things like that, I should probably do the same to “stay competitive.” After putting it off until the morning of, I wrote out a 3 page lesson plan on “What is there to do in Tokyo,” complete with vocab words, a handout diagram, and 3 conversational phrase structures for the students to practice. It actually looked pretty good I think.

I arrive at the interview place about 15 or 20 minutes before the 1PM interview time. Actually, I realized later that the time was supposed to be 1:30; good thing my mistake got me there early rather than later. They were located on the 21st floor of this huge building in downtown Chicago, sharing a large office suite space with a law firm or something. Since I was there so freaking early, I was sitting in the waiting area for almost an hour. Great. Of course I was the first one there. The second person to arrive was a guy wearing khakhis and a tie; let’s call him Muttonchops. I found out later that this guy with the huge sideburns was from Oklahoma and he worked in a Japanese restaurant. That seemed to be his main motivation for applying. Third person to come was a tall guy who looked really nervous, wearing a suit and a big bookbag, and he had a really skinny neck. Let’s call him Neck. Last to arrive was a girl who seemed to be escorted to the office by her dad (or a really old boyfriend maybe?); we’ll call her The Chick. We now have our cast of characters set up so I can keep telling my story. And yes, it was just 4 of us interviewing; I really thought there would have been more.

The interviewers/presenters from AEON were 3: a Japanese lady and two American guys. We entered the conference room and they start off by talking about the program, the company, and all that stuff. We then watched some videos, showing the “making of” and then the actual finished products for 2 of the AEON commercials airing on Japanese TV. One is starring Ai Kato, the other was a famous Japanese dude who I’ve seen on posters and stuff (including the AEON ones) in trains, and maybe TV also. These were kind of cool and interesting to watch. Huge sets, camera set ups, tons of extras, and even a crane and tracks were all used for these commercials. After that video, we got to watch another longer video about a Day in the Life of an AEON teacher. It was mainly focused on this freaky looking old white lady, who taught at the AEON branch school right near MotoYawata Station (本八幡), where I actually have been several times (it was only about 3 stops away from Nishi). Freaky, obviously staged video, but it was interesting to watch anyway. After that video, Neck stands up and goes to talk to one of the AEON guys outside the room. Since the conference room wall was big and all glass, it was only good for blocking the sound. After they talked for a few seconds, Neck comes back in to grab his bag and he leaves. I guess it was too much for him; I have no idea. Maybe he didn’t like to idea of living in a small Japanese apartment (the one in the video was almost exactly like mine over the summer).

So all that’s left now is me, The Chick, and Muttonchops. The recruiters talked some more, then we had a break. I got to talk to the other 2 candidates a little bit during that time, which was good because we needed a little more familiarity for the next part of the session: the demo lessons. We each had to stand up and introduce ourselves, give some info on why we applied, and then give our 5 minutes of fame. Actually I don’t think any of us actually used up all 5 minutes, but that’s cool. The Chick apparently is studying education for kids with speech impediments or something like that, so her lesson was geared towards little kids (complete with an old McDonald’s Farm book and cards). Muttonchops’ wasn’t bad, but it seemed very short and basic. My lesson wasn’t bad, but since the other 2 interviewees weren’t actually Japanese and thus didn’t know anything about Tokyo, it wasn’t as smooth as I had written out. Either way, it went well. After that, we talked again about AEON, and had to fill out a form. One part was a survey/short answer thing about AEON and living in Japan, including “what if” ones like “what would you do to help your school manager attract more students.” The other side of the paper was 5 English grammar questions (circle the part of each sentence that is incorrect), which was harder than you would think. I haven’t taken a class on English grammar since maybe sophomore year of high school, and actually had to think hard about 1 or 2 of the questions. After that was taken care of, we gave them our papers and waited for about 10 or 15 minutes (watching the end of the Tennessee game).

After waiting what seemed like a really long time, the AEON people came back to greet us goodbye for the day and to tell us whether or not we got a second interview. Rather than just telling us straight up, they gave each one of us a sealed letter. Secret Agent style, they told us not to open them until we were alone and outside of the building. A very interesting way of doing it, I’d say. As I headed out to the elevators with the other 2, I was wondering if they would open up their letters once we were out of sight of the AEON staff. I was definitely ready to open mine, and curious about how we all did. Muttonchops made a joke about doing it, but it seemed like The Chick was really apprehensive about it. We didn’t open them on the elevator, but I opened mine up in the lobby near the train entrance. It was really short, but I did get an interview for the next day at 2PM. Awesome.

Second day: I met up with Bryan for lunch (Giordanno’s Pizza), which was really awesome, then I headed back to the AEON building. I was wearing the same suit, a different colored shirt; I hope they didn’t care. This time, it was a personal interview (just me), and it ended up being only one of the AEON guys interviewing me (Rob). When he came to pick me up from the waiting area, we went back to a small room. There was a whiteboard and 2 copies of a page from an English book. I was given 10 minutes to prepare a 10 minute lesson about verbs. It’s really hard to think about how to explain basic English grammar when you’ve just been using it like it’s nothing for the past 20 or so years. Thank god the lesson was something basic like this, rather than something more complicated like interrogatives or gerunds. I figured out a basic lesson, wrote stuff on both sides of the whiteboard, and got ready mentally for what I was going to say. After time was apparently up, Rob comes back roleplaying as a Japanese college student. He actually did a pretty good job getting the mannerisms and stuff down on what a Japanese student would sound like, so I was pretty impressed.

Lesson went pretty well, but Rob really did get me pretty good on some “real life situations,” like when the student didn’t understand the meaning of “seriously” or “annoying.” I was very impressed with that; I think they must have had that prepared from the get-go. Anyway, after that I ended up being interviewed (just 1-on-1, I have no idea what happened to the other 2 recruiters from the previous day) for over an hour. By the end, of course, my throat was dry and I started coughing from talking for so damn long. Stuff during the interview was a lot like any regular interview: talking about why I applied, stuff about my work at IUSTV, and a lot about my previous experiences in Japan. He asked right off the bat why I got involved with Japanese in the first place, which I never really have a good answer for (how DID I get started on this?). Anyway, things went very well I think. I told him I’m interviewing with Nova next month, and I have an offer from Sears. I’ll know from AEON sometime before April 7 via phone (if I get an offer) or via postal mail (if I get a rejection).

One of the nice things about AEON is that if/when they give you an offer for a job, it comes along with the exact school that you would be placed at. No risk of going to Japan blind and getting stuck in Podunktown, Nippon. I talked during the second interview a bit about my placement preference, and of course I strongly pushed for Tokyo or Chiba. Rob was trying to push for “greater Kanto area” but I really don’t know how happy I would be in some smaller part of Kanagawa or something. We’ll see. Who knows if I even get an offer. Well, that’s enough for now; I’ve written way too much. If anyone out there is interviewing with AEON and finds this little mini-guide to my experiences helpful, I’m glad. Please comment or something so I know you’re reading. Wow this is way too long; sorry about that.

鹿語

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The drive from Bloomington to Chicago must be one of the most boring and least-scenic of roadways I have ever seen. Driving up to Indy is pretty much the same as usual, but once you pass Indy, there is absolutely nothing. NOTHING. Not really even anything interesting on the sides of the roads. No major towns until you get up to Gary/Chicago area. I passed Lafayette and Purdue I think, but saw nothing of note from the highway except for some salt mines. But, about 5 hours later (including a pitstop in Morocco), I made it to Chicago. I’m staying in a pretty nice hotel downtown, preparing for my interview with AEON tomorrow. AEON, for those wondering, is an English school in Japan. Sounds fancy; I think I have a decent chance at getting in. However, Bryan Reynolds also applied last year and didn’t get in, which leaves me worried. Maybe the A-Team is too super qualified for this kind of job. I’m considering playing down my experience, which is really tough since half of my resume is Japan or Japanese-related stuff. We’ll see. Also sometime between now and the interview tomorrow at 1PM, I have to make up a 15-minute lesson plan for the group interview. I guess I’ll just try to pull something out of the memories of my stint of teaching English at Takanawadai High School.

I’d never driven to Chicago before. I’ve been here quite a few times, but it was always either my parents driving, flying, or taking a bus. Anyway, the drive wasn’t too bad (except for the excruciatingly boring aspects); I do like the drive to St. Louis better. Also, before you get into Chicago proper, you pass through this industrial zone where every building spits smoke of varying levels of pollution (including neon blue!). Maybe that was Gary? Yes, that part of the world looked pretty bad from what I saw. The legends are true!

Toll roads. I get to the first toll gate, and was preparing for the worst. 15 cents. Sweet; I can deal with that. Then the next one: 50 cents. A big increase, but still, not too bad. Then a little bit more down the road and I hit the last of my toll gates of the night. This one, however, is a whopping $2.50. What. The. Heck. Chicago.???! They lure you into thinking “oh wow, these toll roads ain’t so bad.” But once you’re on the road and there’s already no way out, they slam you at the end with a huge price increase. 15 cents should be the maximum or something. The roads weren’t even THAT much better than a standard highway. Bah.

Up to now, spring break has been just working on IUSTV stuff everyday at the office, usually until about 8 or 9 at night. I’m kind of glad that I got to come up to Chicago for a few days, just to get away from everything. Sure, tomorrow afternoon after my interview I’ll probably come back to the hotel to work on IUSTV stuff (e-mail, scheduling stuff, etc), but it’s still like a vacation for me. I want to check out the Field Museum, Chinatown, and Mitsuwa. All of which I think I’ll be able to pull off, since I’m staying here until Saturday afternoon. If anyone else is around Chicago, call me and we can hang out. Otherwise I’ll just be museum-ing it up myself. God I’m such a dork. But they have an exhibit on evolution!

Driving for 5 hours by yourself with nothing to do but listen to CDs gives you a lot of time to think to yourself. I can’t really remember if there was anything important (there certainly wasn’t anything deep), but I do remember the revelation about sleep. Recently, I’ve been getting more sleep than I ever have since I was very very young (probably before I entered elementary school), save for weekends, breaks, etc. Nowadays, with my demanding College Senior class schedule, I sleep pretty much 8 hours every day. I wake up feeling fine, never need to nap, don’t feel tired, and life, in summary, is good. This is coming off a long stretch (middle school to junior year of college) where I would instead get about 5 or 6 hours of sleep, I would wake up tired all the time, fall asleep in class, take naps, etc. Getting 8 hours sleep is definitely a good thing. I actually think I’ve written about this before on the blog (well, probably just bragging about my awesome schedule), but I just wanted to throw it out there again.

Now, I’m watching Champloo on Adult Swim in my hotel room, thinking about what I should make my lesson plan about, and I have already planned out my morning schedule for tomorrow. I’m going to wake up around 9AM to get everything organized, printed, and to make sure I show up at the interview place ON TIME (yeah, we all know I have a bad habit about being late for everything). Once that’s over, time to explore downtown Chicago. SPRING BREAK 2K6!!!! WOOOOOOO!

Boston wrap-up

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And so, days later, I return, still job-less, with a slight cold, but full of clam chowder and lobster. Boston was a lot of fun, although it was colder and rainier than I would have liked. I ended up not sleeping Thursday night in order to pack and drive to Indy for a 5:30AM flight. It wasn’t too bad until it started raining even harder than it had been, which made driving behind anyone impossible, because you’d get sprayed with enough water backwash to make the road invisible. Anyway, somehow I made it alive to the airport, and off to Boston I went.

I spent my first few hours in Boston going to my hotel (in Braintree, should have been called MotherbrainTree), and then going to the nearby mall because somehow I forgot to pack my ties. So I went and bought 2 clearance ties (still nice ones). Made it to the World Trade Center for the Boston Career Fair. Now, I knew this before I went, but it really is something to see and behold: Japanese kids all over the place, all dressed in pretty much the same black suits, looking for jobs and being mega Japanese about it. I watched a video in class about this, called 就職活動 which pretty much means job hunting, but seeing it in real life was kind of funny. I met up with Aki and talked to a few places. Made a fool out of myself at Goldman Sachs trying to somewhat fake that I was interested in finance, which I’m absolutely not. Ah well.

Now to quickly put down the Career Forum and get it out of the way. First, it is geared for Japanese kids who happen to be in America. That was my first big disadvantage, not being Japanese and also not being fluent in the language. Second big boner for the fair was that the big majority of the companies were recruiting for finance-type positions. Also something I’m not. So already going in, my chances were down a lot, but I’m still glad I went. It was a good experience and I did get to see Boston as well. I thought I’d go ahead and get that all out there so that it doesn’t sound like I’m complaining the whole post.

That night, I just went home around 7. Took about an hour to get from the World Trade Center to my hotel with waiting times, etc. I get home and pretty much just passed out. Lack of sleep, extensive walking, and boredom put me out pretty nicely. I woke up around 2 or 3AM pretty hungry, and since Braintree is like a ghetto suburb (read: not a college town), there were no take-out or delivery food places open that late. I was starving. I went down to the lobby, had like 2 cups of coffee, 2 small candy bars from the dish at the front desk, then finally resorted to eating 2 packs of instant oatmeal, with water heated in my rooms coffee maker. It wasn’t good, but it wasn’t bad. I went to sleep again to wake up the next day, a bit later than planned, and finally left the hotel even more later than planned. What caused this tardiness, aside from my usual laziness? Nervousness for the career fair? Practicing my Japanese? Studying corporate literature? No, I was sitting in my room for about an hour watching Bring It On Again, a fine film if I ever saw one. Note that I am joking, but it did have cute girls in skirts, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time.

I get to the career fair finally, and meet up with Seth, then Angela and Sunny, then Paulos and Courtney-something (who I have only met once), then Aki. Also there were some scabes in there. Adam was apparently there earlier, but I missed him. Most of us went to get food, then back to the fair for me. I talked to a bunch of places, pretty much anywhere that didn’t require native Japanese ability. It was decent, but definitely nothing amazing or the like. At the end of the day, Sunny got a sweet offer from Lehman Brothers, so she’s all set. That night, I went and got dinner with Seth, his sister, and Jeremy from Penn State (the legendary Jermbo that german-suplexed a gorilla bear in Nagoya). It sounds very simple, but from the time we decided we should get some food to the time we sat down to eat (eventually at Cheers), about 3 or 4 hours had passed by. We had tried coordinating with like 12 other people, and yeah, that didn’t work. Haha oh well.

Ate dinner, went to the Beantown Pub, and then went home. Luckily (ugh) it was raining, so I got to run to the station in my suit. Good times. The next day, Sunday, I woke up and watched part of another classic movie, Richie Rich. Had enough of the career fair and no one else was going, so I decided to go on an adventure like I do every so often when I’m traveling. The only setback was the cold and wind, which by now I’m pretty sure got me sick. I went to Chinatown, Quincy Market, Boston Crossing, and crossed through the theatre district. Nice, but once again, very cold. Met up with Angela for a bit and got dinner. Lobster for like $12. Hell yes. It was delicious, and I felt like I accomplished something I had to do in Boston.

That was about it; slept a bit Sunday night, got up really early Monday and got back to Indiana. I didn’t get a job, but it was a good weekend anyway. I’m definitely exhausted. In closing, I would like to point out that Boston has the most Dunkin’ Donuts than anywhere else I have ever seen. They definitely outnumbered the Starbucks even. I didn’t actually eat any donuts from there, but I did get a cappucino on Sunday night. Thanks for a good time Boston, and also for the cold. I’d like to go back some time.

PS – on my layover in Philly I got a cheese steak. I love eating 名物。

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First job interview of the year in about…6 hours. I’ll fill you all in on it afterwards. It’s with Cook Urological…yeeeeah. I know nothing about urological equipment, but they want a Product Manager in their Tokyo office, and specifically e-mailed me. I had never heard of them, but I think they’re just looking for anyone from the B-school who knows Japanese. Urological…yeah, it’s just what you’re thinking. Great.

The hunt

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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the future. Not like way into the future, but mainly the great task of finding a JOB. I’ve had to work on resumes and cover letters for my X420 class, and there’s this career fair coming up at the end of October in Boston. I think I’m going to go. It’s a bunch of Japanese companies, which is something I’ve been considering. The big hangup, however, is that most of these companies ask for Business Level Japanese of American applicants. I’ll admit, my Japanese is pretty good, especially conversational, but BUSINESS LEVEL? Uhh I don’t think so. It’s like keigo (honorific language) on steroids. That’s my main reservation about going to Boston. I’m just counting (I mean hoping) that there will be some companies who only ask of conversational Japanese ability, and/or companies there who interview in English. Boston would be a fun weekend trip as well.

X420 is also doing it’s own little job of making me stress out and think about getting a job. The class itself is cake; I go to class sometimes, and spend about 30 minutes a piece on the homework assignments. I’m doing really well so far; the class is graded on a point system, and I’ve been making plenty of points. It is, I suppose, a good excuse to make me work on resumes and stuff like that, since otherwise I probably would neglect to do them. I need to start going to job fairs, sending out resumes and cover letters, and in general just actually go out and hunt for a job. Graduation isn’t until May (I should find out when I need to register for that), but I have a feeling I’m going to need to find and have a job by the end of March at the very latest. Maybe I should just take the easy way out and do JET (teaching English or something in Japan). The pay isn’t great, but it’s not bad. And I’d be in Japan. Do I even want to be in Japan?

Speaking of the job hunt, and X420, I have to admit how much I hate some business students. I know, I’m a business student, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about certain business students (there are a lot of them) that take this all too seriously. I’m talking about the kids who wear suits to stupid company presentations IN CLASS (not like real company presentations, just them coming to talk to a class), go up and try to BS smalltalk with the presenters just to “stand out,” and in general just try too hard to be “professional” and just trying to get a job. It’s hard to explain, but I think you know what I’m talking about. There was such a presentation in my X420 lecture this past Thursday, and when it was all over, everyone is in line to throw their resume into the company folders. One of the presenters is up at the front of the room, and I hear this one kid in front of me trying to make smalltalk. Not even meaningful conversation. Just pure BS. It was so forced and uncomfortable it could have been on Curb Your Enthusiasm. And of course he tried to turn his comment into a handshake and a “Hi, my name is Retarded Moron, blah blah blah.” These kids do it all the time. I am not going to kiss up to someone to get a job (OK maybe just a little, but I still gotta keep my dignity). If someone is going to hire me, it’s going to be because I’m awesome. Which I am. Look at my resume. You will hire me.

I’ve decided (OK not really, it’s always been kind of a given) that there are 3 main categories of job that I might be going for. Also there are hybrids of these categories. The 3 are: Marketing/Advertising, Television or Film, and Japanese related. Right now I have no clue which one I want to concentrate on. I have a feeling that the marketing path will get me the biggest starting salary…somewhere around 50K plus. That’s pretty darn tempting. Television is probably something that I would love the most. Japanese would be fun, but I don’t know if that’s something I should do right away. Especially since I don’t have business level Japanese (ugh). If I were super lucky, I could land a job doing TV advertisements (CMs) for a Japanese TV station. Let’s be honest, I’m not going to land something that sweet right away.

This post was pretty pointless (I say that all the time, mainly because it’s true). Just wanted to let everyone know that finding a job is a huge pain in the butt and I wish I could just get paid a handsome salary to stay at IUSTV the rest of my life. Oh, in other news, I finally got Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, and it is one of the sweetest films I have ever seen. Even if I’d never played through FF7, I think this would still be one of the greatest films ever. The CG is amazing; about 3820498 times more impressive than Toy Story. Everyone should see this movie right now. I’m totally buying the DVD when it’s released in the US at the end of November. For now, my torrented version works great.

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